 Chapter 9, Part 1 of A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great, Volume 1. A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great, Volume 1 by John Bagnell Bury, Chapter 9, Part 1. The Athenian Empire under the Guidance of Pericles, Section 1, The Completion of the Athenian Democracy. To the Greeks of Simone's day it might have seemed that the Athenian Constitution, as it had been fixed by Cleassthenes and further reformed after the Battle of Marathon, was as democratic as it well could be. But the supreme people was to become instill full measure, lord in its own house, under the Guidance of Thethylides, whose career was suddenly cut short, and of Pericles, son of Santhippus, who was to be the most prominent figure in Greece for 30 years. The mother of Pericles belonged to the family and bore the name of the daughter of the Cessonian tyrant, the Agarista who was wooing had been so famous. She was the niece of Cleassthenes the lawgiver and sister of Megacles, who had been ostracized as a friend of the Pistrotids. The young statesmen had a military training, but he came under the influence of two distinguished teachers to whom he owed much. One was a countryman of his own, Damon of Oa, one of the most intellectual Athenians of his day and renowned as a master of the theory of music. The other was an outlander and a philosopher, Anaxagoras of Clasimeni, whose mechanical theory of the material universe, once for all set in motion by an act of unchangeable mind, freed Pericles from the superstition of the multitude whom it was his task to guide. To these masters the statesmen partially owned his intellectual aloofness, but he did not owe them either his political ideas or the gift of lucid and persuasive speech, which was essential to his success. He was indeed a striking contrast to Simone, the loose and genial boon companion. He seldom walked abroad, he was strict in the economy of his household, he avoided convivial parties and jealously maintained the dignity of his reserved. His portrait was chiseled by Cressilis. It is something to have the round pedestal in which the original image was set, but we also possess a copy of the portrait. It shows us not the lofty Olympian statesmen, but the passionless contemplative face of the friend of Anaxagoras. The most conservative institution in Athens was the Council of Areopicus, for it was filled up with the archons who were taken from the two richest classes in the state. This institution was incompatible with the development of democracy, and it was inevitable that it should be ended or mended. Ephialites had prepared the way for an attack by accusing individual Areopukites of corruption and fraudulent practices, and then, taking advantage of Simone's absence in Messenia, he introduced a series of laws which deprived the ancient Council of all its powers that had any political significance. Its right to punish the public ministers and officers if they violated the laws, its duties of supervising the administration and seeing that the laws were obeyed were transferred away and transferred to the people. The sensorial powers which enabled it to inquire into the lives of private citizens were abolished. Nothing was left to the venerable body, but its jurisdiction in homicidal cases, the care of the sacred olive trees of Athena, and a voice in the supervision of the property of the Illusian deities. The functions which it lost passed to the Council of 500, the assembly, and the popular law courts. All impeachments for crimes which threatened the public wheel were henceforward brought before the Council or the assembly, and henceforward the people tried in their own courts officials who had failed to give a satisfactory account of their administration. We have a notable monument of the excitement which this radical change caused at Athens, and a drama of Escalus which was performed a few years later. The Humanities describes the trial of Orestes on the Hill of Ares for the murder of his mother and the institution of the court of the Areopagus. The significance of the drama has been often misunderstood. It is no protest after the event. It is no cry to undo what had been done. On the contrary, Escalus, so far as his poetical motive permits him to suggest a criticism of recent events, approves of their reform. The Areopagus he suggests was instituted as a court, not as a council. Its true purpose is to pass judgment on homicides like Orestes. The Humanities was calculated to tranquilize those who, awed by the dark and solemn associations which hovered over the Hill of Ares, regarded the attack upon it as an impiety. The dismantling of the Areopagus was an indirect blow to the dignity of the Archons, who, by virtue of their office, became Areopagites. About the same time, another step was taken on the path of democracy by making the Archonship a paid office. Once this was done, there was no longer any reason for confining the post to the two richer classes. The third class, the Zucatay, were presently made eligible. And it cannot have been long before the Thetes, whose distinction from the third class seems to have been yearly becoming fainter, were admitted also. The two engines of the democratic development were lot and pay. Lot had been long ago introduced, but it had not been introduced in its purest form. The Archons and other lesser officers and the members of the council were taken by lot from a select number of candidates. But these candidates were chosen by deliberate election. This mixed system was now abolished, the preliminary election was done away with, and the council of 500, as well as the Archons, were appointed by lot from all the eligible citizens. By this means, every citizen had an equal chance of holding political office and taking a part in the conduct of public affairs. It is clear that this system could not work unless the offices were paid, for the poorest citizens would have been unable to give up their time to the service of the state. Accordingly, pay was introduced, not only for the archonship, but for the members of the council. The payment of state offices was the leading feature of the democratic reforms of Pericles. It was a feature which naturally went in popularity and masses, especially when it was adopted in the case of the popular courts of justice. At the time of the attack on the Aeropagus, Pericles carried a measure that the judges should receive a remuneration of an oboe a day. Though the measure had the immediate political object of gaining popular support for the attack on the Aeropagus, it was a measure which was ultimately inevitable. The amount of judicial business was growing so enormously that it would have been impossible to find a sufficient number of judges ready to attend day after day in the courts without any compensation. But the easily earned pay attracted the poor and idle, who found it pleasant to sit in court listening to curious cases. Their sense of self-importance tickled by the flattering respect of the pleaders. Every citizen who wished could place his name on a list from which the list of judges was selected by lot, so many from each tribe, and the courts were empaneled from this list. It was now to the interest of every Athenian that there should be as few citizens as possible to participate in the new privileges and profits of citizenship. Accordingly, about ten years later the rolls of the burgers were stringently revised, and a law was passed that the name of no child should be admitted, whose father and mother were not Athenian citizens legitimately wedded. It was a law which would have excluded the mysticlies and Cleansonies, the lawgiver, whose mothers were foreigners. It was a matter, of course, that in cases above political character the judges of the Helicia should be swayed by their own political opinions and by the eloquence of the pleaders working upon their emotions. It was inevitable that the legal aspect of such cases should be often lost to sight, and the facts often misjudged. It was an essential part of the democratic intention that the sovereign people should make its anger felt, and if its anger were sometimes, like a king's anger, unfair, that could not be helped. But it was far more serious that in private cases the ends of justice were liable to be defeated, not through intention, but through ignorance. We can have no better evidence as to the working of the popular courts than the speeches by which the pleaders hoped to influence the decisions of the judges. Litigants and Athens had to plead their own cases. There were no such institutions as court advocates. But a man might learn off a speech would have been composed for him by another, and recite it in court. Hence there arose a class of professional speech writers, and many of their speeches have been preserved. From these models of judicial eloquence, we learn how pleaders expected to gain sentences in their favor. To make a large use of arguments which are perfectly irrelevant to the case, a plaintiff, for example, will try to demonstrate at great length that he has rendered services to this state, and that his opponent has performed none. There was thus no question of simply administering the law. The judges heard each party interpreting the law in its own sense, but they had themselves no knowledge of the law, and therefore, however impartial they sought to be, their decision was unduly influenced by the dexterity of an eloquent pleader, and affected by considerations which had nothing to do with the matter at issue. And there was no appeal from their judgment. A feature of the American democracy, not to be lost sight of, is that public burdens were laid upon the rich burgers, which did not fall upon the poor. These were no regular taxes on income or capital, but burdens which were highly characteristic of ancient society, and which might fall to a man's lot only once or twice in his life. We have already seen high chirocts were taken from the richer classes to equip and man tyremes, in which they were themselves obliged to sale, and for which they were entirely responsible. It was a duty which entailed not only an outlay of money, but a considerable sacrifice of time and trouble. There were other burdens also. For example, when the city sent solemn deputation some religious errand, whether to the yearly Feast of Apollo at Los, to one of the great Pan-Hellenic festivals, or to the Oracle of Delphi, a wealthy citizen was chosen to eke out at his cost the money applied for the purpose to the public treasury, and to conduct the deputation and equip it with magnificence worthy of the occasion. But none of the liturgies, as these public buildings were called, was more important or more characteristic of Athenian life than that of providing the choruses for the festivals of Dionysus. Every year each tribe named one of its wealthy tribesmen to be a Sheregos, and its duty were to furnish and array a chorus and provide a skilled trainer to teach it the dances and songs of the drama which it was to perform. Rivalry spurred the choray guide to ungrudging outlay. He whose chorus was victorious in the tragic or the comic competition was crowned and received the bronze tripod which he used to set up and scribe with his own name and that of his tribe, upon a pillar or sometimes upon a miniature round temple. On the east side of the Acropolis, leading to the theater, a long street of these shurigat monuments recorded the public spirit of the citizens, and this street of tripod showed perhaps more impressively than any other evidence how much significance this state attached to the theater and the worship of Dionysus. Never was Piety more fully approved as wisdom. The state's endowment of religion turned out to be an endowment of brilliant genius, and the rich men who were called upon to spend their time and money in furnishing the dancers did service to the great masters of tragedy and comedy and thereby served the whole world. Section 2 War of Athens with the Peloponnesians The banishment of Simone was a signal for a complete change in the foreign policy of Athens. She abandoned the alliance with the Lacedemonians and formed a new alliance with their enemies, Argos and Thessaly. The new friendship of the Athenian and Argyve people is reflected in the trilogy which Escalus composed about this time on the murder of Agamemnon and the vengeance of Orestes. The dramatist plays pointedly upon the alliance and perhaps it is not undesigned compliment to the new ally that he makes Agamemnon, Lord of Argos and not of the newly destroyed Mycenae. So far indeed, as the main interests of Athens were concerned, she was not brought into direct collision with Sparta. But these interests forced her into deadly Ravru of two of Sparta's allies. The naval empire of Athens and the growth of her sea power rapidly extending her trade and opening new visions of commercial ambition in all quarters of the Greek world. She was competing with and it seemed likely she would outstrip the two great cities of traffic, Corinth and Eugenia. With Eugenia there had already been a struggle and now that Athens had grown in power and wealth another struggle was inevitable. The competition of Athenian merchants with Corinth in the west was active at the time that an Athenian general took Nopadicus from the Ozzolian Locrians and secured a naval station which gave Athens a considerable control over the mouth of the Corinthian Gulf. This was a blow which struck home. Athens had now the means of intercepting and harassing the Corinthian Argosites which sailed forth with merchandise for the far west. War was a question of months and the occasion soon came. The Magarians, on account of a frontier dispute with Corinth, deserted the Peloponnesian League and placed themselves under Athenian protection. Nothing could be more welcome to Athens than the adhesion of Magara. Holding Magara she had a strong frontier against the Peloponnesus commanding the Isthmus from Pagai on the Corinthian to Nisei and the Seronic Bay. Without any delay she set about the building of a double line of wall from the hill of Magara down to the haven of Nicaea and she garrisoned these, quote, long walls in, quote, with her own troops. Thus the eastern coast road was under her control and Attica had a strong bulwark against invasion by land. The occupation of Magara was a new offense to Corinth and it was an offense to the mistress of the Peloponnesian League. War soon broke out but at first part it took no active part. On the events of the war we were ill-instructed. We find an Athenian squadron making descent on Haleus and gaining an advantage over some Corinthian and Epidurian troops. Then the little isle and the Sacrophalia which lies between Eugenia and the Argyve shore becomes the scene of a naval combat with Peloponnesian fleet and the Athenians prevail. At this point the Eugenitans entered the struggle. They saw that if Corinth sustained a severe defeat their own fate was sealed. Athens would become absolute mistress in the Seronic Sea. A great naval battle was fought near Eugenia. The allies of both the Eugenia and Athens were engaged and the Athenians having taken 70 ships landed on the island and blockaded the town. Thereupon the Peloponnesians sent a force of hoplites to help the Eugenitans while the Corinthians advancing over the heights of Gerania descended into the Magrid expecting that the Athenians would find it impossible to protect Magara and blockade Eugenia at the same time. But they reckoned without the true knowledge of the Athenian spirit. The citizens who were below and above the regular military age were formed into an extraordinary army and marched to the Magrid under the strategic Myronides. A battle was fought both sides claimed victory but when the Corinthians withdrew the Athenians raised a trophy. Urged by the taunts of their fellow citizens the Corinthian soldiers returned in 12 days and began to set up a counter trophy but as they were at work the Athenians rushed forth from Magara and inflicted a severe defeat. This warfare around the shores and in the waters of the Seronic Bay is the prelude to more warfare in other parts of Greece. But it is a prelude which has a unity of its own. Athens is opposed indeed to the Peloponnesian alliance but the war is so far mainly conducted by a constant of three states whose interests lie in the neighborhood of the Seronic Bay Corinth, Apidorus and Agena. These states have indeed the Peloponnesian League behind them and are helped out by the quote Peloponnesian ships and quote Peloponnesian hoplites but at the same time the war is not yet assumed a fully Peloponnesian character. The year of these successes was a year of intense excitement and strain for Athens. It might fairly be described as a marvellous in her history. The victories of Cycrafalia and Agena were won with only a portion of her fleet for in the very hour when she was about to be bought face to face with the armed opposition of rival Greek powers against the growth of her empire and the expansion of her trade she had embarked in an enterprise beyond the limits of the Greek world. It was an expedition to Egypt one of the most daring ventures she ever undertook. A fleet of 200 Athenian and Confederate galleys was operating against Persian and Cyprian seas when it was invited to cross over to Egypt. The call came from Anaros, a Libyan potentate who had stirred up the lands of the Lower Nile to revolt against their Persian masters. The murder of Xerxes had been followed by troubles at the Persian court and it was some time before Adar Xerxes was safely seated on his throne. The rebellion of Egypt was one of the consequences of the situation. The invitation of Anaros was most alluring. It meant that if Athens delivered Egypt from Persian rule she would secure the chief control of the foreign trade with the Nile Valley and be able to establish a naval station on the coast. By one stroke she would far outstrip all the rival merchant cities of Hellas. The nameless generals of the Aegean fleet accepted the call of the Libyan prince. As in the days of remote antiquity the quote peoples of the north end quote were now to help the Libyans in an attempt to overthrow the lords of Egypt. Of those remote episodes the Greeks knew nothing but they might remember how Karrion and Ionian adventures had once placed the Egyptian king upon the throne. In another way an attack on Egypt was a step in a new path. Hitherto the Confederate ships had sailed in waters which were holy or partly Greek and had confined their purpose to the deliverance of Greek cities or cities which like the Karrion and Lycean were in close touch with Greek civilization. The shores of Cyprus where Greek information were side by side invited above other shores a squadron of Greek deliverers. But when the squadron crossed over to Egypt it entered a new sphere and undertook a new kind of work. The Egyptian expedition was an attempt to carry the struggle with Persia into another stage at which Greece was the aggressor and the invader. This attempt was not destined to prosper more than a century was still to elapse before the invasion of Xerxes would be avenged. But it is well to remember that the Athenians in moving on Egypt anticipated Alexander the Great and that success was not impossible if Simone had been their general. The Athenians sailed up the Nile to find Aynaros triumphant having gained a great victory in Delta over a Persian army which had been sent to Quelheim. Sailing up they won possession of the city of Memphis except the citadel, the quote White Castle in which the Persian garrison held out. After this achievement we lose sight of the war in Egypt for more than two years and beyond the protracted brocade of the White Castle we have no record how the Athenian forces were employed. But it was a fatal coincidence that the power of Athens should have been divided at this moment. With her full forces she might have inflicted a crushing blow onto Peloponnesians. With her full forces she might have prospered in Egypt. It was a triumph for the political party which had driven Simone into banishment that when half the Athenian fleet was on the blanks of the Nile the hostilities of Corinth and Eugenia were in their friends should have been so bravely repelled. Nothing impresses one more with the energy of Athens at this crisis than a stone which records the names of the citizens belonging to one of the tribes who fell in this memorable year. Quote Of the Erechtheid tribe these are they who died in the war in Cyprus in Egypt in Phoenice at Helalis in Eugenia at Magara in the same year and the names follow The siege of Eugenia was continued and within two years after the battle the Eugenians capitulated and agreed to surrender their fleet and pay tribute to Athens. Few successes can have been more welcome or profitable to the Athenians than this. The island which offended their eyes and attracted their desires when they looked forth from their hills across the waters of their bay was at length powerless in their hands. They had lame one of their most formidable commercial rivals. They had overthrown one of the most influential cities of Dorian Greece. In the Confederacy Eugenia took her rank with Thassos as richest of the subject states. For these two island cities the burden of yearly tribute was 30 talents incomparably larger than the sum paid by any of the other cities whose tribute we know. In the meantime events in another part of Greece had let the Lacedaemonians themselves take part in the war and had transported to the main interest of the struggle from the Seronic Gulf to Boetia. The errand of the Lacedaemonians was an errand of piety to succor their mother people the Dorians of the north one whose three little towns had been taken by the Phocians. To force the aggressors to restore the place was an easy task for a force which consisted of 1,500 Lacedaemonian hoplites and 10,000 troops of allies. The real work of the expedition lay in Boetia. It was clearly the policy of Sparta to raise up here a powerful state to hold Athens in check and this could only be affected by strengthening Thebes and making her mistress of the Boetian Federation. Accordingly, Sparta now set up power of Thebes again revising the League and forcing the Boetian cities to join it. When the army had done its work in Boetia its return to the Peloponnesus was beset by difficulties. To march through the Margarit was dangerous for the Athenians held the passes and had redoubled their precautions and it was not safe to cross the Corinthian Gulf the way by which they probably had come for Athenian vessels were now on the watch to intercept them. In this embarrassment they seemed to have resolved to march straight upon Athens where the people were now engaged in the building of the long walls from the city to the harbor. This course was probably suggested by an Athenian party of oligarchs who were always abiding an opportunity to overthrow the democracy. The Peloponnesian army advanced to Tannagra near the Attic frontier but before they crossed the borders the Athenians went forth to meet them 14,000 strong including 1,000 Argyves and some Thessalian cavalry. The banished statesman Simone now came to the Athenian camp pitched on Boetian soil and sought leave to fight for his country against Sparta. The request was hastily referred to the council of 500 of Athens it was not granted and all that Simon could do was exhort his partisans to fight valiantly. This act of Simone prepared the way for his recall and the battle which followed his friends fought so stubbornly that none of them survived. There was great slaughter on both sides but the Thessalian horsemen deserted during the combat and Elacidamonians gained the victory. But the battle saved Athens and the victory only enabled the victors to return by the Ismus and cut down the fruit trees of the Megarid. Athens now desired to make a truce with Sparta in order to gain time. No man was more fitted to compass than the exile Simone whose recent conduct had shown that he was the foe of the foes of Athens even if these foes were Spartans. The people at the instance of Pericles passed a decree recalling him but when Simone had negotiated the truce he withdrew to a distance from Athens with a tact which we might hardly have expected. Elacidamonians celebrated their victory by a golden shield which they set upon the gavel in a new temple of Zeus in the Altus of Olympia as a gift from the spoils of Tanagra. But the victory did not even secure Boetia. Two months after the battle the Athenians made an expedition into Boetia under the command of Myronades. A decisive battle was fought at Arnafida and the Athenians became masters of the whole land except Thebes. The Boetian cities were not enrolled in the maritime Confederacy of Delos but the dependence on Athens was expressed in the obligation of furnishing contingents to her armies. At the same time the Phocians entered into the alliance of Athens and the Opuncin Locrians were constrained to acknowledge her supremacy. Sucks were the consequences of Anifida and Tanagra. Athens could now quietly complete the building of her long walls. These brilliant successes were crowned as we have seen by the capture of Agena and probably about the same time the acquisition of Chosen gave the Athenians an important post on their garlic shore. But in the far south their arms were not so prosperous. Since the capture of Memphis no success seems to have been gained and the White Castle still held out. After an ineffectual attempt to induce Sparta to cause a diversion by invading Attica King Atazirksi sent a large army to Ergip under Megabysis who was supported by a Phoenician fleet. Having won a battle they drove the Greeks out of Memphis and shut them up in propitias an island formed by a canal which intersected the canopic and semenitic chants of the Nile. Here he blockaded them for 18 months. At last he drained the canal and turned aside the water so that the Greek ships were left high and dry and almost a whole island was reconnected with the banks. Thus the Persians were able to march across the island. The Greeks having burned their ships turned to Byblos where they capitulated to Megabysis and were allowed to depart. A tedious march brought them the friendly Cyrene where they found means of returning to their homes. A Nairos who kindled the revolt was crucified though his life had been spared by the terms of the capitulation. Soon afterwards a relief squad in the fiftly Tyremes arrived from Athens. It was attacked by the powerful Phoenician fleet in the Mendesian mouth of the Nile and only a few ships escaped. The Persian authority was restored throughout the land. The day for Greek control of Egypt had not yet come. But though the Athenian lost ships and treasures along this daring ill-fated enterprise their empire was now at the height of its power. They were even able to make the disaster in Egypt a pretext for converting the Delian Confederacy into an undisguised Athenian empire. The triumphant Persian fleet might sail into the Aegean Sea. A Nairos was not a safe treasury. The funds of the league must be removed to the Athenian Acropolis. The empire of Athens now included a continental as well as a maritime dominion. The two countries which marched on her frontiers Boethia and Magara had become her subjects. Beyond Boethia her dominion extended over Phosis and Locris to the pass of Thermophilae. In Argos her influence was predominant. The Aegean had been added to her Aegean empire. The ships of Aegean to her navy. Through the subjection of Magara the conquest of Aegean and the capture of Choisin the Seronic Bay had almost been converted into an attic lake. The great commercial city of the Isthmus was the chief and most dangerous enemy of Athens and the next object of the policy of Pericles was to convert to Corinthian Gulf into an attic lake also and so Heminth Corinth on both of her seas. The possession of the Magara and Boethia especially the station at Nalpaticus gave Athens control of the northern shores of the Gulf from within the gate up to the Isthmus. But the southern seaboard was still entirely Peloponnesian and outside the gate on the Eccarnary coast there were posts which ought to be secured. The general Tomides made a beginning by capturing the Corinthian colony Chelsus opposite Paltre. Then Pericles having conducted an expedition to continue the work of the Ptolemides. Having failed to reduce Cicin he laid seized Onide an important and strong walled mart on the Akanadian coast but he was unable to take it. Though no military success was gained the expedition created a sensation and it seems have led to the ahesion of the Achean cities to the Athenian alliance. It is certain at least that shortly afterwards Achaea was an Athenian dependency and for a few years Athenian vessels could sail with the Tenth of Dominion in the Corinthian as well as in the Seronic Bay. End of Chapter 9 Part 1 Section 33 of the History of Greece. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recorded by Kirsten Ferrari. History of Greece by J. B. Berry. Chapter 9 The Athenian Empire under Pericles. Section 3 Conclusion of Peace with Persia. The warfare of recent years had been an enormous strain on the resources of Athens and it was found necessary to increase the burden of tribute imposed on her allies. She wanted a relief from the strain but after the expedition of Pericles three or four years elapsed before peace was concluded. During that interval there seems to have been by mutual consent of the combatants a cessation from military operations. Lacedaemon and Argos first concluded a treaty of peace for thirty years and then Semen, who had returned to Athens negotiated a truce which was fixed for five years between the Athenians and Peloponnesians. As soon as the peace was arranged Athens and her allies were able to resume their warfare against Persia and to no man could that warfare be more safely or fiddly entrusted than to the hero of the Euramedon River. Pericles may have been well pleased to use Semen's military experience and an amicable arrangement seems to have been made Semen undertaking not to interfere with the policy of Pericles. Gossip said that Semen's sister had much to do with bringing to pass the reconciliation. The charms as well as the intrigues of Alpenes appear to have figured conspicuously in the memoirs of Athenian biographers. They were employed by one party as a means of columnating Semen by the other for discrediting Pericles. Women played no part in the history of Athena's city. The Phoenician fleet, which had put down the Egyptian rebellion was afterwards sent to re-establish the authority of Artaxerxes and accordingly Semen sailed thither with a squadron of two hundred vessels. He detached sixty to help a princelot who had succeeded in defying the Persians in the fends of the Delta of the Nile for the Athenians, even after their calamity, had not entirely abandoned the thought of Egyptian conquest. Then he laid siege to Citian. It was the last enterprise of the man who had conducted the war against Persia ever since the Battle of Micali. He died during the blockade and his death marks the beginning of a new period in which hostilities between Greek and Persian slumber. But one final success was gained. Raising the siege of Citian because there was no food, the fleet arrived off Salamis and the Greeks gained a double victory by sea and land over the Phoenician and Silesian ships. But this victory did not encourage the Athenians to continue the war. We have no glimpse of the councils of their statement at this moment, but the facts of the situation enable us to understand their resolution to make peace with the great king. The events of recent years had proved to them that it was beyond the strength of Athens to carry on war at the same time in any effectual way with the common enemy of all the Greeks and with her rivals among the Greeks themselves. It was therefore necessary to choose between peace with Persia and peace in Greece. But an enduring peace in Greece could only be purchased by the surrender of those possesses which Athens had lately gained. Corinth would never acquiesce until she had won back her old predominant position in her western gulf. So long as she was hemmed in as Athens had hemmed her in she would inevitably seize any favourable hour to strike for her release. Some Athenian politicians would have been ready to retreat from the positions which had been recently seized and of which the occupation was most galling to Corinth. But Pericles, who had won these positions was a strong imperialist. The aim of his statesmanship was to increase the Athenian empire and to spread the political influence of Athens within the borders of Greece. He was unwilling to let any part of her empire go for the sake of earning new successes against the barbarian. The death of Simon who had been the soul of the Persian war may have helped Pericles to carry through his determination to bring that war to an end. And the great king on his side would not hesitate. For the Greek victory of Cyprian Salamis had been followed by a revolt of Megabasis, the general who had quelled the insurrection of Egypt. Accordingly peace was made with Persia. There is a dark mist about the negotiations so dark that it has been questioned whether a formal treaty was ever concluded. But there can be no reasonable doubt that Athens came to an understanding with Artaxerxes and that peace ensued, and it is equally certain that there was a definite contract by which Persia undertook not to send ships of war into the Aegean, and Athens gave a similar pledge securing the coasts of the Persian Empire against attack. An embassy from Athens and her allies must have waited on the great king at Sousa, and the terms of the arrangement must have been put in writing. But on the other hand there was no treaty as between two Greek states. The great king would never have consented as an equal, and he certainly did not stoop to the humiliation of formally acknowledging the independence of the Greek cities of Asia. It was enough that he should graciously promise to make certain concessions. But whenever were the diplomatic forms of the agreement both parties meant peace, and peace was maintained. It has been called the Peace of Collias, and we have a record which makes it probable that the chief ambassador was Collias, the richest man at Athens, and the husband of Amon's sister. The first act in the strife of Greece and Persia thus closes. All the cities of Helos, which had come under barbarian sway, had been reunited to the world of free Hellenic states, except in one outlying corner. The Greek cities of Cyprus were left to struggle with the Phoenicians as best they might, and the Phoenicians soon got the upper hand and held it for many years. They tried to extirpate Greek civilization from the island, but Greek civilization was a hardy growth, and we shall hereafter see Greek dynasties again in power. Section 4 Athenian Reverses The Thirty Years' Peace The peace with Persia, however, was not followed by further Athenian expansion within the defined limits. On the contrary, some of the most recent acquisitions of the Athenian Empire began to fall away. Orcomenas and Carania and some other towns in western Boetia were seized by exiled oligarchs, and it was necessary for Athens to intervene promptly. The general Tolmaides went forth with a wholly inadequate number of troops. He took and garrisoned Carania but did not attempt Orcomenas. On his way home he was set upon by the exiles from Orcomenas and some others in the neighborhood of Corania and defeated. He was himself slain, many of the hoplites were taken prisoners, and the Athenians, in order to obtain the release, resigned Boetia. Thus the battle of Corania undid the work of Inafaita. Athens had little reason to regret this loss, for dominion in Boetia was not really conducive to the consolidation of her empire. To maintain control over the numerous city-states of the Boetian country would have been a constant strain on her military resources which would hardly have been remunerative. The loss of Boetia was followed by the loss of Phocis and Locris. It was strange enough that Phocis should fall away. A few years before the Phocians had taken possession of Delphi the Spartans had sent an army to rescue the shrine from their hands and give it back to the Delphians, but as soon as the Spartans had gone an Athenian army came led by Pericles and restored the sanctuary to the Phocians. It was a sacred war but so conducted that it did not make a breach of the five years truce. Yet although their position at Delphi seemed to depend on the support of Athens the Phocians now deserted her alliance. The change was due to an oligarchical reaction in the Phocian cities consequent on the oligarchical rising in Boetia. The defeat of Coronea dimmed the prestige of Athenian arms and still more serious results ensued. Jobia and Megara revolted at the same moment. Here too oligarchical parties were at work. Pericles, who was a general, immediately went to Jobia with the regiments of seven of the tribes remaining three marched into the Megara. But he had no sooner reached the island than he was overtaken by the news that the garrison in the city of Megara had been massacred and that a Peloponnesian army was threatening Attica. He promptly returned and his first object was to unite his forces with the troops in the Megara which were under the command of Andesides. But King Pleistoanex and the Lacedemonians were between them commanding the east coast road to return to Attica by creeping round the corner of the Corinthian Gulf at Agostheni and passing through Boetia. The troops were guided by a man of Megara named Pythian and the gratitude of the three tribes quote whom he saved by leading them from Pagae through Boetia to Athens was recorded on his funeral monument. The stone has survived and the verses written upon it are a touching reminiscence of a moment of great peril. But when the whole army united in Attica the peril was past. The return of Pericles had disconcerted King Pleistoanex who commanded the Lacedemonians and having advanced only as far as the Triassian plain he withdrew deeming it useless to strike at Athens. Pericles was thus set free to carry out the reduction of Ubia. Histaea, the city in the north of the island was most hardly dealt with probably because her resistance was most obstinate. The people were driven out, their territory was annexed to Athens and the new settlement of Oreos took the place of Histaea. In other cases the position of each state was settled by an agreement and the arrangements which were made with Calcus were still preserved in stone. The alarm of the Athenians is reflected in reductions of tribute which they allowed to their subject states they feared that the example of Ubia might spread. The use of five years was now approaching its end and peace was felt to be so indispensable that they resigned purchasing a more durable treaty by considerable concessions. They had lost Megara but they still held the two ports Nicaea and Pagae. Thessae as well as Achaea they agreed to surrender and on this basis a peace was concluded for thirty years between the Athenians and the Peloponnesians. All the allies of both sides were enumerated in the treaty and it was stipulated that neither Athens nor Lassidamen was to admit into her alliance an ally of the other while neutral states could join whichever alliance they chose. It was a humiliating peace for Athens and perhaps would not have been concluded but for the alarm which had been caused by the in-road of the Peloponnesians into Attic territory. While the loss of Boeisha was probably a gain and the evacuation of Achaea might be lightly endured the loss of the Megara was a serious blow for while Athens held the long walls and the passes of Guerenaea she had complete immunity from Peloponnesian soil. Henceforth Attica was always exposed to such aggressions. Besides this her position in the Crescent Gulf was greatly weakened. The attempt which she had made to win a land empire had succeeded only for a brief space the lesson was that she must devote her whole energy to maintaining her maritime dominion. It was a gloomy moment for the Athenians and it must have required all the tact and eloquence of Pericles to restore the shaken confidence and revive the pirates. Yubia at all events was safe and men might look back over sixty years to that victory which had been won by their ancestors in a critical hour over a joint attack of the Boeicians and Calcidians. On that occasion a tithe of the spoil had been dedicated to Athena. Pericles now set up a bronze chariot with this tithe and so associated the earlier victory with his own. The parallel was close for the rebellion of Yubia had mainly been the Boeician oligarchs who freed their own land from Athenian control. The marble base on which the chariot stood on the Acropolis has been found and a few letters of the inscribed verses which Herodotus read and copied can be made out. The recollection that the sons of the Athenians quenched the insolence of the Boeicians as these verses have it was indeed the only consolation that could be offered for the defeat of Coronia. While he made the most of the reduction of Yubia, Pericles may also have dwelt on the prospects of the Attic Sea Empire. He may have elated them by words such as he has reported to have used at a later moment of despondency, quote, of the two divisions of the world accessible to man, the land and the sea, there is one of which you are absolute masters and have or may have the dominion to any extent you please. Neither the great king nor any nation on earth can hinder a navy like yours from penetrating with or so ever you choose to sail. Thucydides. Book 2. Chapter 62 Section 5 The imperialism of Pericles and the opposition to his policy The cities of the Athenian alliance might have claimed, when the Persian war was ended, that Confederacy should be broken up and that they should resume their original and rightful freedom. The fair answer to this claim would have been that peace had indeed come but that it would endure only so long as a power was maintained strong enough to stand up against the might of Persia. Dissolve the Confederacy and the cities will severly and speedily become the prey of the barbarian. But in any case, the Confederacy had become an empire and Athens was in the full career of an ambitious imperialist state. The tributes which she imposed on her subjects were probably not oppressive and were constantly revised. When the five years truce was about to be concluded she reduced the tribute which had been increased under the stress of war to its former amount. She did not force her own coinage upon her subjects, every city might have its own mint and most of them had but there was much that was galling in her empire to communities in which the love of freedom was strongly developed. The revolt and reduction of Ubia showed in its undisguised shape the rule of might. It must, however, be remembered in judging of the feelings of the cities toward their mistress that in nearly every city there were an oligarchical and a democratical party. The democracy was supported by Athens and was generally friendly to her. The oligarchs were always on the watch for an opportunity to rebel. And for this reason a revolt is not in itself evidence that Athens was unpopular among her allies. The carrion in Lycian cities began to fall away after the peace with Persia but most of them were only superficially Hellenized and Athens let them go, not thinking it worth while to take measures for retaining all of them. Pericles had been the guide of the Athenian people in the recent war. His councils had directed their imperial policy but that policy had not been unchallenged. His leadership had not been unopposed. There was a strong oligarchical party at Athens which not only disliked the democracy of her city but arraigned their empire. Most of this party attacked the imperialist policy of Pericles purely from party motives and for the purpose of attacking him there was one man at least who may claim the credit of having honestly espoused the cause of the allied cities against the unscrupulous selfishness of his own city. This was Thucydides, the son of Melisius, a man who had connections with many of the allies. He maintained that the tribute should be reserved exclusively for the purpose for which it was levied, the defense of Greece against Persia and that Athens had no right to spend it on other things, especially things which concerned herself alone and did not benefit the cities. It was an injustice that these cities should have to defray any part of the costs of an Athenian campaign in Boetia or a new temple in Athens. This was a just view. But justice is never entirely compatible with the growth of a country to political greatness and Pericles was resolved to make his country great at all hazards. For this purpose his policy toward the allied cities was in a phrase which seems to have been his own to keep them well in hand. It is pleasant to find that voices were raised against his unscrupulous imperialism. The more extreme section of the party which supported Thucydides would not have hesitated to betray Athens into the hands of her foes for the sake of overthrowing the democracy. They had tried to do this at the time of the Battle of Tanagra. Much less would they have scrupled to give secret help to the oligarchical parties which worked against Athenian rule in the subject cities. In many places during the five years truce oligarchical movements had led to the loss of Boetia. Oligarchical movements had caused the revolts of Megara and Euboea. Oligarchy had even prevailed in Phocis. There can be little doubt that this widespread oligarchical activity had its echo in Athens and that these years the party opposed to Pericles was loud and aggressive. He met that opposition with remarkable dexterity. He introduced a new policy which, while it was thoroughly imperialist was so popular at Athens that his adversaries were silenced. Among the measures which Pericles initiated to strengthen the empire of his city none was more important in its results than the system of settling Athenian citizens abroad. Like measures of many great statesmen this policy affected the solution of two diverse problems. The colonies which were thus sent to different parts of the empire served as garrisons in the lands of subject allies and they also helped to provide for part of the superfluous population of Athens. The first of these Pericles and Claroshes was established in the Thracian Charisthenes under the personal supervision of Pericles himself. Lands were bought from the allied cities of the peninsula and a thousand Athenian citizens, chiefly of the poor and unemployed, were allotted farms and assigned to the several cities. The payment for the land was made in the shape of a reduction of the tribute. At the same time Pericles restored the wall which Militiades had built across the Isthmus to protect the city against the Thracians. In view of the rising power of the Thracian prince Theras this precaution was wise. The out settlements in the Charisthenes which were probably followed by out settlements in Lemnos and Imbros, the island waters of the Gate of the Propontus were the most important of all. The same policy was at the same time adopted in Ubia and some of the islands of the Aegean and in a mysterious the Thracian Brea which probably lay west of the Strymon. The original act of the colonization of Brea has been preserved and the provision that all the settlers shall belong to the two poorest classes of the people on the Solonian classification illustrates the character of the Periclean Clarishies. The policy was naturally popular at Athens since it provided for thousands of unemployed who cumbered the streets and perhaps it may be regarded as one of the happiest strokes devised by Pericles in producing his ascendancy and confounding his opponents, but it was a policy which was highly unpopular among the allies in whose territories the settlements were made and it gave perhaps more dissatisfaction than any other feature of Athenian rule. Most Athenian citizens were naturally allured by a policy of expansion which made their city great and powerful without exacting heavy sacrifices from themselves. The day had not yet come when they were unwilling to undertake military service and they were in as long as the cost of maintaining the empire did not tax their purses. The empire furthered the extension of their trade and increased their prosperity. The average Athenian was not hindered by his own full measure of freedom from being willing to press with as little scruple as any tyrant the yoke of his city upon the necks of other communities. So long as the prophets of empire were many and its burdens light, the Athenian democracy would feel few searchings of heart in adopting the imperialism of Pericles. That imperialism was indeed of a lofty kind. The aim of the statesmen who guided the destinies of Athens in these days of her greatness was to make her the queen of Helas to spread her sway on the mainland as well as beyond the seas and to make her political influence felt in those states which it would have been unwise and perhaps impossible to draw within the borders of her empire. The full achievement of this ideal would have meant the union of the Greeks, a union held together by the power of Athens, but having a natural support in a common religion, common traditions, common customs and a common language. Shortly before the loss of Boesia through the defeat of Coroneia Athens addressed to Greece an open declaration of her Pan-Helenic ambition. She invited the Greek states to send representatives to an Hellenic congress at Athens for the purpose of discussing certain matters of common interest to restore the temples which had been burned by the Persians, to pay the vote of offerings which were due to the gods for the great deliverance and to take common measures for clearing the seas of piracy. This was the program which Athens proposed to the consideration of Greece. The invitation did not go to the west for the Italians and Siciliates were not directly concerned in the Persian war but it went to all the cities of old Greece and to the cities and islands which belonged to the Athenian empire. If the congress had taken place it would have inaugurated an Amphitiania of all Hellas and Athens would have been the center of this vast religious union. It was a sublime project but it could not be. It was not to be expected that Sparta would fall in with a project which, however noble and pious it sounded might tempt or help Athens to strike out new and perilous paths of ambition and a grandisement. The Athenian envoys were rebuffed in the Peloponnesus and the plan fell through. The revolution in Boatia deprived Athens of her empire on the mainland. End of Section 33 Chapter 9 Part 6 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 Kalinda A History of Greece to the death of Alexander the Great, Volume 1 by John Bagnell Bury Chapter 9 Part 6 The Restoration of the Temples It remained then for Athens to carry out that part of the program which concerned herself and restore in greater splendor the temples of her city and her land. We shall miss the meaning of the architectural monuments which now begin to rise under the direction and influence of Pericles if we do not clearly grasp their historical motive and recognize their immediate connection with the Persian War. It devolved upon the city as a religious duty to make good the injuries which the barbarian had inflicted upon the habitations of her gods and fully to pay her debt of gratitude to heaven for the defeat of the Mayday and seeing that Athens had won her great empire through that defeat the gods might well expect that she would perform this duty on no small scale and in no niggerly spirit. In this above all was the greatness of Pericles displayed that he discerned the importance of performing it on a grand scale. He recognized that the city by ennobling the houses of her gods would ennoble herself and that she could express her own might and her ideals in no worthier way than by the erection of beautiful temples. His architectural plans went farther than this and we can see that he was influenced by the example of the Pistradids but the chief buildings of the Periclean age it should always be remembered were like the Athenian empire itself the consequence of the Persian invasion. Of the monuments which in the course of twenty years changed the appearance of the Acropolis one of the first was a gigantic statue of Athena wrought in bronze the goddess stood near the west brow of her own hill looking south westward and her helmet and the tip of her lance flashing in the sun could be seen far off at sea but nothing was so pressing as to carry to completion the new house of the goddess which had been begun in the days of Themistocles and never finished the work was now resumed on the same site and the same foundations but it was resumed on an entirely different plan which was drawn up by the gifted architect Ictonus the new temple was slightly broader but considerably shorter than what it would have been if the old design had been carried out and instead of foreign Perian marble native attic from the quarries of Pentelechus was employed Calicrates another expert architect super intended the execution of the plan which Ictonus had conceived it is not within our province to enter here into the architectural beauties of this perfect Dorian came afterwards to be generally known as the Parthenon the building contained two rooms between which there was no communication the eastern room into which one entered from the Pronaus was the temple proper and contained the statue of the goddess it was about a hundred feet long and was hence officially called the Hecatompetos the door of the small western room was on the west side of the temple this chamber was perhaps designed for the habitation of invisible maidens who attended the maiden goddess it is at least certain that it was called the Parthenon it is easy to imagine how a word which designated as the room of the maidens part of the house of the maiden could soon come to be associated popularly with the whole building and the name Parthenon came to mean for the ordinary ear in defiance of official usage the temple of Athena Parthenos and not the chamber of her virgins the goddess stood in her dwelling majestic and smiling her colossal figure arrayed in a golden robe a helmet on her head her right hand holding a golden victory and her left resting on her shield while the snake Ericthonius was coiled at her feet it was a wooden statue covered with ivory and gold ivory for the exposed flesh gold for the raiment and hence called chrysalophantine it was wrought by the Athenian sculptor of genius who has given his name to the plastic art of the paraclean age Phidias the son of Carmedes he had already made his fame by another beautiful statue of the goddess the city which the out-settlers who went forth to colonize Lemnos dedicated on the acropolis the Lemnian Athena was wrought in bronze and it revealed Athena to her people in the guise of their friend while the image of the Parthenon showed her rather as their queen both these creations have perished but copies have been preserved from which we can frame some far off idea of the sculptor's work to Phidias too was entrusted the task of designing and carrying out those plastic decorations which were necessary to the completion of a great temple with the metopes of the lofty entablature from which centaurs and giants stood out in high relief the great master had probably little to do but in the two pediments and on the frieze which ran around the temple within the colonade he left monuments of his genius and his skill for mankind to adore the triangle above the eastern portal was adorned with the scene of the birth of Athena who had sprung from the head of Zeus at the rising of the sun and the setting of the moon and Iris the heavenly messenger was shown going forth to carry the good news to the ends of the world the pediment of the western end was occupied with the passage in the life of the goddess that specially appertained to Attica her triumph on the acropolis in her contest with her rival Poseidon for the lordship of the land the olive which came forth from the earth by her enchantment was probably shown and we should like to believe that at the northern and southern ends reclined the two river gods Zeus and Ilisus each at the side which was nearest his own waters the subject of the wonderful freeze which encircled the temple from end to end was the most solemn of all the ceremonies which the Athenians performed in honor of their queen at the great Panathenaic festival every fourth year they went up in long procession to her temple to present her with a new robe the advance of this procession starting from the western side and moving simultaneously along the northern and southern sides to meet at the eastern entrance was vividly shown on the freeze of the Parthenon walking along the peristyle and looking upwards the spectator saw the Athenian knights beautiful young men on horseback charioteers citizens on foot musicians, kind and sheep sacrifice stately maidens with sacred vessels the nine archons of the city all advancing to the house of Athena where she entertains the celestials on her feast day the high gods are seated on thrones Zeus on one side of Athena Hephaestus on the other and near the goddess is a peplos perhaps the old peplos in the hands of a priest the western side of the freeze is still in its place but the rest has been removed the greater part to our own island Athena Polyas had now two houses side by side on her hill for the old restored temple was not destroyed nor was her old image removed from it but in her character of victory yet another small habitation was built for her by the architect Calicrates about the same time on the bastion which the hill throws out on its southwestern side footnote an inscription of circa 450 BC providing for the building of the temple and altar has been recently discovered and footnote it was an appropriate spot for the house of victory the Athenian standing on that platform saw Salamis and Agena near him his eye ranged along the Argolic coast to the distant citadel of Corinth in the mountains of the Megorid under the shadow of victory he could lose himself in reveries of memory and dreams of hope the motive of the temple as the memorial of the Persian war was written clear in the freeze whereas the sculptures of other temples of this period only alluded directly to that great struggle by the representation of mythical wars such as the war of Greek and Amazons or of Lapits and Centaurs or of gods and giants on the freeze of Athena Nike a battle between the Greeks and Persians is portrayed it is the battle of Plataea for Greeks are shown fighting in the Persian host but there were other shrines of other gods in Athens and Attica which had been wrecked by the Persians and which were now to be restored from the west side of the Acropolis as one looks down on the western quarter of the city no building is so prominent or can ever have been so prominent as the Dorian temple of Pentelic marble which crowns the hill of colonis and replaced an older temple of the limestone of Piraeus it is the temple which the sons of Hephaestus built for their sire the god of handicraftsmen who was always worshiped with special devotion at Athens it is significant that on the freeze of the Parthenon he sits next to the lady of the land this house of Hephaestus is the only Greek temple that is not a ruin about the same time a marble temple of Poseidon rose on the extreme point of southern Attica the promontory of Sunium the Persian invasion had probably been fatal to the old temple of Porostone here the sea god to whom men pray at Sunium seems to have had his own house looking down upon his own domain he was not forced here as on the Acropolis to share a sanctuary with Athena but the goddess had a separate temple of her own hard by at the other extremity of the Attic land the shrine of the goddesses of Elusis had likewise been destroyed by the barbarians the rebuilding had been soon begun but like the new temple of Athena on the Acropolis the work had been discontinued owing to the claims of war on the revenue of the state under Pericles it was taken up again and completed Ictonus made the design and Corbus carried it out the new Hall of Mysteries was built of the dark stone of Elusis one side of it was formed by the rock of the hill under which it was built and the stone steps around the walls would have seated about 3,000 as the place was close to the Magarian frontier a strong wall with towers was erected around the priestly of the shrine so that the place had the aspect of a fortress these splendid buildings required a large outlay of money and thus gave the political opponents of Pericles a welcome handle against him Thucydides was the leader of the outcry he accused Pericles not merely of squandering the resources of the state which ought to be kept as a reserve for war but of misappropriating the money of the Confederacy for purely Athenian purposes Athens it was said was like a vain woman adorning herself with pendants of precious stones and statues and temples that cost a thousand talents it is certainly true that some money was taken from the treasury of the Hellenotemi for the new buildings but this was only a very small part of the cost which was mainly defrayed by the treasury of Athena and by the public treasury of Athens there was however a good case against Pericles both on grounds of policy and on grounds of justice the plea for taking a part of the tribute perhaps a sixtieth besides the sixtieth which was consecrated to Athena doubtless was that the restoration of Greek temples destroyed by the Persians was a duty which devolved upon all the Greeks but Pericles with bold sophistry said that the allies had no reason to complain so long as Athens defended them efficiently this was the contract and they had no right to interfere in her disposition of the funds three years after the thirty years peace Thucydides thought that he could bring the question to an issue and he asked the people to educate by the sherd but the people voted for the ostracism of Thucydides so that Pericles had no opponent of influence to thwart his policy or cross his way the buildings already begun could now be continued without criticism and new works could be undertaken a great hall of music or Odeon intended for the musical contests which had recently been added to the Panathenaic celebrations was now erected on the east side of the theater of Dionysus its roof made of the masts and yard arms of captured Persian ships was pointed like a tent and wits compared it to the helmet of Pericles the strategos the trial by sherd is over says someone in a play which the Comet poet Cratonus put on the stage at this time so here comes Pericles our peak headed Zeus with the Odeon set on his crown though Simon when he constructed the southern wall of the Acropolis also built a new entrance gate facing southwestward it was too small and unimposing to relieve the frowning aspect of the walled hill a more worthy approach worthy of the Parthenon was devised by the architect Maniskelis and met the approbation of Pericles the buildings designed by Maniskelis occupied the whole west side in the center on the brow of the height and facing westward was to be the entrance with five gates and on either side of this two vast columned halls reaching to the north and south brinks of the hill in which the Athenians could walk sheltered from sun and rain thrown out on the projecting cliffs in front of these halls were to be two spacious wings flanking the ascent to the central gate but the plan of Maniskelis took no account of the sanctuaries on the southwestern part of the Acropolis on which his new buildings would encroach the southern colonnade would have cut short the precinct of Artemis Broeronia and the adjacent southern wing would have infringed on the enclosure of Athena Nike on the north side there were no such impediments the priests of these goddesses raised objections to the execution of the architect's plan at the expense of their sacred precincts and in consequence the grand idea of Maniskelis was only partly carried out but even after the building had begun Pericles and his architect never abandoned the hope that the scruples of the priests might ultimately be overcome and while they omitted altogether the southern colonnade reached the proportions of the southern wing they built in such a way that at some future time the structure might be easily enlarged to the measures of the original design on the northern side too the idea of Maniskelis was not completed but for a different reason the covered colonnade was never built it was left to the last and when the time came Athens was threatened by a great war and deemed it unwise to undertake any further outlay on building but the northwestern wing was built and was adorned with painting the greatest paintings that Athens possessed were however not on the hill but in buildings below and they belonged to a somewhat earlier age it was Simon who brought Polygnotus of Thassos to Athens and it was when Simon was in power that he, in collaboration with Mycon another eminent painter decorated with life-size frescoes the new Thasium and the Aniseum on the north side of the Acropolis and the walls of the painted portico in the marketplace we have already cast a glance at the picture of the battle of Marathon the most famous of the pictures of the Thasian master was executed after he had left Athens for the speech hall of the Snydians at Delphi its subject was the Underworld visited by Odysseus if it was vain for Athens to hope that Greece would yield her any formal acknowledgement of headship she might at all events have the triumph of exerting intellectual influence even in the lands which were released ready to admit her claims and in the field of art she partly fulfilled the ambition of Pericles who when he could not make her the queen desired that she should be the instructor of Hellas when Phidias had completed the great statue of Athena in gold and ivory and had seen it set up in the new temple he went forth, invited by the men of Elis to make the image for the temple of Zeus at Olympia for five years in his workshop in the Altus the Athenian sculptor wrought at the great Chrysalmphontine god the image which came from his hands was probably the highest creation ever achieved by the plastic art of Greece the Pan-Hellenic god seated on a lofty throne and clad in a golden robe held a victory in his right hand and a scepter in his left he was bearded and his hair was wreathed with a branch of olive many have borne witness to the impression which the serene aspect of this manifest divinity always produced upon the heart of the beholder let a man sick and weary in his soul who has passed through many distresses and sorrows whose pillow is unvisited by kindly sleep stand in front of this image he will, I deem, forget all the terrors and troubles of human life an Athenian had wrought for one of the two great centers of Hellenic religion the most sublime expression the Greek ideal of godhead nor was Phidias the only Athenian artist who worked abroad we also find the architect Ictonus engaged in designing temples in the Peloponnesus section 7 the Piraeus growth of Athenian trade the Piraeus had grown enormously since it had been fortified by Themistocles it was now one of the great ports and cheeping towns of Hellas and Pericles took in hand to make it a greater and fairer place there was one weak point in the common defenses of Piraeus and Athens between Monachia and the extreme end of the southern wall which ran down to the strand of Phalaron there was an unfortified piece of Marchishore where an enemy might land at night this defect might have been remedied by building a cross wall but a wholly different plan was adopted a new long wall was built running parallel and close to the northern wall and like it joining the fortification of Piraeus with the upper city as Athens was locally called the southern or Phalaron wall consequently ceased to be part of the system of defense and was allowed to fall into disrepair around the three harbors shipsteads were constructed in which the vessels could lie high and dry and on the wharfs and quays new storehouses and buildings of sundry kinds arose for the convenience of shipping and trade on the east side of the great harbor the chief traffic was carried on in the place of commerce this mart was marked off by boundary stones some of which are still preserved and was subject to the control of a special board of officers the most famous of the buildings in the place of commerce was the colonnade known as the daigma or show place where merchants showed their wares but Piraeus was not content with the erection of new buildings the whole town which crept up the slopes of Monachia from the quays of the great harbor was laid out on a completely new system which created considerable interest in Greece it was the rectangular system on which the main streets run parallel and are cut by cross streets at right angles the Piraeus was the first town in Europe where this plan was adopted which we now see carried out on a large scale in many modern cities the idea was due to hippodamus an architect of Miletus a man of a speculative as well as practical turn who tried with less success to apply his principles of symmetry to politics and sketched the scheme of a model state whose institutions were as precisely correlated as the streets of his model town the increase of Athenian trade was largely due to the decline of the merchant cities of Ionia as well as to the blow which was struck to the Phoenician commerce by the victory of Greece over Persia the decay of Ionian commerce is strikingly reflected in the tribute records of the Athenian Confederacy where the small sums paid by the Ionians are contrasted with the large tributes of the cities on the shores of the Propontis Lampsakis contributes twice as much both trade and industry migrated from the eastern to western and northern shores of the Aegean and this charge coincided with the rise of her empire it was Athens that it chiefly profited the population of Athens and her harbor multiplied and about this time the whole number of the inhabitants of Attica seem to have been about 250,000 perhaps more than twice as large as the population of the Corinthian state but nearly half of these inhabitants were slaves for one consequence of the growth of manufacturers was the inflowing of slave hands into the manufacturing towns in towns where the people subsisted on the fruits of agriculture the demand for slaves remained small it should be observed that although Greece and especially Athens consumed large quantities of corn brought from beyond the seas this did not ruin the agriculture of Greece the costs of transport were so great that homegrown corn could still be profitable except in remote or unusually conservative regions money had now entirely displaced more primitive standards of exchange and valuation most Greek states of any size issued their own coins and their money at this time in almost all cases silver silver had become plentiful and prices had necessarily gone up thus the price of barley and wheat had become two or three times dearer than a hundred years before far more remarkable was the increase in the price of stock in the days of Solon a sheep could be bought for a drachma in the days of Pericles its cost might approach 50 drachma as money was cheap interest should have been low but mercantile enterprise was so active the demand for capital so great and security so inadequate that the usual price of a loan was 12% End of Chapter 9 Part 7 Recording by Kalinda in Raymond, New Hampshire on February 6, 2008 Chapter 9 Part 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 Kalinda A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great Volume 1 by John Bagnell Bury Chapter 9 Part 8 Athenian Enterprise in Italy In the far west, Athens was spreading her influence and pushing her trade She supplied Arturia with her black red-figured pottery and there was a market for these products of her industry even in the remote valley of the Poe Her ships brought back metalworks from Tuscany, carpets and cushions from Carthage, corn, cheese and pork from Sicily The Greek cities of Sicily had gradually adopted the attic standard for their currency and in the Little Italian Republic on the Tiber which was afterwards destined to make laws for the whole world The fame of the legislation of Solon was so high that envoys were sent to Athens to obtain a copy of the code Thus Athens had stepped into the place of Chalcis She was now the chief Ionian trader with Italian and Sicilian lands Her rival in this western commerce was Corinth but she was beginning to out-distance the great Dorian merchant city In this competition Athens had one advantage By the possession of Napactus she could control the entrance to the Corinthian Gulf a perpetual menace to Corinth while the hatred which existed between Corinth and her colony Corsera prevented this island from being used as useful as it should have been to the Corinthian traffic with the west On the other hand Corinth had the advantage of having important colonies in the west with which she maintained intimate relations especially Syracuse and these maritime cities were centers of her trade and influence Next to Athens herself Syracuse was probably the largest and most populous city in the Greek world Athens had no colonies and no such centers The disadvantage was felt by Themistocles and his active brain devised the occupation of the site of Ceres which had been destroyed by its neighbors but the scheme was not realized At length the opportunity came when Pericles was at the head of affairs Here, as in other cases it fell upon him to execute ideas of Themistocles The men of Old Sibiris who since the destruction of their own town had dwelled in neighboring cities thought that they might at length return to build a new Sibiris on the old site but within five years their old foes the men of Croton went up and drove them out Yet they did not despair but hoped to compass with the help of others what they had failed to accomplish by themselves They invited Athens and Sparta to take part in founding a new city For Sparta the offer had no attraction but for Athens it was a welcome opportunity The land of Sibiris was famous for its fertility and the position was suitable for Athenian commerce but Pericles determined to give the enterprise an international significance It was to be more than a mere Athenian speculation It was proclaimed throughout the Peloponnesus that whosoever wished might take part in the foundation of the new colony The Peloponnesus and especially Ikea with whose cities Athens had been closely connected in recent years was the mother country of the Greek colonies which fringed the Terentine Gulf and the idea of Pericles was that the mother country under the auspices of Athens should establish the new city Achaea, Arcadia and Elyse responded to the call New Sibiris was founded and the Athenian predominance was expressed in the image of Athena with Attic helmet on the coins of the young city But the men of old Sibiris were not content to stand on an equal footing with the colonists who had come to help them from the mother country They thought that their old connection to the place entitled them to a privileged position They claimed an exclusive right to the most important offices in the state Such claims could not be tolerated A battle was fought and the Sibiris were driven out But when the city was thus deplenished there was a pressing need for men and for the second time an appeal was made to Athens but this time from her own children To the second appeal Athens, under the guidance of Pericles responded by an enterprise on a still greater scale All Greece was now invited to take part in founding a Pan-Hellenic colony In carrying out this project the right-hand man of Pericles was the seer and interpreter exegete Lampon who was closely connected with the Ellusinian worship and was the highest authority in Athens on all matters pertaining to religion He obtained from the Delphic god an oracle touching the new colony It was to be planted where men could drink water by measure and eat bread without measure At Athens the enemies of Pericles opposed the project and especially the Pan-Hellenic character which he sought to impress upon it Cretanus brought out a play deriding Lampon and asking whether Pericles was a second Theseus who wanted to cynosize the whole of Greece But Greece responded to the Athenian proposal and the colony went forth under the guidance of Lampon Not far from the site of Cyborus they found a stream gushing from a bronze pipe which was locally known as the bushel Here clearly was the measured water oracle pointed while the land was so fruitful that it might well be said to furnish bread without measure The place was named Thury and the new city was designed by Hippodamus the architect who had laid out the Piraeus in rectangular streets The constitution of Thury was naturally a democracy but though the influence of the Athenian model might be recognized the colony adopted not the laws of Solon but the laws of Zaluchus the law giver of Locrete Some years after the foundation the question was asked who was the founder and the Delphic god himself claimed the honor The coins of Thury were stamped with Athena's head and an olive branch and the place became, as it was intended a center of Athenian influence in Italy although the attic element in the population failed to maintain its predominance Athenian policy in Thrace and the Yuxin but Athens had greater and more immediate interests in the eastern sea where she succeeded Meletus than in the western where she succeeded Chelsus The importance of the imports from the Pontus, especially corn fish and wood was more vital than that of the wares which came to her from the west and hence there was nothing of higher consequence in the eyes of a clear-sighted statesman than the assurance of the line of communication between Athens and the Yuxin sea and the occupation of strong and favorable points on the coasts of the Yuxin itself The outer gate of the Yuxin was secured by the possession of the Chercenes which Pericles strengthened and the inner gate by the control of Byzantium and Chelsodon members of the Athenian Confederacy In the Yuxin, Athens relied on the Greek towns which fringing the shores at distant intervals looked to her for support against the neighbouring barbarians The corn market in the Athenian Agora was sensitive to every political movement in Thrace and Scythia and it was necessary to be ever ready to support the ships of trade by the presence of ships of war The growth of a large Thracian kingdom under Therese and his son Siddleses demanded the attention of Athenian statesmen to these regions more pressingly than ever The power of Therese reached to the Danube and his influence to Dnipr but he married his daughter to the king of the neighbouring Scythians It was in order to impress the barbarians of the Yuxin regions with a just sense of the greatness of the Athenian sea power that Pericles sailed himself to the Pontus in command of an imposing squadron Of that voyage we know little It is ascertained that he visited Sinope and that in consequence of his visit the Athenians gained a permanent footing at that important point It is probable that he also sailed to the Sumerian Bosphorus and visited the archa enacted lords of Panticapam who were distinguished for many a long year by their abiding friendship to Athens in her good and evil days alike At Panticapam was the centre of the Yuxin corn trade This intimacy was of the highest importance The union of the Thracian tribes under a powerful king constrained Athens also to keep a watchful eye upon the north coast of the Aegean and the eastern front of Macedonia The most important point on that coast both from a commercial and strategic point of view was the mouth of the Strymon where the Athenians possessed the fortress of Ion Not far from the mouth was the bridge over which all the trade between Thrace and Macedonia passed to and fro and up the Strymon Valley ran the chief roads into the hinterland The mountains of the neighbourhood were famous for the veins of gold and silver stored in their recesses The Macedonian king Alexander had tapped a mine near Lake Prasias which yielded daily a silver talent In the days of Simon, Athens had attempted to strengthen Ion by establishing a colony at the Nine Ways by the Strymon Bridge We saw how that attempt roused the opposition of Thassos whose interest it menaced and though Thassos was subdued the colony of the Nine Ways was destroyed by the neighbouring barbarians Thirty years later Pericles resumed the project with greater success Hagnon, son of Nysias led forth a colony of Athenians and others and founded a new city by the Strymon stream and called its name Amphipolis It flourished and became as was inevitable the most important place on the coast But a local feeling grew up unfavourable to the mother country and the city was lost to Athens within 15 years of its foundation as we shall see hereafter Section 10 The Revolt of Samos After the ostracism of Thucydides Pericles reigned the undisputed leader of Athenian policy for nearly 15 years He ruled as absolutely as a tyrant and folk might have said that his rule was a continuation of the tyranny of the Pisistratids but his position was entirely constitutional and it had the stablest foundation his moral influence over the sovereign people He had the power of persuading them to do whatever he thought good and every year for 15 years after his rival's banishment he was elected one of the generals Although all the ten generals nominally possessed equal powers yet the man who possessed the supreme political influence and enjoyed the confidence of the people was practically chief of the ten and had the conduct of foreign affairs in his hands Pericles was not irresponsible for at the end of any official year the people could decline to reelect him and could call him to account for his acts When he had once gained the undisputed mastery the only forces which he used to maintain it were wisdom and eloquence Whatever devices he may have employed in his earlier career for party purposes he rejected now all vulgar means of courting popularity or catching votes He believed in himself and he sought to raise the people to his own wisdom he would not stoop to their folly The desire of autocratic authority was doubtless part of his nature but his spirit was fine enough to feel that it was a greater thing to be a leader of free men whom he must convince by speech than despot of subjects who must obey his nod Yet this leader of democracy was disdainful of the vulgar herd and perhaps no one knew more exactly than he the weak points in a democratic constitution There is no better equipment for the highest statesmanship than the temper which holds aloof from the public the front of good-natured indifference towards unfriendly criticism and we may be sure that this quality in the temperament of Pericles helped to establish his success and maintain his supremacy Pericles was a man of finer fiber than Themistocles but he was not like Themistocles a statesman of originative genius He originated little He elaborated the ideas of others He brought to perfection the sovereignty of the people which was fully established in principle long ago He raised to its height the empire which had already been founded As an orator he may have had true genius of that we cannot judge It was his privilege to guide the policy of his country at a time when she had poets and artists who stand alone and eminent not only in her own annals and those of Greece but in the history of mankind The Periclean Age Pericles and Euripides Ictinus and Phidias was not made by Pericles but Pericles, though not creative was one of its most interesting figures Perhaps his best service to Greece was one which is often overlooked The preservation of peace for twelve years between Athens and her jealous continental neighbors an achievement which demanded statesmanship of no ordinary tact In his military operations he seems to have been competent though we have not material to criticize them minutely He was at least generally successful Five years after the thirty years peace he was called upon to display his generalship Athens was involved in a war with one of the strongest members of her Confederacy the island of Samos The occasion of this war was a dispute which Samos had with another member, Miletus about the possession of Prion It appears that Athens, some years before had settled the constitution of Miletus and placed a garrison in the city and yet we now find Miletus engaged in a struggle with a non-tributary ally and when she is worsted appealing to Athens The case shows how little we know of the various orderings of the relations between Athens and her allies and subjects One would have thought the decision of such a case would have rested the most from the first On the appeal she decided in favor of Miletus and Pericles sailed with forty-four triremes to Samos where he overthrew the aristocracy carried away a number of hostages and established a democratic constitution leaving a garrison to protect it The nobles who fled to the mainland returned one night captured the garrison and handed them over to the Persian satrap of Sardis with whom they were intriguing They also recovered the hostages who had been lodged in the island of Lemnos Athens received another blow at the same time by the revolt of Byzantium Pericles sailed speedily back to Samos and invested it with a large fleet Hearing that a Phoenician squadron was coming to assist the Samians he raised the siege and with a part of his armament went to meet it During his absence the Samians were anchored close to the harbor At the end of two weeks Pericles returned Either the Phoenicians had not appeared after all or they had been induced to sail home Well-nigh two hundred warships now blockaded Samos and at the end of nine months the city surrendered The Samians undertook to pull down their walls to surrender their ships and pay a war in demnity which amounted to fifteen hundred talents They became subject to Athens and were obliged to furnish soldiers to her armies but they were not made tributary The Athenian citizens who fell in the war received a public burial at Athens Pericles pronounced the funeral oration and it may have been on this occasion that he used a famous phrase of the young men who had fallen The spring, he said, was taken out of the year Byzantium also came back to the Confederacy It had been a trying moment for Athens for she had some reason to fear Peloponnesian intervention Sparta and her allies had met to consider the situation and the Corinthians afterwards claimed whether truly or not that they deprecated any interference on the general principle that every state should be left to deal with her own rebellious allies However the Corinthians may have acted on this occasion it was chiefly the commercial jealousy existing between Athens and Corinth that brought on the ultimate outbreak of hostilities between the Athenians and Peloponnesians which led to the destruction of the Athenian Empire It seems that during the excitement of the Samian War Pericles deemed it expedient to place some restraints upon the license of the comic drama What he feared was the effect which the free criticisms of the comic poets on his policy might have not upon the Athenians themselves but upon the strangers who were present in the theater and especially upon citizens of the subject states The precaution shows that the situation was critical though the restraints were withdrawn as soon as possible for they were contrary to the spirit of the time Henceforward the only check on the comic poet was that he might be prosecuted before the council of 500 for doing wrong to the people if his jests against the officers of the people went too far Comedy had grown up in Athens out of the mummaries of masked revelers who kept the feasts of Dionysus by singing phallic songs and flinging coarse jests at the folk It was not till after the Persian war that the state recognized it Then a place was given at the great festival of Dionysus to comic competitions To the three days which were devoted to the competitions of tragedies a fourth was added for the new contest The comic drama then assumed form and shape Magnes and Cionides were its first masters but they were eclipsed by Cratonus the most brilliant comic poet of the age of Pericles There is no more significant symptom of the political and social health of the Athenian state in the period of its empire than the perfect freedom which was accorded to the comic stage to laugh at everything in earth and heaven and splash with ridicule every institution of the city at the end of the day to libel the statesman and even jest at the gods Such license is never permitted in an age of decadence even under the shelter of religious usage It can only prevail in a free country where men's belief in their own strength and virtue in the excellence of their institutions and their ideals is still true, deep and fervent then they can afford to laugh at themselves The old comedy Section 11 Since the days of Nestor and Odysseus the art of persuasive speech was held in honor by the Greeks With the rise of the democratic commonwealths it became more important and the greater attention which was paid to the cultivation of oratory may perhaps be reflected in the introduction of a new class of proper names which refer to excellence in addressing public assemblies The institutions of a Greek democratic city presupposed in the average citizen the faculty of speaking in public and for anyone who was ambitious for a political career it was indispensable If a man was hauled into a law court by his enemies and knew not how to speak he was like an unarmed civilian attacked by soldiers in panoply The power of clearly expressing ideas in such a way as to persuade an audience was an art to be learned and taught but it was not enough to gain command of a vocabulary it was necessary to learn how to argue and to exercise oneself in the discussion of political and ethical questions there was a demand for higher education This tendency of democracy corresponded to the growth of that spirit of inquiry which had first revealed itself in Ionia in the field of natural philosophy The study of nature had passed into a higher stage in the hands of two men of genius whose speculations have had an abiding effect on science Empedocles distinguished the four elements and explained the development of the universe by the forces of attraction and repulsion which have held their place till today in scientific theory This tendency of democracy corresponded to the growth of that spirit of inquiry which had first revealed itself in Ionia in the field of natural philosophy The study of nature had passed into a higher stage in the hands of two men of genius whose speculations have had an abiding effect on science Empedocles distinguished the four elements and explained the development of the universe by the forces of attraction and repulsion which have held their place till today in scientific theory He also foreshadowed the doctrine of the survival of the fittest Democritus of Abdera a man of vast learning originated the atomic theory which was in later days popularized by Epicurus and instilled later by the Roman Lucretius The scientific imagination of Democritus generated the world from atoms like in quality but different in size and weight existing in void space Such advances in the explanation of nature implied and promoted a new conception of what may be called methodized knowledge and this conception was applied to every subject The second half of the fifth century was an age of technical treatises Oratory and Coopery were alike reduced to systems Political institutions and received morality became the subject of scientific inquiry Desire of knowledge had led the Greeks to seek more information about foreign lands and peoples They had begun both to know more of the world and to regard it with a more critical mind Enlightenment was spreading Prejudices were being dispelled Herodotus, who was far from being a skeptic fully appreciates the instructiveness of the story which he took How Darius asks some Greeks for what price they would be willing to eat the dead bodies of their fathers When they cry that nothing would induce them to do so, the king calls a tribe of Indians who eat their parents and asks them what price they would accept to burn the bodies of their fathers The Indians exclaim against the bare thought of such a horror Custom, Pindar had said and Herodotus echoes is king of the world and men began to distinguish between custom and nature They felt that their own conventions and institutions required justification The authority of usage and antiquity was not enough and they compared human society with nature The appeal to nature led indeed to very opposite theories In the sight of nature it was said All are equal Birth and wealth are indifferent Therefore the state should be built on the basis of perfect equality On the other hand it was argued that in the state of nature the strong man subdues the weaker and rules over them Therefore monarchy is the natural constitution But it matters little what particular inferences were drawn for no attempt was made to put them into practice The main point is that the questioning spirit was active There were clever men everywhere who refused to take anything on authority who asked always and claimed to discuss all things in heaven and earth It was in this atmosphere of critical inquiry and skepticism that Greece had to provide for the higher education of her youth, which the practical conditions of the democracy demanded The demand was met by teachers who traveled about and gave general instruction in the art of speaking and in the art of reasoning and out of their encyclopedic knowledge lectured on all possible subjects They received fees for their courses and recalled sophists of which name perhaps our best equivalent is professors Properly a sophist means one who was eminently proficient in some particular art in poetry for instance, or cookery As applied to the teachers who educated the youths who were able to pay the name acquired a slightly unfavorable color partly owing to the distrust felt by the masses towards men who know too much partly to the prejudice which in Greece always existed more or less against those who gave their services for pay partly to the jealousy of those who were too poor to pay the fees and were consequently at a great disadvantage in public life compared with men whom a sophist had trained But this haze of contempt which hung about the sophistic profession did not imply the idea that the professors were imposters who deliberately sought to hoodwink the public by arguments in which they did not believe themselves That suggestion which has determined the modern meaning of sophist and sophistry was first made by the philosopher Plato and is entirely unhistorical The sophists did not confine themselves to teaching they wrote much, they discussed occasional topics criticized political affairs diffused ideas and it has been said that this part of their activity supplied in some measure the place of modern journalism but the greatest of the professors were much more than either teachers or journalists they not only diffused but set afloat ideas they enriched the world with contributions to knowledge they were all alike rationalists spreaders of enlightenment but they were very various in their views and doctrines Gorgias of Lantini Protagoras of Abdera Prodicus of Seos Hippias of Ellis Socrates of Athens each had his own strongly marked individuality to Socrates and we shall revert in a later chapter Prodicus of Seos was a pessimist and it was doubtless he whom the poet Euripides meant by the man who considered the ills of men to be more in number than their good things it was Prodicus who invented the famous fable of Heracles at the crossway choosing between virtue and pleasure of all the sophists Protagoras was perhaps the greatest he first distinguished the parts of speech and founded the science of grammar for Europe his activity as a teacher was chiefly at Athens where he seems to have been intimate with Pericles the story that Pericles and Protagoras spent a whole day arguing on the theory of punishment a question which is still unsettled illustrates the services which the sophists rendered to speculation the retributive theory of justice which logically enough led to the trial and punishment of animals and inanimate things was called into question and a counter theory started that the object of punishment was to deter Protagoras was a victim of the religious prejudices of the Athenians he wrote a theological book which he published by reading it aloud before a chosen audience in the house of his friend Euripides the thesis of the work is probably contained in the first sentence in regard to the gods I cannot know that they exist nor yet that they do not exist for many things hinder such knowledge the obscurity of the matter and the shortness of human life Protagoras may have himself believed in the gods what he asserted was that their existence could not be a matter of knowledge unluckily the book itself has perished for a certain Pythodorus came forward as the standard bearer of the state religion and accused Protagoras of impiety the philosopher deemed it wise to flee from Athens he sailed for Sicily and was lost at sea when Euripides makes the choir of Thracian women in his play of Palamedes cry bitterly you have slain, oh Greeks you have slain the nightingale of the muses the wizard bird that did no wrong the poet was thinking of the dead friend who had come from the Thracian city the sale of the book of Protagoras was forbidden in Athens and all copies that could be found were publicly burned the case of Protagoras was not the only case of the kind years before the philosopher Annexagoras had been contempt for impiety years after Socrates would be condemned these cases show that the Athenians were not more enlightened than other peoples or less prejudiced the attitude of Protagoras to theology was perfectly compatible with a fervent devotion to the religion of the state but an Athenian jury was not sufficiently well educated to discern this when we admire the spread of knowledge and reasoning in the fifth century we must remember that the massive citizens was not reached by the new light they were still sunk in ignorance suspicious and jealous of the training which could be got only by sons of the comparatively well-to-do or those who were exceptionally intellectual Gorgias was a philosophical thinker and politician but he won his renown as an orator and a stylist he taught Greece how to write a new kind of prose not the cold style which appeals only to the understanding but a brilliant style, rhythmic, flowery addiction full of figures speaking to the sense and imagination in the inscription of a statue which his grand-nephew erected to him at Olympia it is said no mortal ever invented a fairer art to temper the soul for manly hood and virtue wherever he went he was received with enthusiasm we shall presently meet him as an ambassador at Athens the Sophists were the chief the professional expounders of the intellectual movement but the exultation of reason had a no less powerful supporter in the poet Euripides he used the tragic stage to disseminate rationalism he undermined the popular religion from the very steps of the altar by the necessity of the case he accomplished his work indirectly but with consummate dexterity Escalus and Sophocles had reverently modified religious legend adapting it to their own ideals interpreting it so as to satisfy the standard Euripides takes the myths just as he finds them and contrives his dramas so as to bring the absurdities into relief he does not acquiesce like the older tragic poets in the ways of the gods with men he is not content to be a resigned pessimist he will receive nothing on authority he declines to bow to the orthodox opinions of his respectable fellow countrymen on such matters as the institution of slavery or the position of women in society he refuses to endorse the inveterate prejudice which prevailed even at Athens in favor of noble birth but perhaps nothing is so significant as his attitude to the contempt which the Greeks universally felt for other races than their own nowhere is Euripides more sarcastic than when in his Medea he makes Jason pose as a benefactor of the woman whom he has basely betrayed on the ground that he has brought her out of an obscure barbarian home and enabled her to enjoy the privilege of living in Greece yet we need not go to the most daring thinkers to Euripides and the Sophists to discern the spirit of criticism at work the Periclean age has left us few more significant and certainly no more beautiful monuments than a tragic drama which won the first prize at the great Dionysia a few years after the 30 years peace the soul of Sophocles was in untroubled harmony with the received religion but living in an atmosphere of criticism and speculation even he could not keep his mind aloof from the questions which were debated by the thoughtful men of his time he took as the motive of his Antigone a deep and difficult question of political and of ethical science the relation of the individual citizen to the state what shall a man do if his duty of obedience to the government of his country conflicts with other duties are there any obligations higher to the laws of his city the poet answers that there are such for instance certain obligations of religion he justifies Antigone in her disobedience to the king's decree the motive lends itself to dramatic treatment and never has it been handled with such consummate art as by him who first saw its possibilities but it is worth observing that the Antigone besides its importance in the history of dramatic poetry has a high significance in the development of European thought as the first presentation of a problem which both touches the very roots of ethical theory and is in daily practice constantly clamoring for solution end of chapter 9 part 11 recording by Kalinda in Raymond New Hampshire on February 20th 2008