 Chapter 2, Part 3 of A History of Grease to the Death of Alexander the Great, Volume 1. Chapter 2, Part 3. Colonies in the Western Mediterranean. The earliest mention of Sicilian and Italian regions in literature is to be found in some later passages of the Odyssey, which should perhaps be referred to the 8th century. There we meet with the Sicils and with the island of Sicania, while Timeser, where Greek traders could buy Tuscan copper, has the distinction of being the first Italian place mentioned by name in a literary record. By the end of the 7th century Greek states stood thick on the east coast of Sicily and round the sweep of the Tarentine Gulf. These colonies naturally fall into three groups. One, the Ubean, which were both in Sicily and in Italy. Two, the Achaean, which were all together on Italian soil. Three, the Dorian, which were, with few exceptions, in Sicily. The chronology is uncertain, and we cannot say whether the island or the mainland was first colonized. The oldest stories of the adventures of Odysseus were laid, as we have seen, in the half-explored regions of the Black Sea. Nothing shows more impressively the life of this poetry and the power it had won over the hearts of the Greek folks than the fact that when the navigation of the Italian and Sicilian seas began, these adventures were transferred from the east to the west. And in the further growth of this cycle of poems, a new mythical geography was adopted. At a time when the Greeks knew so little of Italy that the southern promontories could be designated as sacred islands, footnote, the expression is preserved in the catalogue of the Hesiodic Theogony. End of footnote. The Straits of Massana were identified with Silla and Caribdis. Lippera became the island of Eolus. The home of the Cyclopes was found in the fiery mount of Etna. Then Sherea, the Isle of the Pheasians, was fancied to be Corsaira. An entrance to the underworld was placed at Cumi, and the rocks of the Sirens were sought near Sorento. And not only did the first glimpses of western geography affect the transmutation of the Odyssey into its final shape, but the Odyssey reacted on the geography of the west. That the promontory of Cersei in Latin territory bears the name of the sorceress of Colchis is an evidence of the spell of Homeric song. Odysseus was not the only hero who was born westward with Greek ships in the eighth century. Cretan, Minos, and Deedalus, for example, had links with Sicily. Above all, the earliest navigation of the western seas was ascribed to Heracles, who reached the limits of the land of the setting sun and stood on the ledge of the world looking out upon the stream of Oceanus. From him the opposite cliffs, which formed the gate of the Mediterranean, were called the Pillars of Heracles. The earliest colony founded by Greek sailors in the western seas was said to have been Cymie on the coast of Campania. Tradition assigned to it an origin before 1000 BC, a date which modern criticism has called in question. But even if we place its origin much later, the tradition that it was the earliest Greek city founded in the Middle Peninsula of the Mediterranean may possibly be true. It was at all events one of the oldest, and it had an unique position. Calces, Eretria, and Cymie, a town on the eastern coast of Euboea, which at that time had some eminence, but afterwards sank into the obscurity of a village, joined together and enlisted for their expedition some Grians who dwelled on the opposite mainland in the neighborhood of Tanagra. The colonizers settled first on the island of Pithecusi, and soon succeeded in establishing themselves on a rocky height which rises above the sea just where the Italian coast is about to turn sharply eastward to encircle the Bay of Naples. The site was happily chosen. It was a strong post, and though there was no harbor the strangers could haul up their ships on the stretch of sand below. Subsequently they occupied the harbor which was just inside the promontory and established there the town of Dicearchia which afterwards became Puteoli. Far the east they founded Naples, the new city. The people in whose midst this outpost of Greek civilization was planted were the Opicans, one of the chief branches of the Italic race. The colonists were eminently successful in their intercourse with the natives, and the solitary position of Cymie in these regions, for no Greek settlement could be made northward on account of the great Etruscan power, and there was no rival southward until the later plantation of Posidonia made her influence both wide and noiseless. Her external history is uneventful. There are no striking wars or struggles to record, but the work she did holds an important and definite place in the history of European civilization. To the Ubeans of Cymie we may say that we owe the alphabet which we use today, for it was from them that the Latins learned to write. The Etruscans also got their alphabet independently from the same masters, and having modified it in certain ways to suit themselves, passed it on to the Oskans and Umbrians. Again the Cymians introduced the neighbouring Italian peoples to a knowledge of the Greek gods and Greek religion. Heracles, Apollo, Castor, and Polyduces became such familiar names in Italy that they came to be regarded as original Italian deities. The oracles of the Cymians, Sibyl, Profites of Apollo, were believed to contain the destinies of Rome. To Cymie too, Western Europe probably owes the name by which she calls Hellas and the Hellenes. The Greeks, when they first came into contact with Latins, had no common name. Hellenes, the name which afterwards united them, was as yet merely associated with a particular tribe. It was only natural that strangers should extend the name of the first Greeks with whom they came in contact to others whom they fell in with later, and so to all Greeks whatsoever. But the curious circumstance is that the settlers of Cymie were known not by the name of Calces or Eretria or Cymie itself, but by that of Grya. Grya was the term which the Latins and their fellows applied to the colonists, and the name Greeki is a derivative of a usual type from Grya. It was darkly some trivial accident which ruled that we today call Hellas Greece, instead of knowing it by some name derived from Cymie, Eretria or Calces. The West has got its Greece from an obscure district in Biosia. Greece itself got its Hellas from a small territory in Thessaly. This was accidental, but it was no accident that Western Europe calls Greece by a name connected with that city in which Greeks first came into touch with the people who were destined to civilize Western Europe and rule it for centuries. The next settlement of the Euboean Greeks was on Sicilian, not Italian, ground. The island of Sicily is geographically a continuation of Italy, just as the Peloponnesus is a continuation of the Great Eastern Peninsula, but its historical importance depends much more on another geographical fact. It is the center of the Mediterranean. It parts the eastern from the western waters. It has been thus marked out by nature as a meeting place of nations and the struggle between European and Asiatic peoples, which has been called the eternal question, has been partly fought out on Sicilian soil. There has been in historical times no native Sicilian power. The greatness of the island was due to colonization, not migration, from other lands. Lying as a connecting link between Europe and Africa, it attracted settlers from both sides, while its close proximity to Italy always rendered it an object of acquisition to those who successively ruled in that peninsula. The earliest inhabitants of the island were the Sicians. They believed themselves to be autochthonous, and we have no record at what time they entered the island, or whence they came, or to what race they belonged. The nature of things makes it probable that they entered from Italy. From them the island was called Sicania. The next commas were the Sicils, of whom we can speak with more certainty. As we find Sicils in the toe of Italy, we know that tradition correctly described them as settlers from the Italian peninsula, and there is some slight evidence to show that they spoke the same language as that group of Italic peoples to which the Latins belonged. The likeness of the name Sicil and Sicken has naturally led to the view that these two folks were akin in race and language. But likeness of names is deceptive, and it is a remarkable fact that the Greeks, who were only too prone to build up theories on resemblances of words, always carefully distinguished the Sicken from the Sicil as ethnically different. Still a connection is possible, if we suppose that the Sicils were Sicken's who remaining behind in Italy had in the course of centuries become italicised by intercourse with the Latin and Kindred peoples, and then emigrating in their turn to the island met without recognition the brethren from whom they had parted in the remote past. But all this is uncertain. The Sicils, however, rested from the Sicken's the eastern half of the island, which was thus cut up into two countries, Sicania in the west, Sicilia in the east. In the odyssey we read of Sicania, perhaps the Greeks of Sime knew it by this name. At a very early time Sicania was invaded by a mysterious people named Elimians, variously said to have come from Italy and from the north of Asia Minor. The probability is that they were of Iberian race. They occupied a small territory in the northwest of the island. These were the three peoples who inhabited this miniature continent soon about to become the battlefield of Greek and Phoenician. The Sicils were the most numerous and most important. The only Sicken town of any significance in historical times was Haikara on the northwest promontory. Minoa, originally Sicken on the south coast, became Greek. Camicus, at some distance inland in the same region, was in early days an important stronghold. The Elimian settlements at Sugesta and Erics became of far greater importance than the Sicken. The eastern half of the island, the original Sicilia, was thickly set with Sicil fortresses from Cephalidian, the modern Cefalu at the center of the northern coast, to Motica, an inland town in the southeastern corner. Among the most famous were Agerium, Centiorepa, Morgantina and above all Henna. At an early age merchants from Phoenicia planted factories on the coasts of the island. At first they did not make any settlements of a permanent kind, any that could be called cities. Sicily was to them only a house to call at lying directly on their way to the land of the farthest west, when they went forth to win the golden treasures of Tarshish and planted their earliest colony, Gades, outside the straits which divide Europe from Africa. Their next colonies were on the coast of Africa over against Sicily and this settlement had a decisive influence on the destinies of the island. The Phoenician trading stations on the east coast of Sicily were probably outposts of old Phoenicia but some at least of those in the west seem to have come from the new and nearer Phoenicia. The settlements of Hippo and Utica, older than Carthage, were probably the parents of the more abiding Phoenician settlements in Sicily. Footnote. There is no clear evidence for the date of the Phoenician colonies in western Sicily. It might be argued that they were later than the Greek colonies on the ground that the Phoenicians, if their colonization had begun earlier than Greek colonization, would have occupied the excellent sites which the Greeks seized. But this argument is not conclusive, for one thing the Sicils had to be reckoned with. It was probably an easier task to gain a footing on sick and soil and the Phoenicians may have tried and failed on Sicil soil where the Greeks succeeded. Or again if Phoenician city settlements grew out of mere factories the Greeks may have abolished such factories which might if they had been left to themselves have grown into cities. End of footnote. In the east of the island the Phoenicians had no secure foothold. They were not able to dispossess the Sicil natives or to make a home among them. They appeared purely in the guise of traders. Hence when the Greeks came and seriously set to work to plant true cities the Phoenicians disappeared and left few traces to show that they had ever been there. Sicilian like Italian history really opens with the coming of the Greeks. They came under the guidance of Calces and the auspices of Apollo. It was naturally on the east coast which faces Greece that the first Greek settlement was made and it is to be noticed that of the coasts of Sicily the east is that which most resembles in character the coastline of Greece. The site which was chosen by the Calcidians and the Ionians of Naxos who accompanied them was not a striking one. A little tongue of land north of Mount Etna very different from the height of Sime was selected for the foundation of Naxos. Here as in the case of Sime the Calcidians who led the enterprise surrendered the honour of naming the new city to their less prominent fellowfounders. The first of all the Greek towns of Sicily Naxos was not destined to live for much more than 300 years. It was to be destroyed not by the fire of the dangerous mountain which dominated it but by a human foe. A sort of consecration was always attached to Naxos as the first homestead of the Hellenes in the island which was to become a brilliant part of Hellas. To Apollo archegities an altar was erected on the spot where the Greeks first landed, driven as the legend told by contrary winds through Apollo's dispensation to the Sicilian shores. It was the habit of ambassadors from Old Greece as soon as they arrived in Sicily to offer sacrifice on this altar. In the fertile plain south of Etna the Calcidians soon afterwards founded Catani close to the sea and protected by a low range of hills behind but under the power of Etna which was to un-make the place again and again, and inland Leontini at the south end of her plain between two hills with an eastern and a western acropolis. These sites, Leontini certainly if not Catani, were rested from the Cissoes. The Calcidians also won possession of the northeast corner and thus obtained command of the straits between the island and the mainland. Here Simeons and Calcidians planted Zankli on a low rim of land which resembles a reaping hook and gave the place its name. The haven is formed by the curving blade and when Zankli came in after days to mint money she engraved on her coins a sickle representing her harbour and a dolphin floating within it. A hundred years later the city was transformed by the immigration of a company of Messenians and ultimately the old local name was ousted in favour of Messana. From Zankli the Ubeans established the fortress of Miley on the other side of the northeastern promontory and in the middle of the 7th century they founded Himera, the only Greek city on the northern coast, destined to live for scarce two centuries and a half and then to be swept away by the Phoenician. It was important for Zankli that the land over against her, the extreme point of the Italian peninsula should be in friendly hands and therefore the men of Zankli incited their mother city to found region and in this foundation Messenians took part. While this group of Calcidian colonies was being formed in northeastern Sicily Dorian Greeks began to obtain a footing in southeastern Sicily which history decided should become the Dorian quarter. The earliest of the Dorian cities was also the greatest. Syracuse destined to be the head of Greek Sicily was founded by Corinthian emigrants under the leadership of Archeas before the end of the 8th century. Somewhere about the same time Corinth also colonised Corsaira. The Ionian islands were half-way stations to the west. Which colony was the elder we know not. Tradition did not attempt to decide for it placed both in the same year. But in both cases Corinth had to dispossess previous Greek settlers and in both cases the previous settlers were Ubeans. Her colonists had to drive a retrience from Corsaira and Calcidians from Syracuse. The great haven of Syracuse with its island and its hill formed the most striking site on the east coast and could not fail to invite the earliest colonists. Calcidians occupied the island of Ortigia, Isle of Quales, as it was called. They must have won it from the Cecil or possibly from the Phoenician and held it long enough to associate it forever with the name of a fountain in their old home Arithusa. It is highly probable that the Calcidian occupation was affected very soon after that of Naxos and it is possible that the Corinthians did not supersede the Calcidians till many years later. But when they once held Syracuse they effectively prevented any Calcidian expansion south of Leontini. At an early date Magarians also sailed into the west to find a new home. After various unsuccessful attempts to establish themselves they finally built their city on the coast north of Syracuse beside the hills of Heibla and perhaps Cecil natives joined in founding the western Megara. It was the most northerly Dorian town on the east coast. But like her mother the Heiblean Megara was destined to found a colony more famous than herself. In the middle of the 7th century the Magarians sent to their metropolis to invite cooperation in planting a settlement in the southwestern part of the island. This settlement which was to be the farthest outpost of Greek Sicily was Silinus the town named of wild celery as its own coins boasted situated on a low hill on the coast. Megara had been occupied with the goodwill of the Sicil. Silinus was probably held at the expense of the Sicken. In the meantime the southeastern corner was being studied with Dorian cities though they did not rise by any means so rapidly as the Calcidian in the north. The Sicils seemed to have offered a stouter resistance here. At the beginning of the 7th century Gila, the name is Sicil was planted by Rhodian colonists with Cretans in their train. This city was set on a long narrow hill which stretched between the sea and an inland plain. At a later time Acre and Casmini were founded by Syracuse. They were overshadowed by the greatness of the mother city and never attained as much independence as more distant Camarena which was planted from the same metropolis about half a century later. The latest Dorian colony of Sicily was only less conspicuous than the first. The Geloans sought an ecist from their Rhodian metropolis and founded half way between their own city and Silinus the lofty town of Acragas which soon took the second place in Greek Sicily and became the rival of Syracuse. It was perched on a high hill near the seashore. The small poor haven was at some distance from the town. Flock feeding Acragas never became a maritime power. The symbols on its coins were the eagle and the crab. In planting their colonies and founding their domination in Sicily the Greeks had mainly to reckon with the Sicils. In their few foundations in the farther west they had to deal with the Sicans. These older inhabitants were forced to retire from the coasts but they lived on in their fortresses on the inland hills. The island was too large and its character too continental to invite the newcomers to attempt to conquer the whole of it. With the Phoenicians the Greeks had no trouble. Their factories and temples had not taken root in the soil and on the landing of a stranger who was resolved to take root they vanished. Traces of their worship sometimes remained here as in the Aegean but they did not abandon the western corner of the island where the Greeks did not attempt to settle. There they maintained three places which now assumed the character of cities. These were Panormas, Solas and Motia. The Haven, the Rock and the Island. Panormas or all Haven in a fertile plain is protected on the north by Mount Hercti now the Pilgrim Mount and on the east by Solas. Motia is on an island in a small bay on the west coast. The Illimion country lay between Motia and Panormas. The chief town of the Illimion's Sugesta which in Greek mouths became Egesta was essentially a city while Eric's farther west high above the sea but not actually on it was their outpost of defense. On Eric's they worshipped some goddess of nature soon to be identified with the Greek Aphrodite. The Illimions were on good terms with the Phoenicians and western Sicily became a Phoenician corner. While the inland country was left to Sicil and Sicain the coasts were to be the scene of struggles between Phoenician and Greek and here the natural position of the combatants was reversed for the Asiatic power was in the west and the European in the east. In the 7th century this struggle was still a long way off Sicily was still large enough to hold both the Greek and the Canaanite in peace. The name by which we know the central of the three great peninsulas of the Mediterranean did not extend as far north as the Poe in the time of Julius Caesar and originally it covered a very small area indeed. In the 5th century Thucydides applies the name Italy to the modern Calabria the western of the two extremities into which the peninsular divides. This extremity was inhabited when the Greeks first visited it by Sicils and Inotrians but the hill was occupied by peoples of that Illyrian race which had played as we dimly see a decisive part in the earliest history of the Greeks. The Illyrian was now a stride of the Adriatic. He had reached Italy before the Greek. The Calabrians who gave their name to the hill were of Illyrian stock and along with these were the Mesapians some of whose brethren on the other side of the water seem to have thrown in their fortunes with the Greeks and penetrated into Locris and Biosia and perhaps into the Peloponnesus. It was on the seaboard of the Sicils and Inotrians that the Achaeans of the Peloponnesus probably towards the close of the 8th century found a field for colonization. It has been already remarked that the Ionian islands are a sort of stepping stone to the west and just as we find Carinthians settling in Corsaira so we find Achaeans settling in Sysinthus. The first colonies which they planted in Italy were perhaps Sibaris and Croton, famous for their wealth and their rivalry. Sibaris on the River Crathus in an unhealthy but most fruitful plain soon extended her dominion across the narrow peninsula and founding the settlements of Laos and Sidros on the western coast commanded two seas. Thus having in her hands an overland route to the eastern Mediterranean she could forward to her ports on the Terranian Sea the valuable merchandise of the Mylesians whom Calcydian jealousy excluded from the straits between Italy and Sicily. Thus both agriculture and traffic formed the basis of the remarkable wealth of Sibaris and the result was an elaboration of luxury which caused the Sibarite name to pass into a proverb. Posidonia, famous for its temples and its roses was another colony on the western sea founded from Sibaris. It is said to have been formed by Trezenians who were driven out from that city by the Achaeans. A good way to the south of Sibaris you come to Croton before the coast in its southern trend has yet reached the Lausinian promontory on which a stately temple of Hera formed a central place of worship for the Greek settlers in Italy. Unlike the other Achaean colonies Croton had a good harbour, the only good harbour on the west side of the Gulf but her prosperity like that of her fellows rested not on maritime traffic but on the cultivation of land and the rearing of cattle. The Delphic god seems to have taken a more than wanted interest in the foundation of this city if we may judge from the Delphic tripod which appears on its earliest coins. Like Sibaris Croton widened its territory and planted colonies of its own. On the Tyranian Sea, Terina and Temeza were to Croton what Laos and Cedros were to Sibaris. Footnote, another colony of Croton was Pandosia and it conquered the Ionian town of Seletion or Silesion. End of footnote. Colonia, perhaps also a Crotonian settlement, was the most southerly Achaean colony and was the neighbour of the western Lochrai. This town was founded in the territory of the Sicils it is not certain by which of the three Locrian states. Perhaps it was a joint enterprise of all three. It was agricultural like its Achaean neighbours and like them it pushed over to the western sea and founded Medma and Hipponian on the other coast. The Achaeans and Locrians might quarrel among themselves but they had more in common with each other than either had with the Dorians and we may conveniently include Locrai in the Achaean group. Thus the southern coast of Italy would have been almost a homogeneous circle if a Dorian colony had not been established in a small sheltered bay at the extreme north point of the Gulf to which it gave the name its still bears Taras Autarentum. Taras was remarkable as the only foreign settlement ever made by the greatest of all the Dorian peoples. The town, called like Sibaris after the name of a neighbouring stream, was founded by the Parthenii a name which has not yet been explained. There are reasons for thinking that these first founders were pre Dorian Greeks from the Peloponnesus but Laconian settlers occupied the place at some unknown date and made of it a Dorian city. A legend then grew up which connected the Parthenii with Sparta and a historical episode taking various forms was manufactured. It was said that in a war with the Messenians when the Spartans were for many years absent from home the women bore sons to helots and that this progeny called Parthenii or maidens children conspired against the state and being driven out of the country were directed by the oracle to settle at Taras. The hero Philanthus who seems to have been originally a local sea god headed to the rank of a hero at the coming of Poseidon was worshipped by the Tarentines and his ride overseas on a dolphin was represented on their coins. The framers of the story of the Parthenii made him the leader of the colonists from Laconia. The prosperity of the Tarentines depended partly on the cultivation of a fruitful territory but mainly on their manufacturing industry. Their fabrics and dyed wools became renowned and their pottery was widely diffused. Taras in fact must be regarded as an industrial rather than as an agricultural state. Her position brought her into contact with inhabitants of the Calabrian Peninsula and she had a foe in the Missapian town of Brentesian. She founded the colonies of Calipolis and Hydras on the eastern coast where she had no Greek rivals. But on the other side her possible advance was foreseen and hindered by the prudence of the Siborites. They feared lest the Dorian city might creep round the coast and occupy the fertile lands which are watered by the Bredanus and the Cyrus. So they induced the Achaeans of Old Greece to found a colony at Metapontian on the Bredanus a place which had derived its name from Missapian settlers and this the most northerly of the Achaean cities flourished as an agricultural community and cut off the westward expansion of Taras. But in the meantime another rival seized the very place from which the Achaeans had desired to exclude the Dorians. In the middle of the 7th century Colophonians planted a colony at Cyrus and this Ionian state threatened to interrupt the Achaean line of cities and cut off Metapontian from her sisters. This solitary instance of an Ionian attempt to found a colony at this period in these regions is rendered interesting through the probability that the poet Archilicus took part in the expedition. But the attempt seems to have failed. There are reasons for thinking, though the evidence is not clear that the place was seized by its Achaean neighbours and became an Achaean town. Cyrus, like Cyborus, Croton and Locry had her helpmate, though not a daughter, on the Tyrrhenian Sea. By the persuasion of common interest she formed a close connection with Pixas. The two cities issued common coins and perhaps organised a rival overland route. Thus the western coast of the Tarentine Gulf was beset with a line of Achaean cities flanked at one extremity by western Locry on the other by Dorian Terrace. The common feature which distinguished them from the cities settled by the men of Calces and Corinth was that their wealth depended on the mainland, not on the sea. Their rich men were landowners, not merchants. It was not traffic but rich soil that had originally lured them to the far west. The un-warlike Sicils and Inotrians seemed to have laid no obstacles in the way of their settlements and to have submitted to their rule. The Iopegians and Mesapians of Calabria were of different temper and it is significant that it was men from warlike Sparta who succeeded in establishing Terrace. These cities, with their dependencies beyond the hills on the shores of the Terranian Sea, came to be regarded as a group and the country came to be called Great Helas. We might rather have looked to find it called Great Achaia by contrast to the older Achaean lands in Greece. But here, as in other cases, it is the name of a lesser folk which prevails. If the Hellenes, the old Greek inhabitants of the plain of the Spurkius, had been conquered by the Achaeans, the conquest was forgotten and the two peoples had gone forth together to found new cities in the west. And here the Hellenic name rose to celebrity and honour. It was no small thing in itself that the belt of Greek settlements on the Tarentine Gulf should come to be called Great Helas. But it was a small thing compared with the extension of the name Hellenes to designate all peoples of Greek race. There was nothing to lead the Greeks of their own accord to fix on Hellenes as a common name. If they had sought such a name deliberately their natural choice would have been Achaeans which Homer had already used in a wide sense. The name must have been given to them from without. Just as the barbarian peoples in central Italy had taken hold of the name of the Greys so the barbarians in the southern peninsula took hold of the name of the Hellenes and used it to denote all settlers and strangers of the same race. Such a common name applied by barbarian lips to them all alike brought home to Greek traders the significance of their common race and they adopted the name themselves as the conjugate of barbarians. So the name Hellenes, obscure when it had gone forth to the west travelled back to the east in a new sense and won its way into universal use. The fictitious ancestor Hellene became the forefather of the whole Greek race and the fictitious ancestors of the Dorians, Ionians and Iolians were all derived from him. The original Hellenes lost their separate identity as completely as the original Iolians and Ionians had lost theirs but their name was destined to live forever in the speech of men while those of their greater fellows had passed into a memory. End of chapter 2 part 3 Recording by Graham Redman Chapter 2 parts 4 to 8 of a history of Greece to the death of Alexander the Great Volume 1 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Graham Redman A history of Greece to the death of Alexander the Great Volume 1 by John Bagnell Bury Chapter 2 part 4 Growth of trade and maritime enterprise The age of the aristocratic republic saw the face of the Greek world completely transformed. The colonial expansion of Greece eastward and westward was itself part of this transformation but it also helped signally to bring about other changes. For while the colonies were politically independent of their mother states they reacted in many ways on the mother country. We have seen how the system of family property was favourable to colonial enterprise but the colonists who had suffered under that system were not likely to introduce it in their new settlements and thus the institution of personal land ownership was probably first established and regulated in the colonies. Their example reacted on the mother country where other natural causes were also gradually undermining the family system. In the first place as the power of the state grew greater the power of the family grew less and when the head of the state whether king or republican government was felt as a formidable authority the prestige of the head of the family overshadowed by the power of the state became insensibly weaker. In the second place it was common to assign a portion of an estate to one member of the family to manage and enjoy the undivided use of it and although it did not become his and he had no power of disposing of it yet the natural tendency would have been to allow it on his death to pass to his son on the same conditions. It is clear that such a practice tended to the ultimate establishment of personal proprietorship of the soil. Again side by side with the undivided family estate personal properties were actually acquired. At this period there was much wild unallotted land which wild beasts haunt especially on the hillslopes and when a man of energy reclaimed a portion of this land for tillage the new fields became his own for they had belonged to no man. We can thus see generally how inevitable it was that the old system should disappear and the large family estates break up into private domains. But the change was not accomplished by legislation and the gradual process by which it was brought about is withdrawn from our eyes. It was only when private land ownership had become an established fact that the law came in and recognized it by regulating sales of land and allowing men to bequeath it freely. The Beotian poet Heziod has given us a picture of rural life in Greece at this period. He was a husbandman himself near Ascra where his father who had come as a stranger from Sime in Eolus had put under cultivation a strip of wasteland on the slopes of Helicon. The farm was divided between his two sons Perseys and Heziod but in unequal shares and Heziod accuses Perseys of winning the larger moiety by bribing the lords of the district. But Perseys managed his farm badly and it did not prosper. Heziod wrote his poem The Works to teach such unthrifty farmers as his brother true principles of agriculture and economy. His view of life is profoundly gloomy and suggests a condition of grave social distress in Beotia. This must have been mainly due to the oppression of the nobles gift-devouring princes as he calls them. The poet looks back to the past with regret. The golden age, the silver and the bronze have all gone by and the age of the heroes who fought at Troy and mankind is now in the Iron Age and will never cease by day or night from weariness and woe. Would that I did not live in this generation would that I had died before or were born hereafter. The poem gives minute directions for the routine of the husbandman's work, the times and tides of sowing and reaping and the other labours of the field, the passion of the implements of tillage and all this is accompanied by maxims of proverbial wisdom. Apart from the value of his poem as a social picture Heziod has a great significance as the first spokesman of the common folk. In the history of Europe his is the first voice raised from among the toiling classes and claiming the interest of mankind in their lot. It is a voice indeed of acquiescence counselling fellow toilers to make the best of an evil case. The stage of revolt has not yet been reached but the grievances are aired and the lords who wield the power are exhorted to deal just judgments that the land may prosper. The new poet is in form and style under the influence of the Homeric poems but he is acutely conscious that he is striking new notes and has new messages for men. He comes forward unlike Homer in his own person. He contrasts himself with Homer when he claims that the muses can teach truth as well as beautiful fiction. In his other poem, the Theogony he tells us that the daughters of Zeus taught Heziod as he fed sheep on the hillsides of Helicon. They gave him for staff a branch of bay. The staff was now the minstrel's emblem for the epic poems were no longer sung to the liar but were recited by the Rapsode standing with the staff in his hand. Then the muses breathed into the shepherd of Ascra the wizard power of declaring the future and the past and set him the task of singing the race of the blessed gods. In the Theogony he performs this task. He sings how the world was made the gods and the earth, the rivers and the ocean the stars and the heaven how in infinite space which was at the beginning there arose earth and Tartarus and love the cosmic principle and it is notable how he introduces amongst the oldest born powers of the world such abstractions as love itself memory sleep. These speculations on the origin of the universe and the attempt to work up the popular myths into a system mark a new stage in the intellectual development of Greece. The Theogony produced a whole school of bards who merged their identity under the name of Heziod and as we have seen these Heziodic poems had a decisive influence in molding the ideas of the Greeks as to the early history of their race. Biosha was always an un-enterprising country of husbandmen and Heziod had no sympathy with trade or foreign venture though his father had come from Eolus but the growth of trade was the most important fact of the time and here too the colonies reacted on the mother country. By enlarging the borders of the Greek world they invited and facilitated the extension of Greek trade and promoted the growth of industries. Here the two the Greeks had been mainly un-agricultural and pastoral people many of them were now becoming industrial they had to supply their western colonies with oil and wool with metal and pottery and they began to enter into serious competition with the Phoenician trader and to drive eastern goods from the market. Greek trade moved chiefly along waterways and this is illustrated by the neglect of road-making in Greece there were no paved roads even in later times except the sacred ways to frequented sanctuaries like that from Athens to Eleusis and Delphi or that from the sea coast to Olympia yet the Greeks were still timorous navigators and it was deemed hazardous to sail even in the most familiar waters except in the late summer Hesiod expresses in vivid verses the general fear of the sea for fifty days after the solstice till the end of the harvest is the tide for sailing then you will not wreck your ship nor will the sea wash down your crew unless Poseidon or Zeus wills their destruction in that season winds are steady and ocean kind with mind at rest launch your ship and stow your freight but make all speed to return home and await not the new wine at the reign of the vintage tide when the winter approaches and the terrible south winds stirs the waves in fellowship with the heavy autumnal reign of Zeus and makes the sea cruel about this time however an important advance was made in sea craft by the discovery of the anchor seafaring states found it needful to build warships for protection against pirates the usual type of the early Greek warship was the Penteconta or Fifty-Ore a long narrow galley with twenty-five benches on each of which two oarsmen sat the Penteconta hardly came into use in Greece before the eighth century the Homeric Greeks had only smaller vessels of twenty oars but we can see in the Homeric poems the Penteconta coming within their ken as a strange and wonderful thing the Ocean Deity Briarios called by the name of the Aegean appears in the Iliad he is probably no other than the new racer of the seas sped by a hundred hands in the Odyssey the Phaeacians who are the kings of sea craft have ships of fifty oars but before the end of the eighth century a new idea revolutionized shipbuilding in Phoenicia vessels were built with two rows of benches one above the other so that the number of oarsmen and the speed were increased adding to the length of the ship the by-ream however never became common in Greece for the Phoenicians had soon improved it into the tri-ream by the superposition of another bank of oars footnote the secret of building this kind of galley has been lost modern shipwrights cannot reproduce a tri-ream in later times the Greeks built ships of many banks five, ten, even forty end of footnote the tri-ream propelled by a hundred and seventy rowers was ultimately to come into universal use as the regular Greek warship though for a long time after its first introduction by the Corinthians the old Pentecontas were still generally used but the unknown shipwright who invented the by-ream deserves the credit of the new idea whatever naval battles were fought in the seventh century were fought mainly, we may be sure, with Pentecontas but Pentecontas and tri-reams alike were affected by the new invention of the bronze ram on the prow a weapon of attack which determined the future character of Greek naval warfare the Greeks believed that the first regular sea fight between two Greek powers was fought before the middle of the seventh century between Corinth and her daughter city Corsaira if the tradition is true we may be sure that the event was an incident in a struggle for the trade with Italy and Sicily and along the Adriatic coasts the chief competitors however with Corinth in the west were the Euboean cities, Calces and Eretria in the traffic in eastern seas the island city of Iginia though she had no colonies of her own took an active part and became one of the richest mercantile states of Greece Athens too had ships but her industries were still on a comparatively small scale and it was not till a much later period that her trade was sufficient to involve her in serious rivalry with her neighbours but the most active of all in industry and commerce were the Greeks of Ionia end of chapter 2 part 4 chapter 2 part 5 influence of Lydia on Greece the Greeks of the Asiatic coast were largely dependent for good or evil on the adjacent inland countries the inland trade added to their prosperity but at any moment if a strong barbarian power arose their independence might be gravely menaced at the beginning of the 7th century active intercourse was maintained between the Greeks and the kingdoms of Phrygia and Myonia the Phrygian king Midas dedicated a throne to the god of Delphi both the Phrygians and the Lydians adopted the Greek alphabet while the Greeks adopted their modes of music and admitted Phrygian legends into Greek mythology a considerable Phrygian element had won its way into Lydia and had gained the upper hand in the Homeric poems we know where read of Lydians but only of Myonians and there can be no doubt that this name represents the Phrygian settlers or conquerors a Myonian dynasty ruled in Lydia at the beginning of the 7th century and the king bears a Myonian name Candolese hound choker the Aryan conquerors conquerors that is who spoke an Aryan tongue had occupied the throne for centuries and Greek tradition afterwards derived the origin of the family of Candolese from Heracles himself but they had become degenerate and Gaijes a native Lydian of the clan of the Mirmnadi succeeded in slaying Candolese and seizing the crown this revolution ushered in a new period for the Lydian as it was now called no longer Myonian kingdom the dominion of the Myonian sovereign had probably extended southward to the valley of the Meander Gaijes extended his power northward to the shores of the Propontis where he founded the Silian and conquered the Troad but he also designed to make the Aegean his western boundary and bring the Greek cities under his lordship he pressed down the valley of the Hermas against Smyrna down the valley of the Cajester against Colophon down the valley of the Meander against Miletus and Magnesia of these enterprises only the faintest hints have come down to us it may be that Colophon was actually captured and perhaps Magnesia but the other cities beat back the enemy the poet Mimnernus sings how a warrior perhaps his own grandfather wrought havoc in the ranks of the Lydian horsemen in the plain of the Hermas but the plans of Gaijes against his Greek neighbours were suddenly interrupted by a blow which descended as it were from the other side of the world upon Greeks and Lydians alike the regions round about Lake Miotis on the northern coast of the Black Sea were inhabited by the Smyrians who appear in the marvellous wanderings of Odysseus they were now driven forth from their abodes to which however their name clung and still clings by Ascythian folk the Scoloti who came from the east homeless the Smyrians wandered to the opposite side of the Yuxain but whether they traveled by the eastern or the western route by the Caucasus or by the Danube is not known for certain on one hand they seem to have appeared first in eastern Asia Minor on the other they seem to have associated with themselves some Thracian peoples the Trierians, Edonians and Thynians the truth may be that they came round by the eastern coast and that afterwards when they made their incursions into western Asia Minor they invited allies from Thrace to help them having defeated the Mylesians of Sinope they chose this place to be their chief settlement they ventured to attack the greatest Syrian Empire and King Asaheddin himself tells how I smote the Smyrian to Yuspa with all his army but they overthrew the realm of Phrygia under its last King Midas and towards the middle of the 7th century they attacked Lydia to meet this danger Gaijes sought help from Assyria the warlike Asaheddin had been succeeded at Nineveh by Asubanipal a peaceful and literary prince whose refined luxury is caricatured in the Greek conception of Sardinopolis the Lord of Lydia acknowledged the overlordship of the Lord of Assyria he gained a victory over the Smyrians and sent their chiefs in chains to Nineveh but he did not long brook to be the vassal of another sovereign he threw off his allegiance to Assyria and sent Ionian and Carian mercenary soldiers to Egypt to help that country also to free itself from Assyrian dominion at this moment perhaps Gaijes was at the height of his power his wealth was famous and he too like Phrygian Midas sent gifts among them six golden mixing bowls to the Delphian god the poet Arkyllicus who witnessed his career sings defiantly that he cares not for the wealth of golden Gaijes but the Smyrians presently renewed their attack and fortune changed Gaijes was slain in battle his capital Sardis was taken except the citadel and it was some satisfaction to Asubanipal to record that Lydia was in the hands of the Smyrians it was not long before they swooped down upon the Greek cities Calinus a poet of Ephesus heard the trample of their horses and roused his fellow citizens to battle Ephesus defied their attack but the temple of Artemis outside the walls was burned down they and their allies from Thrace destroyed Magnesia on the meander the barbarians made a deep impression the swords which they swept down upon their enemies were enormous they were equipped with large quivers and wore the curved caps of the Scythians fierce hounds ran with their horses such was their appearance as they were portrayed by a Greek artist of a later generation on a painted sarcophagus found at Kladzomini but the danger passed away Ardis succeeded Gaijes on the Lydian throne and he finally not only drove out the Smyrians from the land but perhaps succeeded in extending his power into Cappadocia as far as the Hallis in the meantime Lydia had made an invention which revolutionized commerce it is to Lydia that Europe owes the invention of coinage the Babylonians, Phoenicians and Egyptians made use of Wade, Gold and Silver as a medium of exchange a certain ratio being fixed between the two metals a piece of Wade metal becomes a coin when it is stamped by the state and is thereby warranted to have its professed weight and purity this step was first taken in Lydia where the earliest money was coined somewhere about the beginning of the 7th century probably by Gaijes these Lydian coins were made of the native white gold or electron a mixture of gold and silver in which the proportion of gold was greater a bar of the white gold of Sardis was regarded as ten times the value of a silver bar and three fourths of the value of a gold bar of the same weight footnote the Lydians had two scales one for domestic intercourse based on the standard which they derived from Babylonia and one for foreign commerce based on the standard derived from Phoenicia through the Greeks end of footnote Miletus and Samos soon adopted the new invention which then spread to other Asiatic towns then Egyna and the two great cities of Euboea instituted monetary systems and by degrees all the states of Greece gave up the primitive custom of estimating value in heads of cattle and most of them had their own mints as gold was very rare in Greece not being found except in the islands of Siphanos and Thessos the Greeks coined in silver this invention coming at the very moment when the Greeks were entering upon a period of great commercial activity that was of immense importance not only in facilitating trade but in rendering possible the accumulation of capital yet it took many generations to supersede completely the old methods of economy by the new system the Greeks had derived their systems of weight from Babylonia and Phoenicia but when Egyna and the Euboean cities fixed the standard of their silver coinage they did not adopt the silver standard of either of those countries the heavier state here as the standard silver coin was named of Egyna waived 192 grains and slightly exceeded a Florin in value and this system was adopted throughout the Peloponnes and in northern Greece the lighter state here of Euboea waived 130 grains which was the Babylonian standard of gold this system at first confined to Euboea, Samos and a few other places was adopted in the 7th century by Corinth in a modified form and afterwards by Athens it was highly characteristic of the Greeks that their coinage was marked from the beginning by religious associations and it has been supposed that the priests of their temples had an important share in initiating the introduction of money it was in the shrines of their gods that men were accustomed to store their treasures for safekeeping the gods themselves possessed costly dedications and thus the science of weighing the precious metals was naturally studied by the priesthoods every coin which a Greek state issued bore upon it a reference to some deity in early times this reference always took the shape of a symbol in later times the head of the god was often represented the Lydian coins of Sardis, the coins of Miletus and other Ionian cities bore a lion those of Eretria showed a cow with a sucking calf Egyna displayed a tortoise and Scythica satanifish and all these tokens were symbols of the goddess who whether under the name of Aphrodite or Hera or Artemis was identified by the Greeks with a starty of Phoenicia End of chapter 2 part 5 Chapter 2 part 6 The Opening of Egypt Thus the merchants of Miletus and her fellows grew rich they were the intermediaries between Lydia and the Mediterranean while the Lydians carried their wares to the interior parts of Asia Minor and the far east their arguses sailed to the far west as well as to the coasts of the Yuxain but a new field for winning wealth was opened to them much about the same time as the invention of coinage revealed a new prospect to the world of commerce the jealously guarded gates of Egypt were unbarred to Greek trade the greatest exploit of the Assyrian monarch Asahaddon was the conquest of Egypt the land had been split up into an endless number of small kingdoms and the kings continued to govern as vassals of Assyria but the foreign domination did not last for much more than a quarter of a century one of the kings, Semeticus of Seis in lower Egypt, probably of Libyan stock revolted against Asa Banipale who in the last year of his reign was occupied in subduing an insurrection of the Elamites of Susiana we have seen how male clad soldiers of Ionia and Caria were sent by the Lord of Lydia to assist Semeticus with the help of these bronze men who came up from the sea he reduced the other kings and brought the whole of Egypt under his sway this Libyan dynasty kept Seis as their capital and their power was supported by foreign mercenaries, Greeks and Carians, Syrians and Phoenicians Semeticus built the fortress of Daphne for so Greek speech graciously altered into Greek shape the Egyptian name Defene and entrusted it to his Greek soldiers relics of this foreign garrison have been dug up among the ruins of Daphne Semeticus and his successors completely departed from the narrow Egyptian policy of the pharaohs and were the forerunners in some respects of the Greek dynasty of the Ptolemies who three centuries hence were to rule the land they opened Egypt to the trade of the world and allowed Greeks to settle permanently in the country Niko the son of Semeticus connected the Red Sea with the Nile by a canal and began a work which it was reserved for our own time to achieve the cutting of a channel through the Isthmus which parts the Red Sea from the Mediterranean his warfleets sailed both in the Cypriot and in the Arabian seas and a party of Phoenician explorers sent out by him accomplished the circumnavigation of Africa a feat which two thousand years later was regarded as a wild dream the Milesians founded a factory on the western or cannobic channel of the Nile not very far from Seis and around it a Greek city grew up which received the name of Nocratis sea queen this colony became the haven of all Greek traders for though at first they seem to have moved freely restrictions were afterwards placed upon them and they were not permitted to enter Egypt except by the cannobic mouth at Nocratis the Milesians the Samians and the Aegean Eatons had each their own separate quarter and their own sanctuaries all the other Greek settlers had one common enclosure called the Hellenion geared by a thick brick wall and capable of holding 50,000 men here were their marketplace and their temples all the colonists of Nocratis were Greeks of the Asiatic coast other Ionians Dorians or Aeolians accepting alone the Aegean Eatons Egypt as we see offered a field not only for traders but for adventurous soldiers and thus helped to relieve the pressure of overpopulation in Ionia at Abu Simbel in upper Egypt we have a relic of the Greek mercenaries who accompanied King Symmeticus II Niko's successor in an expedition against Ethiopia some of them scratched their names on the colossal statues of the temple and the very triviality of this relic at such a distance of time perhaps makes it the more interesting End of chapter 2 part 6 Chapter 2 part 7 Cyrene Not long after Egypt was thrown open to Greek trade there arose to the west of Egypt a new Greek city civil dissension in the island of Thera between the older population who called themselves by the obscure name of Maini and the later Dorian settlers led to an emigration of the Maini some Dorians among them and the exiles having increased their band by Cretan adventurers sailed for the shores of Barka they made their first settlement on the little island of Platia off the coast their second on the opposite coast of the mainland and when this too proved a failure they founded their abiding settlement about 8 miles from the sea near an abundant spring of water on two white hills which commanded the encompassing plain the city was named Cyrene and it was the only Greek colony on the coast of Africa which attained to eminence and wealth the man who led the island folk to their new home became their king his name seems to have been Aristoteles but he took the strange name of Batas which is said to mean king in the Libyan language while its resemblance to the Greek word for stammer gave rise to the legend that Batas the first stammered in his speech his son was Arkezilas and in the line of the Cyrenean kings Batas and Arkezilas succeeded each other in alternation under Batas II the new city was reinforced by a large incoming of new settlers whom he invited chiefly from the Peloponnes and Crete and this influx changed the character of the place since the original Minion element was outnumbered the lands which the Greeks took from the Libyan inhabitants were made fruitful by the winter rains Pindar describes them as plains over which dark clouds hover there was excellent pastureage and the men of Cyrene became famous for rearing horses and for skill as riders and charioteers they were naturally the intermediaries between Greek merchants and the Libyan natives but the chief source of the wealth of the Cyrenean kings was the export of Silphian a plant which acquired a high repute for medicinal virtues in those days it grew luxuriously in the regions of Baca now it is extinct the sale of Silphian was a monopoly of the king and on a fine Cyrenean cup we can see Arkezylas II himself watching the herb being weighed and packed it was in the reign of this king that Baca was founded farther west he quarrelled with his brothers and they left Cyrene and founded a town for themselves Cyrene held her head high in the Greek world though she was somewhat apart from it a Cyrenean poet arose and continued the odyssey and described the last adventures of Odysseus his poem was accepted by Greece as winding up the epic cycle which was associated with the name of Homer his work was distinguished by local pride and local colouring he gave Odysseus a son Arkezylius and connected the royal line of Cyrene with the great wanderer and he introduced a flavour of those Libyan influences which modified Cyrenean civilisation just as the remote cities of the Yuxain received influences from Cythia End of chapter 2 part 7 chapter 2 part 8 popular discontent in Greece the advance of the Greeks in trade and industry produced many consequences of moment for their political and social development the manufacturers required labour and a sufficient number of free labourers was not to be had slaves were therefore indispensable and they were imported in large numbers from Asia Minor and Thrace and the coasts of the Yuxain the slave trade became a profitable enterprise and the men of Chios made it their chief pursuit the existence of household slaves, generally war captives such as we meet in Homer was an innocent institution which would never have had serious results but the new organised slave system which began in the 7th century was destined to prove one of the most fatal causes of disease and decay to the states of Greece at first the privileged classes of the aristocratic republics benefitted by the increase of commerce for the nobles were themselves the chief speculators but the wealth which they acquired by trade undermined their political position for in the first place their influence depended largely on their domains of land and when industries arose to compete with agriculture the importance of land necessarily declined in the second place wealth introduced a new political standard and aristocracies resting on birth tended to transform themselves into aristocracies resting on wealth the proverb money makes the man now came into vogue as nobility by birth cannot be acquired whereas wealth can such a change is always a step in the direction of democracy on the other hand the poorer free men at first suffered how heavily the transition from the old systems of exchange to the use of money bore upon them we shall find illustrated when we come to the special history of Athens but their distress and discontent drove them into striving for full political equality and in many cases they strove with success the second half of the 7th century is marked in many parts of Greece by struggles between the classes and the wiser and better of the nobles began themselves to see the necessity of extending political privileges to their fellow citizens the centralization in towns owing to the growth of industries and the declining importance of agriculture created a new town population and doubtless helped on the democratic movement in this agitated period lived a poet of great genius Archilicus of Peros it has been truly said that Archilicus is the first Greek of flesh and blood whom we can grasp through the mists of antiquity son of a noble by a slave mother he tried his luck among the adventurers who went forth to colonize Cyrus in Italy but he returned having won an experience of seafaring which taught him to sing of the bitter gifts of Poseidon and the Marino's prayers for sweet home then he took part in a Perian colonization of Thesos and was involved in party struggles which rent the island it must have been a Thesos that he witnessed an eclipse of the sun at Noontide which he describes and this gives us as a date in the Thesian period of his life the 6th of April 648 BC the first exact date we have bearing on the history of Greece all the evils of all hell-ass are here he exclaims and Thesos is not a fair place nor a desirable like the land round the stream of Cyrus he announces that he is the servant of the Lord of battle and skilled in the delicious gift of the muses but when he fought in a war which the Thesians waged with the Thracians of the opposite coast he ran for his life and dropped his shield never mind he said I will get me another as good poor with a stain on his birth tossed about the world soured by adversity Achillicus in his poetry gave full expression to his feelings and used it to utter his passionate hatred against his enemies such as the Perian lycambis for instance who refused him his daughter Neobuli had fortune favoured him he would have been a noble of the nobles ill luck drove him to join the movement against aristocracy his poems present a complete contrast to the epic style and even to Hesiod he addressed himself to the people sang to the flute instead of the lyre used colloquial language and perfected iambic and trochaic measures for literary purposes his influence may be judged from the fact that his poems were recited by the Rapsodes along with Homer and Hesiod the ills of Greece which were reflected in the poems of Achillicus were to lead to the development of equality and freedom but success in the struggle would in most cases depend on military efficiency and a revolution in the art of warfare which was brought about at the same period was therefore of immense importance this takes us to the history of Sparta End of chapter 2 part 8 Recording by Graham Redman Chapter 3 part 1 of a history of Greece to the death of Alexander the Great This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Lizzie Driver A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great Volume 1 by John Bagnell Brewery Chapter 3 The Growth of Sparta and the Fall of the Aristocracies Part 1 Sparta and a Constitution The Dorian settlers from the north who took possession of the valley of the Eurotas established themselves in a number of village communities throughout the land and bore the name of Lassidimonians In the course of time a city-state grew up in their midst and won dominion over the rest The town was formed by the union of five villages which, after their union, still continued to preserve their identity as separate units within the larger unity This city was called Sparta and took the dominant place in Laconia which had been formerly held by Amclea The other Lassidimonian communities were called the Parise or dwellers round about the ruling city and though they were free and managed their local affairs they had no political rights in the Spartan state Open Footnote There is some evidence that in later times they were under the supervision of Spartan harm-osts but even this evidence chiefly concerns the island of Sithira which, from a military point of view, required special arrangements Close Footnote The chief burdens which fell on them were military service and the farming of the royal dominions The Spartans were always noted for their conservative spirit hence we find in their constitution which was remarkable in many ways survivals of an old order of things which existed in the days of Homeric poetry but has passed away in most places when trustworthy history begins The most striking of these survivals was royalty Sparta was nominally ruled by kings This conservative spirit of the Spartans rendered them anxious to believe and others willing to accept the view that their constitution had existed from very ancient times in just the same shape and feature which it displayed in the days of recorded history We are however forced to suspect that this was not the case There can be little doubt that the Spartan state developed up to the end of the 7th century on the same general lines as other Greek states though with some remarkable peculiarities There can be little doubt that, like most other states it passed through the stages of royalty and aristocracy and that the final form of the constitution was the result of a struggle between the nobles and the people The remarkable thing was that throughout these changes hereditary kingship survived The machine of the Spartan constitution as we know it when it was fully developed had four parts the kings, the council, the assembly and the ethos The first three are the original institutions which were common as we saw to the whole Greek race The ethos were a later institution and were peculiar to Sparta We saw that towards the end of the Homeric period the powers of the king were limited and that this limited monarchy then died out sometimes leaving a trace behind it perhaps in the name of a magistrasi like the king Archon at Athens In a few places it survived and Sparta was one of them But if it survived here its powers were limited in a twofold way It was limited not only by the other institutions of the state but by its own dual character for there were two kings at Sparta and had been since the memory of men It seems possible that the origin of this double kingship lay in the coalition of two distinct communities each of which had its own king One tribe dwelt about Sparta and its kings belonged to the clan of the Agaday The other tribe we may guess was settled somewhere in southern Laconia and its royal clan was that of the Eropontide These two tribes must have united to form a large city-state at Sparta and the terms of the union may have been that neither tribe should give up its king but two kings with co-equal authority should rule over the joint community The kingship passed from father to son in the two royal houses of the Agads and the Eropontids and if the Agad kings possessed a slight superiority in public estimation over their colleagues this may have been due to the fact that the Eropontids were the strangers who migrated to Sparta According to a pedigree which was made out for them in later days when the myth of the return of the Heroclyde had become current both dynasties trace themselves back to Hercules It seems probable that it was partly because there were two kings the one a check upon the other that kingship was not abolished in Sparta or reduced to a mere magistracy but the powers of the kings were largely curtailed and we may suppose that the limitations were introduced by degrees during that epoch in which throughout Greece generally monarchies were giving way to aristocratic republics of the religious, military and judicial functions which belonged to them and to all other Greek kings they lost some and retained others they were privileged to hold certain priesthoods they offered solemn sacrifices for the city every month to Apollo they prepared the necessary sacrifices before warlike expeditions and battles they were priests though not the sole priests of the community they were supreme commanders of the army they had the right of making war upon whatever country they chose and penalties were laid on any Spartan who presumed to hinder them in the field they had unlimited right of life and death and they had a bodyguard of a hundred men it is clear that these large powers were almost limited by the double nature of the kingship but at a later period it was defined by law that only one of the kings to be chosen on each occasion by the people should lead the army in time of war and moreover they were made responsible to the community for their conduct in their campaigns but while they enjoyed this supreme position as high priests and leaders of the host they could hardly be considered judges any longer the right of dealing out dooms like the Homeric Agamemnon had passed away from them only in three special cases had they still judicial or legal powers they presided at the adoption of children they decided who was to marry an heiress whose father had died without betrothing her and they judged in all matters concerning public roads they were royal domains in the territory of the Parisi from which the kings derived their revenue but they also had perquisites at public sacrifices on such occasions they were like Homeric kings given the first seat at the banquet was served first and received a double portion of everything and the hides of the slaughtered beasts the pious sentiment with which royalty as a hallowed institution was regarded is illustrated by the honours which were paid to the kings when they died horsemen, says Hereditas carry round the tidings of the event through all Aconia and in the city women go about beating a cauldron and at this sign two free persons of each house, a man and a woman must put on morning garb and if any fail to do this great pains are imposed the funeral was attended by a fixed number of the Parisi and it was part of the stated ceremony that the dead king should be praised by the mourners as better than all who had gone before him public business was not resumed for ten days after the burial the king was succeeded by a zeltis son but a son born before his father's ascension to the kingship had to give way to the eldest of those who were born after the accession if there were no children the succession fell to the nearest male kinsmen who was likewise the regent in the case of a minority the guarantees or elders whom we find in Homer advising the king and also acting as judges have developed at Sparta into a body of fixed number forming a definite part of the constitution called the Garusia this council consisted of thirty members including the two kings who belonged to it by virtue of their kingship the other twenty-eight must be over sixty years of age so that the council was a body of elders in the strict sense of the word they held their office for life and were chosen by acclamation in the general assembly of citizens whose choice was supposed to fall on him whose moral merits were greatest membership of the council was described as a prize for virtue the council prepared matters which were to come before the assembly it exercised as an advising body a great influence on political affairs and it formed a court of justice for criminal cases but though the councillors were elected by the people they were not elected from the people nobility of birth retained at Sparta's political significance and only men of the noble families could be chosen members of the council and thus the council formed an oligarchical element in the Lacedaemonian constitution every Spartan who had passed his thirtieth year was a member of the Appella or assembly of citizens which met every month between the bridge of Babica and to the stream of Cachion in old days no doubt it was summoned by the kings but in historical times we find that this right has passed the euphors the assembly did not debate but having heard the proposals of kings or euphors signified its will by acclamation if it seemed doubtful to which opinion the majority of the voices inclined recourse was had to a diversion the people elected the members of the Garusia, the Euphors and other magistrates determined questions of war and peace and foreign politics and decided disputed successions to a kingly office thus theoretically the Spartan constitution was a democracy no Spartan was excluded from the Appella of the people and the will of the people expressed at their Appella was supreme to the people, runs an old statute, shall belong the decision and the power but the same statute granted to the executive authorities the elders and magistrates a power which restricted this apparent supremacy of the people it allowed them to be seceders if the people make a crooked decree it seems that the will of the people declared by the acclamations did not receive the force of law unless it were then formally proclaimed before the assembly was formally dissolved if the elders and magistrates did not approve of the decision of the majority of the assembly they could annul the proceedings by refusing to proclaim it succeeding and dissolving the meeting without waiting for the regular dissolution by king or Euphor the five Euphors were the most characteristic part of the political constitution of Sparta the origin of the office is veiled in obscurity it was supposed to been instituted in the first half of the 8th century open footnote the Alexandrian seemed to have a Euphorist reaching as far back as 757 BC but we cannot build much on this it is perhaps of more importance that the Euphorate existed in the Laconian colony at Thera but what most of all proves its antiquity it's its close interconnection with the whole framework of the Sparta constitution close footnote but we must distinguish between the first institution of the office and the beginning of its political importance it is probable that in the course of the 8th century the kings finding it impossible to attend all their duties were constrained to give up the civil jurisdiction and that the Euphors or overseers were appointed for this purpose the number of the Euphors would seem to be connected with the number of the five Dems or villages whose union formed the city and perhaps each one of the Euphors was assigned originally to one of the villages but it cannot have been till the 7th century that the Euphors won their great political power they must have won that power in a conflict between the nobility who governed in conjunction with the kings and the people who had no share in the government in that struggle the kings represented the cause of the nobility while the Euphors were the representatives of the people a compromise as the result of such a conflict is implied in the Odes which were every month exchanged between the kings and the Euphors the kings swore that he would observe the laws of the state in discharging his royal functions the Euphor that he would maintain the royal power undiminished so long as the king was true to his oath in this ceremony we have the record of an acute conflict between the government and the people the democratic character of the Euphorate appears from the fact that any Spartan might be elected the mode of election which is described by Aristotle as very childish was practically equivalent to an election by lot when the five Euphors did not agree among themselves the minority gave way the Euphors ended upon their office at the beginning of the Laconian year which fell on the first new moon after the autumnal equinox as chosen guardians of the rights of the people they were called upon to watch jealously the conduct of the kings with this object two Euphors always accompanied the king on warlike expeditions they had the power of indicting the king and summoning him to appear before them the judicial functions which the kings lost passed partly to the Euphors partly to the council the Euphors were the supreme civil court the council as we have seen formed the supreme criminal court but in the case of the Parisii the Euphors were criminal judges also they were moreover responsible for the strict maintenance of the order and discipline of the Spartan state and when they entered upon office they issued a proclamation to the citizens to shave their upper lips and obey the laws this unique constitution cannot be placed under any general head cannot be called kingdom, oligarchy or democracy without misleading none of these names is applicable to it but it participated in all three a stranger who saw the kings going forth with power to the head of the host or honored above all at the public feast in the city would have described Sparta as a kingdom if one of the kings themselves had been asked to define the constitution it is probable that he would have regrettively called it a democracy yet the close council taken from a privileged class exercising an important influence on public affairs and deferring to an assembly which could not debate might be alleged to prove that Sparta was an oligarchy the secret of this complex character of the Spartan constitution lies in the fact that while Sparta developed on the same general path as other states and had to face the same political crisis she overcame each crisis with less violence and showed a more conservative spirit when she ought to have passed from royalty to aristocracy she diminished the power of the kings but she preserved hereditary kingship as a part of the aristocratic government when she ought to have advanced a democracy she gave indeed enormous power to the representatives of the people but she still preserved both hereditary kings and the council of ennobles Part 2 Spartan conquest of Messenia in the growth of Sparta the first and most decisive step was the conquest of Messenia the southern portion of the Peloponnesus is divided into two parts by Mount Tygetus of these the eastern part is again severed by Mount Pannon into two regions the Vale of the River Eurotas and the rugged strip of coast between Pannon and the sea the western country is less mountainous, more fruitful and blessed by a milder climate nor is it divided in the same way by a mountain chain the hills rise irregularly and the river Parmesus waters the central plain of the steinclarus where the Greek invaders are said to have fixed their abode the natural forces of the country was the lofty rock of Ethomy which rises to the west of the river it is probable that under its protection a town grew up at an early period whose name Messenia was afterwards transferred to the whole country the fruitful soil of Messenia good to plant and good to ear as the Spartan poet sang could not but excite the curvaceousness of her martial neighbours it is impossible to determine the date of the first Messenian war with greater precision than the 8th century legends grew up freely as to its causes and its course all that we know with certainty is that the Spartan king under whose auspices it was waged was named Theopompus that it was decided by the capture of the great fortress Ethomy and that the eastern part of the land became Laconia a poet writing it to the beginning of the 7th century would have naturally spoken of Messenia or Ferry as being in Lacedomion when the second war broke out towards the end of the 7th century it was either history or legend that the previous war had lasted twenty years legends grew up around it in which the chief figure was a Messenian hero named Aristodemus the tale was that he offered his daughter as a sacrifice to save his country in obedience to the demand of an oracle her lover made a despairing effort to save her life by spreading a report that the maiden was about to become a mother and the Calmoni so incensed Astrodemus that he slew her with his own hand afterwards terrified by evil dreams and portents and persuaded that his country was doomed he killed himself upon his daughter's tomb as the object of the Spartans was to increase the number of the lots of land for their citizens many of the conquered Messinians were reduced to the conditions of helots and servitude was hard though their plight might have been harder they paid to their lords only one half of the produce of the lands which they tilled whereas in Attica at the same period the free tillers of the soil had to pay five six the Spartan poet Titeus describes how the Messinians endured the insolence of their masters as asses worn by loads intolerable so them did stress of cruel force compel of all the fruits the well-tilt land affords the moiety to bear to their proud lords for some generations they submitted patiently but at length when Victoria Sparta felt secure a rebellion was organized in the northern district Vandania the rebels were supported by their neighbours in Arcadia and Pisatis and they are said to have found an able and ardent leader in Astro Minas sprung from an old Messinian family the revolt was at first successful the Spartans fared ill and their young men experienced a disgrace of defeat the hopes of the serfs rose and Sparta despaired of recovering the land but a leader and a poet arose amongst them the lame Titeus is recorded to have inspired his countrymen with such martial vigor that the tide of fortune turned and Sparta began to retrieve her losses and recover her reputation some scraps of the poems of Titeus have been preserved and they supply the only trustworthy material we have for the history of the Messian Wars and he won such fame by the practical success of his art that at a later time the Athenians sought to claim him as one of their sons and give out that Sparta, by the consul of an oracle, had sent for him the warriors advanced to battle singing his marches to the sound of flutes while his elegies composed in the conventional epic dialect are said to have been recited in the tents after the evening meal but we learn from himself that his strategy was as effective as his poetry and the Messinians were presently defeated in the battle of the great Phos they then retired to the northern stronghold of Eir on the river Nidon which plays the same part in the Second War that Ythomi played in the first while Astromenus takes the place of Astrodemus As to Eir, indeed we possess no record on the contemporary authority of Toteus whose extant fragments notice none of the adventures nor even the name of the hero Astromenus yet Eir may well have been the place where the last stam was made for the Spartans had raised the fortifications of Ythomi which is not mentioned in connection with the Second War at Eir the defenders were near the Akkadian supporters and within reach of Pylos which seems not to have been yet Lassidemonion but Eir fell, legend says that it was belugored for eight years Astromenus was the soul of the defence his wonderful escape became the argument of a stirring tale on one occasion he was thrown with fifty fellow-consumen captured by the Spartans into a deep pit his comrades perished and Astromenus awaited certain death but by following the track for Fox he found a passage in the rocky wall of his prison and appeared on the following day at Eir when the Spartans surprised that fortress he made his escape wounded to Akkadia he died in Rhodes but two hundred and fifty years later on the field of Lakutra he reappeared against the Spartans to avenge his defeat those mercenians who were left in the land were mostly reduced again to the condition of helots but the maritime communities and even a few in the interior remained free as Parisi in the possession of their estates many escaped to Akkadia while some of the inhabitants of the coast towns may have taken ship and sail to other places at this time Sparta, like most other Greek states suffered from domestic discontent there was a pressing land-question with which Tertius dealt in a poem named Eunomia or Law and Order these questions were partly solved by the conquest of the whole land of Mycenae and doubtless the foundation of the colony in Tarris in southern Italy was undertaken for the purpose of relieving an excessive population the Mycenae War, as recorded by Tertius shows us that the power of the privileged classes had already been undermined by a great change in the method of warfare the fighting is done and the victory won by regiments of mailed footlances who march and fight together in close ranks the secret had been discovered that such well-drilled spearsmen hoplites as they were called were superior to cavalry and much about the same period in Ionia we find the infantry of Sminia holding their own against the Lydian horsemen of Gaijes the recognition of serried bodies of foot as a useful weapon in battle can be traced in the later parts of the Iliad but it was in Sparta first that their value was fully appreciated there they became the main part of the military establishment the city no longer depended chiefly on her nobles in times of war she depended on her whole people the progress of metalsmiths in their trade which accompanied the general industrial advance of Greece rendered possible the transformation in the art of war every well-to-do citizen could now provide himself with an outfit of armour and go forth to battle in panoply open footnote the metal breastplate had been introduced metal greys were worn and thigh pieces the round shield born on the arm had superseded the clumsy shoulder swing shield of the heroic period close footnote the transformation was distinctly levelling and democratic fruit placed the noble and the ordinary citizen on an equality in the field we shall not be wrong in connecting this military development with those aspirations of the people for a popular constitution which resulted in the investment of the euphrite with its great political powers from Sparta where it was brought to a perfection which in the days of 30s had not yet attained the institution of the heavy footlances spread throughout Greece and its natural tendency everywhere was to promote the progress of democracy it is significant that in Thessaly where the system of hoplites was not introduced and cavalry was always the colonel of the army democratic ideas never made way End of chapter 3 part 1