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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Book I
+by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Book I
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Release Date: October 20, 2006 [EBook #6151]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATHENS: ITS RISE AND FALL, ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Tapio Riikonen and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+ATHENS: ITS RISE AND FALL
+
+by Edward Bulwer Lytton
+
+
+
+
+DEDICATION.
+
+TO HENRY FYNES CLINTON, ESQ., etc., etc. AUTHOR OF "THE FASTI
+HELLENICI."
+
+
+My Dear Sir,
+
+I am not more sensible of the distinction conferred upon me when you
+allowed me to inscribe this history with your name, than pleased with
+an occasion to express my gratitude for the assistance I have derived
+throughout the progress of my labours from that memorable work, in
+which you have upheld the celebrity of English learning, and afforded
+so imperishable a contribution to our knowledge of the Ancient World.
+To all who in history look for the true connexion between causes and
+effects, chronology is not a dry and mechanical compilation of barren
+dates, but the explanation of events and the philosophy of facts. And
+the publication of the Fasti Hellenici has thrown upon those times, in
+which an accurate chronological system can best repair what is
+deficient, and best elucidate what is obscure in the scanty
+authorities bequeathed to us, all the light of a profound and
+disciplined intellect, applying the acutest comprehension to the
+richest erudition, and arriving at its conclusions according to the
+true spirit of inductive reasoning, which proportions the completeness
+of the final discovery to the caution of the intermediate process. My
+obligations to that learning and to those gifts which you have
+exhibited to the world are shared by all who, in England or in Europe,
+study the history or cultivate the literature of Greece. But, in the
+patient kindness with which you have permitted me to consult you
+during the tedious passage of these volumes through the press--in the
+careful advice--in the generous encouragement--which have so often
+smoothed the path and animated the progress--there are obligations
+peculiar to myself; and in those obligations there is so much that
+honours me, that, were I to enlarge upon them more, the world might
+mistake an acknowledgment for a boast.
+
+ With the highest consideration and esteem,
+ Believe me, my dear sir,
+ Most sincerely and gratefully yours,
+ EDWARD LYTTON BULWER
+ London, March, 1837.
+
+
+
+
+ADVERTISEMENT.
+
+
+The work, a portion of which is now presented to the reader, has
+occupied me many years--though often interrupted in its progress,
+either by more active employment, or by literary undertakings of a
+character more seductive. These volumes were not only written, but
+actually in the hands of the publisher before the appearance, and
+even, I believe, before the announcement of the first volume of Mr.
+Thirlwall's History of Greece, or I might have declined going over any
+portion of the ground cultivated by that distinguished scholar [1].
+As it is, however, the plan I have pursued differs materially from
+that of Mr. Thirlwall, and I trust that the soil is sufficiently
+fertile to yield a harvest to either labourer.
+
+Since it is the letters, yet more than the arms or the institutions of
+Athens, which have rendered her illustrious, it is my object to
+combine an elaborate view of her literature with a complete and
+impartial account of her political transactions. The two volumes now
+published bring the reader, in the one branch of my subject, to the
+supreme administration of Pericles; in the other, to a critical
+analysis of the tragedies of Sophocles. Two additional volumes will,
+I trust, be sufficient to accomplish my task, and close the records of
+Athens at that period when, with the accession of Augustus, the annals
+of the world are merged into the chronicle of the Roman empire. In
+these latter volumes it is my intention to complete the history of the
+Athenian drama--to include a survey of the Athenian philosophy--to
+describe the manners, habits, and social life of the people, and to
+conclude the whole with such a review of the facts and events narrated
+as may constitute, perhaps, an unprejudiced and intelligible
+explanation of the causes of the rise and fall of Athens.
+
+As the history of the Greek republics has been too often corruptly
+pressed into the service of heated political partisans, may I be
+pardoned the precaution of observing that, whatever my own political
+code, as applied to England, I have nowhere sought knowingly to
+pervert the lessons of a past nor analogous time to fugitive interests
+and party purposes. Whether led sometimes to censure, or more often
+to vindicate the Athenian people, I am not conscious of any other
+desire than that of strict, faithful, impartial justice. Restlessly
+to seek among the ancient institutions for illustrations (rarely
+apposite) of the modern, is, indeed, to desert the character of a
+judge for that of an advocate, and to undertake the task of the
+historian with the ambition of the pamphleteer. Though designing this
+work not for colleges and cloisters, but for the general and
+miscellaneous public, it is nevertheless impossible to pass over in
+silence some matters which, if apparently trifling in themselves, have
+acquired dignity, and even interest, from brilliant speculations or
+celebrated disputes. In the history of Greece (and Athenian history
+necessarily includes nearly all that is valuable in the annals of the
+whole Hellenic race) the reader must submit to pass through much that
+is minute, much that is wearisome, if he desire to arrive at last at
+definite knowledge and comprehensive views. In order, however, to
+interrupt as little as possible the recital of events, I have
+endeavoured to confine to the earlier portion of the work such details
+of an antiquarian or speculative nature as, while they may afford to
+the general reader, not, indeed, a minute analysis, but perhaps a
+sufficient notion of the scholastic inquiries which have engaged the
+attention of some of the subtlest minds of Germany and England, may
+also prepare him the better to comprehend the peculiar character and
+circumstances of the people to whose history he is introduced: and it
+may be well to warn the more impatient that it is not till the second
+book (vol. i., p. 181) that disquisition is abandoned for narrative.
+There yet remain various points on which special comment would be
+incompatible with connected and popular history, but on which I
+propose to enlarge in a series of supplementary notes, to be appended
+to the concluding volume. These notes will also comprise criticisms
+and specimens of Greek writers not so intimately connected with the
+progress of Athenian literature as to demand lengthened and elaborate
+notice in the body of the work. Thus, when it is completed, it is my
+hope that this book will combine, with a full and complete history of
+Athens, political and moral, a more ample and comprehensive view of
+the treasures of the Greek literature than has yet been afforded to
+the English public. I have ventured on these remarks because I thought
+it due to the reader, no less than to myself, to explain the plan and
+outline of a design at present only partially developed.
+
+London, March, 1837.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+ BOOK I
+
+ CHAPTER
+
+ I Situation and Soil of Attica.--The Pelasgians its earliest
+ Inhabitants.--Their Race and Language akin to the Grecian.--
+ Their varying Civilization and Architectural Remains.--
+ Cecrops.--Were the earliest Civilizers of Greece foreigners
+ or Greeks?--The Foundation of Athens.--The Improvements
+ attributed to Cecrops.--The Religion of the Greeks cannot
+ be reduced to a simple System.--Its Influence upon their
+ Character and Morals, Arts and Poetry.--The Origin of
+ Slavery and Aristocracy.
+
+ II The unimportant consequences to be deduced from the admission
+ that Cecrops might be Egyptian.--Attic Kings before
+ Theseus.--The Hellenes.--Their Genealogy.--Ionians and
+ Achaeans Pelasgic.--Contrast between Dorians and Ionians.--
+ Amphictyonic League.
+
+ III The Heroic Age.--Theseus.--His legislative Influence upon
+ Athens.--Qualities of the Greek Heroes.--Effect of a
+ Traditional Age upon the Character of a People.
+
+ IV The Successors of Theseus.--The Fate of Codrus.--The
+ Emigration of Nileus.--The Archons.--Draco.
+
+ V A General Survey of Greece and the East previous to the
+ Time of Solon.--The Grecian Colonies.--The Isles.--Brief
+ account of the States on the Continent.--Elis and the
+ Olympic Games.
+
+ VI Return of the Heraclidae.--The Spartan Constitution and
+ Habits.--The first and second Messenian War.
+
+ VII Governments in Greece.
+
+ VIII Brief Survey of Arts, Letters, and Philosophy in Greece,
+ prior to the Legislation of Solon.
+
+
+ BOOK II
+
+ CHAPTER
+
+ I The Conspiracy of Cylon.--Loss of Salamis.--First Appearance
+ of Solon.--Success against the Megarians in the Struggle for
+ Salamis.--Cirrhaean War.--Epimenides.--Political State of
+ Athens.--Character of Solon.--His Legislation.--General View
+ of the Athenian Constitution.
+
+ II The Departure of Solon from Athens.--The Rise of Pisistratus.
+ --Return of Solon.--His Conduct and Death.--The Second and
+ Third Tyranny of Pisistratus.--Capture of Sigeum.--Colony
+ In the Chersonesus founded by the first Miltiades.--Death of
+ Pisistratus.
+
+ III The Administration of Hippias.--The Conspiracy of Harmodius
+ and Aristogiton.--The Death of Hipparchus.--Cruelties of
+ Hippias.--The young Miltiades sent to the Chersonesus.--The
+ Spartans Combine with the Alcmaeonidae against Hippias.--The
+ fall of the Tyranny.--The Innovations of Clisthenes.--His
+ Expulsion and Restoration.--Embassy to the Satrap of Sardis.
+ --Retrospective View of the Lydian, Medean, and Persian
+ Monarchies.--Result of the Athenian Embassy to Sardis.--
+ Conduct of Cleomenes.--Victory of the Athenians against the
+ Boeotians and Chalcidians.--Hippias arrives at Sparta.--The
+ Speech of Sosicles the Corinthian.--Hippias retires to
+ Sardis.
+
+ IV Histiaeus, Tyrant of Miletus, removed to Persia.--The
+ Government of that City deputed to Aristagoras, who invades
+ Naxos with the aid of the Persians.--Ill Success of that
+ Expedition.--Aristagoras resolves upon Revolting from the
+ Persians.--Repairs to Sparta and to Athens.--The Athenians
+ and Eretrians induced to assist the Ionians.--Burning of
+ Sardis.--The Ionian War.--The Fate of Aristagoras.--Naval
+ Battle of Lade.--Fall of Miletus.--Reduction of Ionia.--
+ Miltiades.--His Character.--Mardonius replaces Artaphernes
+ in the Lydian Satrapy.--Hostilities between Aegina and
+ Athens.--Conduct of Cleomenes.--Demaratus deposed.--Death
+ Of Cleomenes.--New Persian Expedition.
+
+ V The Persian Generals enter Europe.--Invasion of Naxos,
+ Carystus, Eretria.--The Athenians Demand the Aid of Sparta.
+ --The Result of their Mission and the Adventure of their
+ Messenger.--The Persians advance to Marathon.--The Plain
+ Described.--Division of Opinion in the Athenian Camp.--The
+ Advice of Miltiades prevails.--The Drear of Hippias.--The
+ Battle of Marathon.
+
+
+ BOOK III
+
+ CHAPTER
+
+ I The Character and Popularity of Miltiades.--Naval expedition.
+ --Siege of Paros.--Conduct of Miltiades.--He is Accused and
+ Sentenced.--His Death.
+
+ II The Athenian Tragedy.--Its Origin.--Thespis.--Phrynichus.--
+ Aeschylus.--Analysis of the Tragedies of Aeschylus.
+
+ III Aristides.--His Character and Position.--The Rise of
+ Themistocles.--Aristides is Ostracised.--The Ostracism
+ examined.--The Influence of Themistocles increases.--The
+ Silver--mines of Laurion.--Their Product applied by
+ Themistocles to the Increase of the Navy.--New Direction
+ given to the National Character.
+
+ IV The Preparations of Darius.--Revolt of Egypt.--Dispute for
+ The Succession to the Persian Throne.--Death of Darius.--
+ Brief Review of the leading Events and Characteristics of
+ his Reign.
+
+ V Xerxes conducts an Expedition into Egypt.--He finally resolves
+ on the Invasion of Greece.--Vast Preparations for the
+ Conquest of Europe.--Xerxes arrives at Sardis.--Despatches
+ Envoys to the Greek States, demanding Tribute.--The Bridge
+ of the Hellespont.--Review of the Persian Armament at
+ Abydos.--Xerxes encamps at Therme.
+
+ VI The Conduct of the Greeks.--The Oracle relating to Salamis.--
+ Art of Themistocles.--The Isthmian Congress.--Embassies to
+ Argos, Crete, Corcyra, and Syracuse.--Their ill Success.--
+ The Thessalians send Envoys to the Isthmus.--The Greeks
+ advance to Tempe, but retreat.--The Fleet despatched to
+ Artemisium, and the Pass of Thermopylae occupied.--Numbers
+ of the Grecian Fleet.--Battle of Thermopylae.
+
+ VII The Advice of Demaratus to Xerxes.--Themistocles.--Actions off
+ Artemisium.--The Greeks retreat.--The Persians invade
+ Delphi, and are repulsed with great Loss.--The Athenians,
+ unaided by their Allies, abandon Athens, and embark for
+ Salamis.--The irresolute and selfish Policy of the
+ Peloponnesians.--Dexterity and Firmness of Themistocles.--
+ Battle of Salamis.--Andros and Carystus besieged by the
+ Greeks.--Anecdotes of Themistocles.--Honours awarded to him
+ in Sparta.--Xerxes returns to Asia.--Olynthus and Potidaea
+ besieged by Artabazus.--The Athenians return Home.--The
+ Ostracism of Aristides is repealed.
+
+ VIII Embassy of Alexander of Macedon to Athens.--The Result of his
+ Proposals.--Athenians retreat to Salamis.--Mardonius
+ occupies Athens.--The Athenians send Envoys to Sparta.--
+ Pausanias succeeds Cleombrotus as Regent of Sparta.--Battle
+ of Plataea.--Thebes besieged by the Athenians.--Battle of
+ Mycale.--Siege of Sestos.--Conclusion of the Persian War.
+
+
+ BOOK IV
+
+ CHAPTER
+
+ I Remarks on the Effects of War.--State of Athens.--Interference
+ of Sparta with respect to the Fortifications of Athens.--
+ Dexterous Conduct of Themistocles.--The New Harbour of the
+ Piraeus.--Proposition of the Spartans in the Amphictyonic
+ Council defeated by Themistocles.--Allied Fleet at Cyprus
+ and Byzantium.--Pausanias.--Alteration in his Character.--
+ His ambitious Views and Treason.--The Revolt of the Ionians
+ from the Spartan Command.--Pausanias recalled.--Dorcis
+ replaces him.--The Athenians rise to the Head of the Ionian
+ League.--Delos made the Senate and Treasury of the Allies.--
+ Able and prudent Management of Aristides.--Cimon succeeds
+ To the Command of the Fleet.--Character of Cimon.--Eion
+ besieged.--Scyros colonized by Atticans.--Supposed Discovery
+ of the Bones of Theseus.--Declining Power of Themistocles.
+ --Democratic Change in the Constitution.--Themistocles
+ ostracised.--Death of Aristides.
+
+ II Popularity and Policy of Cimon.--Naxos revolts from the
+ Ionian League.--Is besieged by Cimon.--Conspiracy and
+ Fate of Pausanias.--Flight and Adventures of Themistocles.
+ --His Death.
+
+ III Reduction of Naxos.--Actions off Cyprus.--Manners of
+ Cimon.--Improvements in Athens.--Colony at the Nine Ways.
+ --Siege of Thasos.--Earthquake in Sparta.--Revolt of Helots,
+ Occupation of Ithome, and Third Messenian War.--Rise and
+ Character of Pericles.--Prosecution and Acquittal of Cimon.
+ --The Athenians assist the Spartans at Ithome.--Thasos
+ Surrenders.--Breach between the Athenians and Spartans.--
+ Constitutional Innovations at Athens.--Ostracism of Cimon.
+
+ IV War between Megara and Corinth.--Megara and Pegae garrisoned
+ by Athenians.--Review of Affairs at the Persian Court.--
+ Accession of Artaxerxes.--Revolt of Egypt under Inarus.--
+ Athenian Expedition to assist Inarus.--Aegina besieged.--The
+ Corinthians defeated.--Spartan Conspiracy with the Athenian
+ Oligarchy.--Battle of Tanagra.--Campaign and Successes of
+ Myronides.--Plot of the Oligarchy against the Republic.--
+ Recall of Cimon.--Long Walls completed.--Aegina reduced.--
+ Expedition under Tolmides.--Ithome surrenders.--The
+ Insurgents are settled at Naupactus.--Disastrous Termination
+ of the Egyptian Expedition.--The Athenians march into
+ Thessaly to restore Orestes the Tagus.--Campaign under
+ Pericles.--Truce of five Years with the Peloponnesians.--
+ Cimon sets sail for Cyprus.--Pretended Treaty of Peace with
+ Persia.--Death of Cimon.
+
+ V Change of Manners in Athens.--Begun under the Pisistratidae.--
+ Effects of the Persian War, and the intimate Connexion with
+ Ionia.--The Hetaerae.--The Political Eminence lately
+ acquired by Athens.--The Transfer of the Treasury from Delos
+ to Athens.--Latent Dangers and Evils.--First, the Artificial
+ Greatness of Athens not supported by Natural Strength.--
+ Secondly, her pernicious Reliance on Tribute.--Thirdly,
+ Deterioration of National Spirit commenced by Cimon in the
+ Use of Bribes and Public Tables.--Fourthly, Defects in
+ Popular Courts of Law.--Progress of General Education.--
+ History.--Its Ionian Origin.--Early Historians.--Acusilaus.
+ --Cadmus.--Eugeon.--Hellanicus.--Pherecides.--Xanthus.--View
+ of the Life and Writings of Herodotus.--Progress of
+ Philosophy since Thales.--Philosophers of the Ionian and
+ Eleatic Schools.--Pythagoras.--His Philosophical Tenets and
+ Political Influence.--Effect of these Philosophers on
+ Athens.--School of Political Philosophy continued in Athens
+ from the Time of Solon.--Anaxagoras.--Archelaus.--Philosophy
+ not a thing apart from the ordinary Life of the Athenians.
+
+
+ BOOK V
+
+ CHAPTER
+
+ I Thucydides chosen by the Aristocratic Party to oppose
+ Pericles.--His Policy.--Munificence of Pericles.--Sacred
+ War.--Battle of Coronea.--Revolt of Euboea and Megara--
+ Invasion and Retreat of the Peloponnesians.--Reduction of
+ Euboea.--Punishment of Histiaea.--A Thirty Years' Truce
+ concluded with the Peloponnesians.--Ostracism of Thucydides.
+
+ II Causes of the Power of Pericles.--Judicial Courts of the
+ dependant Allies transferred to Athens.--Sketch of the
+ Athenian Revenues.--Public Buildings the Work of the People
+ rather than of Pericles.--Vices and Greatness of Athens had
+ the same Sources.--Principle of Payment characterizes the
+ Policy of the Period.--It is the Policy of Civilization.--
+ Colonization, Cleruchia.
+
+ III Revision of the Census.--Samian War.--Sketch of the Rise and
+ Progress of the Athenian Comedy to the Time of Aristophanes.
+
+ IV The Tragedies of Sophocles.
+
+
+
+
+ATHENS: ITS RISE AND FALL
+
+
+
+BOOK I.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Situation and Soil of Attica.--The Pelasgians its earliest
+Inhabitants.--Their Race and Language akin to the Grecian.--Their
+varying Civilization and Architectural Remains.--Cecrops.--Were the
+earliest Civilizers of Greece foreigners or Greeks?--The Foundation of
+Athens.--The Improvements attributed to Cecrops.--The Religion of the
+Greeks cannot be reduced to a simple System.--Its Influence upon their
+Character and Morals, Arts and Poetry.--The Origin of Slavery and
+Aristocracy.
+
+
+I. To vindicate the memory of the Athenian people, without disguising
+the errors of Athenian institutions;--and, in narrating alike the
+triumphs and the reverses--the grandeur and the decay--of the most
+eminent of ancient states, to record the causes of her imperishable
+influence on mankind, not alone in political change or the fortunes of
+fluctuating war, but in the arts, the letters, and the social habits,
+which are equal elements in the history of a people;--this is the
+object that I set before me;--not unreconciled to the toil of years,
+if, serving to divest of some party errors, and to diffuse through a
+wider circle such knowledge as is yet bequeathed to us of a time and
+land, fertile in august examples and in solemn warnings--consecrated
+by undying names and memorable deeds.
+
+II. In that part of earth termed by the Greeks Hellas, and by the
+Romans Graecia [2], a small tract of land known by the name of Attica,
+extends into the Aegaean Sea--the southeast peninsula of Greece. In
+its greatest length it is about sixty, in its greatest breadth about
+twenty-four, geographical miles. In shape it is a rude triangle,--on
+two sides flows the sea--on the third, the mountain range of Parnes
+and Cithaeron divides the Attic from the Boeotian territory. It is
+intersected by frequent but not lofty hills, and, compared with the
+rest of Greece, its soil, though propitious to the growth of the
+olive, is not fertile or abundant. In spite of painful and elaborate
+culture, the traces of which are yet visible, it never produced a
+sufficiency of corn to supply its population; and this, the
+comparative sterility of the land, may be ranked among the causes
+which conduced to the greatness of the people. The principal
+mountains of Attica are, the Cape of Sunium, Hymettus, renowned for
+its honey, and Pentelicus for its marble; the principal streams which
+water the valleys are the capricious and uncertain rivulets of
+Cephisus and Ilissus [3],--streams breaking into lesser brooks,
+deliciously pure and clear. The air is serene--the climate healthful
+--the seasons temperate. Along the hills yet breathe the wild thyme,
+and the odorous plants which, everywhere prodigal in Greece, are more
+especially fragrant in that lucid sky;--and still the atmosphere
+colours with peculiar and various taints the marble of the existent
+temples and the face of the mountain landscapes.
+
+III. I reject at once all attempt to penetrate an unfathomable
+obscurity for an idle object. I do not pause to inquire whether,
+after the destruction of Babel, Javan was the first settler in Attica,
+nor is it reserved for my labours to decide the solemn controversy
+whether Ogyges was the contemporary of Jacob or of Moses. Neither
+shall I suffer myself to be seduced into any lengthened consideration
+of those disputes, so curious and so inconclusive, relative to the
+origin of the Pelasgi (according to Herodotus the earliest inhabitants
+of Attica), which have vainly agitated the learned. It may amuse the
+antiquary to weigh gravely the several doubts as to the derivation of
+their name from Pelasgus or from Peleg--to connect the scattered
+fragments of tradition--and to interpret either into history or
+mythology the language of fabulous genealogies. But our subtlest
+hypotheses can erect only a fabric of doubt, which, while it is
+tempting to assault, it is useless to defend. All that it seems to me
+necessary to say of the Pelasgi is as follows:--They are the earliest
+race which appear to have exercised a dominant power in Greece. Their
+kings can be traced by tradition to a time long prior to the recorded
+genealogy of any other tribe, and Inachus, the father of the Pelasgian
+Phoroneus, is but another name for the remotest era to which Grecian
+chronology can ascend [4]. Whether the Pelasgi were anciently a
+foreign or a Grecian tribe, has been a subject of constant and
+celebrated discussion. Herodotus, speaking of some settlements held
+to be Pelaigic, and existing in his time, terms their language
+"barbarous;" but Mueller, nor with argument insufficient, considers
+that the expression of the historian would apply only to a peculiar
+dialect; and the hypothesis is sustained by another passage in
+Herodotus, in which he applies to certain Ionian dialects the same
+term as that with which he stigmatizes the language of the Pelasgic
+settlements. In corroboration of Mueller's opinion we may also
+observe, that the "barbarous-tongued" is an epithet applied by Homer
+to the Carians, and is rightly construed by the ancient critics as
+denoting a dialect mingled and unpolished, certainly not foreign. Nor
+when the Agamemnon of Sophocles upbraids Teucer with "his barbarous
+tongue," [6] would any scholar suppose that Teucer is upbraided with
+not speaking Greek; he is upbraided with speaking Greek inelegantly
+and rudely. It is clear that they who continued with the least
+adulteration a language in its earliest form, would seem to utter a
+strange and unfamiliar jargon to ears accustomed to its more modern
+construction. And, no doubt, could we meet with a tribe retaining the
+English of the thirteenth century, the language of our ancestors would
+be to most of us unintelligible, and seem to many of us foreign. But,
+however the phrase of Herodotus be interpreted, it would still be
+exceedingly doubtful whether the settlements he refers to were really
+and originally Pelasgic, and still more doubtful whether, if Pelasgia
+they had continued unalloyed and uncorrupted their ancestral language.
+I do not, therefore, attach any importance to the expression of
+Herodotus. I incline, on the contrary, to believe, with the more
+eminent of English scholars, that the language of the Pelasgi
+contained at least the elements of that which we acknowledge as the
+Greek;--and from many arguments I select the following:
+
+1st. Because, in the states which we know to have been peopled by the
+Pelasgi (as Arcadia and Attica), and whence the population were not
+expelled by new tribes, the language appears no less Greek than that
+of those states from which the Pelasgi were the earliest driven. Had
+they spoken a totally different tongue from later settlers, I conceive
+that some unequivocal vestiges of the difference would have been
+visible even to the historical times.
+
+2dly. Because the Hellenes are described as few at first--their
+progress is slow--they subdue, but they do not extirpate; in such
+conquests--the conquests of the few settled among the many--the
+language of the many continues to the last; that of the few would
+influence, enrich, or corrupt, but never destroy it.
+
+3dly. Because, whatever of the Grecian language pervades the Latin
+[7], we can only ascribe to the Pelasgic colonizers of Italy. In
+this, all ancient writers, Greek and Latin, are agreed. The few words
+transmitted to us as Pelasgic betray the Grecian features, and the
+Lamina Borgiana (now in the Borgian collection of Naples, and
+discovered in 1783) has an inscription relative to the Siculi or
+Sicani, a people expelled from their Italian settlements before any
+received date of the Trojan war, of which the character is Pelasgic--
+the language Greek.
+
+IV. Of the moral state of the Pelasgi our accounts are imperfect and
+contradictory. They were not a petty horde, but a vast race,
+doubtless divided, like every migratory people, into numerous tribes,
+differing in rank, in civilization [8], and in many peculiarities of
+character. The Pelasgi in one country might appear as herdsmen or as
+savages; in another, in the same age, they might appear collected into
+cities and cultivating the arts. The history of the East informs us
+with what astonishing rapidity a wandering tribe, once settled, grew
+into fame and power; the camp of to-day--the city of to-morrow--and
+the "dwellers in the wilderness setting up the towers and the palaces
+thereof." [9] Thus, while in Greece this mysterious people are often
+represented as the aboriginal race, receiving from Phoenician and
+Egyptian settlers the primitive blessings of social life, in Italy we
+behold them the improvers in agriculture [10] and first teachers of
+letters. [11]
+
+Even so early as the traditional appearance of Cecrops among the
+savages of Attica, the Pelasgians in Arcadia had probably advanced
+from the pastoral to the civil life; and this, indeed, is the date
+assigned by Pausanias to the foundation of that ancestral Lycosura, in
+whose rude remains (by the living fountain and the waving oaks of the
+modern Diaphorte) the antiquary yet traces the fortifications of "the
+first city which the sun beheld." [12] It is in their buildings that
+the Pelasgi have left the most indisputable record of their name.
+Their handwriting is yet upon their walls! A restless and various
+people--overrunning the whole of Greece, found northward in Dacia,
+Illyria, and the country of the Getae, colonizing the coasts of Ionia,
+and long the master-race of the fairest lands of Italy,--they have
+passed away amid the revolutions of the elder earth, their ancestry
+and their descendants alike unknown;--yet not indeed the last, if my
+conclusions are rightly drawn: if the primitive population of Greece--
+themselves Greek--founding the language, and kindred with the blood,
+of the later and more illustrious Hellenes--they still made the great
+bulk of the people in the various states, and through their most
+dazzling age: Enslaved in Laconia--but free in Athens--it was their
+posterity that fought the Mede at Marathon and Plataea,--whom
+Miltiades led,--for whom Solon legislated,--for whom Plato thought,--
+whom Demosthenes harangued. Not less in Italy than in Greece the
+parents of an imperishable tongue, and, in part, the progenitors of a
+glorious race, we may still find the dim track of their existence
+wherever the classic civilization flourished,--the classic genius
+breathed. If in the Latin, if in the Grecian tongue, are yet the
+indelible traces of the language of the Pelasgi, the literature of the
+ancient, almost of the modern world, is their true descendant!
+
+V. Despite a vague belief (referred to by Plato) of a remote and
+perished era of civilization, the most popular tradition asserts the
+Pelasgic inhabitants of Attica to have been sunk into the deepest
+ignorance of the elements of social life, when, either from Sais, an
+Egyptian city, as is commonly supposed, or from Sais a province in
+Upper Egypt, an Egyptian characterized to posterity by the name of
+Cecrops is said to have passed into Attica with a band of adventurous
+emigrants.
+
+The tradition of this Egyptian immigration into Attica was long
+implicitly received. Recently the bold skepticism of German scholars
+--always erudite--if sometimes rash--has sufficed to convince us of
+the danger we incur in drawing historical conclusions from times to
+which no historical researches can ascend. The proofs upon which rest
+the reputed arrival of Egyptian colonizers, under Cecrops, in Attica,
+have been shown to be slender--the authorities for the assertion to be
+comparatively modern--the arguments against the probability of such an
+immigration in such an age, to be at least plausible and important.
+Not satisfied, however, with reducing to the uncertainty of conjecture
+what incautiously had been acknowledged as fact, the assailants of the
+Egyptian origin of Cecrops presume too much upon their victory, when
+they demand us to accept as a counter fact, what can be, after all,
+but a counter conjecture. To me, impartially weighing the arguments
+and assertions on either side, the popular tradition of Cecrops and
+his colony appears one that can neither be tacitly accepted as
+history, nor contemptuously dismissed as invention. It would be,
+however, a frivolous dispute, whether Cecrops were Egyptian or
+Attican, since no erudition can ascertain that Cecrops ever existed,
+were it not connected with a controversy of some philosophical
+importance, viz., whether the early civilizers of Greece were
+foreigners or Greeks, and whether the Egyptians more especially
+assisted to instruct the ancestors of a race that have become the
+teachers and models of the world, in the elements of religion, of
+polity, and the arts.
+
+Without entering into vain and futile reasonings, derived from the
+scattered passages of some early writers, from the ambiguous silence
+of others--and, above all, from the dreams of etymological analogy or
+mythological fable, I believe the earliest civilizers of Greece to
+have been foreign settlers; deducing my belief from the observations
+of common sense rather than from obscure and unsatisfactory research.
+I believe it,
+
+First--Because, what is more probable than that at very early periods
+the more advanced nations of the East obtained communication with the
+Grecian continent and isles? What more probable than that the
+maritime and roving Phoenicians entered the seas of Greece, and were
+tempted by the plains, which promised abundance, and the mountains,
+which afforded a fastness? Possessed of a superior civilization to
+the hordes they found, they would meet rather with veneration than
+resistance, and thus a settlement would be obtained by an
+inconsiderable number, more in right of intelligence than of conquest.
+
+But, though this may be conceded with respect to the Phoenicians, it
+is asserted that the Egyptians at least were not a maritime or
+colonizing people: and we are gravely assured, that in those distant
+times no Egyptian vessel had entered the Grecian seas. But of the
+remotest ages of Egyptian civilization we know but little. On their
+earliest monuments (now their books!) we find depicted naval as well
+as military battles, in which the vessels are evidently those employed
+at sea. According to their own traditions, they colonized in a remote
+age. They themselves laid claim to Danaus: and the mythus of the
+expedition of Osiris is not improbably construed into a figurative
+representation of the spread of Egyptian civilization by the means of
+colonies. Besides, Egypt was subjected to more than one revolution,
+by which a large portion of her population was expelled the land, and
+scattered over the neighbouring regions [13]. And even granting that
+Egyptians fitted out no maritime expedition--they could easily have
+transplanted themselves in Phoenician vessels, or Grecian rafts--from
+Asia into Greece. Nor can we forget that Egypt [14] for a time was
+the habitation, and Thebes the dominion, of the Phoenicians, and that
+hence, perhaps, the origin of the dispute whether certain of the first
+foreign civilizers of Greece were Phoenicians or Egyptians: The
+settlers might come from Egypt, and be by extraction Phoenicians: or
+Egyptian emigrators might well have accompanied the Phoenician. [15]
+
+2dly. By the evidence of all history, savage tribes appear to owe
+their first enlightenment to foreigners: to be civilized, they conquer
+or are conquered--visit or are visited. For a fact which contains so
+striking a mystery, I do not attempt to account. I find in the
+history of every other part of the world, that it is by the colonizer
+or the conqueror that a tribe neither colonizing nor conquering is
+redeemed from a savage state, and I do not reject so probable an
+hypothesis for Greece.
+
+3dly. I look to the various arguments of a local or special nature,
+by which these general probabilities may be supported, and I find them
+unusually strong: I cast my eyes on the map of Greece, and I see that
+it is almost invariably on the eastern side that these eastern
+colonies are said to have been founded: I turn to chronology, and I
+find the revolutions in the East coincide in point of accredited date
+with the traditional immigrations into Greece: I look to the history
+of the Greeks, and I find the Greeks themselves (a people above all
+others vain of aboriginal descent, and contemptuous of foreign races)
+agreed in according a general belief to the accounts of their
+obligations to foreign settlers; and therefore (without additional but
+doubtful arguments from any imaginary traces of Eastern, Egyptian,
+Phoenician rites and fables in the religion or the legends of Greece
+in her remoter age) I see sufficient ground for inclining to the less
+modern, but mere popular belief, which ascribes a foreign extraction
+to the early civilizers of Greece: nor am I convinced by the
+reasonings of those who exclude the Egyptians from the list of these
+primitive benefactors.
+
+It being conceded that no hypothesis is more probable than that the
+earliest civilizers of Greece were foreign, and might be Egyptian, I
+do not recognise sufficient authority for rejecting the Attic
+traditions claiming Egyptian civilizers for the Attic soil, in
+arguments, whether grounded upon the fact that such traditions,
+unreferred to by the more ancient, were collected by the more modern,
+of Grecian writers--or upon plausible surmises as to the habits of the
+Egyptians in that early age. Whether Cecrops were the first--whether
+he were even one--of these civilizers, is a dispute unworthy of
+philosophical inquirers [16]. But as to the time of Cecrops are
+referred, both by those who contend for his Egyptian, and those who
+assert his Attic origin, certain advances from barbarism, and certain
+innovations in custom, which would have been natural to a foreigner,
+and almost miraculous in a native, I doubt whether it would not be our
+wiser and more cautious policy to leave undisturbed a long accredited
+conjecture, rather than to subscribe to arguments which, however
+startling and ingenious, not only substitute no unanswerable
+hypothesis, but conduce to no important result. [17]
+
+VI. If Cecrops were really the leader of an Egyptian colony, it is
+more than probable that he obtained the possession of Attica by other
+means than those of force. To savage and barbarous tribes, the first
+appearance of men, whose mechanical inventions, whose superior
+knowledge of the arts of life--nay, whose exterior advantages of garb
+and mien [18] indicate intellectual eminence, till then neither known
+nor imagined, presents a something preternatural and divine. The
+imagination of the wild inhabitants is seduced, their superstitions
+aroused, and they yield to a teacher--not succumb to an invader. It
+was probably thus, then, that Cecrops with his colonists would have
+occupied the Attic plain--conciliated rather than subdued the
+inhabitants, and united in himself the twofold authority exercised by
+primeval chiefs--the dignity of the legislator, and the sanctity of
+the priest. It is evident that none of the foreign settlers brought
+with them a numerous band. The traditions speak of them with
+gratitude as civilizers, not with hatred as conquerors. And they did
+not leave any traces in the establishment of their language:--a proof
+of the paucity of their numbers, and the gentle nature of their
+influence--the Phoenician Cadmus, the Egyptian Cecrops, the Phrygian
+Pelops, introduced no separate and alien tongue. Assisting to
+civilize the Greeks, they then became Greeks; their posterity merged
+and lost amid the native population.
+
+VII. Perhaps, in all countries, the first step to social improvement
+is in the institution of marriage, and the second is the formation of
+cities. As Menes in Egypt, as Fohi in China, so Cecrops at Athens is
+said first to have reduced into sacred limits the irregular
+intercourse of the sexes [19], and reclaimed his barbarous subjects
+from a wandering and unprovidential life, subsisting on the
+spontaneous produce of no abundant soil. High above the plain, and
+fronting the sea, which, about three miles distant on that side,
+sweeps into a bay peculiarly adapted for the maritime enterprises of
+an earlier age, we still behold a cragged and nearly perpendicular
+rock. In length its superficies is about eight hundred, in breadth
+about four hundred, feet [20]. Below, on either side, flow the
+immortal streams of the Ilissus and Cephisus. From its summit you may
+survey, here, the mountains of Hymettus, Pentelicus, and, far away,
+"the silver-bearing Laurium;" below, the wide plain of Attica, broken
+by rocky hills--there, the islands of Salamis and Aegina, with the
+opposite shores of Argolis, rising above the waters of the Saronic
+Bay. On this rock the supposed Egyptian is said to have built a
+fortress, and founded a city [21]; the fortress was in later times
+styled the Acropolis, and the place itself, when the buildings of
+Athens spread far and wide beneath its base, was still designated
+polis, or the CITY. By degrees we are told that he extended, from
+this impregnable castle and its adjacent plain, the limit of his
+realm, until it included the whole of Attica, and perhaps Boeotia
+[22]. It is also related that he established eleven other towns or
+hamlets, and divided his people into twelve tribes, to each of which
+one of the towns was apportioned--a fortress against foreign invasion,
+and a court of justice in civil disputes.
+
+If we may trust to the glimmering light which, resting for a moment,
+uncertain and confused, upon the reign of Cecrops, is swallowed up in
+all the darkness of fable during those of his reputed successors,--it
+is to this apocryphal personage that we must refer the elements both
+of agriculture and law. He is said to have instructed the Athenians
+to till the land, and to watch the produce of the seasons; to have
+imported from Egypt the olive-tree, for which the Attic soil was
+afterward so celebrated, and even to have navigated to Sicily and to
+Africa for supplies of corn. That such advances from a primitive and
+savage state were not made in a single generation, is sufficiently
+clear. With more probability, Cecrops is reputed to have imposed upon
+the ignorance of his subjects and the license of his followers the
+curb of impartial law, and to have founded a tribunal of justice
+(doubtless the sole one for all disputes), in which after times
+imagined to trace the origin of the solemn Areopagus.
+
+VIII. Passing from these doubtful speculations on the detailed
+improvements effected by Cecrops in the social life of the Attic
+people, I shall enter now into some examination of two subjects far
+more important. The first is the religion of the Athenians in common
+with the rest of Greece; and the second the origin of the institution
+of slavery.
+
+The origin of religion in all countries is an inquiry of the deepest
+interest and of the vaguest result. For, the desire of the pious to
+trace throughout all creeds the principles of the one they themselves
+profess--the vanity of the learned to display a various and recondite
+erudition--the passion of the ingenious to harmonize conflicting
+traditions--and the ambition of every speculator to say something new
+upon an ancient but inexhaustible subject, so far from enlightening,
+only perplex our conjectures. Scarcely is the theory of to-day
+established, than the theory of to-morrow is invented to oppose it.
+With one the religion of the Greeks is but a type of the mysteries of
+the Jews, the event of the deluge, and the preservation of the ark;
+with another it is as entirely an incorporation of the metaphysical
+solemnities of the Egyptian;--now it is the crafty device of priests,
+now the wise invention of sages. It is not too much to say, that
+after the profoundest labours and the most plausible conjectures of
+modern times, we remain yet more uncertain and confused than we were
+before. It is the dark boast of every pagan mythology, as one of the
+eldest of the pagan deities, that "none among mortals hath lifted up
+its veil!"
+
+After, then, some brief and preliminary remarks, tending to such
+hypotheses as appear to me most probable and simple, I shall hasten
+from unprofitable researches into the Unknown, to useful deductions
+from what is given to our survey--in a word, from the origin of the
+Grecian religion to its influence and its effects; the first is the
+province of the antiquary and the speculator; the last of the
+historian and the practical philosopher.
+
+IX. When Herodotus informs us that Egypt imparted to Greece the names
+of almost all her deities, and that his researches convinced him that
+they were of barbarous origin, he exempts from the list of the
+Egyptian deities, Neptune, the Dioscuri, Juno, Vesta, Themis, the
+Graces, and the Nereids [23]. From Africa, according to Herodotus,
+came Neptune, from the Pelasgi the rest of the deities disclaimed by
+Egypt. According to the same authority, the Pelasgi learned not their
+deities, but the names of their deities (and those at a later period),
+from the Egyptians [24]. But the Pelasgi were the first known
+inhabitants of Greece--the first known inhabitants of Greece had
+therefore their especial deities, before any communication with Egypt.
+For the rest we must accept the account of the simple and credulous
+Herodotus with considerable caution and reserve. Nothing is more
+natural--perhaps more certain--than that every tribe [25], even of
+utter savages, will invent some deities of their own; and as these
+deities will as naturally be taken from external objects, common to
+all mankind, such as the sun or the moon, the waters or the earth, and
+honoured with attributes formed from passions and impressions no less
+universal;--so the deities of every tribe will have something kindred
+to each other, though the tribes themselves may never have come into
+contact or communication.
+
+The mythology of the early Greeks may perhaps be derived from the
+following principal sources:--First, the worship of natural objects;--
+and of divinities so formed, the most unequivocally national will
+obviously be those most associated with their mode of life and the
+influences of their climate. When the savage first intrusts the seed
+to the bosom of the earth--when, through a strange and unaccountable
+process, he beholds what he buried in one season spring forth the
+harvest of the next--the EARTH itself, the mysterious garner, the
+benign, but sometimes the capricious reproducer of the treasures
+committed to its charge--becomes the object of the wonder, the hope,
+and the fear, which are the natural origin of adoration and prayer.
+Again, when he discovers the influence of the heaven upon the growth
+of his labour--when, taught by experience, he acknowledges its power
+to blast or to mellow--then, by the same process of ideas, the HEAVEN
+also assumes the character of divinity, and becomes a new agent, whose
+wrath is to be propitiated, whose favour is to be won. What common
+sense thus suggests to us, our researches confirm, and we find
+accordingly that the Earth and the Heaven are the earliest deities of
+the agricultural Pelasgi. As the Nile to the fields of the Egyptian--
+earth and heaven to the culture of the Greek. The effects of the SUN
+upon human labour and human enjoyment are so sensible to the simplest
+understanding, that we cannot wonder to find that glorious luminary
+among the most popular deities of ancient nations. Why search through
+the East to account for its worship in Greece? More easy to suppose
+that the inhabitants of a land, whom the sun so especially favoured--
+saw and blessed it, for it was good, than, amid innumerable
+contradictions and extravagant assumptions, to decide upon that
+remoter shore, whence was transplanted a deity, whose effects were so
+benignant, whose worship was so natural, to the Greeks. And in the
+more plain belief we are also borne out by the more sound inductions
+of learning. For it is noticeable that neither the moon nor the
+stars--favourite divinities with those who enjoyed the serene nights,
+or inhabited the broad plains of the East--were (though probably
+admitted among the Pelasgic deities) honoured with that intense and
+reverent worship which attended them in Asia and in Egypt. To the
+Pelasgi, not yet arrived at the intellectual stage of philosophical
+contemplation, the most sensible objects of influence would be the
+most earnestly adored. What the stars were to the East, their own
+beautiful Aurora, awaking them to the delight of their genial and
+temperate climate, was to the early Greeks.
+
+Of deities, thus created from external objects, some will rise out (if
+I may use the expression) of natural accident and local circumstance.
+An earthquake will connect a deity with the earth--an inundation with
+the river or the sea. The Grecian soil bears the marks of maritime
+revolution; many of the tribes were settled along the coast, and
+perhaps had already adventured their rafts upon the main. A deity of
+the sea (without any necessary revelation from Africa) is, therefore,
+among the earliest of the Grecian gods. The attributes of each deity
+will be formed from the pursuits and occupations of the worshippers--
+sanguinary with the warlike--gentle with the peaceful. The pastoral
+Pelasgi of Arcadia honoured the pastoral Pan for ages before he was
+received by their Pelasgic brotherhood of Attica. And the
+agricultural Demeter or Ceres will be recognised among many tribes of
+the agricultural Pelasgi, which no Egyptian is reputed, even by
+tradition [26], to have visited.
+
+The origin of prayer is in the sense of dependance, and in the
+instinct of self-preservation or self-interest. The first objects of
+prayer to the infant man will be those on which by his localities he
+believes himself to be most dependant for whatever blessing his mode
+of life inclines him the most to covet, or from which may come
+whatever peril his instinct will teach him the most to deprecate and
+fear. It is this obvious truth which destroys all the erudite systems
+that would refer the different creeds of the heathen to some single
+origin. Till the earth be the same in each region--till the same
+circumstances surround every tribe--different impressions, in nations
+yet unconverted and uncivilized, produce different deities. Nature
+suggests a God, and man invests him with attributes. Nature and man,
+the same as a whole, vary in details; the one does not everywhere
+suggest the same notions--the other cannot everywhere imagine the same
+attributes. As with other tribes, so with the Pelasgi or primitive
+Greeks, their early gods were the creatures of their own early
+impressions.
+
+As one source of religion was in external objects, so another is to be
+found in internal sensations and emotions. The passions are so
+powerful in their effects upon individuals and nations, that we can be
+little surprised to find those effects attributed to the instigation
+and influence of a supernatural being. Love is individualized and
+personified in nearly all mythologies; and LOVE therefore ranks among
+the earliest of the Grecian gods. Fear or terror, whose influence is
+often so strange, sudden, and unaccountable--seizing even the bravest
+--spreading through numbers with all the speed of an electric sympathy
+--and deciding in a moment the destiny of an army or the ruin of a
+tribe--is another of those passions, easily supposed the afflatus of
+some preternatural power, and easily, therefore, susceptible of
+personification. And the pride of men, more especially if habitually
+courageous and warlike, will gladly yield to the credulities which
+shelter a degrading and unwonted infirmity beneath the agency of a
+superior being. TERROR, therefore, received a shape and found an
+altar probably as early at least as the heroic age. According to
+Plutarch, Theseus sacrificed to Terror previous to his battle with the
+Amazons;--an idle tale, it is true, but proving, perhaps, the
+antiquity of a tradition. As society advanced from barbarism arose
+more intellectual creations--as cities were built, and as in the
+constant flux and reflux of martial tribes cities were overthrown, the
+elements of the social state grew into personification, to which
+influence was attributed and reverence paid. Thus were fixed into
+divinity and shape, ORDER, PEACE, JUSTICE, and the stern and gloomy
+ORCOS [27], witness of the oath, avenger of the perjury.
+
+This, the second source of religion, though more subtle and refined in
+its creations, had still its origin in the same human causes as the
+first, viz., anticipation of good and apprehension of evil. Of
+deities so created, many, however, were the inventions of poets--
+(poetic metaphor is a fruitful mother of mythological fable)--many
+also were the graceful refinements of a subsequent age. But some (and
+nearly all those I have enumerated) may be traced to the earliest
+period to which such researches can ascend. It is obvious that the
+eldest would be connected with the passions--the more modern with the
+intellect.
+
+It seems to me apparent that almost simultaneously with deities of
+these two classes would arise the greater and more influential class
+of personal divinities which gradually expanded into the heroic
+dynasty of Olympus. The associations which one tribe, or one
+generation, united with the heaven, the earth, or the sun, another
+might obviously connect, or confuse, with a spirit or genius
+inhabiting or influencing the element or physical object which excited
+their anxiety or awe: And, this creation effected--so what one tribe
+or generation might ascribe to the single personification of a
+passion, a faculty, or a moral and social principle, another would
+just as naturally refer to a personal and more complex deity:--that
+which in one instance would form the very nature of a superior being,
+in the other would form only an attribute--swell the power and amplify
+the character of a Jupiter, a Mars, a Venus, or a Pan. It is in the
+nature of man, that personal divinities once created and adored,
+should present more vivid and forcible images to his fancy than
+abstract personifications of physical objects and moral impressions.
+Thus, deities of this class would gradually rise into pre-eminence and
+popularity above those more vague and incorporeal--and (though I guard
+myself from absolutely solving in this manner the enigma of ancient
+theogonies) the family of Jupiter could scarcely fail to possess
+themselves of the shadowy thrones of the ancestral Earth and the
+primeval Heaven.
+
+A third source of the Grecian, as of all mythologies, was in the
+worship of men who had actually existed, or been supposed to exist.
+For in this respect errors might creep into the calendar of heroes, as
+they did into the calendar of saints (the hero-worship of the
+moderns), which has canonized many names to which it is impossible to
+find the owners. This was probably the latest, but perhaps in
+after-times the most influential and popular addition to the aboriginal
+faith. The worship of dead men once established, it was natural to a
+people so habituated to incorporate and familiarize religious
+impressions--to imagine that even their primary gods, first formed
+from natural impressions (and, still more, those deities they had
+borrowed from stranger creeds)--should have walked the earth. And
+thus among the multitude in the philosophical ages, even the loftiest
+of the Olympian dwellers were vaguely supposed to have known
+humanity;--their immortality but the apotheosis of the benefactor or
+the hero.
+
+X. The Pelasgi, then, had their native or aboriginal deities
+(differing in number and in attributes with each different tribe), and
+with them rests the foundation of the Greek mythology. They required
+no Egyptian wisdom to lead them to believe in superior powers. Nature
+was their primeval teacher. But as intercourse was opened with the
+East from the opposite Asia--with the North from the neighbouring
+Thrace, new deities were transplanted and old deities received
+additional attributes and distinctions, according as the fancy of the
+stranger found them assimilate to the divinities he had been
+accustomed to adore. It seems to me, that in Saturn we may trace the
+popular Phoenician deity--in the Thracian Mars, the fierce war-god of
+the North. But we can scarcely be too cautious how far we allow
+ourselves to be influenced by resemblance, however strong, between a
+Grecian and an alien deity. Such a resemblance may not only be formed
+by comparatively modern innovations, but may either be resolved to
+that general likeness which one polytheism will ever bear towards
+another, or arise from the adoption of new attributes and strange
+traditions;--so that the deity itself may be homesprung and
+indigenous, while bewildering the inquirer with considerable
+similitude to other gods, from whose believers the native worship
+merely received an epithet, a ceremony, a symbol, or a fable. And
+this necessity of caution is peculiarly borne out by the
+contradictions which each scholar enamoured of a system gives to the
+labours of the speculator who preceded him. What one research would
+discover to be Egyptian, another asserts to be Phoenician; a third
+brings from the North; a fourth from the Hebrews; and a fifth, with
+yet wilder imagination, from the far and then unpenetrated caves and
+woods of India. Accept common sense as our guide, and the
+contradictions are less irreconcilable--the mystery less obscure. In
+a deity essentially Greek, a Phoenician colonist may discover
+something familiar, and claim an ancestral god. He imparts to the
+native deity some Phoenician features--an Egyptian or an Asiatic
+succeeds him--discovers a similar likeness--introduces similar
+innovations. The lively Greek receives--amalgamates--appropriates
+all: but the aboriginal deity is not the less Greek. Each speculator
+may be equally right in establishing a partial resemblance, precisely
+because all speculators are wrong in asserting a perfect identity.
+
+It follows as a corollary from the above reasonings, that the religion
+of Greece was much less uniform than is popularly imagined; 1st,
+because each separate state or canton had its own peculiar deity;
+2dly, because, in the foreign communication of new gods, each stranger
+would especially import the deity that at home he had more especially
+adored. Hence to every state its tutelary god--the founder of its
+greatness, the guardian of its renown. Even in the petty and limited
+territory of Attica, each tribe, independent of the public worship,
+had its peculiar deities, honoured by peculiar rites.
+
+The deity said to be introduced by Cecrops is Neith, or more properly
+Naith [28]--the goddess of Sais, in whom we are told to recognise the
+Athene, or Minerva of the Greeks. I pass over as palpably absurd any
+analogy of names by which the letters that compose the word Keith are
+inverted to the word Athene. The identity of the two goddesses must
+rest upon far stronger proof. But, in order to obtain this proof, we
+must know with some precision the nature and attributes of the
+divinity of Sais--a problem which no learning appears to me
+satisfactorily to have solved. It would be a strong, and, I think, a
+convincing argument, that Athene is of foreign origin, could we be
+certain that her attributes, so eminently intellectual, so thoroughly
+out of harmony with the barbarism of the early Greeks, were accorded
+to her at the commencement of her worship. But the remotest traditions
+(such as her contest with Neptune for the possession of the soil), if
+we take the more simple interpretation, seem to prove her to have been
+originally an agricultural deity, the creation of which would have
+been natural enough to the agricultural Pelasgi;--while her supposed
+invention of some of the simplest and most elementary arts are
+sufficiently congenial to the notions of an unpolished and infant era
+of society. Nor at a long subsequent period is there much resemblance
+between the formal and elderly goddess of Daedalian sculpture and the
+glorious and august Glaucopis of Homer--the maiden of celestial beauty
+as of unrivalled wisdom. I grant that the variety of her attributes
+renders it more than probable that Athene was greatly indebted,
+perhaps to the "Divine Intelligence," personified in the Egyptian
+Naith--perhaps also, as Herodotus asserts, to the warlike deity of
+Libya--nor less, it may be, to the Onca of the Phoenicians [29], from
+whom in learning certain of the arts, the Greeks might simultaneously
+learn the name and worship of the Phoenician deity, presiding over
+such inventions. Still an aboriginal deity was probably the nucleus,
+round which gradually gathered various and motley attributes. And
+certain it is, that as soon as the whole creation rose into distinct
+life, the stately and virgin goddess towers, aloof and alone, the most
+national, the most majestic of the Grecian deities--rising above all
+comparison with those who may have assisted to decorate and robe her,
+embodying in a single form the very genius, multiform, yet individual
+as it was, of the Grecian people--and becoming among all the deities
+of the heathen heaven what the Athens she protected became upon the
+earth.
+
+XI. It may be said of the Greeks, that there never was a people who
+so completely nationalized all that they borrowed from a foreign
+source. And whatever, whether in a remoter or more recent age, it
+might have appropriated from the creed of Isis and Osiris, one cause
+alone would have sufficed to efface from the Grecian the peculiar
+character of the Egyptian mythology.
+
+The religion of Egypt, as a science, was symbolical--it denoted
+elementary principles of philosophy; its gods were enigmas. It has
+been asserted (on very insufficient data) that in the earliest ages of
+the world, one god, of whom the sun was either the emblem or the
+actual object of worship, was adored universally throughout the East,
+and that polytheism was created by personifying the properties and
+attributes of the single deity: "there being one God," says Aristotle,
+finely, "called by many names, from the various effects which his
+various power produces." [30] But I am far from believing that a
+symbolical religion is ever the earliest author of polytheism; for a
+symbolical religion belongs to a later period of civilization, when
+some men are set apart in indolence to cultivate their imagination, in
+order to beguile or to instruct the reason of the rest. Priests are
+the first philosophers--a symbolical religion the first philosophy.
+But faith precedes philosophy. I doubt not, therefore, that
+polytheism existed in the East before that age when the priests of
+Chaldea and of Egypt invested it with a sublimer character by
+summoning to the aid of invention a wild and speculative wisdom--by
+representing under corporeal tokens the revolutions of the earth, the
+seasons, and the stars, and creating new (or more probably adapting
+old and sensual) superstitions, as the grosser and more external types
+of a philosophical creed [31]. But a symbolical worship--the creation
+of a separate and established order of priests--never is, and never
+can be, the religion professed, loved, and guarded by a people. The
+multitude demand something positive and real for their belief--they
+cannot worship a delusion--their reverence would be benumbed on the
+instant if they could be made to comprehend that the god to whom they
+sacrificed was no actual power able to effect evil and good, but the
+type of a particular season of the year, or an unwholesome principle
+in the air. Hence, in the Egyptian religion, there was one creed for
+the vulgar and another for the priests. Again, to invent and to
+perpetuate a symbolical religion (which is, in fact, an hereditary
+school of metaphysics) requires men set apart for the purpose, whose
+leisure tempts them to invention, whose interest prompts them to
+imposture. A symbolical religion is a proof of a certain refinement
+in civilization--the refinement of sages in the midst of a subservient
+people; and it absorbs to itself those meditative and imaginative
+minds which, did it not exist, would be devoted to philosophy. Now,
+even allowing full belief to the legends which bring the Egyptian
+colonists into Greece, it is probable that few among them were
+acquainted with the secrets of the symbolical mythology they
+introduced. Nor, if they were so, is it likely that they would have
+communicated to a strange and a barbarous population the profound and
+latent mysteries shrouded from the great majority of Egyptians
+themselves. Thus, whatever the Egyptian colonizers might have
+imported of a typical religion, the abstruser meaning would become,
+either at once or gradually, lost. Nor can we--until the recent age
+of sophists and refiners--clearly ascertain any period in which did
+not exist the indelible distinction between the Grecian and Egyptian
+mythology: viz.--that the first was actual, real, corporeal,
+household; the second vague, shadowy, and symbolical. This might not
+have been the case had there been established in the Grecian, as in
+the Egyptian cities, distinct and separate colleges of priests, having
+in their own hands the sole care of the religion, and forming a
+privileged and exclusive body of the state. But among the Greeks (and
+this should be constantly borne in mind) there never was, at any known
+historical period, a distinct caste of priests [32]. We may perceive,
+indeed, that the early colonizers commenced with approaches to that
+principle, but it was not prosecuted farther. There were sacred
+families in Athens from which certain priesthoods were to be filled--
+but even these personages were not otherwise distinguished; they
+performed all the usual offices of a citizen, and were not united
+together by any exclusiveness of privilege or spirit of party. Among
+the Egyptian adventurers there were probably none fitted by previous
+education for the sacred office; and the chief who had obtained the
+dominion might entertain no irresistible affection for a caste which
+in his own land he had seen dictating to the monarch and interfering
+with the government. [33]
+
+Thus, among the early Greeks, we find the chiefs themselves were
+contented to offer the sacrifice and utter the prayer; and though
+there were indeed appointed and special priests, they held no
+imperious or commanding authority. The Areopagus at Athens had the
+care of religion, but the Areopagites were not priests. This absence
+of a priestly caste had considerable effect upon the flexile and
+familiar nature of the Grecian creed, because there were none
+professionally interested in guarding the purity of the religion, in
+preserving to what it had borrowed, symbolical allusions, and in
+forbidding the admixture of new gods and heterogeneous creeds. The
+more popular a religion, the more it seeks corporeal representations,
+and avoids the dim and frigid shadows of a metaphysical belief. [34]
+
+The romantic fables connected with the Grecian mythology were, some
+home-sprung, some relating to native heroes, and incorporating native
+legends, but they were also, in great measure, literal interpretations
+of symbolical types and of metaphorical expressions, or erroneous
+perversions of words in other tongues. The craving desire to account
+for natural phenomena, common to mankind--the wish to appropriate to
+native heroes the wild tales of mariners and strangers natural to a
+vain and a curious people--the additions which every legend would
+receive in its progress from tribe to tribe--and the constant
+embellishments the most homely inventions would obtain from the
+competition of rival poets, rapidly served to swell and enrich these
+primary treasures of Grecian lore--to deduce a history from an
+allegory--to establish a creed in a romance. Thus the early mythology
+of Greece is to be properly considered in its simple and outward
+interpretations. The Greeks, as yet in their social infancy, regarded
+the legends of their faith as a child reads a fairy tale, credulous of
+all that is supernatural in the agency--unconscious of all that may be
+philosophical in the moral.
+
+It is true, indeed, that dim associations of a religion, sabaean and
+elementary, such as that of the Pelasgi (but not therefore foreign and
+philosophical), with a religion physical and popular, are, here and
+there, to be faintly traced among the eldest of the Grecian authors.
+We may see that in Jupiter they represented the ether, and in Apollo,
+and sometimes even in Hercules, the sun. But these authors, while,
+perhaps unconsciously, they hinted at the symbolical, fixed, by the
+vitality and nature of their descriptions, the actual images of the
+gods and, reversing the order of things, Homer created Jupiter! [35]
+
+But most of the subtle and typical interpretations of the Grecian
+mythology known to us at present were derived from the philosophy of a
+later age. The explanations of religious fables--such, for instance,
+as the chaining of Saturn by Jupiter, and the rape of Proserpine by
+Pluto, in which Saturn is made to signify the revolution of the
+seasons, chained to the courses of the stars, to prevent too
+immoderate a speed, and the rape of Proserpine is refined into an
+allegory that denotes the seeds of corn that the sovereign principle
+of the earth receives and sepulchres [36];--the moral or physical
+explanation of legends like these was, I say, the work of the few,
+reduced to system either from foreign communication or acute
+invention. For a symbolical religion, created by the priests of one
+age, is reinstated or remodelled after its corruption by the
+philosophers of another.
+
+XII. We may here pause a moment to inquire whence the Greeks derived
+the most lovely and fascinating of their mythological creations--those
+lesser and more terrestrial beings--the spirits of the mountain, the
+waters, and the grove.
+
+Throughout the East, from the remotest era, we find that mountains
+were nature's temples. The sanctity of high places is constantly
+recorded in the scriptural writings. The Chaldaean, the Egyptian, and
+the Persian, equally believed that on the summit of mountains they
+approached themselves nearer to the oracles of heaven. But the
+fountain, the cavern, and the grove, were no less holy than the
+mountain-top in the eyes of the first religionists of the East.
+Streams and fountains were dedicated to the Sun, and their exhalations
+were supposed to inspire with prophecy, and to breathe of the god.
+The gloom of caverns, naturally the brooding-place of awe, was deemed
+a fitting scene for diviner revelations--it inspired unearthly
+contemplation and mystic revery. Zoroaster is supposed by Porphyry
+(well versed in all Pagan lore, though frequently misunderstanding its
+proper character) to have first inculcated the worship of caverns
+[37]; and there the early priests held a temple, and primeval
+philosophy its retreat [38]. Groves, especially those in high places,
+or in the neighbourhood of exhaling streams, were also appropriate to
+worship, and conducive to the dreams of an excited and credulous
+imagination; and Pekah, the son of Remaliah, burnt incense, not only
+on the hills, but "under every green tree." [39]
+
+These places, then--the mountain, the forest, the stream, and the
+cavern, were equally objects of sanctity and awe among the ancient
+nations.
+
+But we need not necessarily suppose that a superstition so universal
+was borrowed, and not conceived, by the early Greeks. The same causes
+which had made them worship the earth and the sea, extended their
+faith to the rivers and the mountains, which in a spirit of natural
+and simple poetry they called "the children" of those elementary
+deities. The very soil of Greece, broken up and diversified by so
+many inequalities, stamped with volcanic features, profuse in streams
+and mephitic fountains, contributed to render the feeling of local
+divinity prevalent and intense. Each petty canton had its own Nile,
+whose influence upon fertility and culture was sufficient to become
+worthy to propitiate, and therefore to personify. Had Greece been
+united under one monarchy, and characterized by one common monotony of
+soil, a single river, a single mountain, alone might have been deemed
+divine. It was the number of its tribes--it was the variety of its
+natural features, which produced the affluence and prodigality of its
+mythological creations. Nor can we omit from the causes of the
+teeming, vivid, and universal superstition of Greece, the accidents of
+earthquake and inundation, to which the land appears early and often
+to have been exposed. To the activity and caprice of nature--to the
+frequent operation of causes, unrecognised, unforeseen, unguessed, the
+Greeks owed much of their disposition to recur to mysterious and
+superior agencies--and that wonderful poetry of faith which delighted
+to associate the visible with the unseen. The peculiar character not
+only of a people, but of its earlier poets--not only of its soil, but
+of its air and heaven, colours the superstition it creates: and most
+of the terrestrial demons which the gloomier North clothed with terror
+and endowed with malice, took from the benignant genius and the
+enchanting climes of Greece the gentlest offices and the fairest
+forms;--yet even in Greece itself not universal in their character,
+but rather the faithful reflections of the character of each class of
+worshippers: thus the graces [40], whose "eyes" in the minstrelsey of
+Hesiod "distilled care-beguiling love," in Lacedaemon were the nymphs
+of discipline and war!
+
+In quitting this subject, be one remark permitted in digression: the
+local causes which contributed to superstition might conduct in after
+times to science. If the Nature that was so constantly in strange and
+fitful action, drove the Greeks in their social infancy to seek agents
+for the action and vents for their awe, so, as they advanced to
+maturer intellect, it was in Nature herself that they sought the
+causes of effects that appeared at first preternatural. And, in
+either stage, their curiosity and interest aroused by the phenomena
+around them--the credulous inventions of ignorance gave way to the
+eager explanations of philosophy. Often, in the superstition of one
+age, lies the germe that ripens into the inquiry of the next.
+
+XIII. Pass we now to some examination of the general articles of
+faith among the Greeks; their sacrifices and rites of worship.
+
+In all the more celebrated nations of the ancient world, we find
+established those twin elements of belief by which religion harmonizes
+and directs the social relations of life, viz., a faith in a future
+state, and in the providence of superior powers, who, surveying as
+judges the affairs of earth, punish the wicked and reward the good
+[41]. It has been plausibly conjectured that the fables of Elysium,
+the slow Cocytus, and the gloomy Hades, were either invented or
+allegorized from the names of Egyptian places. Diodorus assures us
+that by the vast catacombs of Egypt, the dismal mansions of the dead--
+were the temple and stream, both called Cocytus, the foul canal of
+Acheron, and the Elysian plains [42]; and, according to the same
+equivocal authority, the body of the dead was wafted across the
+waters by a pilot, termed Charon in the Egyptian tongue. But,
+previous to the embarcation, appointed judges on the margin of the
+Acheron listened to whatever accusations were preferred by the living
+against the deceased, and if convinced of his misdeeds, deprived him
+of the rites of sepulture. Hence it was supposed that Orpheus
+transplanted into Greece the fable of the infernal regions. But there
+is good reason to look on this tale with distrust, and to believe that
+the doctrine of a future state was known to the Greeks without any
+tuition from Egypt;--while it is certain that the main moral of the
+Egyptian ceremony, viz., the judgment of the dead, was not familiar to
+the early doctrine of the Greeks. They did not believe that the good
+were rewarded and the bad punished in that dreary future, which they
+imbodied in their notions of the kingdom of the shades. [43]
+
+XIV. Less in the Grecian deities than in the customs in their honour,
+may we perceive certain traces of oriental superstition. We recognise
+the usages of the elder creeds in the chosen sites of their temples--
+the habitual ceremonies of their worship. It was to the east that the
+supplicator turned his face, and he was sprinkled, as a necessary
+purification, with the holy water often alluded to by sacred writers
+as well as profane--a typical rite entailed from Paganism on the
+greater proportion of existing Christendom. Nor was any oblation duly
+prepared until it was mingled with salt--that homely and immemorial
+offering, ordained not only by the priests of the heathen idols, but
+also prescribed by Moses to the covenant of the Hebrew God. [44]
+
+XV. We now come to those sacred festivals in celebration of religious
+mysteries, which inspire modern times with so earnest an interest.
+Perhaps no subject connected with the religion of the ancients has
+been cultivated with more laborious erudition, attended with more
+barren result. And with equal truth and wit, the acute and searching
+Lobeck has compared the schools of Warburton and St. Croix to the
+Sabines, who possessed the faculty of dreaming what they wished.
+According to an ancient and still popular account, the dark enigmas of
+Eleusis were borrowed from Egypt;--the drama of the Anaglyph [45].
+But, in answer to this theory, we must observe, that even if really,
+at their commencement, the strange and solemn rites which they are
+asserted to have been--mystical ceremonies grow so naturally out of
+the connexion between the awful and the unknown--were found so
+generally among the savages of the ancient world--howsoever dispersed
+--and still so frequently meet the traveller on shores to which it is
+indeed a wild speculation to assert that the oriental wisdom ever
+wandered, that it is more likely that they were the offspring of the
+native ignorance [46], than the sublime importation of a symbolical
+philosophy utterly ungenial to the tribes to which it was
+communicated, and the times to which the institution is referred. And
+though I would assign to the Eleusinian Mysteries a much earlier date
+than Lobeck is inclined to affix [47], I search in vain for a more
+probable supposition of the causes of their origin than that which he
+suggests, and which I now place before the reader. We have seen that
+each Grecian state had its peculiar and favourite deities, propitiated
+by varying ceremonies. The early Greeks imagined that their gods
+might be won from them by the more earnest prayers and the more
+splendid offerings of their neighbours; the Homeric heroes found their
+claim for divine protection on the number of the offerings they have
+rendered to the deity they implore. And how far the jealous desire to
+retain to themselves the favour of tutelary gods was entertained by
+the Greeks, may be illustrated by the instances specially alluding to
+the low and whispered voice in which prayers were addressed to the
+superior powers, lest the enemy should hear the address, and vie with
+interested emulation for the celestial favour. The Eleusinians, in
+frequent hostilities with their neighbours, the Athenians, might very
+reasonably therefore exclude the latter from the ceremonies instituted
+in honour of their guardian divinities, Demeter and Persephone (i. e.,
+Ceres and Proserpine). And we may here add, that secrecy once
+established, the rites might at a very early period obtain, and
+perhaps deserve, an enigmatic and mystic character. But when, after a
+signal defeat of the Eleusinians, the two states were incorporated,
+the union was confirmed by a joint participation in the ceremony [48]
+to which a political cause would thus give a more formal and solemn
+dignity. This account of the origin of the Eleusinian Mysteries is
+not indeed capable of demonstration, but it seems to me at least the
+most probable in itself, and the most conformable to the habits of the
+Greeks, as to those of all early nations.
+
+Certain it is that for a long time the celebration of the Eleusinian
+ceremonies was confined to these two neighbouring states, until, as
+various causes contributed to unite the whole of Greece in a common
+religion and a common name, admission was granted all Greeks of all
+ranks, male and female,--provided they had committed no inexpiable
+offence, performed the previous ceremonies required, and were
+introduced by an Athenian citizen.
+
+With the growing flame and splendour of Athens, this institution rose
+into celebrity and magnificence, until it appears to have become the
+most impressive spectacle of the heathen world. It is evident that a
+people so imitative would reject no innovations or additions that
+could increase the interest or the solemnity of exhibition; and still
+less such as might come (through whatsoever channel) from that antique
+and imposing Egypt, which excited so much of their veneration and
+wonder. Nor do I think it possible to account for the great
+similarity attested by Herodotus and others, between the mysteries of
+Isis and those of Ceres, as well as for the resemblance in less
+celebrated ceremonies between the rites of Egypt and of Greece,
+without granting at once, that mediately, or even immediately, the
+superstitious of the former exercised great influence upon, and
+imparted many features to, those of the latter. But the age in which
+this religious communication principally commenced has been a matter
+of graver dispute than the question merits. A few solitary and
+scattered travellers and strangers may probably have given rise to it
+at a very remote period; but, upon the whole, it appears to me that,
+with certain modifications, we must agree with Lobeck, and the more
+rational schools of inquiry, that it was principally in the interval
+between the Homeric age and the Persian war that mysticism passed into
+religion--that superstition assumed the attributes of a science--and
+that lustrations, auguries, orgies, obtained method and system from
+the exuberant genius of poetical fanaticism.
+
+That in these august mysteries, doctrines contrary to the popular
+religion were propounded, is a theory that has, I think, been
+thoroughly overturned. The exhibition of ancient statues, relics, and
+symbols, concealed from daily adoration (as in the Catholic festivals
+of this day), probably, made a main duty of the Hierophant. But in a
+ceremony in honour of Ceres, the blessings of agriculture, and its
+connexion with civilization, were also very naturally dramatized. The
+visit of the goddess to the Infernal Regions might form an imposing
+part of the spectacle: spectral images--alternations of light and
+darkness--all the apparitions and effects that are said to have
+imparted so much awe to the mysteries, may well have harmonized with,
+not contravened, the popular belief. And there is no reason to
+suppose that the explanations given by the priests did more than
+account for mythological stories, agreeably to the spirit and form of
+the received mythology, or deduce moral maxims from the
+representation, as hackneyed, as simple, and as ancient, as the
+generality of moral aphorisms are. But, as the intellectual progress
+of the audience advanced, philosophers, skeptical of the popular
+religion, delighted to draw from such imposing representations a
+thousand theories and morals utterly unknown to the vulgar; and the
+fancies and refinements of later schoolmen have thus been mistaken for
+the notions of an early age and a promiscuous multitude. The single
+fact (so often insisted upon), that all Greeks were admissible, is
+sufficient alone to prove that no secrets incompatible with the common
+faith, or very important in themselves, could either have been
+propounded by the priests or received by the audience. And it may be
+further observed, in corroboration of so self-evident a truth, that it
+was held an impiety to the popular faith to reject the initiation of
+the mysteries--and that some of the very writers, most superstitious
+with respect to the one, attach the most solemnity to the ceremonies
+of the other.
+
+XVI. Sanchoniathon wrote a work, now lost, on the worship of the
+serpent. This most ancient superstition, found invariably in Egypt
+and the East, is also to be traced through many of the legends and
+many of the ceremonies of the Greeks. The serpent was a frequent
+emblem of various gods--it was often kept about the temples--it was
+introduced in the mysteries--it was everywhere considered sacred.
+Singular enough, by the way, that while with us the symbol of the evil
+spirit, the serpent was generally in the East considered a benefactor.
+In India, the serpent with a thousand heads; in Egypt, the serpent
+crowned with the lotos-leaf, is a benign and paternal deity. It was
+not uncommon for fable to assert that the first civilizers of earth
+were half man, half serpent. Thus was Fohi of China [49] represented,
+and thus Cecrops of Athens.
+
+XVII. But the most remarkable feature of the superstition of Greece
+was her sacred oracles. And these again bring our inquiries back to
+Egypt. Herodotus informs us that the oracle of Dodona was by far the
+most ancient in Greece [50], and he then proceeds to inform us of its
+origin, which he traces to Thebes in Egypt. But here we are beset by
+contradictions: Herodotus, on the authority of the Egyptian priests,
+ascribes the origin of the Dodona and Lybian oracles to two
+priestesses of the Theban Jupiter--stolen by Phoenician pirates--one
+of whom, sold into Greece, established at Dodona an oracle similar to
+that which she had served at Thebes. But in previous passages
+Herodotus informs us, 1st, that in Egypt, no priestesses served the
+temples of any deity, male or female; and 2dly, that when the
+Egyptians imparted to the Pelasgi the names of their divinities, the
+Pelasgi consulted the oracle of Dodona on the propriety of adopting
+them; so that that oracle existed before even the first and
+fundamental revelations of Egyptian religion. It seems to me,
+therefore, a supposition that demands less hardy assumption, and is
+equally conformable with the universal superstitions of mankind (since
+similar attempts at divination are to be found among so many nations
+similarly barbarous) to believe that the oracle arose from the
+impressions of the Pelasgi [51] and the natural phenomena of the spot;
+though at a subsequent period the manner of the divination was very
+probably imitated from that adopted by the Theban oracle. And in
+examining the place it indeed seems as if Nature herself had been the
+Egyptian priestess! Through a mighty grove of oaks there ran a
+stream, whose waters supplied a fountain that might well appear, to
+ignorant wonder, endowed with preternatural properties. At a certain
+hour of noon it was dry, and at midnight full. Such springs have
+usually been deemed oracular, not only in the East, but in almost
+every section of the globe.
+
+At first, by the murmuring of waters, and afterward by noises among
+the trees, the sacred impostors interpreted the voice of the god. It
+is an old truth, that mystery is always imposing and often convenient.
+To plain questions were given dark answers, which might admit of
+interpretation according to the event. The importance attached to the
+oracle, the respect paid to the priest, and the presents heaped on the
+altar, indicated to craft and ambition a profitable profession. And
+that profession became doubly alluring to its members, because it
+proffered to the priests an authority in serving the oracles which
+they could not obtain in the general religion of the people. Oracles
+increased then, at first slowly, and afterward rapidly, until they
+grew so numerous that the single district of Boeotia contained no less
+than twenty-five. The oracle of Dodona long, however, maintained its
+pre-eminence over the rest, and was only at last eclipsed by that of
+Delphi [52], where strong and intoxicating exhalations from a
+neighbouring stream were supposed to confer prophetic phrensy.
+Experience augmented the sagacity of the oracles, and the priests, no
+doubt, intimately acquainted with all the affairs of the states
+around, and viewing the living contests of action with the coolness of
+spectators, were often enabled to give shrewd and sensible
+admonitions,--so that the forethought of wisdom passed for the
+prescience of divinity. Hence the greater part of their predictions
+were eminently successful; and when the reverse occurred, the fault
+was laid on the blind misconstruction of the human applicant. Thus no
+great design was executed, no city founded, no colony planted, no war
+undertaken, without the advice of an oracle. In the famine, the
+pestilence, and the battle, the divine voice was the assuager of
+terror and the inspirer of hope. All the instincts of our frailer
+nature, ever yearning for some support that is not of the world, were
+enlisted in behalf of a superstition which proffered solutions to
+doubt, and remedies to distress.
+
+Besides this general cause for the influence of oracles, there was
+another cause calculated to give to the oracles of Greece a marked and
+popular pre-eminence over those in Egypt. A country divided into
+several small, free, and warlike states, would be more frequently in
+want of the divine advice, than one united under a single monarchy, or
+submitted to the rigid austerity of castes and priestcraft; and in
+which the inhabitants felt for political affairs all the languid
+indifference habitual to the subjects of a despotic government. Half
+a century might pass in Egypt without any political event that would
+send anxious thousands to the oracle; but in the wonderful ferment,
+activity, and restlessness of the numerous Grecian towns, every month,
+every week, there was some project or some feud for which the advice
+of a divinity was desired. Hence it was chiefly to a political cause
+that the immortal oracle of Delphi owed its pre-eminent importance.
+The Dorian worshippers of Apollo (long attached to that oracle, then
+comparatively obscure), passing from its neighbourhood and befriended
+by its predictions, obtained the mastership of the Peloponnesus;--
+their success was the triumph of the oracle. The Dorian Sparta (long
+the most powerful of the Grecian states), inviolably faithful to the
+Delphian god, upheld his authority, and spread the fame of his
+decrees. But in the more polished and enlightened times, the
+reputation of the oracle gradually decayed; it shone the brightest
+before and during the Persian war;--the appropriate light of an age of
+chivalry fading slowly as philosophy arose!
+
+XVIII. But the practice of divination did not limit itself to these
+more solemn sources--its enthusiasm was contagious--its assistance was
+ever at hand [53]. Enthusiasm operated on the humblest individuals.
+One person imagined himself possessed by a spirit actually passing
+into his soul--another merely inspired by the divine breath--a third
+was cast into supernatural ecstasies, in which he beheld the shadow of
+events, or the visions of a god--a threefold species of divine
+possession, which we may still find recognised by the fanatics of a
+graver faith! Nor did this suffice: a world of omens surrounded every
+man. There were not only signs and warnings in the winds, the
+earthquake, the eclipse of the sun or moon, the meteor, or the
+thunderbolt--but dreams also were reduced to a science [54]; the
+entrails of victims were auguries of evil or of good; the flights of
+birds, the motions of serpents, the clustering of bees, had their
+mystic and boding interpretations. Even hasty words, an accident, a
+fall on the earth, a sneeze (for which we still invoke the ancient
+blessing), every singular or unwonted event, might become portentous,
+and were often rendered lucky or unlucky according to the dexterity or
+disposition of the person to whom they occurred.
+
+And although in later times much of this more frivolous superstition
+passed away--although Theophrastus speaks of such lesser omens with
+the same witty disdain as that with which the Spectator ridicules our
+fears at the upsetting of a salt-cellar, or the appearance of a
+winding-sheet in a candle,--yet, in the more interesting period of
+Greece, these popular credulities were not disdained by the nobler or
+wiser few, and to the last they retained that influence upon the mass
+which they lost with individuals. And it is only by constantly
+remembering this universal atmosphere of religion, that we can imbue
+ourselves with a correct understanding of the character of the Greeks
+in their most Grecian age. Their faith was with them ever--in sorrow
+or in joy--at the funeral or the feast--in their uprisings and their
+downsittings--abroad and at home--at the hearth and in the
+market-place--in the camp or at the altar. Morning and night all the
+greater tribes of the elder world offered their supplications on high:
+and Plato has touchingly insisted on this sacred uniformity of custom,
+when he tells us that at the rising of the moon and at the dawning of
+the sun, you may behold Greeks and barbarians--all the nations of the
+earth--bowing in homage to the gods.
+
+XIX. To sum up, the above remarks conduce to these principal
+conclusions; First, that the Grecian mythology cannot be moulded into
+any of the capricious and fantastic systems of erudite ingenuity: as a
+whole, no mythology can be considered more strikingly original, not
+only because its foundations appear indigenous, and based upon the
+character and impressions of the people--not only because at no one
+period, from the earliest even to the latest date, whatever occasional
+resemblances may exist, can any identify be established between its
+most popular and essential creations, and those of any other faith;
+but because, even all that it borrowed it rapidly remodelled and
+naturalized, growing yet more individual from its very complexity, yet
+more original from the plagiarisms which it embraced; Secondly, that
+it differed in many details in the different states, but under the
+development of a general intercourse, assisted by a common language,
+the plastic and tolerant genius of the people harmonized all discords
+--until (catholic in its fundamental principles) her religion united
+the whole of Greece in indissoluble bonds of faith and poetry--of
+daily customs and venerable traditions; Thirdly, that the influence of
+other creeds, though by no means unimportant in amplifying the
+character, and adding to the list of the primitive deities, appears
+far more evident in the ceremonies and usages than the personal
+creations of the faith. We may be reasonably skeptical as to what
+Herodotus heard of the origin of rites or gods from Egyptian priests;
+but there is no reason to disbelieve the testimony of his experience,
+when he asserts, that the forms and solemnities of one worship closely
+resemble those of another; the imitation of a foreign ceremony is
+perfectly compatible with the aboriginal invention of a national god.
+For the rest, I think it might be (and by many scholars appears to me
+to have been) abundantly shown, that the Phoenician influences upon
+the early mythology of the Greeks were far greater than the Egyptian,
+though by degrees, and long after the heroic age, the latter became
+more eagerly adopted and more superficially apparent.
+
+In quitting this part of our subject, let it be observed, as an
+additional illustration of the remarkable nationality of the Grecian
+mythology, that our best light to the manners of the Homeric men, is
+in the study of the Homeric gods. In Homer we behold the mythology of
+an era, for analogy to which we search in vain the records of the
+East--that mythology is inseparably connected with the constitution of
+limited monarchies,--with the manners of an heroic age:--the power of
+the sovereign of the aristocracy of heaven is the power of a Grecian
+king over a Grecian state:--the social life of the gods is the life
+most coveted by the Grecian heroes;--the uncertain attributes of the
+deities, rather physical or intellectual than moral--strength and
+beauty, sagacity mixed with cunning--valour with ferocity--inclination
+to war, yet faculties for the inventions of peace; such were the
+attributes most honoured among men, in the progressive, but still
+uncivilized age which makes the interval so pre-eminently Grecian--
+between the mythical and historic times. Vain and impotent are all
+attempts to identify that religion of Achaian warriors with the
+religion of oriental priests. It was indeed symbolical--but of the
+character of its believers; typical--but of the restless, yet
+poetical, daring, yet graceful temperament, which afterward conducted
+to great achievements and imperishable arts: the coming events of
+glory cast their shadows before, in fable.
+
+XX. There now opens to us a far more important inquiry than that into
+the origin and form of the religion of the Greeks; namely, the
+influences of that religion itself upon their character--their morals
+--their social and intellectual tendencies.
+
+The more we can approach the Deity to ourselves--the more we can
+invest him with human attributes--the more we can connect him with the
+affairs and sympathies of earth, the greater will be his influence
+upon our conduct--the more fondly we shall contemplate his attributes,
+the more timidly we shall shrink from his vigilance, the more
+anxiously we shall strive for his approval. When Epicurus allowed the
+gods to exist, but imagined them wholly indifferent to the concerns of
+men, contemplating only their own happiness, and regardless alike of
+our virtues or our crimes;--with that doctrine he robbed man of the
+divinity, as effectually as if he had denied his existence. The fear
+of the gods could not be before the eyes of votaries who believed that
+the gods were utterly careless of their conduct; and not only the
+awful control of religion was removed from their passions, but the
+more beautiful part of its influence, resulting not from terror but
+from hope, was equally blasted and destroyed: For if the fear of the
+divine power serves to restrain the less noble natures, so, on the
+other hand, with such as are more elevated and generous, there is no
+pleasure like the belief that we are regarded with approbation and
+love by a Being of ineffable majesty and goodness--who compassionates
+our misfortunes--who rewards our struggles with ourselves. It is this
+hope which gives us a pride in our own natures, and which not only
+restrains us from vice, but inspires us with an emulation to arouse
+within us all that is great and virtuous, in order the more to deserve
+his love, and feel the image of divinity reflected upon the soul. It
+is for this reason that we are not contented to leave the character of
+a God uncertain and unguessed, shrouded in the darkness of his own
+infinite power; we clothe him with the attributes of human excellence,
+carried only to an extent beyond humanity; and cannot conceive a deity
+not possessed of the qualities--such as justice, wisdom, and
+benevolence--which are most venerated among mankind. But if we
+believe that he has passed to earth--that he has borne our shape, that
+he has known our sorrows--the connexion becomes yet more intimate and
+close; we feel as if he could comprehend us better, and compassionate
+more benignly our infirmities and our griefs. The Christ that has
+walked the earth, and suffered on the cross, can be more readily
+pictured to our imagination, and is more familiarly before us, than
+the Dread Eternal One, who hath the heaven for his throne, and the
+earth only for his footstool [55]. And it is this very humanness of
+connexion, so to speak, between man and the Saviour, which gives to
+the Christian religion, rightly embraced, its peculiar sentiment of
+gentleness and of love.
+
+But somewhat of this connexion, though in a more corrupt degree,
+marked also the religion of the Greeks; they too believed (at least
+the multitude) that most of the deities had appeared on earth, and
+been the actual dispensers of the great benefits of social life.
+Transferred to heaven, they could more readily understand that those
+divinities regarded with interest the nations to which they had been
+made visible, and exercised a permanent influence over the earth,
+which had been for a while their home.
+
+Retaining the faith that the deities had visited the world, the Greeks
+did not however implicitly believe the fables which degraded them by
+our weaknesses and vices. They had, as it were--and this seems not to
+have been rightly understood by the moderns--two popular mythologies--
+the first consecrated to poetry, and the second to actual life. If a
+man were told to imitate the gods, it was by the virtues of justice,
+temperance, and benevolence [56]; and had he obeyed the mandate by
+emulating the intrigues of Jupiter, or the homicides of Mars, he would
+have been told by the more enlightened that those stories were the
+inventions of the poets; and by the more credulous that gods might be
+emancipated from laws, but men were bound by them--"Superis sea jura"
+[57]--their own laws to the gods! It is true, then, that those fables
+were preserved--were held in popular respect, but the reverence they
+excited among the Greeks was due to a poetry which flattered their
+national pride and enchained their taste, and not to the serious
+doctrines of their religion. Constantly bearing this distinction in
+mind, we shall gain considerable insight, not only into their
+religion, but into seeming contradictions in their literary history.
+They allowed Aristophanes to picture Bacchus as a buffoon, and
+Hercules as a glutton, in the same age in which they persecuted
+Socrates for neglect of the sacred mysteries and contempt of the
+national gods. To that part of their religion which belonged to the
+poets they permitted the fullest license; but to the graver portion of
+religion--to the existence of the gods--to a belief in their
+collective excellence, and providence, and power--to the sanctity of
+asylums--to the obligation of oaths--they showed the most jealous and
+inviolable respect. The religion of the Greeks, then, was a great
+support and sanction to their morals; it inculcated truth, mercy,
+justice, the virtues most necessary to mankind, and stimulated to them
+by the rigid and popular belief that excellence was approved and guilt
+was condemned by the superior powers [58]. And in that beautiful
+process by which the common sense of mankind rectifies the errors of
+imagination--those fables which subsequent philosophers rightly deemed
+dishonourable to the gods, and which the superficial survey of modern
+historians has deemed necessarily prejudicial to morals--had no
+unworthy effect upon the estimate taken by the Greeks whether of human
+actions or of heavenly natures.
+
+XXI. For a considerable period the Greeks did not carry the notion of
+divine punishment beyond the grave, except in relation to those
+audacious criminals who had blasphemed or denied the gods; it was by
+punishments in this world that the guilty were afflicted. And this
+doctrine, if less sublime than that of eternal condemnation, was, I
+apprehend, on regarding the principles of human nature, equally
+effective in restraining crime: for our human and short-sighted minds
+are often affected by punishments, in proportion as they are human and
+speedy. A penance in the future world is less fearful and distinct,
+especially to the young and the passionate, than an unavoidable
+retribution in this. Man, too fondly or too vainly, hopes, by
+penitence at the close of life, to redeem the faults of the
+commencement, and punishment deferred loses more than half its
+terrors, and nearly all its certainty.
+
+As long as the Greeks were left solely to their mythology, their views
+of a future state were melancholy and confused. Death was an evil,
+not a release. Even in their Elysium, their favourite heroes seem to
+enjoy but a frigid and unenviable immortality. Yet this saddening
+prospect of the grave rather served to exhilarate life, and stimulate
+to glory:--"Make the most of existence," say their early poets, "for
+soon comes the dreary Hades!" And placed beneath a delightful
+climate, and endowed with a vivacious and cheerful temperament, they
+yielded readily to the precept. Their religion was eminently glad and
+joyous; even the stern Spartans lost their austerity in their sacred
+rites, simple and manly though they were--and the gayer Athenians
+passed existence in an almost perpetual circle of festivals and
+holydays.
+
+This uncertainty of posthumous happiness contributed also to the
+desire of earthly fame. For below at least, their heroes taught them,
+immortality was not impossible. Bounded by impenetrable shadows to
+this world, they coveted all that in this world was most to be desired
+[59]. A short life is acceptable to Achilles, not if it lead to
+Elysium, but if it be accompanied with glory. By degrees, however,
+prospects of a future state, nobler and more august, were opened by
+their philosophers to the hopes of the Greeks. Thales was asserted to
+be the first Greek who maintained the immortality of the soul, and
+that sublime doctrine was thus rather established by the philosopher
+than the priest. [60]
+
+XXII. Besides the direct tenets of religion, the mysteries of the
+Greeks exercised an influence on their morals, which, though greatly
+exaggerated by modern speculators, was, upon the whole, beneficial,
+though not from the reasons that have been assigned. As they grew up
+into their ripened and mature importance--their ceremonial, rather
+than their doctrine, served to deepen and diffuse a reverence for
+religious things. Whatever the licentiousness of other mysteries
+(especially in Italy), the Eleusinian rites long retained their renown
+for purity and decorum; they were jealously watched by the Athenian
+magistracy, and one of the early Athenian laws enacted that the senate
+should assemble the day after their celebration to inquire into any
+abuse that might have sullied their sacred character. Nor is it,
+perhaps, without justice in the later times, that Isocrates lauds
+their effect on morality, and Cicero their influence on civilization
+and the knowledge of social principles. The lustrations and
+purifications, at whatever period their sanctity was generally
+acknowledged, could scarcely fail of salutary effects. They were
+supposed to absolve the culprit from former crimes, and restore him, a
+new man, to the bosom of society. This principle is a great agent of
+morality, and was felt as such in the earlier era of Christianity: no
+corrupter is so deadly as despair; to reconcile a criminal with
+self-esteem is to readmit him, as it were, to virtue.
+
+Even the fundamental error of the religion in point of doctrine, viz.,
+its polytheism, had one redeeming consequence in the toleration which
+it served to maintain--the grave evils which spring up from the fierce
+antagonism of religious opinions, were, save in a few solitary and
+dubious instances, unknown to the Greeks. And this general
+toleration, assisted yet more by the absence of a separate caste of
+priests, tended to lead to philosophy through the open and
+unchallenged portals of religion. Speculations on the gods connected
+themselves with bold inquiries into nature. Thought let loose in the
+wide space of creation--no obstacle to its wanderings--no monopoly of
+its commerce--achieved, after many a wild and fruitless voyage,
+discoveries unknown to the past--of imperishable importance to the
+future. The intellectual adventurers of Greece planted the first flag
+upon the shores of philosophy; for the competition of errors is
+necessary to the elucidation of truths; and the imagination indicates
+the soil which the reason is destined to culture and possess.
+
+XXIII. While such was the influence of their religion on the morals
+and the philosophy of the Greeks, what was its effect upon their
+national genius?
+
+We must again remember that the Greeks were the only nation among the
+more intellectual of that day, who stripped their deities of
+symbolical attributes, and did not aspire to invent for gods shapes
+differing (save in loftier beauty) from the aspect and form of man.
+And thus at once was opened to them the realm of sculpture. The
+people of the East, sometimes indeed depicting their deities in human
+forms, did not hesitate to change them into monsters, if the addition
+of another leg or another arm, a dog's head or a serpent's tail, could
+better express the emblem they represented. They perverted their
+images into allegorical deformities; and receded from the beautiful in
+proportion as they indulged their false conceptions of the sublime.
+Besides, a painter or a sculptor must have a clear idea presented to
+him, to be long cherished and often revolved, if we desire to call
+forth all the inspiration of which his genius may be capable; but how
+could the eastern artist form a clear idea of an image that should
+represent the sun entering Aries, or the productive principle of
+nature? Such creations could not fail of becoming stiff or
+extravagant, deformed or grotesque. But to the Greek, a god was
+something like the most majestic or the most beautiful of his own
+species. He studied the human shape for his conceptions of the
+divine. Intent upon the natural, he ascended to the ideal. [61]
+
+If such the effect of the Grecian religion upon sculpture, similar and
+equal its influence upon poetry. The earliest verses of the Greeks
+appear to have been of a religious, though I see no sufficient reason
+for asserting that they were therefore of a typical and mystic,
+character. However that be, the narrative succeeding to the sacred
+poetry materialized all it touched. The shadows of Olympus received
+the breath of Homer, and the gods grew at once life-like and palpable
+to men. The traditions which connected the deities with humanity--the
+genius which divested them of allegory--gave at once to the epic and
+the tragic poet the supernatural world. The inhabitants of heaven
+itself became individualized--bore each a separate character--could be
+rendered distinct, dramatic, as the creatures of daily life. Thus--an
+advantage which no moderns ever have possessed--with all the ineffable
+grandeur of deities was combined all the familiar interest of mortals;
+and the poet, by preserving the characteristics allotted to each god,
+might make us feel the associations and sympathies of earth, even when
+he bore us aloft to the unknown Olympus, or plunged below amid the
+shades of Orcus.
+
+The numerous fables mixed with the Grecian creed, sufficiently
+venerable, as we have seen, not to be disdained, but not so sacred as
+to be forbidden, were another advantage to the poet. For the
+traditions of a nation are its poetry! And if we moderns, in the
+German forest, or the Scottish highlands, or the green English fields,
+yet find inspiration in the notions of fiend, and sprite, and fairy,
+not acknowledged by our religion, not appended as an apocryphal
+adjunct to our belief, how much more were those fables adapted to
+poetry, which borrowed not indeed an absolute faith, but a certain
+shadow, a certain reverence and mystery, from religion! Hence we find
+that the greatest works of imagination which the Greeks have left us,
+whether of Homer, of Aeschylus, or of Sophocles, are deeply indebted
+to their mythological legends. The Grecian poetry, like the Grecian
+religion, was at once half human, half divine--majestic, vast, august
+--household, homely, and familiar. If we might borrow an illustration
+from the philosophy of Democritus, its earthlier dreams and
+divinations were indeed the impressions of mighty and spectral images
+inhabiting the air. [62]
+
+XXIV. Of the religion of Greece, of its rites and ceremonies, and of
+its influence upon the moral and intellectual faculties--this--
+already, I fear, somewhat too prolixly told--is all that at present I
+deem it necessary to say. [63]
+
+We have now to consider the origin of slavery in Greece, an inquiry
+almost equally important to our accurate knowledge of her polity and
+manners.
+
+XXV. Wherever we look--to whatsoever period of history--conquest, or
+the settlement of more enlightened colonizers amid a barbarous tribe,
+seems the origin of slavery--modified according to the spirit of the
+times, the humanity of the victor, or the policy of the lawgiver. The
+aboriginals of Greece were probably its earliest slaves [64],--yet the
+aboriginals might be also its earliest lords. Suppose a certain tribe
+to overrun a certain country--conquer and possess it: new settlers are
+almost sure to be less numerous than the inhabitants they subdue; in
+proportion as they are the less powerful in number are they likely to
+be the more severe in authority: they will take away the arms of the
+vanquished--suppress the right of meetings--make stern and terrible
+examples against insurgents--and, in a word, quell by the moral
+constraint of law those whom it would be difficult to control merely
+by, physical force;--the rigidity of the law being in ratio to the
+deficiency of the force. In times semi-civilized, and even
+comparatively enlightened, conquerors have little respect for the
+conquered--an immense and insurmountable distinction is at once made
+between the natives and their lords. All ancient nations seem to have
+considered that the right of conquest gave a right to the lands of the
+conquered country. William dividing England among his Normans is but
+an imitator of every successful invader of ancient times. The
+new-comers having gained the land of a subdued people, that people, in
+order to subsist, must become the serfs of the land [65]. The more
+formidable warriors are mostly slain, or exiled, or conciliated by
+some remains of authority and possessions; the multitude remain the
+labourers of the soil, and slight alterations of law will
+imperceptibly convert the labourer into the slave. The earliest
+slaves appear chiefly to have been the agricultural population. If
+the possession of the government were acquited by colonizers [66],--
+not so much by the force of arms as by the influence of superior arts
+--the colonizers would in some instances still establish servitude for
+the multitude, though not under so harsh a name. The laws they would
+frame for an uncultured and wretched population, would distinguish
+between the colonizers and the aboriginals (excepting perhaps only the
+native chiefs, accustomed arbitrarily to command, though not
+systematically to enslave the rest). The laws for the aboriginal
+population would still be an improvement on their previous savage and
+irregulated state--and generations might pass before they would attain
+a character of severity, or before they made the final and
+ineffaceable distinction between the freeman and the slave. The
+perturbed restlessness and constant migration of tribes in Greece,
+recorded both by tradition and by history, would consequently tend at
+a very remote period to the institution and diffusion of slavery and
+the Pelasgi of one tribe would become the masters of the Pelasgi of
+another. There is, therefore, no necessity to look out of Greece for
+the establishment of servitude in that country by conquest and war.
+But the peaceful colonization of foreign settlers would (as we have
+seen) lead to it by slower and more gentle degrees. And the piracies
+of the Phoenicians, which embraced the human species as an article of
+their market, would be an example, more prevalent and constant than
+their own, to the piracies of the early Greeks. The custom of
+servitude, thus commenced, is soon fed by new sources. Prisoners of
+war are enslaved, or, at the will of the victor, exchanged as an
+article of commerce. Before the interchange of money, we have
+numerous instances of the barter of prisoners for food and arms. And
+as money became the medium of trade, so slaves became a regular
+article of sale and purchase. Hence the origin of the slave-market.
+Luxury increasing slaves were purchased not merely for the purposes of
+labour, but of pleasure. The accomplished musician of the beautiful
+virgin was an article of taste or a victim of passion. Thus, what it
+was the tendency of barbarism to originate, it became the tendency of
+civilization to increase.
+
+Slavery, then, originated first in conquest and war, piracy, or
+colonization: secondly, in purchase. There were two other and
+subordinate sources of the institution--the first was crime, the
+second poverty. If a free citizen committed a heinous offence, he
+could be degraded into a slave--if he were unable to pay his debts,
+the creditor could claim his person. Incarceration is merely a
+remnant and substitute of servitude. The two latter sources failed as
+nations became more free. But in Attica it was not till the time of
+Solon, several centuries after the institution of slavery at Athens,
+that the right of the creditor to the personal services of the debtor
+was formally abolished.
+
+A view of the moral effects of slavery--of the condition of the slaves
+at Athens--of the advantages of the system and its evils--of the light
+in which it was regarded by the ancients themselves, other and more
+fitting opportunities will present to us.
+
+XXVI. The introduction of an hereditary aristocracy into a particular
+country, as yet uncivilized, is often simultaneous with that of
+slavery. A tribe of warriors possess and subdue a territory;--they
+share its soil with the chief in proportion to their connexion with
+his person, or their military services and repute--each becomes the
+lord of lands and slaves--each has privileges above the herd of the
+conquered population. Suppose again, that the dominion is acquired by
+colonizers rather than conquerors; the colonizers, superior in
+civilization to the natives,--and regarded by the latter with
+reverence and awe, would become at once a privileged and noble order.
+Hence, from either source, an aristocracy permanent and hereditary
+[67]. If founded on conquest, in proportion to the number of the
+victors, is that aristocracy more or less oligarchical. The extreme
+paucity of force with which the Dorians conquered their neighbours,
+was one of the main causes why the governments they established were
+rigidly oligarchical.
+
+XXVII. Proceeding onward, we find that in this aristocracy, are
+preserved the seeds of liberty and the germe of republicanism. These
+conquerors, like our feudal barons, being sharers of the profit of the
+conquest and the glory of the enterprise, by no means allow undivided
+and absolute authority to their chiefs. Governed by separate laws--
+distinguished by separate privileges from the subdued community, they
+are proud of their own freedom, the more it is contrasted with the
+servitude of the population: they preserve liberty for themselves--
+they resist the undue assumptions of the king [68]--and keep alive
+that spirit and knowledge of freedom which in after times (as their
+numbers increase, and they become a people, distinct still from the
+aboriginal natives, who continue slaves) are transfused from the
+nobles to the multitude. In proportion as the new race are warlike
+will their unconscious spirit be that of republicanism; the connexion
+between martial and republican tendencies was especially recognised by
+all ancient writers: and the warlike habits of the Hellenes were the
+cradle of their political institutions. Thus, in conquest (or
+sometimes in immigration) we may trace the origin of an aristocracy
+[69], as of slavery, and thus, by a deeper inquiry, we may find also
+that the slavery of a population and the freedom of a state have their
+date, though dim and undeveloped, in the same epoch.
+
+XXVIII. I have thought that the supposed Egyptian colonization of
+Attica under Cecrops afforded the best occasion to treat of the above
+matters, not so much in reference to Cecrops himself as to the
+migration of Eastern and Egyptian adventurers. Of such migrations the
+dates may be uncertain--of such adventurers the names may be unknown.
+But it seems to me impossible to deny the fact of foreign settlements
+in Greece, in her remoter and more barbarous era, though we may
+dispute as to the precise amount of the influence they exercised, and
+the exact nature of the rites and customs they established.
+
+A belief in the early connexion between the Egyptians and Athenians,
+encouraged by the artful vanity of the one, was welcomed by the lively
+credulity of the other. Many ages after the reputed sway of the
+mythical Cecrops, it was fondly imagined that traces of their origin
+from the solemn Egypt [70] were yet visible among the graceful and
+versatile people, whose character was as various, yet as
+individualized, as their religion--who, viewed in whatsoever aspect of
+their intellectual history, may appear constantly differing, yet
+remain invariably Athenian. Whether clamouring in the Agora--whether
+loitering in the Academe--whether sacrificing to Hercules in the
+temple--whether laughing at Hercules on the stage--whether with
+Miltiades arming against the Mede--whether with Demosthenes declaiming
+against the Macedonian--still unmistakeable, unexampled, original, and
+alone--in their strength or their weakness, their wisdom or their
+foibles their turbulent action, their cultivated repose.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+The unimportant consequences to be deduced from the admission that
+Cecrops might be Egyptian.--Attic Kings before Theseus.--The
+Hellenes.--Their Genealogy.--Ionians and Achaeans Pelasgic.--Contrast
+between Dorians and Ionians.--Amphictyonic League.
+
+
+I. In allowing that there does not appear sufficient evidence to
+induce us to reject the tale of the Egyptian origin of Cecrops, it
+will be already observed, that I attach no great importance to the
+dispute: and I am not inclined reverently to regard the innumerable
+theories that have been built on so uncertain a foundation. An
+Egyptian may have migrated to Attica, but Egyptian influence in Attica
+was faint and evanescent;--arrived at the first dawn of historical
+fact, it is with difficulty that we discover the most dubious and
+shadowy vestiges of its existence. Neither Cecrops nor any other
+Egyptian in those ages is recorded to have founded a dynasty in
+Attica--it is clear that none established a different language--and
+all the boasted analogies of religion fade, on a close examination,
+into an occasional resemblance between the symbols and attributes of
+Egyptian and Grecian deities, or a similarity in mystic ceremonies and
+solemn institutions, which, for the most part, was almost indisputably
+formed by intercourse between Greece and Egypt in a far later age.
+Taking the earliest epoch at which history opens, and comparing the
+whole character of the Athenian people--moral, social, religious, and
+political--with that of any Egyptian population, it is not possible to
+select a more startling contrast, or one in which national character
+seems more indelibly formed by the early and habitual adoption of
+utterly opposite principles of thought and action. [71]
+
+I said that Cecrops founded no dynasty: the same traditions that bring
+him from Egypt give him Cranaus, a native, for his successor. The
+darkness of fable closes over the interval between the reign of
+Cranaus and the time of Theseus: if tradition be any guide whatsoever,
+the history of that period was the history of the human race--it was
+the gradual passage of men from a barbarous state to the dawn of
+civilization--and the national mythi only gather in wild and beautiful
+fictions round every landmark in their slow and encumbered progress.
+
+It would be very possible, by a little ingenious application of the
+various fables transmitted to us, to construct a history of imagined
+conquests and invented revolutions; and thus to win the unmerited
+praise of throwing a new light upon those remote ages. But when fable
+is our only basis--no fabric we erect, however imposing in itself, can
+be rightly entitled to the name of history. And, as in certain
+ancient chronicles it is recorded merely of undistinguished monarchs
+that they "lived and died," so such an assertion is precisely that
+which it would be the most presumptuous to make respecting the shadowy
+kings who, whether in Eusebius or the Parian marble, give dates and
+chronicles to the legendary gloom which preceded the heroic age.
+
+The principal event recorded in these early times, for which there
+seems some foundation, is a war between Erechtheus of Athens and the
+Eleusinians;--the last assisted or headed by the Thracian Eumolpus.
+Erechtheus is said to have fallen a victim in this contest. But a
+treaty afterward concluded with the Eleusinians confirmed the
+ascendency of Athens, and, possibly, by a religious ceremonial, laid
+the foundation of the Eleusinian mysteries. In this contest is
+introduced a very doubtful personage, under the appellation of Ion (to
+whom I shall afterward recur), who appears on the side of the
+Athenians, and who may be allowed to have exercised a certain
+influence over them, whether in religious rites or political
+institutions, though he neither attained to the throne, nor seems to
+have exceeded the peaceful authority of an ally. Upon the dim and
+confused traditions relative to Ion, the wildest and most luxuriant
+speculations have been grafted--prolix to notice, unnecessary to
+contradict.
+
+II. During this period there occurred--not rapidly, but slowly--the
+most important revolution of early Greece, viz., the spread of that
+tribe termed the Hellenes, who gradually established their
+predominance throughout the land, impressed indelible traces on the
+national character, and finally converted their own into the national
+name.
+
+I have already expressed my belief that the Pelasgi were not a
+barbarous race, speaking a barbarous tongue, but that they were akin
+to the Hellenes, who spoke the Grecian language, and are considered
+the proper Grecian family. Even the dubious record of genealogy
+(which, if fabulous in itself, often under the names of individuals
+typifies the affinity of tribes) makes the Hellenes kindred to the
+Pelasgi. Deucalion, the founder of the Hellenes, was of Pelasgic
+origin--son of Prometheus, and nephew of Atlas, king of the Pelasgic
+Arcadia.
+
+However this may be, we find the Hellenes driven from Phocis, their
+earliest recorded seat, by a flood in the time of Deucalion.
+Migrating into Thessaly, they expelled the Pelasgi; and afterward
+spreading themselves through Greece, they attained a general
+ascendency over the earlier habitants, enslaving, doubtless, the bulk
+of the population among which they formed a settlement, but ejecting
+numbers of the more resolute or the more noble families, and causing
+those celebrated migrations by which the Pelasgi carried their name
+and arts into Italy, as well as into Crete and various other isles.
+On the continent of Greece, when the revolution became complete, the
+Pelasgi appear to have retained only Arcadia, the greater part of
+Thessaly [72], the land of Dodona, and Attica.
+
+There is no reason to suppose the Hellenes more enlightened and
+civilized than the Pelasgi; but they seem, if only by the record of
+their conquests, to have been a more stern, warlike, and adventurous
+branch of the Grecian family. I conclude them, in fact, to have been
+that part of the Pelasgic race who the longest retained the fierce and
+vigorous character of a mountain tribe, and who found the nations they
+invaded in that imperfect period of civilization which is so
+favourable to the designs of a conqueror--when the first warlike
+nature of a predatory tribe is indeed abandoned--but before the
+discipline, order, and providence of a social community are acquired.
+Like the Saxons into Britain, the Hellenes were invited [73] by the
+different Pelasgic chiefs as auxiliaries, and remained as conquerors.
+But in other respects they rather resembled the more knightly and
+energetic race by whom in Britain the Saxon dynasty was overturned:--
+the Hellenes were the Normans of antiquity. It is impossible to
+decide the exact date when the Hellenes obtained the general
+ascendency or when the Greeks received from that Thessalian tribe
+their common appellation. The Greeks were not termed Hellenes in the
+time in which the Iliad was composed--they were so termed in the time
+of Hesiod. But even in the Iliad, the word Panhellenes, applied to
+the Greeks, testifies the progress of the revolution [74], and in the
+Odyssey, the Hellenic name is no longer limited to the dominion of
+Achilles.
+
+III. The Hellenic nation became popularly subdivided into four
+principal families, viz., the Dorians, the Aeolians, the Ionians, and
+Achaeans, of which I consider the former two alone genuinely Hellenic.
+The fable which makes Dorus, Aeolus, and Xuthus, the sons of Helen,
+declares that while Dorus was sent forth to conquer other lands,
+Aeolus succeeded to the domain of Phthiotis, and records no conquests
+of his own; but attributes to his sons the origin of most of the
+principal families of Greece. If rightly construed, this account
+would denote that the Aeolians remained for a generation at least
+subsequent to the first migration of the Dorians, in their Thessalian
+territories; and thence splitting into various hordes, descended as
+warriors and invaders upon the different states of Greece. They
+appear to have attached themselves to maritime situations, and the
+wealth of their early settlements is the theme of many a legend. The
+opulence of Orchomenus is compared by Homer to that of Egyptian
+Thebes. And in the time of the Trojan war, Corinth was already termed
+"the wealthy." By degrees the Aeolians became in a great measure
+blended and intermingled with the Dorians. Yet so intimately
+connected are the Hellenes and Pelasgi, that even these, the lineal
+descendants of Helen through the eldest branch, are no less confounded
+with the Pelasgic than the Dorian race. Strabo and Pausanias alike
+affirm the Aeolians to be Pelasgic, and in the Aeolic dialect we
+approach to the Pelasgic tongue.
+
+The Dorians, first appearing in Phthiotis, are found two generations
+afterward in the mountainous district of Histiaeotis, comprising
+within their territory, according to Herodotus, the immemorial Vale of
+Tempe. Neighboured by warlike hordes, more especially the heroic
+Lapithae, with whom their earliest legends record fierce and continued
+war, this mountain tribe took from nature and from circumstance their
+hardy and martial character. Unable to establish secure settlements
+in the fertile Thessalian plains, and ranging to the defiles through
+which the romantic Peneus winds into the sea, several of the tribe
+migrated early into Crete, where, though forming only a part of the
+population of the isle, they are supposed by some to have established
+the Doric constitution and customs, which in their later settlements
+served them for a model. Other migrations marked their progress to
+the foot of Mount Pindus; thence to Dryopis, afterward called Doris;
+and from Dryopis to the Peloponnesus; which celebrated migration,
+under the name of the "Return of the Heraclidae," I shall hereafter
+more especially describe. I have said that genealogy attributes the
+origin of the Dorians and that of the Aeolians to Dorus and Aeolus,
+sons of Helen. This connects them with the Hellenes and with each
+other. The adventures of Xuthus, the third son of Helen, are not
+recorded by the legends of Thessaly, and he seems merely a fictitious
+creation, invented to bring into affinity with the Hellenes the
+families, properly Pelasgic, of the Achaeans and Ionians. It is by
+writers comparatively recent that we are told that Xuthus was driven
+from Thessaly by his brothers--that he took refuge in Attica, and on
+the plains of Marathon built four towns--Oenoe, Marathon,
+Probalinthus, and Tricorythus [75], and that he wedded Creusa,
+daughter of Erechtheus, king of Attica, and that by her he had two
+sons, Achaeus and Ion. By some we are told that Achaeus, entering the
+eastern side of Peloponnesus, founded a dominion in Laconia and
+Argolis; by others, on the contrary, that he conducted a band, partly
+Athenian, into Thessaly, and recovered the domains of which his father
+had been despoiled [76]. Both these accounts of Achaeus, as the
+representative of the Achaeans, are correct in this, that the
+Achaeans, had two settlements from remote periods--the one in the
+south of Thessaly--the other in the Peloponnesus.
+
+The Achaeans were long the most eminent of the Grecian tribes.
+Possessed of nearly the whole of the Peloponnesus, except, by a
+singular chance, that part which afterward bore their name, they
+boasted the warlike fame of the opulent Menelaus and the haughty
+Agamemnon, the king of men. The dominant tribe of the heroic age, the
+Achaeans form the kindred link between the several epochs of the
+Pelasgic and Hellenic sway--their character indeed Hellenic, but their
+descent apparently Pelasgic. Dionysius of Halicarnassus derives them
+from Pelasgus himself, and they existed as Achaeans before the
+Hellenic Xuthus was even born. The legend which makes Achaeus the
+brother of Ion, tends likewise to prove, that if the Ionians were
+originally Pelasgic, so also were the Achaeans. Let us then come to
+Ion.
+
+Although Ion is said to have given the name of Ionians to the
+Atticans, yet long before his time the Iaones were among the ancient
+inhabitants of the country; and Herodotus (the best authority on the
+subject) declares that the Ionians were Pelasgic and indigenous.
+There is not sufficient reason to suppose, therefore, that they were
+Hellenic conquerors or Hellenic settlers. They appear, on the
+contrary, to have been one of the aboriginal tribes of Attica:--a part
+of them proceeded into the Peloponnesus (typified under the migration
+thither of Xuthus), and these again returning (as typified by the
+arrival of Ion at Athens), in conjunction with such of their
+fraternity as had remained in their native settlement, became the most
+powerful and renowned of the several divisions of the Attic
+population. Their intercourse with the Peloponnesians would lead the
+Ionians to establish some of the political institutions and religious
+rites they had become acquainted with in their migration; and thus may
+we most probably account for the introduction of the worship of Apollo
+into Attica, and for that peaceful political influence which the
+mythical Ion is said to have exercised over his countrymen.
+
+At all events, we cannot trace, any distinct and satisfactory
+connexion between this, the most intellectual and brilliant tribe of
+the Grecian family, and that roving and fortunate Thessalian horde to
+which the Hellenes gave the general name, and of which the Dorians
+were the fittest representative and the most powerful section. Nor,
+despite the bold assumptions of Mueller, is there any evidence of a
+Hellenic conquest in Attica. [77]
+
+And that land which, according to tradition and to history, was the
+early refuge of exiles, derived from the admission and intercourse of
+strangers and immigrants those social and political improvements which
+in other states have been wrought by conquest.
+
+IV. After the Dorians obtained possession of the Peloponnesus, the
+whole face of Greece was gradually changed. The return of the
+Heraclidae was the true consummation of the Hellenic revolution. The
+tribes hitherto migratory became fixed in the settlements they
+acquired. The Dorians rose to the rank of the most powerful race of
+Greece: and the Ionians, their sole rivals, possessed only on the
+continent the narrow soil of Attica, though their colonies covered the
+fertile coast of Asia Minor. Greece thus reduced to two main tribes,
+the Doric and the Ionian, historians have justly and generally
+concurred in noticing between them the strongest and most marked
+distinctions,--the Dorians grave, inflexible, austere,--the Ionians
+lively, versatile, prone to change. The very dialect of the one was
+more harsh and masculine than that of the other; and the music, the
+dances of the Dorians, bore the impress of their severe simplicity.
+The sentiment of veneration which pervaded their national character
+taught the Dorians not only, on the one hand, the firmest allegiance
+to the rites of religion--and a patriarchal respect for age--but, on
+the other hand, a blind and superstitious attachment to institutions
+merely on account of their antiquity--and an almost servile regard for
+birth, producing rather the feelings of clanship than the sympathy of
+citizens. We shall see hereafter, that while Athens established
+republics, Sparta planted oligarchies. The Dorians were proud of
+independence, but it was the independence of nobles rather than of a
+people. Their severity preserved them long from innovation--no less
+by what was vicious in its excess than by what was wise in its
+principle. With many great and heroic qualities, they were yet harsh
+to enemies--cruel to dependants--selfish to allies. Their whole
+policy was to preserve themselves as they were; if they knew not the
+rash excesses, neither were they impelled by the generous emotions,
+which belong to men whose constant aspirations are to be better and to
+be greater;--they did not desire to be better or to be greater; their
+only wish was not to be different. They sought in the future nothing
+but the continuance of the past; and to that past they bound
+themselves with customs and laws of iron. The respect in which they
+held their women, as well as their disdain of pleasure, preserved them
+in some measure from the licentiousness common to states in which
+women are despised; but the respect had little of the delicacy and
+sentiment of individual attachment--attachment was chiefly for their
+own sex [78]. The Ionians, on the contrary, were susceptible,
+flexile, and more characterized by the generosity of modern knighthood
+than the sternness of ancient heroism. Them, not the past, but the
+future, charmed. Ever eager to advance, they were impatient even of
+the good, from desire of the better. Once urged to democracy--
+democracy fixed their character, as oligarchy fixed the Spartan. For,
+to change is the ambition of a democracy--to conserve of an oligarchy.
+The taste, love, and intuition of the beautiful stamped the Greeks
+above all nations, and the Ionians above all the Greeks. It was not
+only that the Ionians were more inventive than their neighbours, but
+that whatever was beautiful in invention they at once seized and
+appropriated. Restless, inquisitive, ardent, they attempted all
+things, and perfected art--searched into all things, and consummated
+philosophy.
+
+The Ionic character existed everywhere among Ionians, but the Doric
+was not equally preserved among the Dorians. The reason is evident.
+The essence of the Ionian character consisted in the spirit of change
+--that of the Dorian in resistance to innovation. When any Doric
+state abandoned its hereditary customs and institutions, it soon lost
+the Doric character--became lax, effeminate, luxurious--a corruption
+of the character of the Ionians; but no change could assimilate the
+Ionian to the Doric; for they belonged to different eras of
+civilization--the Doric to the elder, the Ionian to the more advanced.
+The two races of Scotland have become more alike than heretofore; but
+it is by making the highlander resemble the lowlander--and not by
+converting the lowland citizen into the mountain Gael. The habits of
+commerce, the substitution of democratic for oligarchic institutions,
+were sufficient to alter the whole character of the Dorians. The
+voluptuous Corinth--the trading Aegina (Doric states)--infinitely more
+resembled Athens than Sparta.
+
+It is, then, to Sparta, that in the historical times we must look
+chiefly for the representative of the Doric tribe, in its proper and
+elementary features; and there, pure, vigorous, and concentrated, the
+Doric character presents a perpetual contrast to the Athenian. This
+contrast continued so long as either nation retained a character to
+itself;--and (no matter what the pretences of hostility) was the real
+and inevitable cause of that enmity between Athens and Sparta, the
+results of which fixed the destiny of Greece.
+
+Yet were the contests of that enmity less the contests between
+opposing tribes than between those opposing principles which every
+nation may be said to nurse within itself; viz., the principle to
+change, and the principle to preserve; the principle to popularize,
+and the principle to limit the governing power; here the genius of an
+oligarchy, there of a people; here adherence to the past, there desire
+of the future. Each principle produced its excesses, and furnishes a
+salutary warning. The feuds of Sparta and Athens may be regarded as
+historical allegories, clothing the moral struggles, which, with all
+their perils and all their fluctuations, will last to the end of time.
+
+V. This period is also celebrated for the supposed foundation of that
+assembly of the Grecian states, called the Amphictyonic Confederacy.
+Genealogy attributes its origin to a son of Deucalion, called
+Amphictyon. [79]
+
+This fable would intimate a Hellenic origin, since Deucalion is the
+fabled founder of the Hellenes; but out of twelve tribes which
+composed the confederacy, only three were Hellenic, and the rest
+Pelasgic. But with the increasing influence of the Dorian oracle of
+Delphi, with which it was connected, it became gradually considered a
+Hellenic institution. It is not possible to decipher the first
+intention of this league. The meeting was held at two places, near
+Anthela, in the pass of Thermopylae, and Delphi; at the latter place
+in the spring, at the former in the autumn. If tradition imputed to
+Amphictyon the origin of the council, it ascribed to Acrisius, king
+of Argos [80], the formation of its proper power and laws. He is said
+to have founded one of the assemblies, either that in Delphi or
+Thermopylae (accounts vary), and to have combined the two, increased
+the number of the members, and extended the privileges of the body.
+We can only interpret this legend by the probable supposition, that
+the date of holding the same assembly at two different places, at
+different seasons of the year, marks the epoch of some important
+conjunction of various tribes, and, it may be, of deities hitherto
+distinct. It might be an attempt to associate the Hellenes with the
+Pelasgi, in the early and unsettled power of the former race: and this
+supposition is rendered the more plausible by the evident union of the
+worship of the Dorian Apollo at Delphi with that of the Pelasgian
+Ceres at Thermopylae [81]. The constitution of the league was this--
+each city belonging to an Amphictyonic state sent usually two
+deputies--the one called Pylagoras, the other Hieromnemon. The
+functions of the two deputies seem to have differed, and those of the
+latter to have related more particularly to whatsoever appertained to
+religion. On extraordinary occasions more than one pylagoras was
+deputed--Athens at one time sent no less than three. But the number
+of deputies sent did not alter the number of votes in the council.
+Each city had two votes and no more, no matter how many delegates it
+employed.
+
+All the deputies assembled,--solemn sacrifices were offered at Delphi
+to Apollo, Diana, Latona, and Minerva; at Thermopylae to Ceres. An
+oath was then administered, the form of which is preserved to us by
+Aeschines.
+
+"I swear," runs the oath, "never to subvert any Amphictyonic city--
+never to stop the courses of its waters in peace or in war. Those who
+attempt such outrages I will oppose by arms; and the cities that so
+offend I will destroy. If any ravages be committed in the territory
+of the god, if any connive at such a crime, if any conceive a design
+hostile to the temple, against them will I use my hands, my feet, my
+whole power and strength, so that the offenders may be brought to
+punishment."
+
+Fearful and solemn imprecations on any violation of this engagement
+followed the oath.
+
+These ceremonies performed, one of the hieromnemons [82] presided over
+the council; to him were intrusted the collecting the votes, the
+reporting the resolutions, and the power of summoning the general
+assembly, which was a convention separate from the council, held only
+on extraordinary occasions, and composed of residents and strangers,
+whom the solemnity of the meeting congregated in the neighbourhood.
+
+VI. Throughout the historical times we can trace in this league no
+attempt to combine against the aggression of foreign states, except
+for the purposes of preserving the sanctity of the temple. The
+functions of the league were limited to the Amphictyonic tribes and
+whether or not its early, and undefined, and obscure purpose, was to
+check wars among the confederate tribes, it could not attain even that
+object. Its offices were almost wholly confined to religion. The
+league never interfered when one Amphictyonic state exercised the
+worst severities against the other, curbing neither the ambition of
+the Athenian fleet nor the cruelties of the Spartan sword. But, upon
+all matters relative to religion, especially to the worship of Apollo,
+the assembly maintained an authority in theory supreme--in practice,
+equivocal and capricious.
+
+As a political institution, the league contained one vice which could
+not fail to destroy its power. Each city in the twelve Amphictyonic
+tribes, the most unimportant as the most powerful, had the same number
+of votes. This rendered it against the interest of the greater states
+(on whom its consideration necessarily depended) to cement or increase
+its political influence and thus it was quietly left to its natural
+tendency to sacred purposes. Like all institutions which bestow upon
+man the proper prerogative of God, and affect authority over religious
+and not civil opinions, the Amphictyonic council was not very
+efficient in good: even in its punishment of sacrilege, it was only
+dignified and powerful whenever the interests of the Delphic temple
+were at stake. Its most celebrated interference was with the town of
+Crissa, against which the Amphictyons decreed war B. C. 505; the
+territory of Crissa was then dedicated to the god of the temple.
+
+VII. But if not efficient in good, the Amphictyonic council was not
+active in evil. Many causes conspired to prevent the worst excesses
+to which religious domination is prone,--and this cause in particular.
+It was not composed of a separate, interested, and permanent class,
+but of citizens annually chosen from every state, who had a much
+greater interest in the welfare of their own state than in the
+increased authority of the Amphictyonic council [83]. They were
+priests but for an occasion--they were citizens by profession. The
+jealousies of the various states, the constant change in the
+delegates, prevented that energy and oneness necessary to any settled
+design of ecclesiastical ambition. Hence, the real influence of the
+Amphictyonic council was by no means commensurate with its grave
+renown; and when, in the time of Philip, it became an important
+political agent, it was only as the corrupt and servile tool of that
+able monarch. Still it long continued, under the panoply of a great
+religious name, to preserve the aspect of dignity and power, until, at
+the time of Constantine, it fell amid the ruins of the faith it had
+aspired to protect. The creed that became the successor of the
+religion of Delphi found a mightier Amphictyonic assembly in the
+conclaves of Rome. The papal institution possessed precisely those
+qualities for directing the energies of states, for dictating to the
+ambition of kings, for obtaining temporal authority under spiritual
+pretexts--which were wanting to the pagan.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+The Heroic Age.--Theseus.--His legislative Influence upon Athens.--
+Qualities of the Greek Heroes.--Effect of a Traditional Age upon the
+Character of a People.
+
+
+I. As one who has been journeying through the dark [84] begins at
+length to perceive the night breaking away in mist and shadow, so that
+the forms of things, yet uncertain and undefined, assume an
+exaggerated and gigantic outline, half lost amid the clouds,--so now,
+through the obscurity of fable, we descry the dim and mighty outline
+of the HEROIC AGE. The careful and skeptical Thucydides has left us,
+in the commencement of his immortal history, a masterly portraiture of
+the manners of those times in which individual prowess elevates the
+possessor to the rank of a demigod; times of unsettled law and
+indistinct control;--of adventure--of excitement;--of daring qualities
+and lofty crime. We recognise in the picture features familiar to the
+North: the roving warriors and the pirate kings who scoured the seas,
+descended upon unguarded coasts, and deemed the exercise of plunder a
+profession of honour, remind us of the exploits of the Scandinavian
+Her-Kongr, and the boding banners of the Dane. The seas of Greece
+tempted to piratical adventures: their numerous isles, their winding
+bays, and wood-clad shores, proffered ample enterprise to the bold--
+ample booty to the rapacious; the voyages were short for the
+inexperienced, the refuges numerous for the defeated. In early ages,
+valour is the true virtue--it dignifies the pursuits in which it is
+engaged, and the profession of a pirate was long deemed as honourable
+in the Aegean as among the bold rovers of the Scandinavian race [85].
+If the coast was thus exposed to constant incursion and alarm, neither
+were the interior recesses of the country more protected from the
+violence of marauders. The various tribes that passed into Greece, to
+colonize or conquer, dislodged from their settlements many of the
+inhabitants, who, retreating up the country, maintained themselves by
+plunder, or avenged themselves by outrage. The many crags and
+mountains, the caverns and the woods, which diversify the beautiful
+land of Greece, afforded their natural fortresses to these barbarous
+hordes. The chief who had committed a murder, or aspired
+unsuccessfully to an unsteady throne, betook himself, with his
+friends, to some convenient fastness, made a descent on the
+surrounding villages, and bore off the women or the herds, as lust or
+want excited to the enterprise. No home was safe, no journey free
+from peril, and the Greeks passed their lives in armour. Thus,
+gradually, the profession and system of robbery spread itself
+throughout Greece, until the evil became insufferable--until the
+public opinion of all the states and tribes, in which society had
+established laws, was enlisted against the freebooter--until it grew
+an object of ambition to rid the neighbourhood of a scourge--and the
+success of the attempt made the glory of the adventurer. Then
+naturally arose the race of heroes--men who volunteered to seek the
+robber in his hold--and, by the gratitude of a later age, the courage
+of the knight-errant was rewarded with the sanctity of the demigod.
+At that time, too, internal circumstances in the different states--
+whether from the predominance of, or the resistance to, the warlike
+Hellenes, had gradually conspired to raise a military and fierce
+aristocracy above the rest of the population; and as arms became the
+instruments of renown and power, so the wildest feats would lead to
+the most extended fame.
+
+II. The woods and mountains of Greece were not then cleared of the
+first rude aboriginals of nature--wild beasts lurked within its
+caverns;--wolves abounded everywhere--herds of wild bulls, the large
+horns of which Herodotus names with admiration, were common; and even
+the lion himself, so late as the invasion of Xerxes, was found in wide
+districts from the Thracian Abdera to the Acarnanian Achelous. Thus,
+the feats of the early heroes appear to have been mainly directed
+against the freebooter or the wild beast; and among the triumphs of
+Hercules are recorded the extermination of the Lydian robbers, the
+death of Cacus, and the conquest of the lion of Nemea and the boar of
+Erymanthus.
+
+Hercules himself shines conspicuously forth the great model of these
+useful adventurers. There is no doubt that a prince [86], so named,
+actually existed in Greece; and under the title of the Theban
+Hercules, is to be carefully distinguished, both from the god of Egypt
+and the peaceful Hercules of Phoenicia [87], whose worship was not
+unknown to the Greeks previous to the labours of his namesake. As the
+name of Hercules was given to the Theban hero (originally called
+Alcaeus), in consequence of his exploits, it may be that his
+countrymen recognised in his character or his history something
+analogous to the traditional accounts of the Eastern god. It was the
+custom of the early Greeks to attribute to one man the actions which
+he performed in concert with others, and the reputation of Hercules
+was doubtless acquired no less as the leader of an army than by the
+achievements of his personal prowess. His fame and his success
+excited the emulation of his contemporaries, and pre-eminent among
+these ranks the Athenian Theseus.
+
+III. In the romance which Plutarch has bequeathed to us, under the
+title of a "History of Theseus," we seem to read the legends of our
+own fabulous days of chivalry. The adventures of an Amadis or a
+Palmerin are not more knightly nor more extravagant.
+
+According to Plutarch, Aegeus, king of Athens, having no children,
+went to Delphi to consult the oracle how that misfortune might be
+repaired. He was commanded not to approach any woman till he returned
+to Athens; but the answer was couched in mystic and allegorical terms,
+and the good king was rather puzzled than enlightened by the reply.
+He betook himself therefore to Troezene, a small town in Peloponnesus,
+founded by Pittheus, of the race of Pelops, a man eminent in that day
+for wisdom and sagacity. He communicated to him the oracle, and
+besought his interpretation. Something there was in the divine answer
+which induced Pittheus to draw the Athenian king into an illicit
+intercourse with his own daughter, Aethra. The princess became with
+child; and, before his departure from Troezene, Aegeus deposited a
+sword and a pair of sandals in a cavity concealed by a huge stone
+[88], and left injunctions with Aethra that, should the fruit of their
+intercourse prove a male child, and able, when grown up, to remove the
+stone, she should send him privately to Athens with the sword and
+sandals in proof of his birth; for Aegeus had a brother named Pallas,
+who, having a large family of sons, naturally expected, from the
+failure of the direct line, to possess himself or his children of the
+Athenian throne; and the king feared, should the secret of his
+intercourse with Aethra be discovered before the expected child had
+arrived to sufficient strength to protect himself, that either by
+treason or assassination the sons of Pallas would despoil the rightful
+heir of his claim to the royal honours. Aethra gave birth to Theseus,
+and Pittheus concealed the dishonour of his family by asserting that
+Neptune, the god most honoured at Troezene, had condescended to be the
+father of the child:--the gods were very convenient personages in
+those days. As the boy grew up, he evinced equal strength of body and
+nobleness of mind; and at length the time arrived when Aethra
+communicated to him the secret of his birth, and led him to the stone
+which concealed the tokens of his origin. He easily removed it, and
+repaired by land to Athens.
+
+At that time, as I have before stated, Greece was overrun by robbers:
+Hercules had suppressed them for awhile; but the Theban hero was now
+at the feet of the Lydian Omphale, and the freebooters had reappeared
+along the mountainous recesses of the Peloponnesus; the journey by
+land was therefore not only longer, but far more perilous, than a
+voyage by sea, and Pittheus earnestly besought his grandson to prefer
+the latter. But it was the peril of the way that made its charm in
+the eyes of the young hero, and the fame of Hercules had long inspired
+his dreams by night [89], and his thoughts by day. With his father's
+sword, then, he repaired to Athens. Strange and wild were the
+adventures that befell him. In Epidauria he was attacked by a
+celebrated robber, whom he slew, and whose club he retained as his
+favourite weapon. In the Isthmus, Sinnis, another bandit, who had
+been accustomed to destroy the unfortunate travellers who fell in his
+way by binding them to the boughs of two pine trees (so that when the
+trees, released, swung back to their natural position, the victim was
+torn asunder, limb by limb), was punished by the same death he had
+devised for others; and here occurs one of those anecdotes
+illustrative of the romance of the period, and singularly analogous to
+the chivalry of Northern fable, which taught deference to women, and
+rewarded by the smiles of the fair the exploits of the bold. Sinnis,
+"the pine bender," had a daughter remarkable for beauty, who
+concealed herself amid the shrubs and rushes in terror of the victor.
+Theseus discovered her, praying, says Plutarch, in childish innocence
+or folly, to the plants and bushes, and promising, if they would
+shelter her, never to destroy or burn them. A graceful legend, that
+reminds us of the rich inventions of Spenser. But Theseus, with all
+gentle words and soothing vows, allured the maiden from her retreat,
+and succeeded at last in obtaining her love and its rewards.
+
+Continued adventures--the conquest of Phaea, a wild sow (or a female
+robber, so styled from the brutality of her life)--the robber Sciron
+cast headlong from a precipice--Procrustes stretched on his own bed--
+attested the courage and fortune of the wanderer, and at length he
+arrived at the banks of the Cephisus. Here he was saluted by some of
+the Phytalidae, a sacred family descended from Phytalus, the beloved
+of Ceres, and was duly purified from the blood of the savages he had
+slain. Athens was the first place at which he was hospitably
+entertained. He arrived at an opportune moment; the Colchian Medea,
+of evil and magic fame, had fled from Corinth and taken refuge with
+Aegeus, whose affections she had insnared. By her art she promised
+him children to supply his failing line, and she gave full trial to
+the experiment by establishing herself the partner of the royal couch.
+But it was not likely that the numerous sons of Pallas would regard
+this connexion with indifference, and faction and feud reigned
+throughout the city. Medea discovered the secret of the birth of
+Theseus; and, resolved by poison to rid herself of one who would
+naturally interfere with her designs on Aegeus, she took advantage of
+the fear and jealousies of the old king, and persuaded him to become
+her accomplice in the premeditated crime. A banquet, according to the
+wont of those hospitable times, was given to the stranger. The king
+was at the board, the cup of poison at hand, when Theseus, wishing to
+prepare his father for the welcome news he had to divulge, drew the
+sword or cutlass which Aegeus had made the token of his birth, and
+prepared to carve with it the meat that was set before him. The sword
+caught the eye of the king--he dashed the poison to the ground, and
+after a few eager and rapid questions, recognised his son in his
+intended victim. The people were assembled--Theseus was acknowledged
+by the king, and received with joy by the multitude, who had already
+heard of the feats of the hero. The traditionary place where the
+poison fell was still shown in the time of Plutarch. The sons of
+Pallas ill brooked the arrival and acknowledgment of this unexpected
+heir to the throne. They armed themselves and their followers, and
+prepared for war. But one half of their troops, concealed in ambush,
+were cut off by Theseus (instructed in their movements by the
+treachery of a herald), and the other half, thus reduced, were obliged
+to disperse. So Theseus remained the undisputed heir to the Athenian
+throne.
+
+IV. It would be vain for the historian, but delightful for the poet,
+to follow at length this romantic hero through all his reputed
+enterprises. I can only rapidly sketch the more remarkable. I pass,
+then, over the tale how he captured alive the wild bull of Marathon,
+and come at once to that expedition to Crete, which is indissolubly
+intwined with immortal features of love and poetry. It is related
+that Androgeus, a son of Minos, the celebrated King of Crete, and by
+his valour worthy of such a sire, had been murdered in Attica; some
+suppose by the jealousies of Aegeus, who appears to have had a
+singular distrust of all distinguished strangers. Minos retaliated by
+a war which wasted Attica, and was assisted in its ravages by the
+pestilence and the famine. The oracle of Apollo, which often laudably
+reconciled the quarrels of princes, terminated the contest by
+enjoining the Athenians to appease the just indignation of Minos.
+They despatched, therefore, ambassadors to Crete, and consented, in
+token of submission, to send every ninth year a tribute of seven
+virgins and seven young men. The little intercourse that then existed
+between states, conjoined with the indignant grief of the parents at
+the loss of their children, exaggerated the evil of the tribute. The
+hostages were said by the Athenians to be exposed in an intricate
+labyrinth, and devoured by a monster, the creature of unnatural
+intercourse, half man half bull; but the Cretans, certainly the best
+authority in the matter, stripped the account of the fable, and
+declared that the labyrinth was only a prison in which the youths and
+maidens were confined on their arrival--that Minos instituted games in
+honour of Androgeus, and that the Athenian captives were the prize of
+the victors. The first victor was the chief of the Cretan army, named
+Taurus, and he, being fierce and unmerciful, treated the slaves he
+thus acquired with considerable cruelty. Hence the origin of the
+labyrinth and the Minotaur. And Plutarch, giving this explanation of
+the Cretans, cites Aristotle to prove that the youths thus sent were
+not put to death by Minos, but retained in servile employments, and
+that their descendants afterward passed into Thrace, and were called
+Bottiaeans. We must suppose, therefore, in consonance not only with
+these accounts, but the manners of the age, that the tribute was
+merely a token of submission, and the objects of it merely considered
+as slaves. [90]
+
+Of Minos himself all accounts are uncertain. There seems no
+sufficient ground to doubt, indeed, his existence, nor the extended
+power which, during his reign, Crete obtained in Greece. It is most
+probable that it was under Phoenician influence that Crete obtained
+its maritime renown; but there is no reason to suppose Minos himself
+Phoenician.
+
+After the return of Theseus, the time came when the tribute to Crete
+was again to be rendered. The people murmured their dissatisfaction.
+"It was the guilt of Aegeus," said they, "which caused the wrath of
+Minos, yet Aegeus alone escaped its penalty; their lawful children
+were sacrificed to the Cretan barbarity, but the doubtful and
+illegitimate stranger, whom Aegeus had adopted, went safe and free."
+Theseus generously appeased these popular tumults: he insisted on
+being himself included in the seven.
+
+V. Twice before had this human tribute been sent to Crete; and in
+token of the miserable and desperate fate which, according to vulgar
+belief, awaited the victims, a black sail had been fastened to the
+ship.
+
+But this time, Aegeus, inspired by the cheerful confidence of his son,
+gave the pilot a white sail, which he was to hoist, if, on his return,
+he bore back Theseus in safety: if not, the black was once more to be
+the herald of an unhappier fate. It is probable that Theseus did not
+esteem this among the most dangerous of his adventures. At the court
+of the wise Pittheus, or in the course of his travels, he had
+doubtless heard enough of the character of Minos, the greatest and
+most sagacious monarch of his time, to be convinced that the son of
+the Athenian king would have little to fear from his severity. He
+arrived at Crete, and obtained the love of Ariadne, the daughter of
+Minos. Now follows a variety of contradictory accounts, the most
+probable and least poetical of which are given by Plutarch; but as he
+concludes them all by the remark that none are of certainty, it is a
+needless task to repeat them: it suffices to relate, that either with
+or without the consent of Minos, Theseus departed from Crete, in
+company with Ariadne, and that by one means or the other he
+thenceforth freed the Athenians from the payment of the accustomed
+tribute. As it is obvious that with the petty force with which, by
+all accounts, he sailed to Crete, he could not have conquered the
+powerful Minos in his own city, so it is reasonable to conclude, as
+one of the traditions hath it, that the king consented to his alliance
+with his daughter, and, in consequence of that marriage, waived all
+farther claim to the tribute of the Athenians. [91]
+
+Equal obscurity veils the fate of the loving Ariadne; but the
+supposition which seems least objectionable is, that Theseus was
+driven by storm either on Cyprus or Naxos, and Ariadne being then with
+child, and rendered ill by the violence of the waves, was left on
+shore by her lover while he returned to take charge of his vessel;
+that she died in childbed, and that Theseus, on his return, was
+greatly afflicted, and instituted an annual festival in her honour.
+While we adopt the story most probable in itself, and most honourable
+to the character of the Athenian hero, we cannot regret the various
+romance which is interwoven with the tale of the unfortunate Cretan,
+since it has given us some of the most beautiful inventions of
+poetry;--the Labyrinth love-lighted by Ariadne--the Cretan maid
+deserted by the stranger with whom she fled--left forlorn and alone on
+the Naxian shore--and consoled by Bacchus and his satyr horde.
+
+VI. Before he arrived at Athens, Theseus rested at Delos, where he is
+said to have instituted games, and to have originated the custom of
+crowning the victor with the palm. Meanwhile Aegeus waited the return
+of his son. On the Cecropian rock that yet fronts the sea, he watched
+the coming of the vessel and the waving of the white sail: the masts
+appeared--the ship approached--the white sail was not visible: in the
+joy and the impatience of the homeward crew, the pilot had forgotten
+to hoist the appointed signal, and the old man in despair threw
+himself from the rock and was dashed to pieces. Theseus received the
+news of his father's death with sorrow and lamentation. His triumph
+and return were recorded by periodical festivals, in which the fate of
+Aegeus was typically alluded to, and the vessel of thirty oars with
+which he had sailed to Crete was preserved by the Athenians to the
+times of Demetrius the Phalerean--so often new-pieced and repaired,
+that it furnished a favourite thesis to philosophical disputants,
+whether it was or was not the same vessel which Theseus had employed.
+
+VII. Possessed of the supreme power, Theseus now bent his genius to
+the task of legislation, and in this part of his life we tread upon
+firmer ground, because the most judicious of the ancient historians
+[92] expressly attributes to the son of Aegeus those enactments which
+so mainly contributed to consolidate the strength and union of the
+Athenian people.
+
+Although Cecrops is said to have brought the tribes of Attica under
+one government, yet it will be remembered that he had divided the
+territory into twelve districts, with a fortress or capital to each.
+By degrees these several districts had become more and more distinct
+from each other, and in many cases of emergency it was difficult to
+obtain a general assembly or a general concurrence of the people; nay,
+differences had often sprung up between the tribes, which had been
+adjusted, not as among common citizens, by law, but as among jealous
+enemies, by arms and bloodshed. It was the master policy of Theseus
+to unite these petty commonwealths in one state. He applied in
+person, and by all the arte of persuasion, to each tribe: the poor he
+found ready enough to listen to an invitation which promised them the
+shelter of a city, and the protection of a single government from the
+outrage of many tyrants: the rich and the powerful were more jealous
+of their independent, scattered, and, as it were, feudal life. But
+these he sought to conciliate by promises that could not but flatter
+that very prejudice of liberty which naturally at first induced them
+to oppose his designs. He pledged his faith to a constitution which
+should leave the power in the hands of the many. He himself, as
+monarch, desired only the command in war, and in peace the
+guardianship of laws he was equally bound to obey. Some were induced
+by his persuasions, others by the fear of his power, until at length
+he obtained his object. By common consent he dissolved the
+towns'-corporations and councils in each separate town, and built in
+Athens one common prytaneum or council-hall, existent still in the time
+of Plutarch. He united the scattered streets and houses of the citadel,
+and the new town that had grown up along the plain, by the common name
+of "Athens," and instituted the festival of the Panathenaea, in honour
+of the guardian goddess of the city, and as a memorial of the
+confederacy. Adhering then to his promises, he set strict and narrow
+limits to the regal power, created, under the name of eupatrids or
+well-born, an hereditary nobility, and divided into two orders (the
+husbandmen and mechanics) the remainder of the people. The care of
+religion, the explanation of the laws, and the situations of
+magistrates, were the privilege of the nobles. He thus laid the
+foundation of a free, though aristocratic constitution--according to
+Aristotle, the first who surrendered the absolute sway of royalty, and
+receiving from the rhetorical Isocrates the praise that it was a contest
+which should give most, the people of power, or the king of freedom. As
+an extensive population was necessary to a powerful state, so Theseus
+invited to Athens all strangers willing to share in the benefits of its
+protection, granting them equal security of life and law; and he set a
+demarcation to the territory of the state by the boundary of a pillar
+erected in the Isthmus, dividing Ionia from Peloponnesus. The Isthmian
+games in honour of Neptune were also the invention of Theseus.
+
+VIII. Such are the accounts of the legislative enactments of Theseus.
+But of these we must reject much. We may believe from the account of
+Thucydides that jealousies among some Attic towns--which might either
+possess, or pretend to, an independence never completely annihilated
+by Cecrops and his successors, and which the settlement of foreigners
+of various tribes and habits would have served to increase--were so
+far terminated as to induce submission to the acknowledged supremacy
+of Athens as the Attic capital; and that the right of justice, and
+even of legislation, which had before been the prerogative of each
+separate town (to the evident weakening of the supreme and regal
+authority), was now concentrated in the common council-house of
+Athens. To Athens, as to a capital, the eupatrids of Attica would
+repair as a general residence [93]. The city increased in population
+and importance, and from this period Thucydides dates the enlargement
+of the ancient city, by the addition of the Lower Town. That Theseus
+voluntarily lessened the royal power, it is not necessary to believe.
+In the heroic age a warlike race had sprung up, whom no Grecian
+monarch appears to have attempted to govern arbitrarily in peace,
+though they yielded implicitly to his authority in war. Himself on a
+newly-won and uncertain throne, it was the necessity as well as the
+policy of Theseus to conciliate the most powerful of his subjects. It
+may also be conceded, that he more strictly defined the distinctions
+between the nobles and the remaining classes, whether yeomen or
+husbandmen, mechanics or strangers; and it is recorded that the
+honours and the business of legislation were the province of the
+eupatrids. It is possible that the people might be occasionally
+convened--but it is clear that they had little, if any, share in the
+government of the state. But the mere establishment and confirmation
+of a powerful aristocracy, and the mere collection of the population
+into a capital, were sufficient to prepare the way for far more
+democratic institutions than Theseus himself contemplated or designed.
+For centuries afterward an oligarchy ruled in Athens; but, free
+itself, that oligarchy preserved in its monopoly the principles of
+liberty, expanding in their influence with the progress of society.
+The democracy of Athens was not an ancient, yet not a sudden,
+constitution. It developed itself slowly, unconsciously,
+continuously--passing the allotted orbit of royalty, oligarchy,
+aristocracy, timocracy, tyranny, till at length it arrived at its
+dazzling zenith, blazed--waned--and disappeared.
+
+After the successful issue of his legislative attempts, we next hear
+of Theseus less as the monarch of history than as the hero of song.
+On these later traditions, which belong to fable, it is not necessary
+to dwell. Our own Coeur de Lion suggests no improbable resemblance to
+a spirit cast in times yet more wild and enterprising, and without
+seeking interpretations, after the fashion of allegory or system, of
+each legend, it is the most simple hypothesis, that Theseus really
+departed in quest of adventure from a dominion that afforded no scope
+for a desultory and eager ambition; and that something of truth lurks
+beneath many of the rich embellishments which his wanderings and
+exploits received from the exuberant poetry and the rude credibility
+of the age. During his absence, Menestheus, of the royal race of
+Attica, who, Plutarch simply tells us, was the first of mankind that
+undertook the profession of a demagogue, ingratiated himself with the
+people, or rather with the nobles. The absence of a king is always
+the nurse of seditions, and Menestheus succeeded in raising so
+powerful a faction against the hero, that on his return Theseus was
+unable to preserve himself in the government, and, pouring forth a
+solemn curse on the Athenians, departed to Scyros, where he either
+fell by accident from a precipice, or was thrown down by the king.
+His death at first was but little regarded; in after-times, to appease
+his ghost and expiate his curse, divine honours were awarded to his
+memory; and in the most polished age of his descendants, his supposed
+remains, indicated by an eagle in the skeleton of a man of giant
+stature, with a lance of brass and a sword by his side, were brought
+to Athens in the galley of Cimon, hailed by the shouts of a joyous
+multitude, "as if the living Theseus were come again."
+
+X. I have not altogether discarded, while I have abridged, the
+legends relating to a hero who undoubtedly exercised considerable
+influence over his country and his time, because in those legends we
+trace, better than we could do by dull interpretations equally
+unsatisfactory though more prosaic, the effigy of the heroic age--not
+unillustrative of the poetry and the romance which at once formed and
+indicated important features in the character of the Athenians. Much
+of the national spirit of every people, even in its most civilized
+epochs, is to be traced to the influence of that age which may be
+called the heroic. The wild adventurers of the early Greece tended to
+humanize even in their excesses. It is true that there are many
+instances of their sternness, ferocity, and revenge;--they were
+insolent from the consciousness of surpassing strength;--often cruel
+from that contempt of life common to the warlike. But the darker side
+of their character is far less commonly presented to us than the
+brighter--they seem to have been alive to generous emotions more
+readily than any other race so warlike in an age so rude--their
+affections were fervid as their hatreds--their friendships more
+remarkable than their feuds. Even their ferocity was not, as with the
+Scandinavian heroes, a virtue and a boast--their public opinion
+honoured the compassionate and the clement. Thus Hercules is said
+first to have introduced the custom of surrendering to the enemy the
+corpses of their slain; and mildness, justice, and courtesy are no
+less his attributes than invincible strength and undaunted courage.
+Traversing various lands, these paladins of an elder chivalry acquired
+an experience of different governments and customs, which assisted on
+their return to polish and refine the admiring tribes which their
+achievements had adorned. Like the knights of a Northern mythus,
+their duty was to punish the oppressor and redress the wronged, and
+they thus fixed in the wild elements of unsettled opinion a recognised
+standard of generosity and of justice. Their deeds became the theme
+of the poets, who sought to embellish their virtues and extenuate
+their offences. Thus, certain models, not indeed wholly pure or
+excellent, but bright with many of those qualities which ennoble a
+national character, were set before the emulation of the aspiring and
+the young:--and the traditional fame of a Hercules or a Theseus assisted
+to inspire the souls of those who, ages afterward, broke the Mede at
+Marathon, and arrested the Persian might in the Pass of Thermopylae.
+For, as the spirit of a poet has its influence on the destiny and
+character of nations, so TIME itself hath his own poetry, preceding
+and calling forth the poetry of the human genius, and breathing
+inspirations, imaginative and imperishable, from the great deeds and
+gigantic images of an ancestral and traditionary age.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+The Successors of Theseus.--The Fate of Codrus.--The Emigration of
+Nileus.--The Archons.--Draco.
+
+
+I. The reputed period of the Trojan war follows close on the age of
+Hercules and Theseus; and Menestheus, who succeeded the latter hero on
+the throne of Athens, led his countrymen to the immortal war.
+Plutarch and succeeding historians have not failed to notice the
+expression of Homer, in which he applies the word demus or "people" to
+the Athenians, as a proof of the popular government established in
+that state. But while the line has been considered an interpolation,
+as late at least as the time of Solon, we may observe that it was
+never used by Homer in the popular and political sense it afterward
+received. And he applies it not only to the state of Athens, but to
+that of Ithaca, certainly no democracy. [94]
+
+The demagogue king appears to have been a man of much warlike renown
+and skill, and is mentioned as the first who marshalled an army in
+rank and file. Returning from Troy, he died in the Isle of Melos, and
+was succeeded by Demophoon, one of the sons of Theseus, who had also
+fought with the Grecian army in the Trojan siege. In his time a
+dispute between the Athenians and Argives was referred to fifty
+arbiters of each nation, called Ephetae, the origin of the court so
+styled, and afterward re-established with new powers by Draco.
+
+To Demophoon succeeded his son Oxyntes, and to Oxyntes, Aphidas,
+murdered by his bastard brother Thymaetes. Thymaetes was the last of
+the race of Theseus who reigned in Athens. A dispute arose between
+the Boeotians and the Athenians respecting the confines of their
+several territories; it was proposed to decide the difference by a
+single combat between Thymaetes and the King of the Boeotians.
+Thymaetes declined the contest. A Messenian exile, named Melanthus,
+accepted it, slew his antagonist by a stratagem, and, deposing the
+cowardly Athenian, obtained the sovereignty of Athens. With
+Melanthus, who was of the race of Nestor, passed into Athens two
+nobles of the same house, Paeon and Alcmaeon, who were the founders of
+the Paeonids and Alcmaeonids, two powerful families, whose names often
+occur in the subsequent history of Athens, and who, if they did not
+create a new order of nobility, at least sought to confine to their
+own families the chief privileges of that which was established.
+
+II. Melanthus was succeeded by his son Codrus, a man whose fame finds
+more competitors in Roman than Grecian history. During his reign the
+Dorians invaded Attica. They were assured of success by the Delphian
+oracle, on condition that they did not slay the Athenian king.
+Informed of the response, Codrus disguised himself as a peasant, and,
+repairing to the hostile force, sought a quarrel with some of the
+soldiers, and was slain by them not far from the banks of the Ilissus
+[95]. The Athenians sent to demand the body of their king; and the
+Dorians, no longer hoping of success, since the condition of the
+oracle was thus violated, broke up their encampment and relinquished
+their design. Some of the Dorians had already by night secretly
+entered the city and concealed themselves within its walls; but, as
+the day dawned, and they found themselves abandoned by their
+associates and surrounded by the foe, they fled to the Areopagus and
+the altars of the Furies; the refuge was deemed inviolable, and the
+Dorians were dismissed unscathed--a proof of the awe already attached
+to the rites of sanctuary [96]. Still, however, this invasion was
+attended with the success of what might have been the principal object
+of the invaders. Megara [97], which had hitherto been associated with
+Attica, was now seized by the Dorians, and became afterward a colony
+of Corinth. This gallant but petty state had considerable influence
+on some of the earlier events of Athenian history.
+
+III. Codrus was the last of the Athenian kings. The Athenians
+affected the motives of reverence to his memory as an excuse for
+forbidding to the illustrious martyr the chance of an unworthy
+successor. But the aristocratic constitution had been morally
+strengthened by the extinction of the race of Theseus and the jealousy
+of a foreign line; and the abolition of the monarchy was rather caused
+by the ambition of the nobles than the popular veneration for the
+patriotism of Codrus. The name of king was changed into that of
+archon (magistrate or governor); the succession was still made
+hereditary, but the power of the ruler was placed under new limits,
+and he was obliged to render to the people, or rather to the
+eupatrids, an account of his government whenever they deemed it
+advisable to demand it.
+
+IV. Medon, the son of Codrus, was the first of these perpetual
+archons. In that age bodily strength was still deemed an essential
+virtue in a chief; and Nileus, a younger brother of Medon, attempted
+to depose the archon on no other pretence than that of his lameness.
+
+A large portion of the people took advantage of the quarrel between
+the brothers to assert that they would have no king but Jupiter. At
+length Medon had recourse to the oracle, which decided in his favour;
+and Nileus, with all the younger sons of Codrus, and accompanied by a
+numerous force, departed from Athens, and colonized that part of Asia
+Minor celebrated in history under the name of Ionia. The rise, power,
+and influence of these Asiatic colonies we shall find a more
+convenient opportunity to notice. Medon's reign, thus freed from the
+more stirring spirits of his time, appears to have been prosperous and
+popular; it was an era in the ancient world, when the lameness of a
+ruler was discovered to be unconnected with his intellect! Then
+follows a long train of archons--peaceable and obscure. During a
+period estimated at three hundred years, the Athenians performed
+little that has descended to posterity--brief notices of petty
+skirmishes, and trivial dissensions with their neighbours, alone
+diversify that great interval. Meanwhile, the Ionian colonies rise
+rapidly into eminence and power. At length, on the death of Alcmaeon
+--the thirteenth and last perpetual archon--a new and more popular
+change was introduced into the government. The sway of the archon was
+limited to ten years. This change slowly prepared the way to changes
+still more important. Hitherto the office had been confined to the
+two Neleid houses of Codrus and Alcmaeon;--in the archonship of
+Hippomenes it was thrown open to other distinguished families; and at
+length, on the death of Eryxias, the last of the race of Codrus, the
+failure of that ancient house in its direct line (indirectly it still
+continued, and the blood of Codrus flowed through the veins of Solon)
+probably gave excuse and occasion for abolishing the investment of the
+supreme power in one magistrate; nine were appointed, each with the
+title of archon (though the name was more emphatically given to the
+chief of the number), and each with separate functions. This
+institution continued to the last days of Athenian freedom. This
+change took place in the 24th Olympiad.
+
+V. In the 39th Olympiad, Draco, being chief archon, was deputed to
+institute new laws in B. C. 621. He was a man concerning whom history
+is singularly brief; we know only that he was of a virtuous and
+austere renown--that he wrote a great number of verses, as little
+durable as his laws [98]. As for the latter--when we learn that they
+were stern and bloody beyond precedent--we have little difficulty in
+believing that they were inefficient.
+
+VI. I have hastened over this ambiguous and uninteresting period with
+a rapidity I trust all but antiquaries will forgive. Hitherto we have
+been in the land of shadow--we approach the light. The empty names of
+apocryphal beings which we have enumerated are for the most part as
+spectres, so dimly seen as to be probably delusions--invoked to please
+a fanciful curiosity, but without an object to satisfy the reason or
+excuse the apparition. If I am blamed for not imitating those who
+have sought, by weaving together disconnected hints and subtle
+conjectures, to make a history from legends, to overturn what has been
+popularly believed, by systems equally contradictory, though more
+learnedly fabricated;--if I am told that I might have made the
+chronicle thus briefly given extend to a greater space, and sparkle
+with more novel speculation, I answer that I am writing the history of
+men and not of names--to the people and not to scholars--and that no
+researches however elaborate, no conjectures however ingenious, could
+draw any real or solid moral from records which leave us ignorant both
+of the characters of men and the causes of events. What matters who
+was Ion, or whence the first worship of Apollo? what matter
+revolutions or dynasties, ten or twelve centuries before Athens
+emerged from a deserved obscurity?--they had no influence upon her
+after greatness; enigmas impossible to solve--if solved, but
+scholastic frivolities.
+
+Fortunately, as we desire the history of a people, so it is when the
+Athenians become a people, that we pass at once from tradition into
+history.
+
+I pause to take a brief survey of the condition of the rest of Greece
+prior to the age of Solon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+A General Survey of Greece and the East previous to the time of
+Solon.--The Grecian Colonies.--The Isles.--Brief account of the States
+on the Continent.--Elis and the Olympic Games.
+
+
+I. On the north, Greece is separated from Macedonia by the Cambunian
+mountains; on the west spreads the Ionian, on the south and east the
+Aegean Sea. Its greatest length is two hundred and twenty
+geographical miles; its greatest width one hundred and forty. No
+contrast can be more startling than the speck of earth which Greece
+occupies in the map of the world, compared to the space claimed by the
+Grecian influences in the history of the human mind. In that contrast
+itself is the moral which Greece has left us--nor can volumes more
+emphatically describe the triumph of the Intellectual over the
+Material. But as nations, resembling individuals, do not become
+illustrious from their mere physical proportions; as in both, renown
+has its moral sources; so, in examining the causes which conduced to
+the eminence of Greece, we cease to wonder at the insignificance of
+its territories or the splendour of its fame. Even in geographical
+circumstance Nature had endowed the country of the Hellenes with gifts
+which amply atoned the narrow girth of its confines. The most
+southern part of the continent of Europe, it contained within itself
+all the advantages of sea and land; its soil, though unequal in its
+product, is for the most part fertile and abundant; it is intersected
+by numerous streams, and protected by chains of mountains; its plains
+and valleys are adapted to every product most necessary to the support
+of the human species; and the sun that mellows the fruits of nature is
+sufficiently tempered not to relax the energies of man. Bordered on
+three sides by the sea, its broad and winding extent of coast early
+conduced to the spirit of enterprise; and, by innumerable bays and
+harbours, proffered every allurement to that desire of gain which is
+the parent of commerce and the basis of civilization. At the period
+in which Greece rose to eminence it was in the very centre of the most
+advanced and flourishing states of Europe and of Asia. The attention
+of its earlier adventurers was directed not only to the shores of
+Italy, but to the gorgeous cities of the East, and the wise and hoary
+institutions of Egypt. If from other nations they borrowed less than
+has been popularly supposed, the very intercourse with those nations
+alone sufficed to impel and develop the faculties of an imitative and
+youthful people;--while, as the spirit of liberty broke out in all the
+Grecian states, producing a restless competition both among the
+citizens in each city and the cities one with another, no energy was
+allowed to sleep until the operations of an intellect, perpetually
+roused and never crippled, carried the universal civilization to its
+height. Nature herself set the boundaries of the river and the
+mountain to the confines of the several states--the smallness of each
+concentrated power into a focus--the number of all heightened
+emulation to a fever. The Greek cities had therefore, above all other
+nations, the advantage of a perpetual collision of mind--a perpetual
+intercourse with numerous neighbours, with whom intellect was ever at
+work--with whom experiment knew no rest. Greece, taken collectively,
+was the only free country (with the exception of Phoenician states and
+colonies perhaps equally civilized) in the midst of enlightened
+despotisms; and in the ancient world, despotism invented and sheltered
+the arts which liberty refined and perfected [99]: Thus considered,
+her greatness ceases to be a marvel--the very narrowness of her
+dominions was a principal cause of it--and to the most favourable
+circumstances of nature were added circumstances the most favourable
+of time.
+
+If, previous to the age of Solon, we survey the histories of Asia, we
+find that quarter of the globe subjected to great and terrible
+revolutions, which confined and curbed the power of its various
+despotisms. Its empires for the most part built up by the successful
+invasions of Nomad tribes, contained in their very vastness the
+elements of dissolution. The Assyrian Nineveh had been conquered by
+the Babylonians and the Medes (B. C. 606); and Babylon, under the new
+Chaldaean dynasty, was attaining the dominant power of western Asia.
+The Median monarchy was scarce recovering from the pressure of
+barbarian foes, and Cyrus had not as yet arisen to establish the
+throne of Persia. In Asia Minor, it is true, the Lydian empire had
+attained to great wealth and luxury, and was the most formidable enemy
+of the Asiatic Greeks, yet it served to civilize them even while it
+awed. The commercial and enterprising Phoenicians, now foreboding the
+march of the Babylonian king, who had "taken counsel against Tyre, the
+crowning city, whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers are the
+honourable of the earth," at all times were precluded from the desire
+of conquest by their divided states [100], formidable neighbours, and
+trading habits.
+
+In Egypt a great change had operated upon the ancient character; the
+splendid dynasty of the Pharaohs was no more. The empire, rent into
+an oligarchy of twelve princes, had been again united under the
+sceptre of one by the swords of Grecian mercenaries (B. C. 616); and
+Neco, the son of the usurper--a man of mighty intellect and vast
+designs--while he had already adulterated the old Egyptian customs
+with the spirit of Phoenician and Greek adventure, found his field of
+action only in the East (defeats Josiah B. C. 609). As yet, then, no
+foreign enemy had disturbed the early rise of the several states of
+Greece; they were suffered to form their individual demarcations
+tranquilly and indelibly; and to progress to that point between social
+amenities and chivalric hardihood, when, while war is the most sternly
+encountered, it the most rapidly enlightens. The peace that follows
+the first war of a half-civilized nation is usually the great era of
+its intellectual eminence.
+
+II. At this time the colonies in Asia Minor were far advanced in
+civilization beyond the Grecian continent. Along the western coast of
+that delicious district--on a shore more fertile, under a heaven more
+bright, than those of the parent states--the Aeolians, Ionians, and
+Dorians, in a remoter age, had planted settlements and founded cities
+(probably commenced under Penthilus, son of Orestes, about B. C.
+1068). The Aeolian colonies (the result of the Dorian immigrations)
+[101] occupied the coasts of commenced Mysia and Caria--on the
+mainland twelve cities--the most renowned of which were Cyme and
+Smyrna; and the islands of the Heccatonnesi, Tenedos, and Lesbos, the
+last illustrious above the rest, and consecrated by the muses of
+Sappho and Alcaeus. They had also settlements about Mount Ida. Their
+various towns were independent of each other; but Mitylene, in the
+Isle of Lesbos, was regarded as their common capital. The trade of
+Mitylene was extensive--its navy formidable.
+
+The Ionian colonies (probably commenced about 988 B. C.), founded
+subsequently to the Aeolian, but also (though less immediately) a
+consequence of the Dorian revolution, were peopled not only by
+Ionians, but by various nations, led by the sons of Codrus. In the
+islands of Samos and Chios, on the southern coast of Lydia, where
+Caria stretches to the north, they established their voluptuous
+settlements known by the name "Ionia." Theirs were the cities of
+Myus, and Priene, Colophon, Ephesus, Lebedus, Teos, Clazomene,
+Erythrae, Phocae, and Miletus:--in the islands of Samos and Chios were
+two cities of the same name as the isles themselves. The chief of the
+Ionian cities at the time on which we enter, and second perhaps in
+trade and in civilization to none but the great Phoenician states, was
+the celebrated Miletus--founded first by the Carians--exalted to her
+renown by the Ionians (Naval dominion of Miletus commenced B. C. 750).
+Her streets were the mart of the world; along the Euxine and the Palus
+Maeotis, her ships rode in the harbours of a hundred of her colonies.
+Here broke the first light of the Greek philosophy. But if inferior
+to this, their imperial city, each of the Ionian towns had its title
+to renown. Here flourished already music, and art, and song. The
+trade of Phocae extended to the coasts of Italy and Gaul. Ephesus had
+not yet risen to its meridian--it was the successor of Miletus and
+Phocaea. These Ionian states, each independent of the other, were
+united by a common sanctuary--the Panionium (Temple of Neptune), which
+might be seen far off on the headland of that Mycale afterward the
+witness of one of the proudest feats of Grecian valour. Long free,
+Ionia became tributary to the Lydian kings, and afterward to the great
+Persian monarchy.
+
+In the islands of Cos and Rhodes, and on the southern shores of Caria,
+spread the Dorian colonies--planted subsequently to the Ionian by
+gradual immigrations. If in importance and wealth the Aeolian were
+inferior to the Ionian colonies, so were the Dorian colonies to the
+Aeolian. Six cities (Ialyssus, Camirus, and Lindus, in Rhodes; in
+Cos, a city called from the island; Cnidus and Halicarnassus, on the
+mainland) were united, like the Ionians, by a common sanctuary--the
+Temple of Apollo Triopius.
+
+Besides these colonies--the Black Sea, the Palus Maeotis, the
+Propontis, the coasts of Lower Italy, the eastern and southern shores
+of Sicily [102], Syracuse, the mightiest of Grecian offspring, and the
+daughter of Corinth,--the African Cyrene,--not enumerating settlements
+more probably referable to a later date, attested the active spirit
+and extended navigation of early Greece.
+
+The effect of so vast and flourishing a colonization was necessarily
+prodigious upon the moral and intellectual spirit of the mother land.
+The seeds scattered over the earth bore their harvests to her garner.
+
+III. Among the Grecian isles, the glory of Minos had long passed from
+Crete (about 800 B. C.). The monarchical form of government had
+yielded to the republican, but in its worst shape--the oligarchic.
+But the old Cretan institutions still lingered in the habits of
+private life;--while the jealousies and commotions of its several
+cities, each independent, exhausted within itself those powers which,
+properly concentrated and wisely directed, might have placed Crete at
+the head of Greece.
+
+Cyprus, equally favoured by situation with Crete, and civilized by the
+constant influence of the Phoenicians, once its masters, was attached
+to its independence, but not addicted to warlike enterprise. It was,
+like Crete, an instance of a state which seemed unconscious of the
+facilities for command and power which it had received from nature.
+The Island of Corcyra (a Corinthian colony) had not yet arrived at its
+day of power. This was reserved for that period when, after the
+Persian war, it exchanged an oligarchic for a democratic action, which
+wore away, indeed, the greatness of the country in its struggles for
+supremacy, obstinately and fatally resisted by the antagonist
+principle.
+
+Of the Cyclades--those beautiful daughters of Crete--Delos, sacred to
+Apollo, and possessed principally by the Ionians, was the most
+eminent. But Paros boasted not only its marble quarries, but the
+valour of its inhabitants, and the vehement song of Archilochus.
+
+Euboea, neighbouring Attica, possessed two chief cities, Eretria and
+Chalcis, governed apparently by timocracies, and frequently at war
+with each other. Though of importance as connected with the
+subsequent history of Athens, and though the colonization of Chalcis
+was considerable, the fame of Euboea was scarcely proportioned to its
+extent as one of the largest islands of the Aegean; and was far
+outshone by the small and rocky Aegina--the rival of Athens, and at
+this time her superior in maritime power and commercial enterprise.
+Colonized by Epidaurus, Aegina soon became independent; but the
+violence of party, and the power of the oligarchy, while feeding its
+energies, prepared its downfall.
+
+IV. As I profess only to delineate in this work the rise and fall of
+the Athenians, so I shall not deem it at present necessary to do more
+than glance at the condition of the continent of Greece previous to
+the time of Solon. Sparta alone will demand a more attentive survey.
+
+Taking our station on the citadel of Athens, we behold, far projecting
+into the sea, the neighbouring country of Megaris, with Megara for its
+city. It was originally governed by twelve kings; the last, Hyperion,
+being assassinated, its affairs were administered by magistrates, and
+it was one of the earliest of the countries of Greece which adopted
+republican institutions. Nevertheless, during the reigns of the
+earlier kings of Attica, it was tributary to them [103]. We have seen
+how the Dorians subsequently wrested it from the Athenians [104]; and
+it underwent long and frequent warfare for the preservation of its
+independence from the Dorians of Corinth. About the year 640, a
+powerful citizen named Theagenes wrested the supreme power from the
+stern aristocracy which the Dorian conquest had bequeathed, though the
+yoke of Corinth was shaken off. The tyrant--for such was the
+appellation given to a successful usurper--was subsequently deposed,
+and the democratic government restored; and although that democracy
+was one of the most turbulent in Greece, it did not prevent this
+little state from ranking among the most brilliant actors in the
+Persian war.
+
+V. Between Attica and Megaris we survey the Isle of Salamis--the
+right to which we shall find contested both by Athens and the
+Megarians.
+
+VI. Turning our eyes now to the land, we may behold, bordering
+Attica--from which a mountainous tract divides it--the mythological
+Boeotia, the domain of the Phoenician Cadmus, and the birthplace of
+Polynices and Oedipus. Here rise the immemorial mountains of Helicon
+and Cithaeron--the haunt of the muses; here Pentheus fell beneath the
+raging bands of the Bacchanals, and Actaeon endured the wrath of the
+Goddess of the Woods; here rose the walls of Thebes to the harmony of
+Amphion's lyre--and still, in the time of Pausanias, the Thebans
+showed, to the admiration of the traveller, the place where Cadmus
+sowed the dragon-seed--the images of the witches sent by Juno to
+lengthen the pains of Alcmena--the wooden statue wrought by Daedalus--
+and the chambers of Harmonia and of Semele. No land was more
+sanctified by all the golden legends of poetry--and of all Greece no
+people was less alive to the poetical inspiration. Devoted, for the
+most part, to pastoral pursuits, the Boeotians were ridiculed by their
+lively neighbours for an inert and sluggish disposition--a reproach
+which neither the song of Hesiod and Pindar, nor the glories of Thebes
+and Plataea, were sufficient to repel. As early as the twelfth
+century (B. C.) royalty was abolished in Boeotia--its territory was
+divided into several independent states, of which Thebes was the
+principal, and Plataea and Cheronaea among the next in importance.
+Each had its own peculiar government; and, before the Persian war,
+oligarchies had obtained the ascendency in these several states. They
+were united in a league, of which Thebes was the head; but the
+ambition and power of that city kept the rest in perpetual jealousy,
+and weakened, by a common fear and ill-smothered dissensions, a
+country otherwise, from the size of its territories [105] and the
+number of its inhabitants, calculated to be the principal power of
+Greece. Its affairs were administered by eleven magistrates, or
+boeotarchs, elected by four assemblies held in the four districts into
+which Boeotia was divided.
+
+VII. Beyond Boeotia lies Phocis, originally colonized, according to
+the popular tradition, by Phocus from Corinth. Shortly after the
+Dorian irruption, monarchy was abolished and republican institutions
+substituted. In Phocis were more than twenty states independent of
+the general Phocian government, but united in a congress held at
+stated times on the road between Daulis and Delphi. Phocis contained
+also the city of Crissa, with its harbour and the surrounding
+territory inhabited by a fierce and piratical population, and the
+sacred city of Delphi, on the southwest of Parnassus.
+
+VIII. Of the oracle of Delphi I have before spoken--it remains only
+now to point out to the reader the great political cause of its rise
+into importance. It had been long established, but without any
+brilliant celebrity, when happened that Dorian revolution which is
+called the "Return of the Heraclidae." The Dorian conquerors had
+early steered their course by the advice of the Delphian oracle, which
+appeared artfully to favour their pretensions, and which, adjoining
+the province of Doris, had imposed upon them the awe, and perhaps felt
+for them the benevolence, of a sacred neighbour. Their ultimate
+triumph not only gave a striking and supreme repute to the oracle, but
+secured the protection and respect of a race now become the most
+powerful of Greece. From that time no Dorian city ever undertook an
+enterprise without consulting the Pythian voice; the example became
+general, and the shrine of the deity was enriched by offerings not
+only from the piety of Greece, but the credulous awe of barbarian
+kings. Perhaps, though its wealth was afterward greater, its
+authority was never so unquestioned as for a period dating from about
+a century preceding the laws of Solon to the end of the Persian war.
+Delphi was wholly an independent state, administered by a rigid
+aristocracy [106]; and though protected by the Amphictyonic council,
+received from its power none of those haughty admonitions with which
+the defenders of a modern church have often insulted their charge.
+The temple was so enriched by jewels, statues, and vessels of gold,
+that at the time of the invasion of Xerxes its wealth was said to
+equal in value the whole of the Persian armament and so wonderful was
+its magnificence, that it appeared more like the Olympus of the gods
+than a human temple in their honour. On the ancient Delphi stands now
+the monastery of Kastri. But still you discover the terraces once
+crowded by fans--still, amid gloomy chasms, bubbles the Castalian
+spring--and yet permitted to the pilgrim's gaze is the rocky bath of
+the Pythia, and the lofty halls of the Corycian Cave.
+
+IX. Beyond Phocis lies the country of the Locrians, divided into
+three tribes independent of each other--the Locri Ozolae, the Locri
+Opuntii, the Locri Epicnemidii. The Locrians (undistinguished in
+history) changed in early times royal for aristocratic institutions.
+
+The nurse of the Dorian race--the small province of Doris--borders the
+Locrian territory to the south of Mount Oeta; while to the west of
+Locris spreads the mountainous Aetolia, ranging northward from Pindus
+to the Ambracian Bay. Aetolia gave to the heroic age the names of
+Meleager and Diomed, but subsequently fell into complete obscurity.
+The inhabitants were rude and savage, divided into tribes, nor emerged
+into importance until the latest era of the Grecian history. The
+political constitution of Aetolia, in the time referred to, is
+unknown.
+
+X. Acarnania, the most western country of central Greece, appears
+little less obscure at this period than Aetolia, on which it borders;
+with Aetolia it arose into eminence in the Macedonian epoch of Greek
+history.
+
+XI. Northern Greece contains two countries--Thessaly and Epirus.
+
+In Thessaly was situated the long and lofty mountain of the divine
+Olympus, and to the more southern extreme rose Pindus and Oeta. Its
+inhabitants were wild and hardy, and it produced the most celebrated
+breed of horses in Greece. It was from Thessaly that the Hellenes
+commenced their progress over Greece--it was in the kingdoms of
+Thessaly that the race of Achilles held their sway; but its later
+history was not calculated to revive the fame of the Homeric hero; it
+appears to have shared but little of the republican spirit of the more
+famous states of Greece. Divided into four districts (Thessaliotis,
+Pelasgiotis, Phthiotis, and Hestiaeotis), the various states of
+Thessaly were governed either by hereditary princes or nobles of vast
+possessions. An immense population of serfs, or penestae, contributed
+to render the chiefs of Thessaly powerful in war and magnificent in
+peace. Their common country fell into insignificance from the want of
+a people--but their several courts were splendid from the wealth of a
+nobility.
+
+XII. Epirus was of somewhat less extent than Thessaly, and far less
+fertile; it was inhabited by various tribes, some Greek, some
+barbarian, the chief of which was the Molossi, governed by kings who
+boasted their descent from Achilles. Epirus has little importance or
+interest in history until the sun of Athens had set, during the
+ascendency of the Macedonian kings. It contained the independent
+state of Ambracia, peopled from Corinth, and governed by republican
+institutions. Here also were the sacred oaks of the oracular Dodona.
+
+XIII. We now come to the states of the Peloponnesus, which contained
+eight countries.
+
+Beyond Megaris lay the territory of Corinth: its broad bay adapted it
+for commerce, of which it availed itself early; even in the time of
+Homer it was noted for its wealth. It was subdued by the Dorians, and
+for five generations the royal power rested with the descendants of
+Aletes [107], of the family of the Heraclidae. By a revolution, the
+causes of which are unknown to us, the kingdom then passed to Bacchis,
+the founder of an illustrious race (the Bacchiadae), who reigned first
+as kings, and subsequently as yearly magistrates, under the name of
+Prytanes. In the latter period the Bacchiadae were certainly not a
+single family, but a privileged class--they intermarried only with
+each other,--the administrative powers were strictly confined to them
+--and their policy, if exclusive, seems to have been vigorous and
+brilliant. This government was destroyed, as under its sway the
+people increased in wealth and importance; a popular movement, headed
+by Cypselus, a man of birth and fortune, replaced an able oligarchy by
+an abler demagogue (B. C. 655). Cypselus was succeeded by the
+celebrated Heriander (B. C. 625), a man, whose vices were perhaps
+exaggerated, whose genius was indisputable. Under his nephew
+Psammetichus, Corinth afterward regained its freedom. The
+Corinthians, in spite of every change in the population, retained
+their luxury to the last, and the epistles of Alciphron, in the second
+century after Christ, note the ostentation of the few and the poverty
+of the many. At the time now referred to, Corinth--the Genoa of
+Greece--was high in civilization, possessed of a considerable naval
+power, and in art and commerce was the sole rival on the Grecian
+continent to the graceful genius and extensive trade of the Ionian
+colonies.
+
+XIV. Stretching from Corinth along the coast opposite Attica, we
+behold the ancient Argolis. Its three principal cities were Argos,
+Mycenae, and Epidaurus. Mycenae, at the time of the Trojan war, was
+the most powerful of the states of Greece; and Argos, next to Sicyori,
+was reputed the most ancient. Argolis suffered from the Dorian
+revolution, and shortly afterward the regal power, gradually
+diminishing, lapsed into republicanism [108]. Argolis contained
+various independent states--one to every principal city.
+
+XV. On the other side of Corinth, almost opposite Argolis, we find
+the petty state of Sicyon. This was the most ancient of the Grecian
+states, and was conjoined to the kingdom of Agamemnon at the Trojan
+war. At first it was possessed by Ionians, expelled subsequently by
+the Dorians, and not long after seems to have lapsed into a democratic
+republic. A man of low birth, Orthagoras, obtained the tyranny, and
+it continued in his family for a century, the longest tyranny in
+Greece, because the gentlest. Sicyon was of no marked influence at
+the period we are about to enter, though governed by an able tyrant,
+Clisthenes, whose policy it was to break the Dorian nobility, while
+uniting, as in a common interest, popular laws and regal authority.
+
+XVI. Beyond Sicyon we arrive at Achaia. We have already seen that
+this district was formerly possessed by the Ionians, who were expelled
+by some of the Achaeans who escaped the Dorian yoke. Governed first
+by a king, it was afterward divided into twelve republics, leagued
+together. It was long before Achaia appeared on that heated stage of
+action, which allured the more restless spirits of Athens and
+Lacedaemon.
+
+XVII. We now pause at Elis, which had also felt the revolution of the
+Heraclidae, and was possessed by their comrades the Aetolians.
+
+The state of Elis underwent the general change from monarchy to
+republicanism; but republicanism in its most aristocratic form;--
+growing more popular at the period of the Persian wars, but, without
+the convulsions which usually mark the progress of democracy. The
+magistrates of the commonwealth were the superintendents of the Sacred
+Games. And here, diversifying this rapid, but perhaps to the general
+reader somewhat tedious survey of the political and geographical
+aspect of the states of Greece, we will take this occasion to examine
+the nature and the influence of those celebrated contests, which gave
+to Elis its true title to immortality.
+
+XVIII. The origin of the Olympic Games is lost in darkness. The
+legends which attribute their first foundation to the times of
+demigods and heroes, are so far consonant with truth, that exhibitions
+of physical strength made the favourite diversion of that wild and
+barbarous age which is consecrated to the heroic. It is easy to
+perceive that the origin of athletic games preceded the date of
+civilization; that, associated with occasions of festival, they, like
+festivals, assumed a sacred character, and that, whether first
+instituted in honour of a funeral, or in celebration of a victory, or
+in reverence to a god,--religion combined with policy to transmit an
+inspiring custom to a more polished posterity. And though we cannot
+literally give credit to the tradition which assigns the restoration
+of these games to Lycurgus, in concert with Iphitus, king of Elis, and
+Cleosthenes of Pisa, we may suppose at least that to Elis, to Pisa,
+and to Sparta, the institution was indebted for its revival.
+
+The Dorian Oracle of Delphi gave its sanction to a ceremony, the
+restoration of which was intended to impose a check upon the wars and
+disorders of the Peloponnesus. Thus authorized, the festival was
+solemnized at the temple of Jupiter, at Olympia, near Pisa, a town in
+Elis. It was held every fifth year; it lasted four days. It
+consisted in the celebration of games in honour of Jupiter and
+Hercules. The interval between each festival was called, an Olympiad.
+After the fiftieth Olympiad (B. C. 580), the whole management of the
+games, and the choice of the judges, were monopolized by the Eleans.
+Previous to each festival, officers, deputed by the Eleans, proclaimed
+a sacred truce. Whatever hostilities were existent in Greece,
+terminated for the time; sufficient interval was allowed to attend and
+to return from the games. [109]
+
+During this period the sacred territory of Elis was regarded as under
+the protection of the gods--none might traverse it armed. The Eleans
+arrogated indeed the right of a constant sanctity to perpetual peace;
+and the right, though sometimes invaded, seems generally to have been
+conceded. The people of this territory became, as it were, the
+guardians of a sanctuary; they interfered little in the turbulent
+commotions of the rest of Greece; they did not fortify their capital;
+and, the wealthiest people of the Peloponnesus, they enjoyed their
+opulence in tranquillity;--their holy character contenting their
+ambition. And a wonderful thing it was in the midst of those warlike,
+stirring, restless tribes--that solitary land, with its plane grove
+bordering the Alpheus, adorned with innumerable and hallowed monuments
+and statues--unvisited by foreign wars and civil commotion--a whole
+state one temple!
+
+At first only the foot-race was exhibited; afterward were added
+wrestling, leaping, quoiting, darting, boxing, a more complicated
+species of foot-race (the Diaulus and Dolichus), and the chariot and
+horse-races. The Pentathlon was a contest of five gymnastic exercises
+combined. The chariot-races [110] preceded those of the riding
+horses, as in Grecian war the use of chariots preceded the more
+scientific employment of cavalry, and were the most attractive and
+splendid part of the exhibition. Sometimes there were no less than
+forty chariots on the ground. The rarity of horses, and the expense
+of their training, confined, without any law to that effect, the
+chariot-race to the highborn and the wealthy. It was consistent with
+the vain Alcibiades to decline the gymnastic contests in which his
+physical endowments might have ensured him success, because his
+competitors were not the equals to the long-descended heir of the
+Alcmaeonidae. In the equestrian contests his success was
+unprecedented. He brought seven chariots into the field, and bore off
+at the same time the first, second, and fourth prize [111]. Although
+women [112], with the exception of the priestesses of the neighbouring
+fane of Ceres, were not permitted to witness the engagements, they
+were yet allowed to contend by proxy in the chariot-races; and the
+ladies of Macedon especially availed themselves of the privilege. No
+sanguinary contest with weapons, no gratuitous ferocities, no struggle
+between man and beast (the graceless butcheries of Rome), polluted the
+festival dedicated to the Olympian god. Even boxing with the cestus
+was less esteemed than the other athletic exercises, and was excluded
+from the games exhibited by Alexander in his Asiatic invasions [113].
+Neither did any of those haughty assumptions of lineage or knightly
+blood, which characterize the feudal tournament, distinguish between
+Greek and Greek. The equestrian contests were indeed, from their
+expense, limited to the opulent, but the others were impartially free
+to the poor as to the rich, the peasant as the noble,--the Greeks
+forbade monopoly in glory. But although thus open to all Greeks, the
+stadium was impenetrably closed to barbarians. Taken from his plough,
+the boor obtained the garland for which the monarchs of the East were
+held unworthy to contend, and to which the kings of the neighbouring
+Macedon were forbidden to aspire till their Hellenic descent had been
+clearly proved [114]. Thus periodically were the several states
+reminded of their common race, and thus the national name and
+character were solemnly preserved: yet, like the Amphictyonic league,
+while the Olympic festival served to maintain the great distinction
+between foreigners and Greeks, it had but little influence in
+preventing the hostile contests of Greeks themselves. The very
+emulation between the several states stimulated their jealousy of each
+other: and still, if the Greeks found their countrymen in Greeks they
+found also in Greeks their rivals.
+
+We can scarcely conceive the vast importance attached to victory in
+these games [115]; it not only immortalized the winner, it shed glory
+upon his tribe. It is curious to see the different honours
+characteristically assigned to the conqueror in different states. If
+Athenian, he was entitled to a place by the magistrates in the
+Prytaneum; if a Spartan, to a prominent station in the field. To
+conquer at Elis was renown for life, "no less illustrious to a Greek
+than consulship to a Roman!" [116] The haughtiest nobles, the
+wealthiest princes, the most successful generals, contended for the
+prize [117]. And the prize (after the seventh Olympiad) was a wreath
+of the wild olive!
+
+Numerous other and similar games were established throughout Greece.
+Of these, next to the Olympic, the most celebrated, and the only
+national ones, were the Pythian at Delphi, the Nemean in Argolis, the
+Isthmian in Corinth; yet elsewhere the prize was of value; at all the
+national ones it was but a garland--a type of the eternal truth, that
+praise is the only guerdon of renown. The olive-crown was nothing!--
+the shouts of assembled Greece--the showers of herbs and flowers--the
+banquet set apart for the victor--the odes of imperishable poets--the
+public register which transmitted to posterity his name--the privilege
+of a statue in the Altis--the return home through a breach in the
+walls (denoting by a noble metaphor, "that a city which boasts such
+men has slight need of walls" [118]), the first seat in all public
+spectacles; the fame, in short, extended to his native city--
+bequeathed to his children--confirmed by the universal voice wherever
+the Greek civilization spread; this was the true olive-crown to the
+Olympic conqueror!
+
+No other clime can furnish a likeness to these festivals: born of a
+savage time, they retained the vigorous character of an age of heroes,
+but they took every adjunct from the arts and the graces of
+civilization. To the sacred ground flocked all the power, and the
+rank, and the wealth, and the intellect, of Greece. To that gorgeous
+spectacle came men inspired by a nobler ambition than that of the
+arena. Here the poet and the musician could summon an audience to
+their art. If to them it was not a field for emulation [119], it was
+at least a theatre of display.
+
+XIX. The uses of these games were threefold;--1st, The uniting all
+Greeks by one sentiment of national pride, and the memory of a common
+race; 2dly, The inculcation of hardy discipline--of physical education
+throughout every state, by teaching that the body had its honours as
+well as the intellect--a theory conducive to health in peace--and in
+those ages when men fought hand to hand, and individual strength and
+skill were the nerves of the army, to success in war; but, 3dly, and
+principally, its uses were in sustaining and feeding as a passion, as
+a motive, as an irresistible incentive--the desire of glory! That
+desire spread through all classes--it animated all tribes--it taught
+that true rewards are not in gold and gems, but in men's opinions.
+The ambition of the Altis established fame as a common principle of
+action. What chivalry did for the few, the Olympic contests effected
+for the many--they made a knighthood of a people.
+
+If, warmed for a moment from the gravity of the historic muse, we
+might conjure up the picture of this festival, we would invoke the
+imagination of the reader to that sacred ground decorated with the
+profusest triumphs of Grecian art--all Greece assembled from her
+continent, her colonies, her isles--war suspended--a Sabbath of
+solemnity and rejoicing--the Spartan no longer grave, the Athenian
+forgetful of the forum--the highborn Thessalian, the gay Corinthian--
+the lively gestures of the Asiatic Ionian;--suffering the various
+events of various times to confound themselves in one recollection of
+the past, he may see every eye turned from the combatants to one
+majestic figure--hear every lip murmuring a single name [120]--
+glorious in greater fields: Olympia itself is forgotten. Who is the
+spectacle of the day? Themistocles, the conqueror of Salamis, and the
+saviour of Greece! Again--the huzzas of countless thousands following
+the chariot-wheels of the competitors--whose name is shouted forth,
+the victor without a rival!--it is Alcibiades, the destroyer of
+Athens! Turn to the temple of the Olympian god, pass the brazen
+gates, proceed through the columned aisles [121], what arrests the awe
+and wonder of the crowd! Seated on a throne of ebon and of ivory, of
+gold and gems--the olive-crown on his head, in his right hand the
+statue of Victory, in his left; wrought of all metals, the
+cloud-compelling sceptre, behold the colossal masterpiece of Phidias, the
+Homeric dream imbodied [122]--the majesty of the Olympian Jove! Enter
+the banquet-room of the conquerors--to whose verse, hymned in a solemn
+and mighty chorus, bends the listening Spartan--it is the verse of the
+Dorian Pindar! In that motley and glittering space (the fair of
+Olympia, the mart of every commerce, the focus of all intellect), join
+the throng, earnest and breathless, gathered round that sunburnt
+traveller;--now drinking in the wild account of Babylonian gardens, or
+of temples whose awful deity no lip may name--now, with clinched hands
+and glowing cheeks, tracking the march of Xerxes along exhausted
+rivers, and over bridges that spanned the sea--what moves, what hushes
+that mighty audience? It is Herodotus reading his history! [123]
+
+Let us resume our survey.
+
+XX. Midland, in the Peloponnesus, lies the pastoral Arcady. Besides
+the rivers of Alpheus and Erymanthus, it is watered by the gloomy
+stream of Styx; and its western part, intersected by innumerable
+brooks, is the land of Pan. Its inhabitants were long devoted to the
+pursuits of the herdsman and the shepherd, and its ancient government
+was apparently monarchical. The Dorian irruption spared this land of
+poetical tradition, which the oracle of Delphi took under no
+unsuitable protection, and it remained the eldest and most unviolated
+sanctuary of the old Pelasgic name. But not very long after the
+return of the Heraclidae, we find the last king stoned by his
+subjects, and democratic institutions established. It was then
+parcelled out into small states, of which Tegea and Mantinea were the
+chief.
+
+XXI. Messenia, a fertile and level district, which lies to the west
+of Sparta, underwent many struggles with the latter power; and this
+part of its history, which is full of interest, the reader will find
+briefly narrated in that of the Spartans, by whom it was finally
+subdued. Being then incorporated with that country, we cannot, at the
+period of history we are about to enter, consider Messenia as a
+separate and independent state. [124]
+
+And now, completing the survey of the Peloponnesus, we rest at
+Laconia, the country of the Spartans.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+Return of the Heraclidae.--The Spartan Constitution and Habits.--The
+first and second Messenian War.
+
+
+I. We have already seen, that while the Dorians remained in Thessaly,
+the Achaeans possessed the greater part of the Peloponnesus. But,
+under the title of the Return of the Heraclidae (or the descendants of
+Hercules), an important and lasting revolution established the Dorians
+in the kingdoms of Agamemnon and Menelaus. The true nature of this
+revolution has only been rendered more obscure by modern ingenuity,
+which has abandoned the popular accounts for suppositions still more
+improbable and romantic. The popular accounts run thus:--Persecuted
+by Eurystheus, king of Argos, the sons of Hercules, with their friends
+and followers, are compelled to take refuge in Attica. Assisted by
+the Athenians, they defeat and slay Eurystheus, and regain the
+Peloponnesus. A pestilence, regarded as an ominous messenger from
+offended heaven, drives them again into Attica. An oracle declares
+that they shall succeed after the third fruit by the narrow passage at
+sea. Wrongly interpreting the oracle, in the third year they make for
+the Corinthian Isthmus. At the entrance of the Peloponnesus they are
+met by the assembled arms of the Achaeans, Ionians, and Arcadians.
+Hyllus, the eldest son of Hercules, proposes the issue of a single
+combat. Echemus, king of Tegea, is selected by the Peloponnesians.
+He meets and slays Hyllus, and the Heraclidae engage not to renew the
+invasion for one hundred years. Nevertheless, Cleodaeus, the son, and
+Aristomachus, the grandson, of Hyllus, successively attempt to renew
+the enterprise, and in vain. The three sons of Aristomachus
+(Aristodemus, Temenus, and Cresphontes), receive from Apollo himself
+the rightful interpretation of the oracle. It was by the Straits of
+Rhium, across a channel which rendered the distance between the
+opposing shores only five stadia, that they were ordained to pass; and
+by the Return of the third fruit, the third generation was denoted.
+The time had now arrived:--with the assistance of the Dorians, the
+Aetolians, and the Locrians, the descendants of Hercules crossed the
+strait, and established their settlement in Peloponnesus (B. C. 1048).
+
+II. Whether in the previous expeditions the Dorians had assisted the
+Heraclidae, is a matter of dispute--it is not a matter of importance.
+Whether these Heraclidae were really descendants of the Achaean
+prince, and the rightful heritors of a Peloponnesian throne, is a
+point equally contested and equally frivolous. It is probable enough
+that the bold and warlike tribe of Thessaly might have been easily
+allured, by the pretext of reinstating the true royal line, into an
+enterprise which might plant them in safer and more wide domains, and
+that while the prince got the throne, the confederates obtained the
+country [125]. All of consequence to establish is, that the Dorians
+shared in the expedition, which was successful--that by time and
+valour they obtained nearly the whole of the Peloponnesus--that they
+transplanted the Doric character and institutions to their new
+possessions, and that the Return of the Heraclidae is, in fact, the
+popular name for the conquest of the Dorians. Whatever distinction
+existed between the Achaean Heraclidae and the Doric race, had
+probably been much effaced during the long absence of the former among
+foreign tribes, and after their establishment in the Peloponnesus it
+soon became entirely lost. But still the legend that assigned the
+blood of Hercules to the royalty of Sparta received early and implicit
+credence, and Cleomenes, king of that state, some centuries afterward,
+declared himself not Doric, but Achaean.
+
+Of the time employed in consummating the conquest of the invaders we
+are unable to determine--but, by degrees, Sparta, Argos, Corinth, and
+Messene, became possessed by the Dorians; the Aetolian confederates
+obtained Elis. Some of the Achaeans expelled the Ionians from the
+territory they held in the Peloponnesus, and gave to it the name it
+afterward retained, of Achaia. The expelled Ionians took refuge with
+the Athenians, their kindred race.
+
+The fated house of Pelops swept away by this irruption, Sparta fell to
+the lot of Procles and Eurysthenes [126], sons of Aristodemus, fifth
+in descent from Hercules; between these princes the royal power was
+divided, so that the constitution always acknowledged two kings--one
+from each of the Heracleid families. The elder house was called the
+Agids, or descendants of Agis, son of Eurysthenes; the latter, the
+Eurypontids, from Eurypon, descendant of Procles. Although Sparta,
+under the new dynasty, appears to have soon arrogated the pre-eminence
+over the other states of the Peloponnesus, it was long before she
+achieved the conquest even of the cities in her immediate
+neighbourhood. The Achaeans retained the possession of Amyclae, built
+upon a steep rock, and less than three miles from Sparta, for more
+than two centuries and a half after the first invasion of the Dorians.
+And here the Achaeans guarded the venerable tombs of Cassandra and
+Agamemnon.
+
+III. The consequences of the Dorian invasion, if slowly developed,
+were great and lasting. That revolution not only changed the
+character of the Peloponnesus--it not only called into existence the
+iron race of Sparta--but the migrations which it caused made the
+origin of the Grecian colonies in Asia Minor. It developed also those
+seeds of latent republicanism which belonged to the Dorian
+aristocracies, and which finally supplanted the monarchical
+government--through nearly the whole of civilized Greece. The
+revolution once peacefully consummated, migrations no longer disturbed
+to any extent the continent of Greece, and the various tribes became
+settled in their historic homes.
+
+IV. The history of Sparta, till the time of Lycurgus, is that of a
+state maintaining itself with difficulty amid surrounding and hostile
+neighbours; the power of the chiefs diminished the authority of the
+kings; and while all without was danger, all within was turbulence.
+Still the very evils to which the Spartans were subjected--their
+paucity of numbers--their dissensions with their neighbours--their
+pent up and encompassed situation in their mountainous confines--even
+the preponderating power of the warlike chiefs, among whom the unequal
+divisions of property produced constant feuds--served to keep alive
+the elements of the great Doric character; and left it the task of the
+first legislative genius rather to restore and to harmonize, than to
+invent and create.
+
+As I am writing the history, not of Greece, but of Athens, I do not
+consider it necessary that I should detail the legendary life of
+Lycurgus. Modern writers have doubted his existence, but without
+sufficient reason:--such assaults on our belief are but the amusements
+of skepticism. All the popular accounts of Lycurgus agree in this--
+that he was the uncle of the king (Charilaus, an infant), and held the
+rank of protector--that unable successfully to confront a powerful
+faction raised against him, he left Sparta and travelled into Crete,
+where all the ancient Doric laws and manners were yet preserved,
+vigorous and unadulterated. There studying the institutions of Minos,
+he beheld the model for those of Sparta. Thence he is said to have
+passed into Asia Minor, and to have been the first who collected and
+transported to Greece the poems of Homer [127], hitherto only
+partially known in that country. According to some writers, he
+travelled also into Egypt; and could we credit one authority, which
+does not satisfy even the credulous Plutarch, he penetrated into Spain
+and Libya, and held converse with the Gymnosophists of India.
+
+Returned to Sparta, after many solicitations, he found the state in
+disorder: no definite constitution appears to have existed; no laws
+were written. The division of the regal authority between two kings
+must have produced jealousy--and jealousy, faction. And the power so
+divided weakened the monarchic energy without adding to the liberties
+of the people. A turbulent nobility--rude, haughty mountain chiefs--
+made the only part of the community that could benefit by the weakness
+of the crown, and feuds among themselves prevented their power from
+becoming the regular and organized authority of a government [128].
+Such disorders induced prince and people to desire a reform; the
+interference of Lycurgus was solicited; his rank and his travels gave
+him importance; and he had the wisdom to increase it by obtaining from
+Delphi (the object of the implicit reverence of the Dorians) an oracle
+in his favour.
+
+Thus called upon and thus encouraged, Lycurgus commenced his task. I
+enter not into the discussion whether he framed an entirely new
+constitution, or whether he restored the spirit of one common to his
+race and not unfamiliar to Sparta. Common sense seems to me
+sufficient to assure us of the latter. Let those who please believe
+that one man, without the intervention of arms--not as a conqueror,
+but a friend--could succeed in establishing a constitution, resting
+not upon laws, but manners--not upon force, but usage--utterly hostile
+to all the tastes, desires, and affections of human nature: moulding
+every the minutest detail of social life into one system--that system
+offering no temptation to sense, to ambition, to the desire of
+pleasure, or the love of gain, or the propensity to ease--but painful,
+hard, steril, and unjoyous;--let those who please believe that a
+system so created could at once be received, be popularly embraced,
+and last uninterrupted, unbroken, and without exciting even the desire
+of change for four hundred years, without having had any previous
+foundation in the habits of a people--without being previously rooted
+by time, custom, superstition, and character into their breasts. For
+my part, I know that all history furnishes no other such example; and
+I believe that no man was ever so miraculously endowed with the power
+to conquer nature. [129]
+
+But we have not the smallest reason, the slightest excuse, for so
+pliant a credulity. We look to Crete, in which, previous to Lycurgus,
+the Dorians had established their laws and customs, and we see at once
+the resemblance to the leading features of the institutions of
+Lycurgus; we come with Aristotle to the natural conclusion, that what
+was familiar to the Dorian Crete was not unknown to the Dorian Sparta,
+and that Lycurgus did not innovate, but restore and develop, the laws
+and the manners which, under domestic dissensions, might have
+undergone a temporary and superficial change, but which were deeply
+implanted in the national character and the Doric habits. That the
+regulations of Lycurgus were not regarded as peculiar to Sparta, but
+as the most perfect development of the Dorian constitution, we learn
+from Pindar [130], when he tells us that "the descendants of Pamphylus
+and of the Heraclidae wish always to retain the Doric institutions of
+Aegimius." Thus regarded, the legislation of Lycurgus loses its
+miraculous and improbable character, while we still acknowledge
+Lycurgus himself as a great and profound statesman, adopting the only
+theory by which reform can be permanently wrought, and suiting the
+spirit of his laws to the spirit of the people they were to govern.
+When we know that his laws were not written, that he preferred
+engraving them only on the hearts of his countrymen, we know at once
+that he must have legislated in strict conformity to their early
+prepossessions and favourite notions. That the laws were unwritten
+would alone be a proof how little he introduced of what was alien and
+unknown.
+
+V. I proceed to give a brief, but I trust a sufficient outline, of
+the Spartan constitution, social and political, without entering into
+prolix and frivolous discussions as to what was effected or restored
+by Lycurgus--what by a later policy.
+
+There was at Sparta a public assembly of the people (called alia), as
+common to other Doric states, which usually met every full moon--upon
+great occasions more often. The decision of peace and war--the final
+ratification of all treaties with foreign powers--the appointment to
+the office of counsellor, and other important dignities--the
+imposition of new laws--a disputed succession to the throne,--were
+among those matters which required the assent of the people. Thus
+there was the show and semblance of a democracy, but we shall find
+that the intention and origin of the constitution were far from
+democratic. "If the people should opine perversely, the elders and
+the princes shall dissent." Such was an addition to the Rhetra of
+Lycurgus. The popular assembly ratified laws, but it could propose
+none--it could not even alter or amend the decrees that were laid
+before it. It appears that only the princes, the magistrates, and
+foreign ambassadors had the privilege to address it.
+
+The main business of the state was prepared by the Gerusia, or council
+of elders, a senate consisting of thirty members, inclusive of the two
+kings, who had each but a simple vote in the assembly. This council
+was in its outline like the assemblies common to every Dorian state.
+Each senator was required to have reached the age of sixty; he was
+chosen by the popular assembly, not by vote, but by acclamation. The
+mode of election was curious. The candidates presented themselves
+successively before the assembly, while certain judges were enclosed
+in an adjacent room where they could hear the clamour of the people
+without seeing the person, of the candidate. On him whom they
+adjudged to have been most applauded the election fell. A mode of
+election open to every species of fraud, and justly condemned by
+Aristotle as frivolous and puerile [131]. Once elected, the senator
+retained his dignity for life: he was even removed from all
+responsibility to the people. That Mueller should consider this an
+admirable institution, "a splendid monument of early Grecian customs,"
+seems to me not a little extraordinary. I can conceive no elective
+council less practically good than one to which election is for life,
+and in which power is irresponsible. That the institution was felt to
+be faulty is apparent, not because it was abolished, but because its
+more important functions became gradually invaded and superseded by a
+third legislative power, of which I shall speak presently.
+
+The original duties of the Gerusia were to prepare the decrees and
+business to be submitted to the people; they had the power of
+inflicting death or degradation without written laws, they interpreted
+custom, and were intended to preserve and transmit it. The power of
+the kings may be divided into two heads--power at home--power abroad:
+power as a prince--power as a general. In the first it was limited
+and inconsiderable. Although the kings presided over a separate
+tribunal, the cases brought before their court related only to repairs
+of roads, to the superintendence of the intercourse with other states,
+and to questions of inheritance and adoption.
+
+When present at the council they officiated as presidents, but without
+any power of dictation; and, if absent, their place seems easily to
+have been supplied. They united the priestly with the regal
+character; and to the descendants of a demigod a certain sanctity was
+attached, visible in the ceremonies both at demise and at the
+accession to the throne, which appeared to Herodotus to savour rather
+of Oriental than Hellenic origin. But the respect which the Spartan
+monarch received neither endowed him with luxury nor exempted him from
+control. He was undistinguished by his garb--his mode of life, from
+the rest of the citizens. He was subjected to other authorities,
+could be reprimanded, fined, suspended, exiled, put to death. If he
+went as ambassador to foreign states, spies were not unfrequently sent
+with him, and colleagues the most avowedly hostile to his person
+associated in the mission. Thus curbed and thus confined was his
+authority at home, and his prerogative as a king. But by law he was
+the leader of the Spartan armies. He assumed the command--he crossed
+the boundaries, and the limited magistrate became at once an imperial
+despot! [132] No man could question--no law circumscribed his power.
+He raised armies, collected money in foreign states, and condemned to
+death without even the formality of a trial. Nothing, in short,
+curbed his authority, save his responsibility on return. He might be
+a tyrant as a general; but he was to account for the tyranny when he
+relapsed into a king. But this distinction was one of the wisest
+parts of the Spartan system; for war requires in a leader all the
+license of a despot; and triumph, decision, and energy can only be
+secured by the unfettered exercise of a single will. Nor did early
+Rome owe the extent of her conquests to any cause more effective than
+the unlicensed discretion reposed by the senate in the general. [133]
+
+VI. We have now to examine the most active and efficient part of the
+government, viz., the Institution of the Ephors. Like the other
+components of the Spartan constitution, the name and the office of
+ephor were familiar to other states in the great Dorian family; but in
+Sparta the institution soon assumed peculiar features, or rather,
+while the inherent principles of the monarchy and the gerusia remained
+stationary, those of the ephors became expanded and developed. It is
+clear that the later authority of the ephors was never designed by
+Lycurgus or the earlier legislators. It is entirely at variance with
+the confined aristocracy which was the aim of the Spartan, and of
+nearly every genuine Doric [134] constitution. It made a democracy as
+it were by stealth. This powerful body consisted of five persons,
+chosen annually by the people. In fact, they may be called the
+representatives of the popular will--the committee, as it were, of the
+popular council. Their original power seems to have been imperfectly
+designed; it soon became extensive and encroaching. At first the
+ephoralty was a tribunal for civil, as the gerusia was for criminal,
+causes; it exercised a jurisdiction over the Helots and Perioeci, over
+the public market, and the public revenue. But its character
+consisted in this:--it was strictly a popular body, chosen by the
+people for the maintenance of their interests. Agreeably to this
+character, it soon appears arrogating the privilege of instituting an
+inquiry into the conduct of all officials except the counsellors.
+Every eighth year, selecting a dark night when the moon withheld her
+light, the ephors watched the aspect of the heavens, and if any
+shooting star were visible in the expanse, the kings were adjudged to
+have offended the Deity and were suspended from their office until
+acquitted of their guilt by the oracle of Delphi or the priests at
+Olympia. Nor was this prerogative of adjudging the descendants of
+Hercules confined to a superstitious practice: they summoned the king
+before them, no less than the meanest of the magistrates, to account
+for imputed crimes. In a court composed of the counsellors (or
+gerusia), and various other magistrates, they appeared at once as
+accusers and judges; and, dispensing with appeal to a popular
+assembly, subjected even royalty to a trial of life and death. Before
+the Persian war they sat in judgment on the King Cleomenes for an
+accusation of bribery;--just after the Persian war, they resolved upon
+the execution of the Regent Pausanias. In lesser offences they acted
+without the formality of this council, and fined or reprimanded their
+kings for the affability of their manners, or the size [135] of their
+wives. Over education--over social habits-over the regulations
+relative to ambassadors and strangers--over even the marshalling of
+armies and the number of troops, they extended their inquisitorial
+jurisdiction. They became, in fact, the actual government of the
+state.
+
+It is easy to perceive that it was in the nature of things that the
+institution of the ephors should thus encroach until it became the
+prevalent power. Its influence was the result of the vicious
+constitution of the gerusia, or council. Had that assembly been
+properly constituted, there would have been no occasion for the
+ephors. The gerusia was evidently meant, by the policy of Lycurgus,
+and by its popular mode of election, for the only representative
+assembly. But the absurdity of election for life, with irresponsible
+powers, was sufficient to limit its acceptation among the people. Of
+two assemblies--the ephors and the gerusia--we see the one elected
+annually, the other for life--the one responsible to the people, the
+other not--the one composed of men, busy, stirring, ambitious, in the
+vigour of life--the other of veterans, past the ordinary stimulus of
+exertion, and regarding the dignity of office rather as the reward of
+a life than the opening to ambition. Of two such assemblies it is
+easy to foretell which would lose, and which would augment, authority.
+It is also easy to see, that as the ephors increased in importance,
+they, and not the gerusia, would become the check to the kingly
+authority. To whom was the king accountable? To the people:--the
+ephors were the people's representatives! This part of the Spartan
+constitution has not, I think, been sufficiently considered in what
+seems to me its true light; namely, that of a representative
+government. The ephoralty was the focus of the popular power. Like
+an American Congress or an English House of Commons, it prevented the
+action of the people by acting in behalf of the people. To
+representatives annually chosen, the multitude cheerfully left the
+management of their interests [136]. Thus it was true that the ephors
+prevented the encroachments of the popular assembly;--but how? by
+encroaching themselves, and in the name of the people! When we are
+told that Sparta was free from those democratic innovations constant
+in Ionian states, we are not told truly. The Spartan populace was
+constantly innovating, not openly, as in the noisy Agora of Athens,
+but silently and ceaselessly, through their delegated ephors. And
+these dread and tyrant FIVE--an oligarchy constructed upon principles
+the most liberal--went on increasing their authority, as civilization,
+itself increasing, rendered the public business more extensive and
+multifarious, until they at length became the agents of that fate
+which makes the principle of change at once the vital and the
+consuming element of states. The ephors gradually destroyed the
+constitution of Sparta; but, without the ephors, it may be reasonably
+doubted whether the constitution would have survived half as long.
+Aristotle (whose mighty intellect is never more luminously displayed
+than when adjudging the practical workings of various forms of
+government) paints the evils of the ephoral magistrature, but
+acknowledges that it gave strength and durability to the state.
+"For," [137] he says, "the people were contented on account of their
+ephors, who were chosen from the whole body." He might have added,
+that men so chosen, rarely too selected from the chiefs, but often
+from the lower ranks, were the ablest and most active of the
+community, and that the fewness of their numbers gave energy and unity
+to their councils. Had the other part of the Spartan constitution
+(absurdly panegyrized) been so formed as to harmonize with, even in
+checking, the power of the ephors; and, above all, had it not been for
+the lamentable errors of a social system, which, by seeking to exclude
+the desire of gain, created a terrible reaction, and made the Spartan
+magistrature the most venal and corrupt in Greece--the ephors might
+have sufficed to develop all the best principles of government. For
+they went nearly to recognise the soundest philosophy of the
+representative system, being the smallest number of representatives
+chosen, without restriction, from the greatest number of electors, for
+short periods, and under strong responsibilities. [138]
+
+I pass now to the social system of the Spartans.
+
+VII. If we consider the situation of the Spartans at the time of
+Lycurgus, and during a long subsequent period, we see at once that to
+enable them to live at all, they must be accustomed to the life of a
+camp;--they were a little colony of soldiers, supporting themselves,
+hand and foot, in a hostile country, over a population that detested
+them. In such a situation certain qualities were not praiseworthy
+alone--they were necessary. To be always prepared for a foe--to be
+constitutionally averse to indolence--to be brave, temperate, and
+hardy, were the only means by which to escape the sword of the
+Messenian and to master the hatred of the Helot. Sentinels they were,
+and they required the virtues of sentinels: fortunately, these
+necessary qualities were inherent in the bold mountain tribes that had
+long roved among the crags of Thessaly, and wrestled for life with the
+martial Lapithae. But it now remained to mould these qualities into a
+system, and to educate each individual in the habits which could best
+preserve the community. Accordingly the child was reared, from the
+earliest age, to a life of hardship, discipline, and privation; he was
+starved into abstinence;--he was beaten into fortitude;--he was
+punished without offence, that he might be trained to bear without a
+groan;--the older he grew, till he reached manhood, the severer the
+discipline he underwent. The intellectual education was little
+attended to: for what had sentinels to do with the sciences or the
+arts? But the youth was taught acuteness, promptness, and
+discernment--for such are qualities essential to the soldier. He was
+stimulated to condense his thoughts, and to be ready in reply; to say
+little, and to the point. An aphorism bounded his philosophy. Such
+an education produced its results in an athletic frame, in simple and
+hardy habits--in indomitable patience--in quick sagacity. But there
+were other qualities necessary to the position of the Spartan, and
+those scarce so praiseworthy--viz., craft and simulation. He was one
+of a scanty, if a valiant, race. No single citizen could be spared
+the state: it was often better to dupe than to fight an enemy.
+Accordingly, the boy was trained to cunning as to courage. He was
+driven by hunger, or the orders of the leader over him, to obtain his
+food, in house or in field, by stealth;--if undiscovered, he was
+applauded; if detected, punished. Two main-springs of action were
+constructed within him--the dread of shame and the love of country.
+These were motives, it is true, common to all the Grecian states, but
+they seem to have been especially powerful in Sparta. But the last
+produced its abuse in one of the worst vices of the national
+character. The absorbing love for his native Sparta rendered the
+citizen singularly selfish towards other states, even kindred to that
+which he belonged to. Fearless as a Spartan,--when Sparta was
+unmenaced he was lukewarm as a Greek. And this exaggerated yet
+sectarian patriotism, almost peculiar to Sparta, was centred, not only
+in the safety and greatness of the state, but in the inalienable
+preservation of its institutions;--a feeling carefully sustained by a
+policy exceedingly jealous of strangers [139]. Spartans were not
+permitted to travel. Foreigners were but rarely permitted a residence
+within the city: and the Spartan dislike to Athens arose rather from
+fear of the contamination of her principles than from envy at the
+lustre of her fame. When we find (as our history proceeds) the
+Spartans dismissing their Athenian ally from the siege of Ithome, we
+recognise their jealousy of the innovating character of their
+brilliant neighbour;--they feared the infection of the democracy of
+the Agora. This attachment to one exclusive system of government
+characterized all the foreign policy of Sparta, and crippled the
+national sense by the narrowest bigotry and the obtusest prejudice.
+Wherever she conquered, she enforced her own constitution, no matter
+how inimical to the habits of the people, never dreaming that what was
+good for Sparta might be bad for any other state. Thus, when she
+imposed the Thirty Tyrants on Athens, she sought, in fact, to
+establish her own gerusia; and, no doubt, she imagined it would
+become, not a curse, but a blessing to a people accustomed to the
+wildest freedom of a popular assembly. Though herself, through the
+tyranny of the ephors, the unconscious puppet of the democratic
+action, she recoiled from all other and more open forms of democracy
+as from a pestilence. The simple habits of the Spartan life assisted
+to confirm the Spartan prejudices. A dinner, a fine house, these
+sturdy Dorians regarded as a pitiable sign of folly. They had no
+respect for any other cultivation of the mind than that which produced
+bold men and short sentences. Them, nor the science of Aristotle, nor
+the dreams of Plato were fitted to delight. Music and dancing were
+indeed cultivated among them, and with success and skill; but the
+music and the dance were always of one kind--it was a crime to vary an
+air [140] or invent a measure. A martial, haughty, and superstitious
+tribe can scarcely fail to be attached to poetry,--war is ever the
+inspiration of song,--and the eve of battle to a Spartan was the
+season of sacrifice to the Muses. The poetical temperament seems to
+have been common among this singular people. But the dread of
+innovation, when carried to excess, has even worse effect upon
+literary genius than legislative science; and though Sparta produced a
+few poets gifted, doubtless, with the skill to charm the audience they
+addressed, not a single one of the number has bequeathed to us any
+other memorial than his name. Greece, which preserved, as in a common
+treasury, whatever was approved by her unerring taste, her wonderful
+appreciation of the beautiful, regarded the Spartan poetry with an
+indifference which convinces us of its want of value. Thebes, and not
+Sparta, has transmitted to us the Dorian spirit in its noblest shape:
+and in Pindar we find how lofty the verse that was inspired by its
+pride, its daring, and its sublime reverence for glory and the gods.
+As for commerce, manufactures, agriculture,--the manual arts--such
+peaceful occupations were beneath the dignity of a Spartan--they were
+strictly prohibited by law as by pride, and were left to the Perioeci
+or the Helots.
+
+VIII. It was evidently necessary to this little colony to be united.
+Nothing unites men more than living together in common. The syssitia,
+or public tables, an institution which was common in Crete, in Corinth
+[141], and in Megara, effected this object in a mode agreeable to the
+Dorian manners. The society at each table was composed of men
+belonging to the same tribe or clan. New members could only be
+elected by consent of the rest. Each head of a family in Sparta paid
+for his own admission and that of the other members of his house. Men
+only belonged to them. The youths and boys had their own separate
+table. The young children, however, sat with their parents on low
+stools, and received a half share. Women were excluded. Despite the
+celebrated black broth, the table seems to have been sufficiently, if
+not elegantly, furnished. And the second course, consisting of
+voluntary gifts, which was supplied by the poorer members from the
+produce of the chase--by the wealthier from their flocks, orchards,
+poultry, etc., furnished what by Spartans were considered dainties.
+Conversation was familiar, and even jocose, and relieved by songs.
+Thus the public tables (which even the kings were ordinarily obliged
+to attend) were rendered agreeable and inviting by the attractions of
+intimate friendship and unrestrained intercourse.
+
+IX. The obscurest question relative to the Spartan system is that
+connected with property. It was evidently the intention of Lycurgus
+or the earlier legislators to render all the divisions of land and
+wealth as equal as possible. But no law can effect what society
+forbids. The equality of one generation cannot be transmitted to
+another. It may be easy to prevent a great accumulation of wealth,
+but what can prevent poverty? While the acquisition of lands by
+purchase was forbidden, no check was imposed on its acquisition by
+gift or testament; and in the time of Aristotle land had become the
+monopoly of the few. Sparta, like other states, had consequently her
+inequalities--her comparative rich and her positive poor--from an
+early period in her known history. As land descended to women, so
+marriages alone established great disparities of property. "Were the
+whole territory," says Aristotle, "divided into five portions, two
+would belong to the women." The regulation by which the man who could
+not pay his quota to the syssitia was excluded from the public tables,
+proves that it was not an uncommon occurrence to be so excluded; and
+indeed that exclusion grew at last so common, that the public tables
+became an aristocratic instead of a democratic institution.
+Aristotle, in later times, makes it an objection to the ephoral
+government that poor men were chosen ephors, and that their venality
+arose from their indigence--a moral proof that poverty in Sparta must
+have been more common than has generally been supposed [142];--men of
+property would not have chosen their judges and dictators in paupers.
+Land was held and cultivated by the Helots, who paid a certain fixed
+proportion of the produce to their masters. It is said that Lycurgus
+forbade the use of gold and silver, and ordained an iron coinage; but
+gold and silver were at that time unknown as coins in Sparta, and iron
+was a common medium of exchange throughout Greece. The interdiction
+of the precious metals was therefore of later origin. It seems to
+have only related to private Spartans. For those who, not being
+Spartans of the city--that is to say, for the Laconians or Perioeci--
+engaged in commerce, the interdiction could not have existed. A more
+pernicious regulation it is impossible to conceive. While it
+effectually served to cramp the effects of emulation--to stint the
+arts--to limit industry and enterprise--it produced the direct object
+it was intended to prevent;--it infected the whole state with the
+desire of gold--it forbade wealth to be spent, in order that wealth
+might be hoarded; every man seems to have desired gold precisely
+because he could make very little use of it! From the king to the
+Helot [143], the spirit of covetousness spread like a disease. No
+state in Greece was so open to bribery--no magistracy so corrupt as
+the ephors. Sparta became a nation of misers precisely because it
+could not become a nation of spendthrifts. Such are the results which
+man produces when his legislation deposes nature!
+
+X. In their domestic life the Spartans, like the rest of the Greeks,
+had but little pleasure in the society of their wives. At first the
+young husband only visited his bride by stealth--to be seen in company
+with her was a disgrace. But the women enjoyed a much greater freedom
+and received a higher respect in Sparta than elsewhere; the soft
+Asiatic distinctions in dignity between the respective sexes did not
+reach the hardy mountaineers of Lacedaemon; the wife was the mother of
+men! Brought up in robust habits, accustomed to athletic exercises,
+her person exposed in public processions and dances, which, but for
+the custom that made decorous even indecency itself, would have been
+indeed licentious, the Spartan maiden, strong, hardy, and half a
+partaker in the ceremonies of public life, shared the habits, aided
+the emulation, imbibed the patriotism, of her future consort. And, by
+her sympathy with his habits and pursuits, she obtained an influence
+and ascendency over him which was unknown in the rest of Greece.
+Dignified on public occasions, the Spartan matron was deemed, however,
+a virago in private life; and she who had no sorrow for a slaughtered
+son, had very little deference for a living husband. Her obedience to
+her spouse appears to have been the most cheerfully rendered upon
+those delicate emergencies when the service of the state required her
+submission to the embraces of another! [144]
+
+XI. We now come to the most melancholy and gloomy part of the Spartan
+system--the condition of the Helots.
+
+The whole fabric of the Spartan character rested upon slavery. If it
+were beneath a Spartan to labour--to maintain himself--to cultivate
+land--to build a house--to exercise an art;--to do aught else than to
+fight an enemy--to choose an ephor--to pass from the chase or the
+palaestra to the public tables--to live a hero in war--an aristocrat
+in peace,--it was clearly a supreme necessity to his very existence as
+a citizen, and even as a human being, that there should be a
+subordinate class of persons employed in the occupations rejected by
+himself, and engaged in providing for the wants of this privileged
+citizen. Without Helots the Spartan was the most helpless of human
+beings. Slavery taken from the Spartan state, the state would fall at
+once! It is no wonder, therefore, that this institution should have
+been guarded with an extraordinary jealousy--nor that extraordinary
+jealousy should have produced extraordinary harshness. It is exactly
+in proportion to the fear of losing power that men are generally
+tyrannical in the exercise of it. Nor is it from cruelty of
+disposition, but from the anxious curse of living among men whom
+social circumstances make his enemies because his slaves, that a
+despot usually grows ferocious, and that the urgings of suspicion
+create the reign of terror. Besides the political necessity of a
+strict and unrelaxed slavery, a Spartan would also be callous to the
+sufferings, from his contempt for the degradation, of the slave; as he
+despised the employments abandoned to the Helot, even so would he
+despise the wretch that exercised them. Thus the motives that render
+power most intolerant combined in the Spartan in his relations to the
+Helot--viz., 1st, necessity for his services, lost perhaps if the curb
+were ever relaxed--2dly, consummate contempt for the individual he
+debased. The habit of tyranny makes tyranny necessary. When the
+slave has been long maddened by your yoke, if you lighten it for a
+moment he rebels. He has become your deadliest foe, and
+self-preservation renders it necessary that him whom you provoke to
+vengeance you should crush to impotence. The longer, therefore, the
+Spartan government endured, the more cruel became the condition of the
+Helots. Not in Sparta were those fine distinctions of rank which
+exist where slavery is unknown, binding class with class by ties of
+mutual sympathy and dependance--so that Poverty itself may be a
+benefactor to Destitution. Even among the poor the Helot had no
+brotherhood! he was as necessary to the meanest as to the highest
+Spartan--his wrongs gave its very existence to the commonwealth. We
+cannot, then, wonder at the extreme barbarity with which the Spartans
+treated this miserable race; and we can even find something of excuse
+for a cruelty which became at last the instinct of self-preservation.
+Revolt and massacre were perpetually before a Spartan's eyes; and what
+man will be gentle and unsuspecting to those who wait only the moment
+to murder him?
+
+XII. The origin of the Helot race is not clearly ascertained: the
+popular notion that they were the descendants of the inhabitants of
+Helos, a maritime town subdued by the Spartans, and that they were
+degraded to servitude after a revolt, is by no means a conclusive
+account. Whether, as Mueller suggests, they were the original slave
+population of the Achaeans, or whether, as the ancient authorities
+held, they were such of the Achaeans themselves as had most
+obstinately resisted the Spartan sword, and had at last surrendered
+without conditions, is a matter it is now impossible to determine.
+For my own part, I incline to the former supposition, partly because
+of the wide distinction between the enslaved Helots and the (merely)
+inferior Perioeci, who were certainly Achaeans; a distinction which I
+do not think the different manner in which the two classes were
+originally subdued would suffice to account for; partly because I
+doubt whether the handful of Dorians who first fixed their dangerous
+settlement in Laconia could have effectually subjugated the Helots, if
+the latter had not previously been inured to slavery. The objection
+to this hypothesis--that the Helots could scarcely have so hated the
+Spartans if they had merely changed masters, does not appear to me
+very cogent. Under the mild and paternal chiefs of the Homeric age
+[145], they might have been subjected to a much gentler servitude.
+Accustomed to the manners and habits of their Achaean lords, they
+might have half forgotten their condition; and though governed by
+Spartans in the same external relations, it was in a very different
+spirit. The sovereign contempt with which the Spartans regarded the
+Helots, they would scarcely have felt for a tribe distinguished from
+the more honoured Perioeci only by a sterner valour and a greater
+regard for freedom; while that contempt is easily accounted for, if
+its objects were the previously subdued population of a country the
+Spartans themselves subdued.
+
+The Helots were considered the property of the state--but they were
+intrusted and leased, as it were, to individuals; they were bound to
+the soil; even the state did not arrogate the power of selling them
+out of the country; they paid to their masters a rent in corn--the
+surplus profits were their own. It was easier for a Helot than for a
+Spartan to acquire riches--but riches were yet more useless to him.
+Some of the Helots attended their masters at the public tables, and
+others were employed in all public works: they served in the field as
+light-armed troops: they were occasionally emancipated, but there were
+several intermediate grades between the Helot and the freeman; their
+nominal duties were gentle indeed when compared with the spirit in
+which they were regarded and the treatment they received. That much
+exaggeration respecting the barbarity of their masters existed is
+probable enough; but the exaggeration itself, among writers accustomed
+to the institution of slavery elsewhere, and by no means addicted to
+an overstrained humanity, is a proof of the manner in which the
+treatment of the Helots was viewed by the more gentle slave-masters of
+the rest of Greece. They were branded with ineffaceable dishonour: no
+Helot might sing a Spartan song; if he but touched what belonged to a
+Spartan it was profaned--he was the Pariah of Greece. The ephors--the
+popular magistrates--the guardians of freedom--are reported by
+Aristotle to have entered office in making a formal declaration of war
+against the Helots--probably but an idle ceremony of disdain and
+insult. We cannot believe with Plutarch, that the infamous cryptia
+was instituted for the purpose he assigns--viz., that it was an
+ambuscade of the Spartan youths, who dispersed themselves through the
+country, and by night murdered whomsoever of the Helots they could
+meet. But it is certain that a select portion of the younger Spartans
+ranged the country yearly, armed with daggers, and that with the
+object of attaining familiarity with military hardships was associated
+that of strict, stern, and secret surveillance over the Helot
+population. No Helot, perhaps, was murdered from mere wantonness; but
+who does not see how many would necessarily have been butchered at the
+slightest suspicion of disaffection, or for the faintest utility of
+example? These miserable men were the objects of compassion to all
+Greece. "It was the common opinion," says Aelian, "that the
+earthquake in Sparta was a judgment from the gods upon the Spartan
+inhumanity to the Helots." And perhaps in all history (not even
+excepting that awful calmness with which the Italian historians
+narrate the cruelties of a Paduan tyrant or a Venetian oligarchy)
+there is no record of crime more thrilling than that dark and terrible
+passage in Thucydides which relates how two thousand Helots, the best
+and bravest of their tribe, were selected as for reward and freedom,
+how they were led to the temples in thanksgiving to the gods--and how
+they disappeared, their fate notorious--the manner of it a mystery!
+
+XIII. Besides the Helots, the Spartans exercised an authority over
+the intermediate class called the Perioeci. These were indubitably
+the old Achaean race, who had been reduced, not to slavery, but to
+dependance. They retained possession of their own towns, estimated in
+number, after the entire conquest of Messenia, at one hundred. They
+had their own different grades and classes, as the Saxons retained
+theirs after the conquest of the Normans. Among these were the
+traders and manufacturers of Laconia; and thus whatever art attained
+of excellence in the dominions of Sparta was not Spartan but Achaean.
+They served in the army, sometimes as heavy-armed, sometimes as
+light-armed soldiery, according to their rank or callings; and one of
+the Perioeci obtained the command at sea. They appear, indeed, to have
+been universally acknowledged throughout Greece as free citizens, yet
+dependant subjects. But the Spartans jealously and sternly maintained
+the distinction between exemption from the servitude of a Helot, and
+participation in the rights of a Dorian: the Helot lost his personal
+liberty--the Perioecus his political.
+
+XIV. The free or purely Spartan population (as not improbably with
+every Doric state) was divided into three generic tribes--the Hyllean,
+the Dymanatan, and the Pamphylian: of these the Hyllean (the reputed
+descendants of the son of Hercules) gave to Sparta both her kings.
+Besides these tribes of blood or race, there were also five local
+tribes, which formed the constituency of the ephors, and thirty
+subdivisions called obes--according to which the more aristocratic
+offices appear to have been elected. There were also recognised in
+the Spartan constitution two distinct classes--the Equals and the
+Inferiors. Though these were hereditary divisions, merit might
+promote a member of the last--demerit degrade a member of the first.
+The Inferiors, though not boasting the nobility of the Equals, often
+possessed men equally honoured and powerful: as among the commoners of
+England are sometimes found persons of higher birth and more important
+station than among the peers--(a term somewhat synonymous with that
+of Equal.) But the higher class enjoyed certain privileges which we
+can but obscurely trace [146]. Forming an assembly among themselves,
+it may be that they alone elected to the senate; and perhaps they were
+also distinguished by some peculiarities of education--an assertion
+made by Mr. Mueller, but not to my mind sufficiently established.
+With respect to the origin of this distinction between the Inferiors
+and the Equals, my own belief is, that it took place at some period
+(possibly during the Messenian wars) when the necessities of a failing
+population induced the Spartans to increase their number by the
+admixture either of strangers, but (as that hypothesis is scarce
+agreeable to Spartan manners) more probably of the Perioeci; the new
+citizens would thus be the Inferiors. Among the Greek settlements in
+Italy, it was by no means uncommon for a colony, once sufficiently
+established, only to admit new settlers even from the parent state
+upon inferior terms; and in like manner in Venice arose the
+distinction between the gentlemen and the citizens; for when to that
+sea-girt state many flocked for security and refuge, it seemed but
+just to give to the prior inhabitants the distinction of hosts, and to
+consider the immigrators as guests;--to the first a share in the
+administration and a superior dignity--to the last only shelter and
+repose.
+
+XV. Such are the general outlines of the state and constitution of
+Sparta--the firmest aristocracy that perhaps ever existed, for it was
+an aristocracy on the widest base. If some Spartans were noble, every
+Spartan boasted himself gentle. His birth forbade him to work, and
+his only profession was the sword. The difference between the meanest
+Spartan and his king was not so great as that between a Spartan and a
+Perioecus. Not only the servitude of the Helots, but the subjection
+of the Perioeci, perpetually nourished the pride of the superior race;
+and to be born a Spartan was to be born to power. The sense of
+superiority and the habit of command impart a certain elevation to the
+manner and the bearing. There was probably more of dignity in the
+poorest Spartan citizen than in the wealthiest noble of Corinth--the
+most voluptuous courtier of Syracuse. And thus the reserve, the
+decorum, the stately simplicity of the Spartan mien could not but
+impose upon the imagination of the other Greeks, and obtain the credit
+for correspondent qualities which did not always exist beneath that
+lofty exterior. To lively nations, affected by externals, there was
+much in that sedate majesty of demeanour; to gallant nations, much in
+that heroic valour; to superstitious nations, much in that proverbial
+regard to religious rites, which characterized the Spartan race.
+Declaimers on luxury admired their simplicity--the sufferers from
+innovation, their adherence to ancient manners. Many a victim of the
+turbulence of party in Athens sighed for the repose of the
+Lacedaemonian city; and as we always exaggerate the particular evils
+we endure, and admire most blindly the circumstances most opposite to
+those by which we are affected, so it was often the fashion of more
+intellectual states to extol the institutions of which they saw only
+from afar and through a glass the apparent benefits, without examining
+the concomitant defects. An Athenian might laud the Spartan
+austerity, as Tacitus might laud the German barbarism; it was the
+panegyric of rhetoric and satire, of wounded patriotism or
+disappointed ambition. Although the ephors made the government really
+and latently democratic, yet the concentration of its action made it
+seemingly oligarchic; and in its secrecy, caution, vigilance, and
+energy, it exhibited the best of the oligarchic features. Whatever
+was democratic by law was counteracted in its results by all that was
+aristocratic in custom. It was a state of political freedom, but of
+social despotism. This rigidity of ancient usages was binding long
+after its utility was past. For what was admirable at one time became
+pernicious at another; what protected the infant state from
+dissension, stinted all luxuriance of intellect in the more matured
+community. It is in vain that modern writers have attempted to deny
+this fact--the proof is before us. By her valour Sparta was long the
+most eminent state of the most intellectual of all countries; and when
+we ask what she has bequeathed to mankind--what she has left us in
+rivalry to that Athens, whose poetry yet animates, whose philosophy
+yet guides, whose arts yet inspire the world--we find only the names
+of two or three minor poets, whose works have perished, and some half
+a dozen pages of pithy aphorisms and pointed repartees!
+
+XVI. My object in the above sketch has been to give a general outline
+of the Spartan character and the Spartan system during the earlier and
+more brilliant era of Athenian history, without entering into
+unnecessary conjectures as to the precise period of each law and each
+change. The social and political state of Sparta became fixed by her
+conquest of Messenia. It is not within the plan of my undertaking to
+retail at length the legendary and for the most part fabulous accounts
+of the first and second Messenian wars. The first was dignified by
+the fate of the Messenian hero Aristodemus, and the fall of the rocky
+fortress of Ithome; its result was the conquest of Messenia (probably
+begun 743 B. C., ended 723); the inhabitants were compelled to an oath
+of submission, and to surrender to Sparta half their agricultural
+produce. After the first Messenian war, Tarentum was founded by a
+Spartan colony, composed, it is said, of youths [147], the offspring
+of Spartan women and Laconian men, who were dissatisfied with their
+exclusion from citizenship, and by whom the state was menaced with a
+formidable conspiracy shared by the Helots. Meanwhile, the
+Messenians, if conquered, were not subdued. Years rolled away, and
+time had effaced the remembrance of the past sufferings, but not of
+the ancient [148] liberties.
+
+It was among the youth of Messenia that the hope of the national
+deliverance was the most intensely cherished. At length, in Andania,
+the revolt broke forth. A young man, pre-eminent above the rest for
+birth, for valour, and for genius, was the head and the soul of the
+enterprise (probably B. C. 679). His name was Aristomenes. Forming
+secret alliances with the Argives and Arcadians, he at length ventured
+to raise his standard, and encountered at Dera, on their own domains,
+the Spartan force. The issue of the battle was indecisive; still,
+however, it seems to have seriously aroused the fears of Sparta: no
+further hostilities took place till the following year; the oracle at
+Delphi was solemnly consulted, and the god ordained the Spartans to
+seek their adviser in an Athenian. They sent to Athens and obtained
+Tyrtaeus. A popular but fabulous account [149] describes him as a
+lame teacher of grammar, and of no previous repute. His songs and his
+exhortations are said to have produced almost miraculous effects. I
+omit the romantic adventures of the hero Aristomenes, though it may be
+doubted whether all Grecian history can furnish passages that surpass
+the poetry of his reputed life. I leave the reader to learn elsewhere
+how he hung at night a shield in the temple of Chalcioecus, in the
+very city of the foe, with the inscription, that Aristomenes dedicated
+to the goddess that shield from the spoils of the Spartans--how he
+penetrated the secret recesses of Trophonius--how he was deterred from
+entering Sparta by the spectres of Helen and the Dioscuri--how, taken
+prisoner in an attempt to seize the women of Aegila, he was released
+by the love of the priestess of Ceres--how, again made captive, and
+cast into a deep pit with fifty of his men, he escaped by seizing hold
+of a fox (attracted thither by the dead bodies), and suffering himself
+to be drawn by her through dark and scarce pervious places to a hole
+that led to the upper air. These adventures, and others equally
+romantic, I must leave to the genius of more credulous historians.
+
+All that seems to me worthy of belief is, that after stern but
+unavailing struggles, the Messenians abandoned Andania, and took their
+last desperate station at Ira, a mountain at whose feet flows the
+river Neda, separating Messenia from Triphylia. Here, fortified alike
+by art and nature, they sustained a siege of eleven years. But with
+the eleventh the term of their resistance was completed. The slave of
+a Spartan of rank had succeeded in engaging the affections of a
+Messenian woman who dwelt without the walls of the mountain fortress.
+One night the guilty pair were at the house of the adulteress--the
+husband abruptly returned--the slave was concealed, and overheard
+that, in consequence of a violent and sudden storm, the Messenian
+guard had deserted the citadel, not fearing attack from the foe on so
+tempestuous a night, and not anticipating the inspection of
+Aristomenes, who at that time was suffering from a wound. The slave
+overheard--escaped--reached the Spartan camp--apprized his master
+Emperamus (who, in the absence of the kings, headed the troops) of the
+desertion of the guard:--an assault was agreed on: despite the
+darkness of the night, despite the violence of the rain, the Spartans
+marched on:--scaled the fortifications:--were within the walls. The
+fulfilment of dark prophecies had already portended the fate of the
+besieged; and now the very howling of the dogs in a strange and
+unwonted manner was deemed a prodigy. Alarmed, aroused, the
+Messenians betook themselves to the nearest weapons within their
+reach. Aristomenes, his son Gorgus, Theoclus, the guardian prophet of
+his tribe (whose valour was equal to his science), were among the
+first to perceive the danger. Night passed in tumult and disorder.
+Day dawned, but rather to terrify than encourage--the storm increased
+--the thunder burst--the lightning glared. What dismayed the besieged
+encouraged the besiegers. Still, with all the fury of despair, the
+Messenians fought on: the very women took part in the contest; death
+was preferable, even in their eyes, to slavery and dishonour. But the
+Spartans were far superior in number, and, by continual reliefs, the
+fresh succeeded to the weary. In arms for three days and three nights
+without respite, worn out with watching, with the rage of the
+elements, with cold, with hunger, and with thirst, no hope remained
+for the Messenians: the bold prophet declared to Aristomenes that the
+gods had decreed the fall of Messene, that the warning oracles were
+fulfilled. "Preserve," he cried, "what remain of your forces--save
+yourselves. Me the gods impel to fall with my country!" Thus saying,
+the soothsayer rushed on the enemy, and fell at last covered with
+wounds and satiated with the slaughter himself had made. Aristomenes
+called the Messenians round him; the women and the children were
+placed in the centre of the band, guarded by his own son and that of
+the prophet. Heading the troop himself, he rushed on the foe, and by
+his gestures and the shaking of his spear announced his intention to
+force a passage, and effect escape. Unwilling yet more to exasperate
+men urged to despair, the Spartans made way for the rest of the
+besieged. So fell Ira! (probably B. C. 662). [150] The brave
+Messenians escaped to Mount Lyceum in Arcadia, and afterward the
+greater part, invited by Anaxilaus, their own countryman, prince of
+the Dorian colony at Rhegium in Italy, conquered with him the
+Zanclaeans of Sicily, and named the conquered town Messene. It still
+preserves the name [151]. But Aristomenes, retaining indomitable
+hatred to Sparta, refused to join the colony. Yet hoping a day of
+retribution, he went to Delphi. What counsel he there received is
+unrecorded. But the deity ordained to Damagetes, prince of Jalysus in
+Rhodes, to marry the daughter of the best man of Greece. Such a man
+the prince esteemed the hero of the Messenians, and wedded the third
+daughter of Aristomenes. Still bent on designs against the destroyers
+of his country, the patriot warrior repaired to Rhodes, where death
+delivered the Spartans from the terror of his revenge. A monument was
+raised to his memory, and that memory, distinguished by public
+honours, long made the boast of the Messenians, whether those in
+distant exile, or those subjected to the Spartan yoke. Thus ended the
+second Messenian war. Such of the Messenians as had not abandoned
+their country were reduced to Helotism. The Spartan territory
+extended, and the Spartan power secured, that haughty state rose
+slowly to pre-eminence over the rest of Greece; and preserved, amid
+the advancing civilization and refinement of her neighbours, the stern
+and awing likeness of the heroic age:--In the mountains of the
+Peloponnesus, the polished and luxurious Greeks beheld, retained from
+change as by a spell, the iron images of their Homeric ancestry!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Governments in Greece.
+
+
+I. The return of the Heraclidae occasioned consequences of which the
+most important were the least immediate. Whenever the Dorians forced
+a settlement, they dislodged such of the previous inhabitants as
+refused to succumb. Driven elsewhere to seek a home, the exiles found
+it often in yet fairer climes, and along more fertile soils. The
+example of these involuntary migrators became imitated wherever
+discontent prevailed or population was redundant: and hence, as I have
+already recorded, first arose those numerous colonies, which along the
+Asiatic shores, in the Grecian isles, on the plains of Italy, and even
+in Libya and in Egypt, were destined to give, as it were, a second
+youth to the parent states.
+
+II. The ancient Greek constitution was that of an aristocracy, with a
+prince at the head. Suppose a certain number of men, thus governed,
+to be expelled their native soil, united by a common danger and common
+suffering, to land on a foreign shore, to fix themselves with pain and
+labour in a new settlement--it is quite clear that a popular principle
+would insensibly have entered the forms of the constitution they
+transplanted. In the first place, the power of the prince would be
+more circumscribed--in the next place, the free spirit of the
+aristocracy would be more diffused: the first, because the authority
+of the chief would rarely be derived from royal ancestry, or hallowed
+by prescriptive privilege; in most cases he was but a noble, selected
+from the ranks, and crippled by the jealousies, of his order: the
+second, because all who shared in the enterprise would in one respect
+rise at once to an aristocracy--they would be distinguished from the
+population of the state they colonized. Misfortune, sympathy, and
+change would also contribute to sweep away many demarcations; and
+authority was transmuted from a birthright into a trust, the moment it
+was withdrawn from the shelter of ancient custom, and made the gift of
+the living rather than a heritage from the dead. It was probable,
+too, that many of such colonies were founded by men, among whom was
+but little disparity of rank: this would be especially the case with
+those which were the overflow of a redundant population; the great and
+the wealthy are never redundant!--the mass would thus ordinarily be
+composed of the discontented and the poor, and even where the
+aristocratic leaven was most strong, it was still the aristocracy of
+some defeated and humbled faction. So that in the average equality of
+the emigrators were the seeds of a new constitution; and if they
+transplanted the form of monarchy, it already contained the genius of
+republicanism. Hence, colonies in the ancient, as in the modern
+world, advanced by giant strides towards popular principles.
+Maintaining a constant intercourse with their father-land, their own
+constitutions became familiar and tempting to the population of the
+countries they had abandoned; and much of whatsoever advantages were
+derived from the soil they selected, and the commerce they found
+within their reach, was readily attributed only to their more popular
+constitutions; as, at this day, we find American prosperity held out
+to our example, not as the result of local circumstances, but as the
+creature of political institutions.
+
+One principal cause of the republican forms of government that began
+(as, after the Dorian migration, the different tribes became settled
+in those seats by which they are historically known) to spread
+throughout Greece, was, therefore, the establishment of colonies
+retaining constant intercourse with the parent states. A second cause
+is to be found in the elements of the previous constitutions of the
+Grecian states themselves, and the political principles which existed
+universally, even in the heroic ages: so that, in fact, the change
+from monarchy to republicanism was much less violent than at the first
+glance it would seem to our modern notions. The ancient kings, as
+described by Homer, possessed but a limited authority, like that of
+the Spartan kings--extensive in war, narrow in peace. It was
+evidently considered that the source of their authority was in the
+people. No notion seems to have been more universal among the Greeks
+than that it was for the community that all power was to be exercised.
+In Homer's time popular assemblies existed, and claimed the right of
+conferring privileges on rank. The nobles were ever jealous of the
+prerogative of the prince, and ever encroaching on his accidental
+weakness. In his sickness, his age, or his absence, the power of the
+state seems to have been wrested from his hands--the prey of the
+chiefs, or the dispute of contending factions. Nor was there in
+Greece that chivalric fealty to a person which characterizes the
+North. From the earliest times it was not the MONARCH, that called
+forth the virtue of devotion, and inspired the enthusiasm of loyalty.
+Thus, in the limited prerogative of royalty, in the jealousy of the
+chiefs, in the right of popular assemblies, and, above all, in the
+silent and unconscious spirit of political theory, we may recognise in
+the early monarchies of Greece the germes of their inevitable
+dissolution. Another cause was in that singular separation of tribes,
+speaking a common language, and belonging to a common race, which
+characterized the Greeks. Instead of overrunning a territory in one
+vast irruption, each section seized a small district, built a city,
+and formed an independent people. Thus, in fact, the Hellenic
+governments were not those of a country, but of a town; and the words
+"state" and "city" were synonymous [152]. Municipal constitutions, in
+their very nature, are ever more or less republican; and, as in the
+Italian states, the corporation had only to shake off some power
+unconnected with, or hostile to it, to rise into a republic. To this
+it may be added, that the true republican spirit is more easily
+established among mountain tribes imperfectly civilized, and yet fresh
+from the wildness of the natural life, than among old states, where
+luxury leaves indeed the desire, but has enervated the power of
+liberty, "as the marble from the quarry may be more readily wrought
+into the statue, than that on which the hand of the workman has
+already been employed." [153]
+
+III. If the change from monarchy to republicanism was not very
+violent in itself, it appears to have been yet more smoothed away by
+gradual preparations. Monarchy was not abolished, it declined. The
+direct line was broken, or some other excuse occurred for exchanging
+an hereditary for an elective monarchy; then the period of power
+became shortened, and from monarchy for life it was monarchy only for
+a certain number of years: in most cases the name too (and how much is
+there in names!) was changed, and the title of ruler or magistrate
+substituted for that of king.
+
+Thus, by no sudden leap of mind, by no vehement and short-lived
+revolutions, but gradually, insensibly, and permanently, monarchy
+ceased--a fashion, as it were, worn out and obsolete--and
+republicanism succeeded. But this republicanism at first was probably
+in no instance purely democratic. It was the chiefs who were the
+visible agents in the encroachments on the monarchic power--it was an
+aristocracy that succeeded monarchy. Sometimes this aristocracy was
+exceedingly limited in number, or the governing power was usurped by a
+particular faction or pre-eminent families; then it was called an
+OLIGARCHY. And this form of aristocracy appears generally to have
+been the most immediate successor to royalty. "The first polity,"
+says Aristotle [154], "that was established in Greece after the lapse
+of monarchies, was that of the members of the military class, and
+those wholly horsemen," . . . . . "such republics, though called
+democracies, had a strong tendency to oligarchy, and even to royalty."
+[155] But the spirit of change still progressed: whether they were
+few or many, the aristocratic governors could not fail to open the
+door to further innovations. For, if many, they were subjected to
+dissensions among themselves--if few, they created odium in all who
+were excluded from power. Thus fell the oligarchies of Marseilles,
+Ister, and Heraclea. In the one case they were weakened by their own
+jealousies, in the other by the jealousies of their rivals. The
+progress of civilization and the growing habits of commerce gradually
+introduced a medium between the populace and the chiefs. The MIDDLE
+CLASS slowly rose, and with it rose the desire of extended liberties
+and equal laws. [156]
+
+IV. Now then appeared the class of DEMAGOGUES. The people had been
+accustomed to change. They had been led against monarchy, and found
+they had only resigned the one master to obtain the many:--A demagogue
+arose, sometimes one of their own order, more often a dissatisfied,
+ambitious, or empoverished noble. For they who have wasted their
+patrimony, as the Stagirite shrewdly observes, are great promoters of
+innovation! Party ran high--the state became divided--passions were
+aroused--and the popular leader became the popular idol. His life was
+probably often in danger from the resentment of the nobles, and it was
+always easy to assert that it was so endangered.--He obtained a guard
+to protect him, conciliated the soldiers, seized the citadel, and rose
+at once from the head of the populace to the ruler of the state. Such
+was the common history of the tyrants of Greece, who never supplanted
+the kingly sway (unless in the earlier ages, when, born to a limited
+monarchy, they extended their privileges beyond the law, as Pheidon of
+Argos), but nearly always aristocracies or oligarchies [157]. I need
+scarcely observe that the word "tyrant" was of very different
+signification in ancient times from that which it bears at present.
+It more nearly corresponded to our word "usurper," and denoted one
+who, by illegitimate means, whether of art or force, had usurped the
+supreme authority. A tyrant might be mild or cruel, the father of the
+people, or their oppressor; he still preserved the name, and it was
+transmitted to his children. The merits of this race of rulers, and
+the unconscious benefits they produced, have not been justly
+appreciated, either by ancient or modern historians. Without her
+tyrants, Greece might never have established her democracies. As may
+be readily supposed, the man who, against powerful enemies, often from
+a low origin and with empoverished fortunes, had succeeded in
+ascending a throne, was usually possessed of no ordinary abilities.
+It was almost vitally necessary for him to devote those abilities to
+the cause and interests of the people. Their favour had alone raised
+him--numerous foes still surrounded him--it was on the people alone
+that he could depend.
+
+The wiser and more celebrated tyrants were characterized by an extreme
+modesty of deportment--they assumed no extraordinary pomp, no lofty
+titles--they left untouched, or rendered yet more popular, the outward
+forms and institutions of the government--they were not exacting in
+taxation--they affected to link themselves with the lowest orders, and
+their ascendency was usually productive of immediate benefit to the
+working classes, whom they employed in new fortifications or new
+public buildings; dazzling the citizens by a splendour that seemed
+less the ostentation of an individual than the prosperity of a state.
+But the aristocracy still remained their enemies, and it was against
+them, not against the people, that they directed their acute
+sagacities and unsparing energies. Every more politic tyrant was a
+Louis the Eleventh, weakening the nobles, creating a middle class. He
+effected his former object by violent and unscrupulous means. He
+swept away by death or banishment all who opposed his authority or
+excited his fears. He thus left nothing between the state and a
+democracy but himself; himself removed, democracy ensued naturally and
+of course. There are times in the history of all nations when liberty
+is best promoted--when civilization is most rapidly expedited--when
+the arts are most luxuriantly nourished by a strict concentration of
+power in the hands of an individual--and when the despot is but the
+representative of the popular will [158]. At such times did the
+tyrannies in Greece mostly flourish, and they may almost be said to
+cease with the necessity which called them forth. The energy of these
+masters of a revolution opened the intercourse with other states;
+their interests extended commerce; their policy broke up the sullen
+barriers of oligarchical prejudice and custom; their fears found
+perpetual vent for the industry of a population whom they dreaded to
+leave in indolence; their genius appreciated the arts--their vanity
+fostered them. Thus they interrupted the course of liberty only to
+improve, to concentre, to advance its results. Their dynasty never
+lasted long; the oldest tyranny in Greece endured but a hundred years
+[159]--so enduring only from its mildness. The son of the tyrant
+rarely inherited his father's sagacity and talents: he sought to
+strengthen his power by severity; discontent ensued, and his fall was
+sudden and complete. Usually, then, such of the aristocracy as had
+been banished were recalled, but not invested with their former
+privileges. The constitution became more or less democratic. It is
+true that Sparta, who lent her powerful aid in destroying tyrannies,
+aimed at replacing them by oligarchies--but the effort seldom produced
+a permanent result: the more the aristocracy was narrowed, the more
+certain was its fall. If the middle class were powerful--if commerce
+thrived in the state--the former aristocracy of birth was soon
+succeeded by an aristocracy of property (called a timocracy), and this
+was in its nature certain of democratic advances. The moment you
+widen the suffrage, you may date the commencement of universal
+suffrage. He who enjoys certain advantages from the possession of ten
+acres, will excite a party against him in those who have nine; and the
+arguments that had been used for the franchise of the one are equally
+valid for the franchise of the other. Limitations of power by
+property are barriers against a tide which perpetually advances.
+Timocracy, therefore, almost invariably paved the way to democracy.
+But still the old aristocratic faction, constantly invaded, remained
+powerful, stubborn, and resisting, and there was scarcely a state in
+Greece that did not contain the two parties which we find to-day in
+England, and in all free states--the party of the movement to the
+future, and the party of recurrence to the past; I say the past, for
+in politics there is no present! Wherever party exists, if the one
+desire fresh innovations, so the other secretly wishes not to preserve
+what remains, but to restore what has been. This fact it is necessary
+always to bear in mind in examining the political contests of the
+Athenians. For in most of their domestic convulsions we find the
+cause in the efforts of the anti-popular party less to resist new
+encroachments than to revive departed institutions. But though in
+most of the Grecian states were two distinct orders, and the
+Eupatrids, or "Well-born," were a class distinct from, and superior
+to, that of the commonalty, we should err in supposing that the
+separate orders made the great political divisions. As in England the
+more ancient of the nobles are often found in the popular ranks, so in
+the Grecian states many of the Eupatrids headed the democratic party.
+And this division among themselves, while it weakened the power of the
+well-born, contributed to prevent any deadly or ferocious revolutions:
+for it served greatly to soften the excesses of the predominant
+faction, and every collision found mediators between the contending
+parties in some who were at once friends of the people and members of
+the nobility. Nor should it be forgotten that the triumph of the
+popular party was always more moderate than that of the antagonist
+faction--as the history of Athens will hereafter prove.
+
+V. The legal constitutions of Greece were four--Monarchy, Oligarchy,
+Aristocracy, and Democracy; the illegal, was Tyranny in a twofold
+shape, viz., whether it consisted in an usurped monarchy or an usurped
+oligarchy. Thus the oligarchy of the Thirty in Athens was no less a
+tyranny than the single government of Pisistratus. Even democracy had
+its illegal or corrupt form--in OCHLOCRACY or mob rule; for democracy
+did not signify the rule of the lower orders alone, but of all the
+people--the highest as the lowest. If the highest became by law
+excluded--if the populace confined the legislative and executive
+authorities to their own order--then democracy, or the government of a
+whole people, virtually ceased, and became the government of a part of
+the people--a form equally unjust and illegitimate--equally an abuse
+in itself, whether the dominant and exclusive portion were the nobles
+or the mechanics. Thus in modern yet analogous history, when the
+middle class of Florence expelled the nobles from any share of the
+government, they established a monopoly under the name of liberty; and
+the resistance of the nobles was the lawful struggle of patriots and
+of freemen for an inalienable privilege and a natural right.
+
+VI. We should remove some very important prejudices from our minds,
+if we could once subscribe to a fact plain in itself, but which the
+contests of modern party have utterly obscured--that in the mere forms
+of their government, the Greek republics cannot fairly be pressed into
+the service of those who in existing times would attest the evils, or
+proclaim the benefits, of constitutions purely democratic. In the
+first place, they were not democracies, even in their most democratic
+shape:--the vast majority of the working classes were the enslaved
+population. And, therefore, to increase the popular tendencies of the
+republic was, in fact, only to increase the liberties of the few. We
+may fairly doubt whether the worst evils of the ancient republics, in
+the separation of ranks, and the war between rich and poor, were not
+the necessary results of slavery. We may doubt, with equal
+probability, whether much of the lofty spirit, and the universal
+passion for public affairs, whence emanated the enterprise, the
+competition, the patriotism, and the glory of the ancient cities,
+could have existed without a subordinate race to carry on the
+drudgeries of daily life. It is clear, also, that much of the
+intellectual greatness of the several states arose from the exceeding
+smallness of their territories--the concentration of internal power,
+and the perpetual emulation with neighbouring and kindred states
+nearly equal in civilization; it is clear, too, that much of the
+vicious parts of their character, and yet much of their more
+brilliant, arose from the absence of the PRESS. Their intellectual
+state was that of men talked to, not written to. Their imagination
+was perpetually called forth--their deliberative reason rarely;--they
+were the fitting audience for an orator, whose art is effective in
+proportion to the impulse and the passion of those he addresses. Nor
+must it be forgotten that the representative system, which is the
+proper conductor of the democratic action, if not wholly unknown to
+the Greeks [160], and if unconsciously practised in the Spartan
+ephoralty, was at least never existent in the more democratic states.
+And assemblies of the whole people are compatible only with those
+small nations of which the city is the country. Thus, it would be
+impossible for us to propose the abstract constitution of any ancient
+state as a warning or an example to modern countries which possess
+territories large in extent--which subsist without a slave population
+--which substitute representative councils for popular assemblies--and
+which direct the intellectual tastes and political habits of a people,
+not by oratory and conversation, but through the more calm and
+dispassionate medium of the press. This principle settled, it may
+perhaps be generally conceded, that on comparing the democracies of
+Greece with all other contemporary forms of government, we find them
+the most favourable to mental cultivation--not more exposed than
+others to internal revolutions--usually, in fact, more durable,--more
+mild and civilized in their laws--and that the worst tyranny of the
+Demus, whether at home or abroad, never equalled that of an oligarchy
+or a single ruler. That in which the ancient republics are properly
+models to us, consists not in the form, but the spirit of their
+legislation. They teach us that patriotism is most promoted by
+bringing all classes into public and constant intercourse--that
+intellect is most luxuriant wherever the competition is widest and
+most unfettered--and that legislators can create no rewards and invent
+no penalties equal to those which are silently engendered by society
+itself--while it maintains, elaborated into a system, the desire of
+glory and the dread of shame.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+Brief Survey of Arts, Letters, and Philosophy in Greece, prior to the
+Legislation of Solon.
+
+
+I. Before concluding this introductory portion of my work, it will be
+necessary to take a brief survey of the intellectual state of Greece
+prior to that wonderful era of Athenian greatness which commenced with
+the laws of Solon. At this period the continental states of Greece
+had produced little in that literature which is now the heirloom of
+the world. Whether under her monarchy, or the oligarchical
+constitution that succeeded it, the depressed and languid genius of
+Athens had given no earnest of the triumphs she was afterward destined
+to accomplish. Her literature began, though it cannot be said to have
+ceased, with her democracy. The solitary and doubtful claim of the
+birth--but not the song--of Tyrtaeus (fl. B. C. 683), is the highest
+literary honour to which the earlier age of Attica can pretend; and
+many of the Dorian states--even Sparta itself--appear to have been
+more prolific in poets than the city of Aeschylus and Sophocles. But
+throughout all Greece, from the earliest time, was a general passion
+for poetry, however fugitive the poets. The poems of Homer are the
+most ancient of profane writings--but the poems of Homer themselves
+attest that they had many, nor ignoble, precursors. Not only do they
+attest it in their very excellence--not only in their reference to
+other poets--but in the general manner of life attributed to chiefs
+and heroes. The lyre and the song afford the favourite entertainment
+at the banquet [161]. And Achilles, in the interval of his indignant
+repose, exchanges the deadly sword for the "silver harp,"
+
+ "And sings
+ The immortal deeds of heroes and of kings." [162]
+
+II. Ample tradition and the internal evidence of the Homeric poems
+prove the Iliad at least to have been the composition of an Asiatic
+Greek; and though the time in which he flourished is yet warmly
+debated, the most plausible chronology places him about the time of
+the Ionic migration, or somewhat less than two hundred years after the
+Trojan war. The following lines in the speech of Juno in the fourth
+book of the Iliad are supposed by some [163] to allude to the return
+of the Heraclidae and the Dorian conquests in the Peloponnesus:--
+
+ "Three towns are Juno's on the Grecian plains,
+ More dear than all th' extended earth contains--
+ Mycenae, Argos, and the Spartan Wall--
+ These mayst thou raze, nor I forbid their fall;
+ 'Tis not in me the vengeance to remove;
+ The crime's sufficient that they share my love." [164]
+
+And it certainly does seem to me that in a reference so distinct to
+the three great Peloponnesian cities which the Dorians invaded and
+possessed, Homer makes as broad an allusion to the conquests of the
+Heraclidae, not only as would be consistent with the pride of an Ionic
+Greek in attesting the triumphs of the national Dorian foe, but as the
+nature of a theme cast in a distant period, and remarkably removed, in
+its general conduct, from the historical detail of subsequent events,
+would warrant to the poet [165]. And here I may observe, that if the
+date thus assigned to Homer be correct, the very subject of the Iliad
+might have been suggested by the consequences of the Dorian irruption.
+Homer relates,
+
+ "Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring
+ Of woes unnumbered."
+
+But Achilles is the native hero of that Thessalian district, which was
+the earliest settlement of the Dorian family. Agamemnon, whose
+injuries he resents, is the monarch of the great Achaean race, whose
+dynasty and dominion the Dorians are destined to overthrow. It is
+true that at the time of the Trojan war the Dorians had migrated from
+Phthiotis to Phocis--it is true that Achilles was not of Dorian
+extraction; still there would be an interest attached to the singular
+coincidence of place; as, though the English are no descendants from
+the Britons, we yet associate the British history with our own: hence
+it seems to me, though I believe the conjecture is new, that it is not
+the whole Trojan war, but that episode in the Trojan war (otherwise
+unimportant) illustrated by the wrath of Achilles, which awakens the
+inspiration of the poet. In fact, if under the exordium of the Iliad
+there lurk no typical signification, the exordium is scarce
+appropriate to the subject. For the wrath of Achilles did not bring
+upon the Greeks woes more mighty than the ordinary course of war would
+have destined them to endure. But if the Grecian audience (exiles,
+and the posterity of exiles), to whom, on Asiatic shores, Homer
+recited his poem, associated the hereditary feud of Achilles and
+Agamemnon with the strife between the ancient warriors of Phthiotis
+and Achaia; then, indeed, the opening lines assume a solemn and
+prophetic significance, and their effect must have been electrical
+upon a people ever disposed to trace in the mythi of their ancestry
+the legacies of a dark and ominous fatality, by which each present
+suffering was made the inevitable result of an immemorial cause. [166]
+
+III. The ancients unanimously believed the Iliad the production of a
+single poet; in recent times a contrary opinion has been started; and
+in Germany, at this moment, the most fashionable belief is, that that
+wonderful poem was but a collection of rhapsodies by various poets,
+arranged and organized by Pisistratus and the poets of his day; a
+theory a scholar may support, but which no poet could ever have
+invented! For this proposition the principal reasons alleged are
+these:--It is asserted as an "indisputable fact," "that the art of
+writing, and the use of manageable writing materials, were entirely,
+or all but entirely, unknown in Greece and its islands at the supposed
+date of the composition of the Iliad and Odyssey; that, if so, these
+poems could not have been committed to writing during the time of such
+their composition; that, in a question of comparative probabilities
+like this, it is a much grosser improbability that even the single
+Iliad, amounting, after all curtailments and expungings, to upwards of
+15,000 hexameter lines, should have been actually conceived and
+perfected in the brain of one man, with no other help but his own or
+others' memory, than that it should in fact be the result of the
+labours of several distinct authors; that if the Odyssey be counted,
+the improbability is doubled; that if we add, upon the authority of
+Thucydides and Aristotle, the Hymns and Margites, not to say the
+Batrachomyomachia, that which was improbable becomes morally
+impossible! that all that has been so often said as to the fact of as
+many verses or more having been committed to memory, is beside the
+point in question, which is not whether 15,000 or 30,000 lines may not
+be learned by heart from print or manuscript, but whether one man can
+originally compose a poem of that length, which, rightly or not, shall
+be thought to be a perfect model of symmetry and consistency of parts,
+without the aid of writing materials;--that, admitting the superior
+probability of such an achievement in a primitive age, we know nothing
+actually similar or analogous to it; and that it so transcends the
+common limits of intellectual power, as at the least to merit, with as
+much justice as the opposite opinion, the character of improbability."
+[167]
+
+And upon such arguments the identity of Homer is to be destroyed! Let
+us pursue them seriatim.
+
+1st. "The art and the use of manageable writing materials were
+entirely, or all but entirely, unknown in Greece and its islands at
+the supposed date of the composition of the Iliad and Odyssey."
+
+The whole argument against the unity of Homer rests upon this
+assertion; and yet this assertion it is impossible to prove! It is
+allowed, on the contrary, that alphabetical characters were introduced
+in Greece by Cadmus--nay, inscriptions believed by the best
+antiquaries to bear date before the Trojan war are found even among
+the Pelasgi of Italy. Dionysius informs us that the Pelasgi first
+introduced letters into Italy. But in answer to this, it is said that
+letters were used only for inscriptions on stone or wood, and not for
+the preservation of writings so voluminous. If this were the case, I
+scarcely see why the Greeks should have professed so grateful a
+reminiscence of the gift of Cadmus, the mere inscription of a few
+words on stone would not be so very popular or beneficial an
+invention! But the Phoenicians had constant intercourse with the
+Egyptians and Hebrews; among both those nations the art and materials
+of writing were known. The Phoenicians, far more enterprising than
+either, must have been fully acquainted with their means of written
+communication--and indeed we are assured that they were so. Now, if a
+Phoenician had imparted so much of the art to Greece as the knowledge
+of a written alphabet, is it probable that he would have suffered the
+communication to cease there! The Phoenicians were a commercial
+people--their colonies in Greece were for commercial purposes,--would
+they have wilfully and voluntarily neglected the most convenient mode
+of commercial correspondence?--importing just enough of the art to
+suffice for inscriptions of no use but to the natives, would they have
+stopped short precisely at that point when the art became useful to
+themselves? And in vindicating that most able people from so wilful a
+folly, have we no authority in history as well as common sense? We
+have the authority of Herodotus! When he informs us that the
+Phoenicians communicated letters to the Ionians, he adds, that by a
+very ancient custom the Ionians called their books diptherae, or
+skins, because, at a time when the plant of the bibles or papyrus was
+scarce [168], they used instead of it the skins of goats and sheep--a
+custom he himself witnessed among barbarous nations. Were such
+materials used only for inscriptions relative to a religious
+dedication, or a political compact? NO; for then, wood or stone--the
+temple or the pillar--would have been the material for the
+inscription,--they must, then, have been used for a more literary
+purpose; and verse was the first form of literature. I grant that
+prior, and indeed long subsequent to the time of Homer, the art of
+writing (as with us in the dark ages) would be very partially known--
+that in many parts of Greece, especially European Greece, it might
+scarcely ever be used but for brief inscriptions. But that is nothing
+to the purpose;--if known at all--to any Ionian trader--even to any
+neighbouring Asiatic--even to any Phoenician settler--there is every
+reason to suppose that Homer himself, or a contemporary disciple and
+reciter of his verses, would have learned both the art and the use of
+the materials which could best have ensured the fame of the poet, or
+assisted the memory of the reciter. And, though Plutarch in himself
+alone is no authority, he is not to be rejected as a corroborative
+testimony when he informs us that Lycurgus collected and transcribed
+the poems of Homer; and that writing was then known in Greece is
+evident by the very ordinance of Lycurgus that his laws should not be
+written. But Lycurgus is made by Apollodorus contemporary with Homer
+himself; and this belief appears, to receive the sanction of the most
+laborious and profound of modern chronologers [169]. I might adduce
+various other arguments in support of those I have already advanced;
+but I have said enough already to show that it is not an "indisputable
+fact" that Homer could not have been acquainted with writing
+materials; and that the whole battery erected to demolish the fame of
+the greatest of human geniuses has been built upon a most uncertain
+and unsteady foundation. It may be impossible to prove that Homer's
+poems were written, but it is equally impossible to prove that they
+were not--and if it were necessary for the identity of Homer that his
+poems should have been written, that necessity would have been one of
+the strongest proofs, not that Homer did not exist, but that writing
+did!
+
+But let us now suppose it proved that writing materials for a literary
+purpose were unknown, and examine the assertions built upon that
+hypothesis.
+
+2d. "That if these poems could not have been committed to writing
+during the time of their composition, it is a much grosser
+improbability that even the single Iliad, amounting, after all
+curtailments and expungings, to upwards of 15,000 hexameter lines,
+should have been actually conceived and perfected in the brain of one
+man, with no other help but his own or others' memory, than that it
+should, in fact, be the result of the labours of several distinct
+authors."
+
+I deny this altogether. "The improbability" might be "grosser" if the
+Iliad had been composed in a day! But if, as any man of common sense
+would acknowledge, it was composed in parts or "fyttes" of moderate
+length at a time, no extraordinary power of memory, or tension of
+thought, would have been required by the poet. Such parts, once
+recited and admired, became known and learned by a hundred
+professional bards, and were thus orally published, as it were, in
+detached sections, years perhaps before the work was completed. All
+that is said, therefore, about the difficulty of composing so long a
+poem without writing materials is but a jargon of words. Suppose no
+writing materials existed, yet, as soon as portions of a few hundred
+lines at a time were committed to the memory of other minstrels, the
+author would, in those minstrels, have living books whereby to refresh
+his memory, and could even, by their help, polish and amend what was
+already composed. It would not then have been necessary for the poet
+himself perfectly and verbally to remember the whole work. He had his
+tablets of reference in the hearts and lips of others, and even, if it
+were necessary that he himself should retain the entire composition,
+the constant habit of recital, the constant exercise of memory, would
+render such a task by no means impracticable or unprecedented. As for
+the unity of the poem, thus composed, it would have been, as it is,
+the unity, not of technical rules and pedantic criticism, but the
+unity of interest, character, imagery, and thought--a unity which
+required no written references to maintain it, but which was the
+essential quality of one master-mind, and ought to be, to all plain
+men, an irrefragable proof that one mind alone conceived and executed
+the work.
+
+IV. So much for the alleged improbability of one author for the
+Iliad. But with what face can these critics talk of "probability,"
+when, in order to get rid of one Homer, they ask us to believe in
+twenty! Can our wildest imagination form more monstrous hypotheses
+than these, viz.--that several poets, all possessed of the very
+highest order of genius (never before or since surpassed), lived in
+the same age--that that genius was so exactly similar in each, that we
+cannot detect in the thoughts, the imagery, the conception and
+treatment of character, human and divine, as manifest in each, the
+least variety in these wonderful minds--that out of the immense store
+of their national legends, they all agreed in selecting one subject,
+the war of Troy--that of that subject they all agreed in selecting
+only one portion of time, from the insult of Achilles to the
+redemption of the body of Hector--that their different mosaics so
+nicely fitted one into the other, that by the mere skill of an able
+editor they were joined into a whole, so symmetrical that the acutest
+ingenuity of ancient Greece could never discover the imposture [170]--
+and that, of all these poets, so miraculous in their genius, no single
+name, save that of Homer, was recorded by the general people to whom
+they sung, or claimed by the peculiar tribe whose literature they
+ought to have immortalized? If everything else were wanting to prove
+the unity of Homer, this prodigious extravagance of assumption, into
+which a denial of that unity has driven men of no common learning and
+intellect, would be sufficient to establish it.
+
+3d. "That if the Odyssey be counted, the improbability is doubled;
+that if we add, upon the authority of Thucydides and Aristotle, the
+Hymns and Margites, not to say the Batrachomyomachia, that which was
+improbable becomes morally impossible."
+
+Were these last-mentioned poems Homer's, there would yet be nothing
+improbable in the invention and composition of minor poems without
+writing materials; and the fact of his having composed one long poem,
+throws no difficulty in the way of his composing short ones. We have
+already seen that the author need not himself have remembered them all
+his life. But this argument is not honest, for the critics who have
+produced it agree in the same breath, when it suits their purpose,
+that the Hymns, etc., are not Homer's--and in this I concur with
+their, and the almost universal, opinion.
+
+The remaining part of the analysis of the hostile argument has already
+been disposed of in connexion with the first proposition.
+
+It now remains to say a few words upon the authorship of the Odyssey.
+
+V. The question, whether or not the two epics of the Iliad and
+Odyssey were the works of the same poet, is a very different one from
+that which we have just discussed. Distinct and separate, indeed, are
+the inquiries whether Greece might produce, at certain intervals of
+time, two great epic poets, selecting opposite subjects--and whether
+Greece produced a score or two of great poets, from whose desultory
+remains the mighty whole of the Iliad was arranged. Even the ancients
+of the Alexandrine school did not attribute the Odyssey to the author
+of the Iliad. The theme selected--the manners described--the
+mythological spirit--are all widely different in the two works, and
+one is evidently of more recent composition than the other. But, for
+my own part, I do not think it has been yet clearly established that
+all these acknowledged differences are incompatible with the same
+authorship. If the Iliad were written in youth, the travels of the
+poet, the change of mind produced by years and experience, the
+facility with which an ancient Greek changed or remodelled his pliant
+mythology, the rapidity with which (in the quick development of
+civilization in Greece) important changes in society and manners were
+wrought, might all concur in producing, from the mature age of the
+poet, a poem very different to that which he composed in youth. And
+the various undetected interpolations and alterations supposed to be
+foisted into the Odyssey may have originated such detailed points of
+difference as present the graver obstacles to this conjecture.
+Regarding the Iliad and Odyssey as wholes, they are so analogous in
+all the highest and rarest attributes of genius, that it is almost as
+impossible to imagine two Homers as it is two Shakspeares. Nor is
+there such a contrast between the Iliad and the Odyssey as there is
+between any one play of Shakspeare's and another [171]. Still, I
+should warn the general reader, that the utmost opposition that can
+reasonably and effectually be made to those who assign to different
+authors these several epics, limits itself rather to doubt than to
+denial.
+
+VI. It is needless to criticise these immortal masterpieces; not that
+criticism upon them is yet exhausted--not that a most useful, and even
+novel analysis of their merits and character may not yet be performed,
+nor that the most striking and brilliant proofs of the unity of each
+poem, separately considered, may not be established by one who shall,
+with fitting powers, undertake the delightful task of deducing the
+individuality of the poet from the individualizing character of his
+creations, and the peculiar attributes of his genius. With human
+works, as with the divine, the main proof of the unity of the author
+is in his fidelity to himself:--Not then as a superfluous, but as far
+too lengthened and episodical a labour, if worthily performed, do I
+forego at present a critical survey of the two poems popularly
+ascribed to Homer.
+
+The early genius of Greece devoted itself largely to subjects similar
+to those which employed the Homeric muse. At a later period--probably
+dating at the Alexandrian age--a vast collection of ancient poems was
+arranged into what is termed the "Epic Cycle;" these commenced at the
+Theogony, and concluded with the adventures of Telemachus. Though no
+longer extant, the Cyclic poems enjoyed considerable longevity. The
+greater part were composed between the years 775 B. C. and 566 B. C.
+They were extant in the time of Proclus, A. D. 450; the eldest,
+therefore, endured at least twelve, the most recent ten centuries;--
+save a few scattered lines, their titles alone remain, solitary
+tokens, yet floating above the dark oblivion which has swept over the
+epics of thirty bards! But, by the common assent, alike of the
+critics and the multitude, none of these approached the remote age,
+still less the transcendent merits, of the Homeric poems.
+
+VII. But, of earlier date than these disciples of Homer, is a poetry
+of a class fundamentally distinct from the Homeric, viz., the
+collection attributed to Hesiod. Of one of these only, a rustic and
+homely poem called "Works and Days," was Hesiod considered the author
+by his immediate countrymen (the Boeotians of Helicon); but the more
+general belief assigned to the fertility of his genius a variety of
+other works, some of which, if we may judge by the titles, aimed at a
+loftier vein [172]. And were he only the author of the "Works and
+Days"--a poem of very insignificant merit [173]--it would be scarcely
+possible to account for the high estimation in which Hesiod was held
+by the Greeks, often compared, and sometimes preferred, to the mighty
+and majestic Homer. We must either, then, consider Hesiod as the
+author of many writings superior perhaps to what we now possess, or,
+as is more plausibly and popularly supposed by modern critics, the
+representative and type, as it were, of a great school of national
+poetry. And it has been acutely suggested that, viewing the pastoral
+and lowly occupation he declares himself to pursue [174], combined
+with the subjects of his muse, and the place of his birth, we may
+believe the name of Hesiod to have been the representative of the
+poetry, not of the victor lords, but of the conquered people,
+expressive of their pursuits, and illustrative of their religion.
+This will account for the marked and marvellous difference between the
+martial and aristocratic strain of Homer and the peaceful and rustic
+verse of Hesiod [175], as well as for the distinction no less visible
+between the stirring mythology of the one and the thoughtful theogony
+of the other. If this hypothesis be accepted, the Hesiodic era might
+very probably have commenced before the Homeric (although what is now
+ascribed to Hesiod is evidently of later date than the Iliad and the
+Odyssey). And Hesiod is to Homer what the Pelasgic genius was to the
+Hellenic. [176]
+
+VIII. It will be obvious to all who study what I may call the natural
+history of poetry, that short hymns or songs must long have preceded
+the gigantic compositions of Homer. Linus and Thamyris, and, more
+disputably, Orpheus, are recorded to have been the precursors of
+Homer, though the poems ascribed to them (some of which still remain)
+were of much later date. Almost coeval with the Grecian gods were
+doubtless religious hymns in their honour. And the germe of the great
+lyrical poetry that we now possess was, in the rude chants of the
+warlike Dorians, to that Apollo who was no less the Inspirer than the
+Protector. The religion of the Greeks preserved and dignified the
+poetry it created; and the bard, "beloved by gods as men," became
+invested, as well with a sacred character as a popular fame. Beneath
+that cheerful and familiar mythology, even the comic genius sheltered
+its license, and found its subjects. Not only do the earliest of the
+comic dramatists seem to have sought in mythic fables their characters
+and plots, but, far before the DRAMA itself arose in any of the
+Grecian states, comic recital prepared the way for comic
+representation. In the eighth book of the Odyssey, the splendid
+Alcinous and the pious Ulysses listen with delight to the story, even
+broadly ludicrous, how Vulcan nets and exposes Venus and her war-god
+lover--
+
+ "All heaven beholds imprisoned as they lie,
+ And unextinguished laughter shakes the sky."
+
+And this singular and well-known effusion shows, not only how grave
+and reverent an example Epicharmus had for his own audacious
+portraiture of the infirmities of the Olympian family, but how
+immemorially and how deeply fixed in the popular spirit was the
+disposition to draw from the same source the elements of humour and of
+awe.
+
+But, however ancient the lyrical poetry of Greece, its masterpieces of
+art were composed long subsequent to the Homeric poems; and, no doubt,
+greatly influenced by acquaintance with those fountains of universal
+inspiration. I think it might be shown that lyrical poetry developed
+itself, in its more elaborate form, earliest in those places where the
+poems of Homer are most likely to have been familiarly known.
+
+The peculiar character of the Greek lyrical poetry can only be
+understood by remembering its inseparable connexion with music; and
+the general application of both, not only to religious but political
+purposes. The Dorian states regarded the lyre and the song as
+powerful instruments upon the education, the manners, and the national
+character of their citizens. With them these arts were watched and
+regulated by the law, and the poet acquired something of the social
+rank, and aimed at much of the moral design, of a statesman and a
+legislator: while, in the Ionian states, the wonderful stir and
+agitation, the changes and experiments in government, the rapid growth
+of luxury, commerce, and civilization, afforded to a poetry which was
+not, as with us, considered a detached, unsocial, and solitary art,
+but which was associated with every event of actual life--occasions of
+vast variety--themes of universal animation. The eloquence of poetry
+will always be more exciting in its appeals--the love for poetry
+always more diffused throughout a people, in proportion as it is less
+written than recited. How few, even at this day, will read a poem!--
+what crowds will listen to a song! Recitation transfers the stage of
+effect from the closet to the multitude--the public becomes an
+audience, the poet an orator. And when we remember that the poetry,
+thus created, imbodying the most vivid, popular, animated subjects of
+interest, was united with all the pomp of festival and show--all the
+grandest, the most elaborate, and artful effects of music--we may
+understand why the true genius of lyrical composition has passed for
+ever away from the modern world.
+
+As early as between 708 and 665 B. C., Archilochus brought to
+perfection a poetry worthy of loftier passions than those which mostly
+animated his headstrong and angry genius. In 625 (thirty-one years
+before the legislation of Solon) flourished Arion, the Lesbian, who,
+at Corinth, carried, to extraordinary perfection the heroic adaptation
+of song to choral music. In 611 flourished the Sicilian, Stersichorus
+--no unworthy rival of Arion; while simultaneously, in strains less
+national and Grecian, and more resembling the inspiration of modern
+minstrels, Alcaeus vented his burning and bitter spirit;--and Sappho
+(whose chaste and tender muse it was reserved for the chivalry of a
+northern student, five-and-twenty centuries after the hand was cold
+and the tongue was mute, to vindicate from the longest-continued
+calumny that genius ever endured) [177] gave to the most ardent of
+human passions the most delicate colouring of female sentiment.
+Perhaps, of all that Greece has bequeathed to us, nothing is so
+perfect in its concentration of real feeling as the fragments of
+Sappho. In one poem of a few lines--nor that, alas! transmitted to us
+complete--she has given a picture of the effect of love upon one who
+loves, to which volumes of the most eloquent description could
+scarcely add a single new touch of natural pathos--so subtle is it,
+yet so simple. I cannot pass over in silence the fragments of
+Mimnermus (fl. B. C. 630)--they seem of an order so little akin to the
+usual character of Grecian poetry; there is in them a thoughtful
+though gloomy sadness, that belongs rather to the deep northern
+imagination than the brilliant fancies of the west; their melancholy
+is mixed with something half intellectual--half voluptuous--indicative
+of the mournful but interesting wisdom of satiety. Mimnermus is a
+principal model of the Latin elegiac writers--and Propertius compares
+his love verses with those of Homer. Mimnermus did not invent the
+elegiac form (for it was first applied to warlike inspiration by
+another Ionian poet, Callinus); but he seems the founder of what we
+now call the elegiac spirit in its association of the sentiment of
+melancholy with the passion of love.
+
+IX. While such was the state of POETRY in Greece--torpid in the
+Ionian Athens, but already prodigal in her kindred states of Asia and
+the Isles; gravely honoured, rather than produced, in Sparta;--
+splendidly welcomed, rather than home-born, in Corinth;--the Asiatic
+colonies must also claim the honour of the advance of the sister arts.
+But in architecture the Dorian states of European Greece, Sicyon,
+Aegina, and the luxurious Corinth, were no unworthy competitors with
+Ionia.
+
+In the heroic times, the Homeric poems, especially the Odyssey, attest
+the refinement and skill to which many of the imitative arts of
+Grecian civilization had attained. In embroidery, the high-born
+occupation of Helen ad Penelope, were attempted the most complex and
+difficult designs; and it is hard to suppose that these subjects could
+have been wrought upon garments with sufficient fidelity to warrant
+the praise of a poet who evidently wrote from experience of what he
+had seen, if the art of DRAWING had not been also carried to some
+excellence--although to PAINTING itself the poet makes none but
+dubious and obscure allusions. Still, if, on the one hand [178], in
+embroidery, and upon arms (as the shield of Achilles), delineation in
+its more complex and minute form was attempted,--and if, on the other
+hand, the use of colours was known (which it was, as applied not only
+to garments but to ivory), it could not have been long before two such
+kindred elements of the same art were united. Although it is
+contended by many that rude stones or beams were the earliest objects
+of Grecian worship, and though it is certain that in several places
+such emblems of the Deity preceded the worship of images, yet to the
+superstitious art of the rude Pelasgi in their earliest age, uncouth
+and half-formed statues of Hermes are attributed, and the idol is
+commemorated by traditions almost as antique as those which attest the
+sanctity of the fetiche [179]. In the Homeric age, SCULPTURE in
+metals, and on a large scale, was certainly known. By the door of
+Alcinous, the king of an island in the Ionian Sea, stand rows of dogs
+in gold and silver--in his hall, upon pedestals, are golden statues of
+boys holding torches; and that such sculpture was even then dedicated
+to the gods is apparent by a well-known passage in the earlier poem of
+the Iliad; which represents Theano, the Trojan priestess of Minerva,
+placing the offering of Hecuba upon the knees of the statue of the
+goddess. How far, however, such statues could be called works of art,
+or how far they were wrought by native Greeks, it is impossible to
+determine [180]. Certain it is that the memorable and gigantic
+advance in the art of SCULPTURE was not made till about the 50th
+Olympiad (B. C. 580), when Dipaenus and Scyllis first obtained
+celebrity in works in marble (wood and metals were the earliest
+materials of sculpture). The great improvements in the art seem to
+have been coeval with the substitution of the naked for the draped
+figure. Beauty, and ease, and grace, and power, were the result of
+the anatomical study of the human form. ARCHITECTURE has bequeathed
+to us, in the Pelasgic and Cyclopean remains, sufficient to indicate
+the massive strength it early acquired in parts of Greece. In the
+Homeric times, the intercourse with Asia had already given something
+of lightness to the elder forms. Columns are constantly introduced
+into the palaces of the chiefs, profuse metallic ornaments decorate
+the walls; and the Homeric palaces, with their cornices gayly
+inwrought with blue--their pillars of silver on bases of brass, rising
+amid vines and fruit-trees,--even allowing for all the exaggerations
+of the poet,--dazzle the imagination with much of the gaudiness and
+glitter of an oriental city [181]. At this period Athens receives
+from Homer the epithet of "broad-streeted:" and it is by no means
+improbable that the city of the Attic king might have presented to a
+traveller, in the time of Homer, a more pleasing general appearance
+than in its age of fame, when, after the Persian devastations, its
+stately temples rose above narrow and irregular streets, and the
+jealous effects of democracy forbade to the mansions of individual
+nobles that striking pre-eminence over the houses of the commonalty
+which would naturally mark the distinction of wealth and rank, in a
+monarchical, or even an oligarchical government.
+
+X. About the time on which we now enter, the extensive commerce and
+free institutions of the Ionian colonies had carried all the arts just
+referred to far beyond the Homeric time. And, in addition to the
+activity and development of the intellect in all its faculties which
+progressed with the extensive trade and colonization of Miletus
+(operating upon the sensitive, inquiring, and poetical temperament of
+the Ionian population), a singular event, which suddenly opened to
+Greece familiar intercourse with the arts and lore of Egypt, gave
+considerable impetus to the whole Grecian MIND.
+
+In our previous brief survey of the state of the Oriental world, we
+have seen that Egypt, having been rent into twelve principalities, had
+been again united under a single monarch. The ambitious and fortunate
+Psammetichus was enabled, by the swords of some Ionian and Carian
+adventurers (who, bound on a voyage of plunder, had been driven upon
+the Egyptian shores), not only to regain his own dominion, from which
+he had been expelled by the jealousy of his comrades, but to acquire
+the sole sovereignty of Egypt (B. C. 670). In gratitude for their
+services, Psammetichus conferred upon his wild allies certain lands at
+the Pelusian mouth of the Nile, and obliged some Egyptian children to
+learn the Grecian language;--from these children descended a class of
+interpreters, that long afterward established the facilities of
+familiar intercourse between Greece and Egypt. Whatever, before that
+time, might have been the migrations of Egyptians into Greece, these
+were the first Greeks whom the Egyptians received among themselves.
+Thence poured into Greece, in one full and continuous stream, the
+Egyptian influences, hitherto partial and unfrequent. [182]
+
+In the same reign, according to Strabo, the Asiatic Greeks obtained a
+settlement at Naucratis, the ancient emporium of Egypt; and the
+communication, once begun, rapidly increased, until in the subsequent
+time of Amasis (B. C. 569) we find the Ionians, the Dorians, the
+Aeolians of Asia, and even the people of Aegina and Samos [183],
+building temples and offering worship amid the jealous and mystic
+priestcrafts of the Nile. This familiar and advantageous intercourse
+with a people whom the Greeks themselves considered the wisest on the
+earth, exercised speedy and powerful effect upon their religion and
+their art. In the first it operated immediately upon their modes of
+divination and their mystic rites--in the last, the influence was less
+direct. It is true that they probably learned from the Egyptians many
+technical rules in painting and in sculpture; they learned how to cut
+the marble and to blend the colours, but their own genius taught them
+how to animate the block and vivify the image. We have seen already,
+that before this event, art had attained to a certain eminence among
+the Greeks--fortunately, therefore, what they now acquired was not the
+foundation of their lore. Grafted on a Grecian stock, every shoot
+bore Grecian fruit: and what was borrowed from mechanism was
+reproduced in beauty [184]. As with the arts, so with the SCIENCES;
+we have reason to doubt whether the Egyptian sages, whose minds were
+swathed and bandaged in the cerements of hereditary rules, never to
+swell out of the slavery of castes, had any very sound and enlightened
+philosophy to communicate: their wisdom was probably exaggerated by
+the lively and credulous Greeks, awed by the mysticism of the priests,
+the grandeur of the cities, the very rigidity, so novel to them, of
+imposing and antique custom. What, then, was the real benefit of the
+intercourse? Not so much in satisfying as in arousing and stimulating
+the curiosity of knowledge. Egypt, to the Greeks, was as America to
+Europe--the Egyptians taught them little, but Egypt much. And that
+what the Egyptians did directly communicate was rather the material
+for improvement than the improvement itself, this one gift is an
+individual example and a general type;--the Egyptians imparted to the
+Greeks the use of the papyrus--the most easy and popular material for
+writing; we are thus indebted to Egypt for a contrivance that has done
+much to preserve to us--much, perhaps, to create for us--a Plato and
+an Aristotle; but for the thoughts of Aristotle and Plato we are
+indebted to Greece alone:--the material Egyptian--the manufacture
+Greek.
+
+XI. The use of the papyrus had undoubtedly much effect upon the
+formation of prose composition in Greece, but it was by no means an
+instantaneous one. At the period on which we now enter (about B. C.
+600), the first recorded prose Grecian writer had not composed his
+works. The wide interval between prose in its commencement and poetry
+in its perfection is peculiarly Grecian; many causes conspired to
+produce it, but the principal one was, that works, if written, being
+not the less composed to be recited, not read--were composed to
+interest and delight, rather than formally to instruct. Poetry was,
+therefore, so obviously the best means to secure the end of the
+author, that we cannot wonder to find that channel of appeal
+universally chosen; the facility with which the language formed itself
+into verse, and the license that appears to have been granted to the
+gravest to assume a poetical diction without attempting the poetical
+spirit, allowed even legislators and moralists to promulgate precepts
+and sentences in the rhythm of a Homer and a Hesiod. And since laws
+were not written before the time of Draco, it was doubly necessary
+that they should be cast in that fashion by which words are most
+durably impressed on the memory of the multitude. Even on Solon's
+first appearance in public life, when he inspires the Athenians to
+prosecute the war with Megara, he addresses the passions of the crowd,
+not by an oration, but a poem; and in a subsequent period, when prose
+composition had become familiar, it was still in verse that Hipparchus
+communicated his moral apothegms. The origin of prose in Greece is,
+therefore, doubly interesting as an epoch, not only in the
+intellectual, but also in the social state. It is clear that it would
+not commence until a reading public was created; and until, amid the
+poetical many, had sprung up the grave and studious few. Accordingly,
+philosophy, orally delivered, preceded prose composition--and Thales
+taught before Pherecydes wrote [185]. To the superficial it may seem
+surprising that literature, as distinct from poetry, should commence
+with the most subtle and laborious direction of the human intellect:
+yet so it was, not only in Greece, but almost universally. In nearly
+all countries, speculative conjecture or inquiry is the first
+successor to poetry. In India, in China, in the East, some dim
+philosophy is the characteristic of the earliest works--sometimes
+inculcating maxims of morality--sometimes allegorically shadowing
+forth, sometimes even plainly expressing, the opinions of the author
+on the mysteries of life--of nature--of the creation. Even with the
+moderns, the dawn of letters broke on the torpor of the dark ages of
+the North in speculative disquisition; the Arabian and the
+Aristotelian subtleties engaged the attention of the earliest
+cultivators of modern prose (as separated from poetic fiction), and
+the first instinct of the awakened reason was to grope through the
+misty twilight after TRUTH. Philosophy precedes even history; men
+were desirous of solving the enigmas of the world, before they
+disentangled from tradition the chronicles of its former habitants.
+
+If we examine the ways of an infant we shall cease to wonder at those
+of an infant civilization. Long before we can engage the curiosity of
+the child in the History of England--long before we can induce him to
+listen with pleasure to our stories even of Poictiers and Cressy--and
+(a fortiori) long before he can be taught an interest in Magna Charta
+and the Bill of Rights, he will of his own accord question us of the
+phenomena of nature--inquire how he himself came into the world--
+delight to learn something of the God we tell him to adore--and find
+in the rainbow and the thunder, in the meteor and the star, a thousand
+subjects of eager curiosity and reverent wonder. The why perpetually
+torments him;--every child is born a philosopher!--the child is the
+analogy of a people yet in childhood. [186]
+
+XII. It may follow as a corollary from this problem, that the Greeks
+of themselves arrived at the stage of philosophical inquiry without
+any very important and direct assistance from the lore of Egypt and
+the East. That lore, indeed, awakened the desire, but it did not
+guide the spirit of speculative research. And the main cause why
+philosophy at once assumed with the Greeks a character distinct from
+that of the Oriental world, I have already intimated [187], in the
+absence of a segregated and privileged religious caste. Philosophy
+thus fell into the hands of sages, not of priests. And whatever the
+Ionian states (the cradle of Grecian wisdom) received from Egypt or
+the East, they received to reproduce in new and luxuriant prodigality.
+The Ionian sages took from an elder wisdom not dogmas never to be
+questioned, but suggestions carefully to be examined. It thus
+fortunately happened that the deeper and maturer philosophy of Greece
+proper had a kind of intermedium between the systems of other nations
+and its own. The Eastern knowledge was borne to Europe through the
+Greek channels of Asiatic colonies, and became Hellenized as it
+passed. Thus, what was a certainty in the East, became a proposition
+in Ionia, and ultimately a doubt, at Athens. In Greece, indeed, as
+everywhere, religion was connected with the first researches of
+philosophy. From the fear of the gods, to question of the nature of
+the gods, is an easy transition. The abundance and variety of popular
+superstitions served but to stimulate curiosity as to their origin;
+and since in Egypt the sole philosophers were the priests, a Greek
+could scarcely converse with an Egyptian on the articles of his
+religion without discussing also the principles of his philosophy.
+Whatever opinions the Greek might then form and promulge, being
+sheltered beneath no jealous and prescriptive priestcraft, all had
+unfettered right to canvass and dispute them, till by little and
+little discussion ripened into science.
+
+The distinction, in fine, between the Greeks and their contemporaries
+was this: if they were not the only people that philosophized, they
+were the only people that said whatever they pleased about philosophy.
+Their very plagiarism from the philosophy of other creeds was
+fortunate, inasmuch as it presented nothing hostile to the national
+superstition. Had they disputed about the nature of Jupiter, or the
+existence of Apollo, they might have been persecuted, but they could
+start at once into disquisitions upon the eternity of matter, or the
+providence of a pervading mind.
+
+XIII. This spirit of innovation and discussion, which made the
+characteristic of the Greeks, is noted by Diodorus. "Unlike the
+Chaldaeans," he observes, "with whom philosophy is delivered from sire
+to son, and all other employment rejected by its cultivators, the
+Greeks come late to the science--take it up for a short time--desert
+it for a more active means of subsistence--and the few who surrender
+themselves wholly to it practise for gain, innovate the most important
+doctrines, pay no reverence to those that went before, create new
+sects, establish new theorems, and, by perpetual contradictions,
+entail perpetual doubts." Those contradictions and those doubts made
+precisely the reason why the Greeks became the tutors of the world!
+
+There is another characteristic of the Greeks indicated by this remark
+of Diodorus. Their early philosophers, not being exempted from other
+employments, were not the mere dreamers of the closet and the cell.
+They were active, practical, stirring men of the world. They were
+politicians and moralists as well as philosophers. The practical
+pervaded the ideal, and was, in fact, the salt that preserved it from
+decay. Thus legislation and science sprung simultaneously into life,
+and the age of Solon is the age of Thales.
+
+XIV. Of the seven wise men (if we accept that number) who flourished
+about the same period, six were rulers and statesmen. They were
+eminent, not as physical, but as moral, philosophers; and their wisdom
+was in their maxims and apothegms. They resembled in much the wary
+and sagacious tyrants of Italy in the middle ages--masters of men's
+actions by becoming readers of their minds. Of these seven, Periander
+of Corinth (began to reign B. C. 625, died B. C. 585) and Cleobulus of
+Lindus (fl. B. C. 586), tyrants in their lives, and cruel in their
+actions, were, it is said, disowned by the remaining five [188]. But
+goodness is not the necessary consequence of intellect, and, despite
+their vices, these princes deserved the epithet of wise. Of Cleobulus
+we know less than of Periander; but both governed with prosperity, and
+died in old age. If we except Pisistratus, Periander was the greatest
+artist of all that able and profound fraternity, who, under the name
+of tyrants, concentred the energies of their several states, and
+prepared the democracies by which they were succeeded. Periander's
+reputed maxims are at variance with his practice; they breathe a
+spirit of freedom and a love of virtue which may render us suspicious
+of their authenticity--the more so as they are also attributed to
+others. Nevertheless, the inconsistency would be natural, for reason
+makes our opinions, and circumstance shapes our actions. "A democracy
+is better than a tyranny," is an aphorism imputed to Periander: but
+when asked why he continued tyrant, he answered, "Because it is
+dangerous willingly to resist, or unwillingly to be deposed." His
+principles were republican, his position made him a tyrant. He is
+said to have fallen into extreme dejection in his old age; perhaps
+because his tastes and his intellect were at war with his life.
+Chilo, the Lacedaemonian ephor, is placed also among the seven. His
+maxims are singularly Dorian--they breathe reverence of the dead and
+suspicion of the living. "Love," he said (if we may take the
+authority of Aulus Gellius, fl. B. C. 586), "as if you might hereafter
+hate, and hate as if you might hereafter love." Another favourite
+sentence of his was, "to a surety loss is at hand." [189] A third,
+"we try gold by the touchstone. Gold is the touchstone of the mind."
+Bias, of Priene in Ionia, is quoted, in Herodotus, as the author of an
+advice to the Ionians to quit their country, and found a common city
+in Sardinia (B. C. 586). He seems to have taken an active part in all
+civil affairs. His reputed maxims are plain and homely--the
+elementary principles of morals. Mitylene in Lesbos boasted the
+celebrated Pittacus (began to govern B. C. 589, resigned 579, died
+569). He rose to the tyranny of the government by the free voice of
+the people; enjoyed it ten years, and voluntarily resigned it, as
+having only borne the dignity while the state required the direction
+of a single leader. It was a maxim with him, for which he is reproved
+by Plato, "That to be good is hard." His favourite precept was, "Know
+occasion:" and this he amplified in another (if rightly attributed to
+him), "To foresee and prevent dangers is the province of the wise--to
+direct them when they come, of the brave."
+
+XV. Of Solon, the greatest of the seven, I shall hereafter speak at
+length. I pass now to Thales (born B. C. 639);--the founder of
+philosophy, in its scientific sense--the speculative in
+contradistinction to the moral: Although an ardent republican, Thales
+alone, of the seven sages, appears to have led a private and studious
+life. He travelled, into Crete, Asia, and at a later period into
+Egypt. According to Laertius, Egypt taught him geometry. He is
+supposed to have derived his astrological notions from Phoenicia. But
+this he might easily have done without visiting the Phoenician states.
+Returning to Miletus, he obtained his title of Wise [190]. Much
+learning has been exhausted upon his doctrines to very little purpose.
+They were of small value, save as they led to the most valuable of all
+philosophies--that of experiment. They were not new probably even in
+Greece [191], and of their utility the following brief sketch will
+enable the reader to judge for himself.
+
+He maintained that water, or rather humidity, was the origin of all
+things, though he allowed mind or intellect (nous) to be the impelling
+principle. And one of his arguments in favour of humidity, as
+rendered to us by Plutarch and Stobaeus, is pretty nearly as follows:
+--"Because fire, even in the sun and the stars, is nourished by
+vapours proceeding from humidity,--and therefore the whole world
+consists of the same." Of the world, he supposed the whole to be
+animated by, and full of, the Divinity--its Creator--that in it was no
+vacuum--that matter was fluid and variable. [192]
+
+He maintained the stars and sun to be earthly, and the moon of the
+same nature as the sun, but illumined by it. Somewhat more valuable
+would appear to have been his geometrical science, could we with
+accuracy attribute to Thales many problems claimed also, and more
+probably, by Pythagoras and later reasoners. He is asserted to have
+measured the pyramids by their shadows. He cultivated astronomy and
+astrology; and Laertius declares him to have been the first Greek that
+foretold eclipses. The yet higher distinction has been claimed for
+Thales of having introduced among his countrymen the doctrine of the
+immortality of the soul. But this sublime truth, though connected
+with no theory of future rewards and punishments, was received in
+Greece long before his time. Perhaps, however, as the expressions of
+Cicero indicate, Thales might be the first who attempted to give
+reasons for what was believed. His reasons were, nevertheless,
+sufficiently crude and puerile; and having declared it the property of
+the soul to move itself, and other things, he was forced to give a
+soul to the loadstone, because it moved iron!
+
+These fantastic doctrines examined, and his geometrical or
+astronomical discoveries dubious, it may be asked, what did Thales
+effect for philosophy? Chiefly this: he gave reasons for opinions--he
+aroused the dormant spirit of inquiry--he did for truths what the
+legislators of his age did for the people--left them active and
+stirring to free and vigorous competition. He took Wisdom out of
+despotism, and placed her in a republic--he was in harmony with the
+great principle of his age, which was investigation, and not
+tradition; and thus he became the first example of that great truth--
+that to think freely is the first step to thinking well. It
+fortunately happened, too, that his moral theories, however
+inadequately argued upon, were noble and exalting. He contended for
+the providence of a God, as well as for the immortality of man. He
+asserted vice to be the most hateful, virtue the most profitable of
+all things [193]. He waged war on that vulgar tenacity of life which
+is the enemy to all that is most spiritual and most enterprising in
+our natures, and maintained that between life and death there is no
+difference--the fitting deduction from a belief in the continuous
+existence of the soul [194]. His especial maxim was the celebrated
+precept, "Know thyself." His influence was vigorous and immediate.
+How far he created philosophy may be doubtful, but he created
+philosophers. From the prolific intelligence which his fame and
+researches called into being, sprang a new race of thoughts, which
+continued in unbroken succession until they begat descendants
+illustrious and immortal. Without the hardy errors of Thales,
+Socrates might have spent his life in spoiling marble, Plato might
+have been only a tenth-rate poet, and Aristotle an intriguing
+pedagogue.
+
+XVI. With this I close my introductory chapters, and proceed from
+dissertation into history;--pleased that our general survey of Greece
+should conclude with an acknowledgment of our obligations to the
+Ionian colonies. Soon, from the contemplation of those enchanting
+climes; of the extended commerce and the brilliant genius of the
+people--the birthplace of the epic and the lyric muse, the first home
+of history, of philosophy, of art;--soon, from our survey of the rise
+and splendour of the Asiatic Ionians, we turn to the agony of their
+struggles--the catastrophe of their fall. Those wonderful children of
+Greece had something kindred with the precocious intellect that is
+often the hectic symptom of premature decline. Originating, advancing
+nearly all which the imagination or the reason can produce, while yet
+in that social youth which promised a long and a yet more glorious
+existence--while even their great parent herself had scarcely emerged
+from the long pupilage of nations, they fell into the feebleness of
+age! Amid the vital struggles, followed by the palsied and prostrate
+exhaustion of her Ionian children, the majestic Athens suddenly arose
+from the obscurity of the past to an empire that can never perish,
+until heroism shall cease to warm, poetry to delight, and wisdom to
+instruct the future.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Athens: Its Rise and Fall
+by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATHENS: ITS RISE AND FALL, ***
+
+***** This file should be named 6151.txt or 6151.zip *****
+
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