 20. A Cultural Revolution. 431-404. Summary of Periclian Culture. The culture of the Age of Pericles rested essentially on traditional belief purified by an expanding intelligence and humanism, belief in the power, wisdom, and goodness of the gods, in the superiority of the fathers in all the elements of manhood, in the beneficence of the heroes of old, eternal models for men, and closely connected with them a lofty ideal of philanthropy, of protecting the weak and unfortunate from the assaults of brute strength. Lastly, in the all-comprehensive perfection of the state to whose good the citizens are to subordinate their individual interests and devote their lives alike in war and peace, growth of individualism. Into that culture, however, there had been implanted a germ which was to prove most deadly to Greek ideals while maturing to civilization essentially modern in character and fruitage. It is to the earlier stage of this growth that the present chapter is devoted. The modernizing principle, grafted as it were, upon the tree of Hellenic life, was individualism. In its planting and nurture, the Sophists were undoubtedly but the directors of a general movement of thought. Yet adherence to the traditional was so widespread and so strong that throughout the period of the war the new tendencies struggled with the old in a conflict fiercer and deadlier than was the strife of battle between Athenians and Peloponnesians. The growth of theatrocracy, while the masses, as will hereafter be explained, held firmly to the traditional religion in other fields that were radiate for modern ideas. With their approbation, the statuesque oratory of Pericles gave way to Cleon's theatrical delivery. Girding up his Hematian, he strode up and down the Bhima, haranguing in a loud voice and vilifying his opponents. Thus, quote, he corrupted the people by his impulsive manners, end quote. Similarly, in the theatre, the audience, forgetting that they were present to receive instruction, made themselves judges of the music and the poetry, quote, in this way the theatres from being mute have become vocal, as though they had understanding of good and bad in music and poetry. And instead of an aristocracy, an evil sort of theatrocracy has grown up. Consequent upon this freedom comes the other freedom of disobedience to rulers, and then the attempt to escape the control and exhortation of father, mother, elders, and when near the end, the control also of the laws, end quote. This license, however, this disobedience to authority affected the social classes in proportion to their rank. It demoralized the knights, and in a less degree, the heavy infantry, whereas the poor maintained unimpaired their prompt, orderly obedience to their superintendents and teachers in the gymnastic contests and choruses, and to their officers in naval service. The blame for the relaxation of self-restraints is laid by the ancients upon their political and intellectual leaders. The people were enticed by demagogues from their ideals of philanthropy, conceived by Askelos, and brought into public life by Pericles, to a policy of brute force in the government of allies, and of narrow material selfishness in the extension of their power. From the habits of the fathers, the wealthy departed most widely in building for themselves more sumptuous homes, with colonnades in front, adorned with mural paintings and supplied with comfortable furniture. Paying more careful attention to their food, they engaged expert cooks and multiplied the number of dainted dishes. These, however, were but the promise of a home luxury, which was to grow and expand during the following century. These beginnings of modern life in the masses were stimulated by their educators, the composers of music and song. Quote, There were men of genius but had no perception of what is just and lawful in music. Quote, Melodies were mixed and misapplied. The classic standard fell before the onslaught of, quote unquote, ragtime, and the new music misdirected the people to individualistic paths. The last great lyricist of Hellas was Bakillides. After him, the decline of the chorus went hand in hand with the dissolution of the rhythmic life of the city-state. Interest in public affairs waned. The marketplace thronged with idle gossipers, while the dwindling company of patriots assembled on the knicks. Among the world to do was forming a class of men who shunned politics to pursue their own pleasures, or to avoid contact with cobblers, tanners, and hucksters with the alleged course manners and unraising will of the multitude. Euripides, about 481-406, his first tragedy, 455. The great exponent of the new spirit of the new humanism was the poet Euripides. His life was contemporary with the manhood of Sophocles, his activity beginning with the age of Pericles, terminated shortly before the end of the Peloponnesian War, and yet an age seems to separate him from Sophocles. In the older poet beats the heart of Hellenism. His younger contemporary is distinctly the first of the moderns. A careful education in literature and athletics was followed by a brief devotion to the painter's brush, which gave him an appreciation of landscape and art noticeable in his plays. Particularly he studied the philosophers and Sophists, and was among the first to collect a library. It is equally characteristic of him that he held aloof from public life to apply his whole energy to the composition of plays, through no disparagement of politics, but in the consciousness that his own mission was superior to any civic achievement of the individual. The Apostle of Humanism, he issued his dramas as epistles to mankind. His message was the moral and spiritual interpretation of the utterance of Protagoras. Man is the measure of all things. The keen intellect and the sensitive conscience developed by a marvelous civilization are presented with all their artistic allurements of dramatic genius as the standards whereby to judge truth and right on earth and in heaven. Casting off from traditional moorings, he pilots mankind over the surging seas of thought and emotion. He bears the storm-tossed heart, but his ship reaches no haven. He finds no balm for the wounds he has opened. His sympathy with the less fortunate classes. He descends to the level of common folk to sympathize with beggars and cripples, with women and slaves. The poet of the submerged majority of humankind founded no small part of his task to express the yearnings of Athenian women for a larger life and in a measure to create a sentiment in favor of their amelioration. Pyrrhiclean women. The spirit of the Pyrrhiclean age subordinated everything to the glory and the greatness of Athens. As women could not fight and lacked the right to vote, that spirit tended to restrict them to the narrow but invaluable function in which the state was interested, the sphere of the mother of citizens and soldiers. The statute of 151 enhanced the value of Athenian women. The aim was an exclusive body of citizens based upon racial purity. While the value of women within the house was accordingly accentuated, her influence outside was depreciated and repressed. The chief object of her assailation, limited mainly to the wealthier class, was to keep her pure from contact with a brutal world. With the growing refinement of the age, men became conscious of their own sinfulness, of the immoral propensities of their social nature, of the consequent temptations to which their sisters and daughters would be exposed should they be suffered to participate unrestrained in the society of men. With almost fanatical zeal, therefore, the higher social class, distrusting the strength of women's character, segregated the sexes to shield her from brutality and corruption. Restrictions on women's freedom. Women could walk abroad in the city, but only when attended by their female slaves. They were free to call upon one another to join in their own religious holidays and under due regulations to participate in the great festivals of the city. They could not decorously sit at table, even in their own house when guests outside their near kinsmen were present. Only at funeral feasts did they occasionally meet the intimate friends of father or husband. We should not lose sight of the fact that, beyond the circle of near kin, men were as completely debarred from the society of respectable women as they from social intercourse with men. The lives of women, however, were relatively cramped. An ideal of resignation of narrow the noble duty was formulated for them by Pericles in an official utterance. Great will be your glory if you do not lower the nature within you, hers most of all, whose praise or blame is least brooded on the lips of men. Self-sacrificing women The majority of women were ready to meet the demand upon them by resignation and self-sacrifice. This spirit finds expression in the Alsastres of Euripides, presented in 438. The heroine goes voluntarily to death to save her husband's life, coward and weakling as he was. The poet holds her up as a model matron, and after death a kindly saint. Let Hades know that's worthy God, and that old man who sits to row and steer alike at his death ferry, that he hath carried o'er the lake of Acheron, a woman peerless amid her sex. Oft to thee the muses votaries shall sing on the seven-stringed mountain shell, and in hymns that need no harp. Glorifying thee oft, as the season in his cycle, cometh round at Sparta, and that Carnian month when all night long the moon sails overhead, yea, an irradiant Athens happy town. So glorious a theme hath thy death bequeathed to tuneful bards. We loved her while she was with us. We love her still, though dead. Her tomb let none regard as the graves of those who die and are no more, but let her have honors equal with the gods, revered by every traveler, and many a one will cross the roads and read this verse aloud. This is she that died in days gone by to save her lord. Now is she a spirit blessed. Hail, lady revered, be kind to us. Such glad greetings shall she have." This absolute devotion to duty, this complete readiness for self-effacement, met with wide appreciation among the Hellenes. Ephigenia of Aulis is equally ready to sacrifice her life that Hellas may win the victory over foreigners. Man she steams of more value to her country than ten thousand women. Women of rebellious spirit. Naturally all was not humility within the ranks of Athenian women. Many chafed under the restriction that cut them off from the larger life of the city. A few perhaps were ready for rebellion. All the spirit of discontent with their narrow life, their hated environment, the poet concentrates and intensifies in his media, whom he presented to the public in 431. This fiery spirit, hurling defiance at her oppressors, foretells the time when militant feminism shall stand triumphant, her foot on the neck of prostrate man, her genius attuning all song and story to the new conditions. Back turns the wave of the ever-running river. Life, life is changed and the laws of it are trod. Man shall be the slave, the affrighted, the low-liver. Man hath forgotten God. And woman, yea woman, shall be terrible in story. The tales to me, Simeth, shall be other than of your. For if fear there is that cometh out of woman and the glory and the hard-hating voices shall encompass her no more. The old bards shall seize, and their memory that lingers of frail brides and faithless shall be shriveled as with fire. For they loved us not, nor knew us, and our lips were dumb, our fingers could wake not the secret of the liar. Else, else, O God the singer, I hath sung amid the rages a long story of men and his deeds for good and ill, but the world knoweth, tis the speech of all his ages, man's wrong and ours, he knoweth and is still. Capabilities In an intellectual movement for her emancipation, beginning with Euripides and culminating in the Republic of Plato, the first thing noticeable was her great capabilities, even though for mischief, for evil. There is no scourge dread as woman is. No painting could portray her hideousness nor speech declare. If this thing by some God was molded, greatest fashioner of ills and most malevolent to man was he. This power for evil, however, she exercises against the men who wrong her or her kinfolk, quote, grim to her foes and kindly to her friends, end quote. In her, the place of reckless valor has been usurped by prudence, quote, full oft even from woman's lips issue words of wisdom, end quote. Some, too, are capable of higher culture, as many undoubtedly, as among men, quote. Full oft ere this my soul hath scaled lone heights of thought, imperial steeps, or plunged far down the darkling deeps, where woman's feebler heart hath failed, yet wherefore failed, should woman find no inspiration fill her breast, nor welcome ever that sweet guest of song that uttereth wisdom's mind. Alas, not all, few, few are they, perchance amid a thousand, one thou shouldst find, for whom the Son of Poesy makes an inner day, end quote. Among a few intellectuals the idea was cherished that women, if admitted to public councils, might benefit the state by their frugal management, their caution, and their love of peace. This idea finds its first literary expression in the Lysistrita, which Aristophanes, in mingle jest and earnest, placed on the stage in 411. Lysistrita, a clever young Athenian matron, organizes the women of Athens, Biosha, and Peloponnes in a scheme for forcing the men to peace. Naturally, she has to use much argument with her lady friends. Quote, Kelanese, what can we women do? What brilliant scheme can we poor souls accomplish who sit, trimmed, and bedisoned in our saffron silks, our cambric ropes, and our little thinnacle shoes? Lysistrita, why there the very things I hope will save us, your saffron dresses, your thinnacle shoes, your paints and perfumes, and your robes of gauze? Kelanese, how many you save us? Lysistrita, so that nevermore man in our day shall lift the hostile spear. End quote. Deserting their homes and husbands accordingly, they seize the acropolis and refuse to return to their matronly duties until peace is firmly established. It is not merely for securing a treaty that the women come forward in this play, but for expressing the poet's best sentiments of brotherly love among the Hellenes, which would create an everlasting peace and of a wise liberality in admitting the allies to Athenian citizenship. Such intellectual agitation for the rights of women was carried farther in the following century, but wholly failed to become political. Religion. Elian Celts. The spirit that strove to enlarge the liberty of women wrought more powerfully to break the supremacy of traditional faith. To the native gods were added the strange deities brought in by the swarms of foreign traders, medics, and slaves. Beside the official mysteries of Eluses were introduced the more exciting mysteries from barbaric Samothrace. From Phrygia came Sibley, the great mother, to take up her abode in Athens as well as in many other towns. The metron, her shrine near the council hall, held the public archives. In her worship, processions with beating drums and clashing symbols moved noisily through the streets. Likewise from Cyprus came the divine youth, Aphrodite's companion Adonis, whose untimely death sympathetic women lamented with piercing wails in yearly festival. Many in brief were the new coming gods from Thrace, Phrygia, or the Orient with their strange priests and curious rites, emotional and noisy, or secret and mystical. All alike were individualistic, in contrast with the recognized civic cults. Scorned by the educated and the conservative, such innovation tended to loosen the hold of the community on its hereditary gods. Rationalism, Euripides' treatment of myths. A far more active dissolvent was rationalism. While treating with notable forbearance the myths that formed not only the tragic poets stuck in trade, but the background of his country's history, Euripides gives us to understand that many supernatural powers traditionally assumed have no real existence. The furies that goad arrestees orbit the creations of an excited mind. Homer had made the gods responsible for the good and evil acts of men. Euripides rejects the whole theory, that Helen followed Paris to Troy, no goddess should be blamed. Quote, All folly is to men their Aphrodite. Sensual, senseless, consonant they ring. Him in barbaric bravery saw as thou, gold glittering, and thy senses were distraught. This rationalism reduces the deity to a force or passion. But while undermining traditional religion, it marks a moral advance in laying the responsibility for conduct upon the individual. As a class the Sophists were skeptical, but they were few, and the number of men who were willing and able to pay them the required fee formed but a small fraction of the community. The drama, however, took up these advanced ideas and spread them broadcast over the audience. In this way, they attained a degree of popularity. Atheism, Critias A poet who dared openly to preach atheism would have been prosecuted without delay. Yet, we find the doctrine loudly proclaimed in a drama of Critias, composed perhaps for a home reading rather than for presentation on the stage. Here is offered the theory that the gods are the invention of clever men to serve a useful purpose in society. A time once existed when unordered was the life of men and kindred to the beasts, a life enslaved to brute force when no regard was offered to the good, nor for the bad was raw chastisement. Then methinks did men establish laws as means of punishment, the justice might be autocrat and have insolence for slave, and penalty was mediated out to any who transgressed. But when the laws restrained them openly from doing deeds of force, but secretly they did them, then methinks some men adroit and wise conceived the notion to devise gods for mankind that there might be awe for the bad, even if secretly they should perform or say or think some evil. Thence did he introduce divinity, that there is a supernal being flourishing with life imperishable and mind, hearing and seeing and thinking, and attending to these things and bearing divine nature, who will hear all that is spoken among mortals and will perceive all that is enacted. Even if in silence thou some evil planest, this will not escape the gods." The doubts of various intellectuals. Euripides however, while avoiding this bold stand, makes his characters the spokesman of various doubts. The great comic poets Aristophanes, reputed orthodox, was freer to hold up the gods as a laughing stock, and while professing to resist modern ideas was instrumental in spreading them. In the night, Dimath Tanees doubts the existence of the gods, whereas Nishias believes in them because he is, quote, such a god-detested wretch, end quote. In a last play of Euripides, the hero exclaims, quote, if deeds of shame gods do, no gods are they, end quote. A more startling doubt springs from the lips of Talthybius, quote, great Zeus, what can I say, that thine eye is over men, or that we hold this false opinion to no purpose, thinking that there is any race of gods when it is chance that rules the mortal sphere, end quote. While Thesedides, the historian, takes pains to prove the oracles true, all almonds, prophecies, and soothed stares suffer at the hands of the two poets, quote, as for birds that fly above our heads, a long farewell to them, end quote. Whilst, quote, the Hosea tribe is one ambitious curse, abominable and useless, end quote. The burlesque of oracles by Aristophanes must have had a disquieting effect on the audience, quote. Heed thou well, Eurictheides, the kidnapping Cerberus, band dog. Wigging his tail, he stands, and fawning upon thee at dinner, waiting thy slice to devour when odd distract thy attention. Soon as the night comes round, his steels unseen to the kitchen, dog-wise, then will his tongue clean out the plates and the islands, end quote. Reasons for such parodies and criticisms. This oracle is addressed to the Athenians, Eurictheides, warning them against the fawning, pilfering dog, Cleon. Such parodies were inspired by the excessive pretensions of oracle-mongers, while skepticism as to the gods was largely due to an advancing moral sense and to a growing individualism which emboldened the Greeks to demand of the powers above the moral standard which men had set up for themselves. Especially reprehensible are the lawless unions of Zeus and Apollo with mortal women, once an honor to the family thus visited, but now a disgrace to the gods. Quote. O Phoebus, do not so, but as thou art supreme, follow in virtuous track, for whosoever of mortal men transgresses him the gods punish. How then can it be just that ye should enact your laws for men and yourselves incur the charge of breaking them? Now I will put this case, though it will never happen. Where thou were Poseidon and Zeus, Lord of Heaven, to make atonement to mankind for every act of lawless love, ye would empty your temples in paying the fines for your misdeeds. For when ye pursue pleasure in preference to the claims of prudence, ye act unjustly. No longer is it fair to call men wicked if they imitate the evil deeds of the gods, but rather those who gave us such examples. End quote. Failure of the gods to uphold the moral order In many respects, the gods seem to fail in their function of upholding justice. For such shortcomings, some mortals are inclined to curse them, assigning a selfish motive to their confusion of moral order. Not is there man may trust, nor high repute, nor present wheel, for it may turn to woe. All things the gods confound, hurl this way and that, turmoiling all, that we, for knowing not, may worship them. What skills it to make moan for this, outrunning evils, none the more. End quote. Their ways are past finding out. Others, in more submissive spirit, merely remark upon the inscrutability of God. Quote. Oh, the words of the gods, in manyfold wise they reveal them, manyfold things unhoped for the gods to accomplishment bring, and the things that we looked for, the gods deign not to fulfill them, and the paths undissirned of our eyes, the gods unseal them. So fell this marvelous thing. End quote. A refuge of the believer is in predestination. An apparent wrong is explained by the will of Zeus, working from of old, for some purpose unknown to man. It is a bolder idea, perhaps a suggestion from the realm of magic, that man may compel the god against his selfish interest to do the right. Future life. There is the same attitude of doubt toward future life. Quote. Man's whole existence is full of anguish, no respite from his woes he finds, but if there is odd to love beyond this life, night's dark pall doth wrap it round. End quote. Death is annihilation. The body returns to earth, the breath to air. It is better so, for we shall be free from trouble. Yet after all, this life may be mere death compared with a glorious existence beyond the grave. Quote. Who knows if life is not a death, and death is held below to be our life? End quote. In brief, all the unanswered questions of right and wrong, of religion and future life, that vexed modern thought, turmoiled the mind of Euripides and his contemporaries. Sophistic degenerates. Meanwhile, Sophists, without character or earnest purpose, pushing to ridiculous extremes the doctrine of Protagoras, were asserting that everything is precisely as it appears to every individual. No affirmation can be false, because it is impossible to state that which does not exist. If a thing is true, the opposite is equally true. Thus arose a class of disputants, whose sole purpose was to confute their adversaries by quibbling with words, by fallacies of logic, and by sheer effrontery of manner. The effect was to fill the right-minded with disgust of sophistry. Religion and Philosophic Recovery It is not surprising, therefore, that as an escape from the hopeless hubbub of skepticism, a reaction should arise toward religious and philosophic faith. Here and there, through all the plays of Euripides, may be found expressions of faith, and in his back he, composed shortly before his death, the aged poet, totally renouncing radicalism, seeks comfort in the ancestral beliefs. Quote, It is not for us to reason touching gods, traditions of our fathers, all this time we hold, no reasoning shall cast them down, no, though a subtlest wisdom sprung. End quote. The heaven he has learned to adore, however, is not the Homeric Council of Gods, but a moral and spiritual power to whose guidance a man may wisely subject his soul. Quote, Thus shall a mortal have sorrowless days, if he keepeth his soul sober in spirit, and swift in obedience to heaven's control, murmuring not, neither pressing beyond his mortality's goal. End quote. Socrates, about 469-399. A contemporary of Euripides and a kindred spirit was Socrates the philosopher. He was relatively poor, his estate barely enabled him to serve in the heavy infantry, and in youth he had trained as a sculptor in his father's shop. Little schooling fell to his lot, and his moderate acquaintance with existing philosophers was but incidentally gained. From early life, however, he neglected his worldly affairs to devote himself to thought. He had the habit of standing for hours together, even for an entire night, staring at vacancy, totally absorbed in reasoning out a problem that chanced to interest him. Forsaking a trade which under the circumstances could have afforded him but a meager sustenance, he devoted his entire life to the pursuit of truth. In this vocation, he was encouraged by an oracle of Apollo, which declared him to be the wisest of men. His religion. Through his whole life Socrates accepted and faithfully practiced the religion of the state, and was often seen sacrificing at the public altars. His ideas of the gods, however, were enlightened. Whereas the many still believed that their knowledge was limited, Socrates held that they were present everywhere and knew all things. It was equally his conviction that they communicated with man through almonds and oracles. A divinity accompanying him through life gave him warnings which he always heeded. The Argument of Design His belief in the greatness and the wisdom of God was strengthened by the argument of design. The world is made for man, and every part of a human being is admirably adapted to a good purpose. Existing things must therefore be the handiwork of a wise artificer, full of love for all things living. As man is superior to animals, the deity has taken a special thought for him. He is pleased with those things in us which conduce most to our well-being. Socrates drew to from experience that the wisest and most enduring of human institutions are the most God-fearing, and that in the individual man the riper his age and judgment the deeper his religion. It was necessary for Socrates to make his sacrifices correspond to his small means, but he believed that the joy of the gods is great in proportion to the holiness of the worshiper, and in the conviction that they well knew his own interest he used to pray simply, quote, give me what is best for me, end quote. The Charm of His Personality his preference for ethics. He was not the mere prosaic teacher of Xenophon's recollections, but in addition to an ample fund of common sense he had with him humor, imagination, intellectual power, and a love of truth so burning as to become at times ecstatic. With such qualities he fascinated his young companions, and some of them, especially Plato, he awakened to a life of intense mental productivity. With Socrates true knowledge was not simply the source, but the substance of virtue, and he preferably sought that kind of truth which should determine the conduct of men, for example, quote, what is piety and what impiety, what is the beautiful and what the ugly, what is the noble and what the base, what are meant by just and unjust, what by sobriety and madness, what by courage and cowardice, what is a state, and what a statesman, what is a ruler over men, and what a ruling character, and other similar problems, end quote. The Socratic Method His method of research was through conversation with his fellows. Wherever the crowds were thickest, there he could be found engaged in arguments on his favorite subjects. It was easy for him to prove his opponents ignorant of the topic under discussion, as he was the most formidable reasoner of his age. Having thus cleared the ground, he proceeded by induction to establish precise definitions of general terms, quote, there are two things that one would rightly attribute to Socrates, inductive reasoning, and universal definition. In fact, these two things are the very foundation of knowledge, end quote. It was thus that while professing ignorance on all subjects, he built up a body of ethical science which might serve as a guide to himself and to others, in assuming man to be the measure of all things, he stood on sophisticated ground, but he made a vast advance in pointing to the reason rather than the senses as the universal and eternal elements in man, the infallible criterion of truth, therefore, in the realm of conduct or of nature. As intellectual education, however, merely increased a man's power for evil, he was careful, first of all, to instruct his associates in self-control and to inspire them with a wise spirit in their relations with the gods. Wisdom and justice we should seek not only because of their use to us, but also because they are pleasing to the gods. The facts here cited prove his teachings to have been quite as religious as philosophic. A Model Life Throughout his life, he gave evidence of loyalty and love for his fellow citizens and his country. Living with rare frugality on a small estate, he charged no fee for instruction, but lavished the wealth of his spirit on rich and poor alike. Many were his exhortations to brothers to love one another, to children to respect and obey their parents, and to citizens to be true to their country. Faithfully he performed his military duties, and as chairman of the assembly, he fiercely adhered to law against popular clamor for injustice. It is true that he criticized the use of the lot for the appointment of officials on the ground that it brought incompetent men into public service. But with the general principles of democracy, he was in full sympathy. Rather than give his time to the holding of offices, he chose as a higher duty the task of preparing men to serve the states in war and peace with strong bodies, clear brains, and upright hearts. History, Thucydides The desire for serviceable knowledge, the interest in mankind, the absorption in the present, which characterized the intellectual movement set forth in this chapter, found notable expression in history. Thucydides was related to multities. Like his kinsman Simon, he had threshing blood in his veins, which may explain his virile spirit. He resembled the man of the Perclean age, not only in intensity and power of thought and style, but also in the fact that he was a man of action, as well as of words, a general in the war, who could therefore season his writings with practical experience. A mistake or failure as commander of an Athenian squadron in the North Aegean led to his exile in 424. At the outbreak of the war, foreseeing that it would be memorable, he had begun to collect material for a history of it, and during the 20 years of his exile, he traveled about visiting the scenes of military operations and ascertaining facts from eyewitnesses. Doubtless, he kept a record of events which he corrected and expanded with the acquisition of new and more precise information. At the close of the war, he undertook a final recomposition of his work from the beginning. It comes to an end in the course of 411. Doubtless cut short by his death, and the fifth and eighth books lack his finishing touches. Desire for exact knowledge A characteristic which perhaps first strikes the reader's attention is the desire for exact knowledge shared by him with Socrates and the best minds of the age. Quote, Of the events of the war I have not ventured to speak from any information nor according to any notion of my own. I have described nothing but what I either saw myself or learned from others of whom I made the most careful and particular inquiry. The task was a laborious one, because eyewitnesses of the same occurrences gave different accounts of them, as they remembered or were interested in the actions of one side or the other. End quote. It was partly this consideration which led him to avoid a detailed treatment of the distant past. Quote, The character of the events which preceded the war, whether immediately or in more remote antiquity, because of the lapse of time cannot be made out with certainty. End quote. A greater motive however, was his conviction that as compared with the present, the past was in significance. Quote, Former ages were not great either in their wars or in anything else. The greatest achievement was the Persian war, yet even this struggle was speedily decided in two battles by sea and two by land. End quote. The most important event in history, as he supposed, was the Peloponnesian war. In this connection, it is worthy of notice in what, according to his judgment, the greatness of an event consisted. The measure of a greatness of a war. Quote, The Peloponnesian war was a protracted struggle and attended by calamities such as Hellas had never known within a like period of time. Never were so many cities captured and depopulated, some by foreigners, others by Hellenes themselves fighting against one another. And several of them, after their capture, were repealed by strangers. Never were exile and slaughter more frequent, whether in the war or brought about by civil strife. There were earthquakes unparalleled in their extent and fury, and eclipses of the sun more numerous than are recorded to have happened in any former age. There were also in some places great droughts causing famines, and lastly the plague which did immense harm and destroyed many people. End quote. Contrast between Thucydides and the modern historian. From this passage it appears that his criteria of the importance of events differ widely from those of our times, which estimate the significance of a war by its influence on the course of history. Closely related is his idea of cause, which is as widely separated from our own. In his first book he sets forth as the antecedents of the war, the events leading up to it, and particularly the mutual grievances of the parties concerned. There is no thought of seeking into what we should term underlying causes. General economic, social, and political conditions, which tended to bring Athenians and Peloponnesians into conflict. Briefly, such inquiries are a product of modern evolutionary science. The great contrast in fact between ancient and modern history is this, that whereas the moderns instinctively and incessantly seek for the operation of social conditions, of economic and topological factors, and of political forces and processes of evolution, all of which elements they try to bring under laws as general and abstract as possible. The ancients looked simply and solely to the feelings, motives, characters of individuals or of cities. These, and apart from supernatural agencies, these only, appeared to them to shape the course of history. It was far from the thought of the Greeks that they were slaves of heredity and environment. With Thucydides, the forces that make history are the statesmen who consciously operate to effect a given purpose. Secondarily, the people, especially in assembly, moved by capricious feeling to a wise or foolish resolution. The ideal republic, therefore, is one like Athens in the Age of Pericles, in which the best and wisest citizen is able to control the rest. The Purpose of His History To the modern historian, the choice of a war as a subject for treatment, rather than a period or a phase of historical development, might be set down as evidence of a narrow mind. To the Hellenic statesmen, however, there was no more pressing and vital interest than the military defense of his country, and the paramount object of Thucydides was a work that would prove serviceable to generals and statesmen. If he who desires to have before his eyes a picture of the events which have happened, and of the like events which may be expected to happen hereafter in the order of human things, shall pronounce what I have written to be useful, then I shall be satisfied. My history is an everlasting possession, not a prize composition which is heard and forgotten. In his utilitarian motive, he agrees with the Sophists. The theory that history repeats itself is not affirmed by Thucydides, nor is it held by the moderns. The fact is recognized, however, that to the experienced statesmen a careful and extensive knowledge of past conditions is most helpful in maturing his practical judgment. The Orations The Orations which occupy a large part of the work are, so to speak, its soul. Usually they are given in pairs, representing the opposing views of a situation or a question for decision before an assembly. Quote, As to the speeches which were made either before or during the war, it is hard for me, and for others who reported them to me, to recollect the exact words. I have therefore put into the mouth of each speaker the sentiments proper to the occasion, expressed as I thought he would be likely to express them, while at the same time I endeavored, as nearly as I could, to give the general purport of what was actually said, end quote. The language is the historians. The idea, so far as they could be a certain, are the orators. Though even here, as the actual speeches were unwritten, the historian exercised large discretion in including what he considered appropriate to the occasion. Generally, therefore, the speeches embody the historian's conception of the situation which they present, and express most adequately his keen analytical intelligence. His work a model. Notwithstanding certain differences between ancient and modern conceptions of history, we may still look to Thucydides as a master in important respects unrivaled. In his own personal reserve, in the determination with which he pursues his single aim, rejecting every extraneous matter, in the relentless analysis which lays bare the souls of individuals, of factions, of communities, in the fairness and mental placidity with which he treats of personal enemies and opposing parties, in intellectual depth, keenness and grasp, we may safely say that he has thus far no equal. Art. Statuary. In Art II we discover a development in modern directions. Polyclitus, a younger contemporary of Phidias, began his activity as a sculptor with the dawn of the Periklian age and continued to the end of the Peloponnesian War. In the fact that his athletes are a direct development from the pre-Persian Apollos, he seems more conservative even than Myron, but we place him in this chapter because his work reveals the influence of scientific thought. In a treatise entitled The Canon on the Ideal Human Form, he sets forth his theory as to the mathematical proportions of the body. Taking the width of the middle finger as a unit, he mechanically constructed the whole human frame in multiples of this measure and with the same scientific precision determined its pose and attitude. The statue in bronze, made to illustrate this principle, was also termed The Canon. It is a nude athlete walking with a spear over the left shoulder, hands called Doriforus, spear bearer. The copies are in marble of Roman date, the best being in the National Museum of Naples. Undoubtedly, they do ill justice to the original. The head is somewhat oblong with scant facial expression, and the body seems to us too heavy. Apart from the general harmony of proportions, we find little in these copies to admire, and we cannot understand why the Doriforus remains the type of athlete till the period of Alexander the Great. More beautiful to the modern eye is the wounded Amazon, remarkable for the graceful attitude, the flowing line of contour, the simple beauty of the drapery, and in the best copy, the fine proportions of the head. Architecture The Nike Ballastrade A departure from the Periclean Standard took place not only in statues, but also in architecture and its decorative sculptures. In this period, the Athenians surrounded the little Nike temple with the ballastrade of stone slabs, adorned with reliefs of victories in various attitudes. Among the best preserved of these figures, and far the most admired, is the Nike adjusting her sandal. The change that has been introduced into art, we may best appreciate by contrasting this figure with the maidens of the Parthenon Fries. There is a great loss in the dignified restraint, the austere reserve of the Periclean age, and as great again in freedom of attitude, in lightness of drapery, which reveals the human form with its physical loveliness. If the art of the Parthenon exhibits the perfection of civic achievement in the subordination of the citizen to the moral idea of the state, in a word, the highest reach of Hellenic civilization, the Nike sculptures equally represent the first downward step of the community toward decay and dissolution, and the first step of the individual toward the free development of his personality. The Erechtheum completed 409-407. In the later years of the war, when the Athenians were cramped for money and the masses were reduced to the point of starvation, we are surprised to find the state engaged in finishing the Erechtheum, a building begun some years earlier but suspended doubtless because of the war. The idea may have been to furnish the needy citizens, medics and slaves with work, or more probably to fulfill a religious duty. It was a temple to Athena and Erechtheus. The Athena here worshipped is known as Polius, guardian of the city, in contrast with the imperial goddess of the Parthenon. Her image, a rudely carved log, was more highly venerated than any artistic statue of recent times. Erechtheus, hero of the fertility of earth, had been placed among the earliest kings of Athens, and in this temple was identified with Poseidon. Within the shrine was the sea god Salt Spring with the mark of his trident in the rock. Outside was Athens' olive tree. With the irregularity of the plan we are not concerned. It will suffice here to notice the beautiful carvings of the base and capital of the Ionic columns and of the cornice and doorway. These rich but delicate ornamentations, often imitated but never equaled, are eternal patterns of beauty. The porch of the maidens Such are the columns of the east and north porches and the north doorway still partially preserved. On the south is the porch of the maidens, in which full grown girls are substituted for columns as supports. In a country in which women have always been accustomed to carrying heavy loads on their heads, the idea is not strange and has in fact been expressed in various ancient buildings. The conditions required an erect dignified posture. The drapery, covering the entire body, falls in large quiet folds to the feet. In ease, simplicity and dignity, these figures rise to the Periclean standard. At the same time, it seems probable that they have a religious significance. In a festival in honor of Erechtheus, a procession of girls moved to his shrine, carrying on their heads a chest which contained objects for his worship. It is a reasonable view that the maidens of the porch represent these girls and that the architrave above their heads takes the place of the chest. Two types of civilization represented in art, literature and thought. As the Parthenon is the best example of a Doric temple, the Erechtheum expresses the perfection of the Ionic style. It is a remarkable fact that the same quarter of a century saw the substantial completion of these perfect examples of widely divergent architectural orders. Equally notable is the kinship of the type with the general civilization of the time. While admiring the Parthenon and the Sophoclean drama, we recognize that they are so essentially Hellenic as to defy imitation, whereas the sculpture of the Erechtheum and of the Nike Ballastrade, the place of Euripides and the reasoning of Socrates, however high their excellence, have an appreciable kinship with modern civilization. End of chapter 20. Chapter 21 of Hellenic history. 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 Ryan Fahey, Fairfield, Connecticut. Hellenic history by George Willis Botsford. Chapter 21. The Lachydemonian Empire and the Ascendancy of Thebes. Part 1. The Lachydemonian Empire. 404 to 371. Old professions and a new policy. As champions of particularism, of the untrammeled sovereignty of the individual city-state, the Spartans had led their allies in the weirisome war with Athens. And finally when her ramparts and her ports came into their hands, they and their allies fell to leveling the fortifications and walls with great enthusiasm, to the accompaniment of the music of women pipers, for they thought that day the beginning of Hellenic liberty. The realization of their hopes would have turned back the clock of history 200 years into the past. When, however, the Spartans found themselves masters of Eastern Helos, they would rise to no higher conception than that of holding what they had gained. Disregarding their promises, they thought merely to substitute their city for Athens as the head of an empire, no small part of which they had already sacrificed to Persia. Nature of the Change in Leadership, Lysander. The change from Athenian to Spartan leadership was a decisive step downward. The Lachydemonians lacked the intelligence and the broad, generous humanism of Athenians. They were totally without experience in imperial finance and in the administration of justice. For the time being, these men of narrow mind were controlled by Lysander. Born of a Heracliad father and Helot mother, and reared in the poverty and discipline of his city, he had developed an unscrupulous cleverness, an astounding mastery of men and parties, and an ambition for the lordship of Hellos. Throughout the Aegean world, he had organized oligarchies in every city and had attached them to himself. On him, all eyes centered in fear or admiration. He was the first Greek to whom cities erected altars and offered sacrifices as to a god. In his honor, the Samyans changed the name of their chief festival Horea to Lysandria. Thus the Orientalizing Greeks of Asia Minor and its neighborhood displayed their acquired servility in the deification of this enormous egoist, the Dekarchies. The oligarchies of Ten, Dekarchies, established by Lysander in the Aegean cities taken from Athens, were ostensibly to hold them loyal to their new imperial mistress. The members of these boards were partisans of Lysander, usually supported by a Peloponnesian garrison under a Helot commander, Harmost, who catered to their villainies in exchange for flattery and spoil for himself and license for his men. Thus protected, the Dekarchs reveled in the plunder, oppression and murder of their fellow citizens, and inventing upon personal enemies the hatred they had long been gathering in their souls. What form of oppression escaped them, or what deed of shame or of cruelty did they not perpetrate? The most lawless they deemed most faithful to themselves, they courted traitors as benefactors, and they chose to be slaves to a Helot that they might outrage their own native land. The Thirty, 404-3 We lack detailed knowledge of their government, but may be sure that it differed little in character from the rule of the Thirty at Athens. This board was instituted under intimidation from Lysander, ostensibly to draw up a new constitution for Athens, but in reality to govern with absolute sway. One of the leaders was Critius, a Eupatred writer, a poet, rhetorician, and political thinker, noticed above as a pronounced atheist, a deletante in literature, and in politics a heartless calculating schemer. His colleague in the leadership was Theramenes the Shifty, who while preferring a moderate oligarchy, had managed to emerge triumphant from every difficulty through which he had passed. Butchery and Confiscation Beginning in moderation, the rule of the Thirty rapidly degenerated to a selfish bloody despotism. Supported by their lackidemonian harmost, they proceeded to condemn and put to death their political enemies. Executions were always accompanied by confiscations of property. Still, wanting funds for the payment of the garrison, they next proceeded against wealthy men even of oligarchic views. As many alien residents were well to do, they inevitably fell victims to the tyrant's greed. There were wholesale banishments. Many fled, too, through fear, so that the surrounding states were full of fugitives from these monsters. Among their oppressive acts was an edict for abolishing higher education in literature and philosophy, the effect of which, if long continued, would have been to wipe Athens from the history of civilization. Meanwhile, by protesting against the violence of the Thirty, Theramenes incurred the mortal hatred of Critias, to whom the very idea of moderation or of compromise meant overthrow and death. With frantic haste, Theramenes was imprisoned and compelled to drink the deadly hemlock. More violent grew the reign of terror, till in the eight months of the oligarchy, the butcher's bill mounted to 1500 lives. The Fall of the Thirty, 403. In spite of orders from Sparta, the neighbors of Athens received the exiles with sympathy and aid. From Thebes, through Sybilus, one of these refugees, led a small band of patriots across the border to seize a fortress on Mount Parnas. Then, after increasing his force to a thousand, he occupied Piraeus. With so small a band, it was a bold stroke, but this stronghold of democracy welcomed him and reinforced his army. In the streets of the port town, the patriots battled with a military force of the Thirty, defeated it, and killed Critias. Soon afterward, the democracy was restored. About the same time, many Dekorches fell. The Spartans permitted all this to happen because they disapproved of the insolence and the vaulting ambition of Lysander, who was playing the despot throughout their empire. Confronted by a menacing opposition at home, he retired into exile. The expedition of Cyrus, 401. Shortly after these events, Cyrus, with whose aid Peloponnes had triumphed over Athens, set out at the head of about 13,000 Greek mercenaries and a much larger number of Asiatics against his brother Artaxerxes, who had succeeded to the kingship of Persia. The prize of battle was to be the throne. At the town of Kunaxa, not far from Babylon, the brothers met. The Greeks were victorious over a greatly superior force, but Cyrus was killed, and the expedition therefore failed. Although the Hellenic generals were entrapped and slain by the enemy, the mercenary force elected new commanders, among them Xenophon. According to his account, vividly presented in the Anabasis, this young man, an Athenian of the School of Socrates, was the inspiring genius of the retreat. The homeward march of the 10,000 across rivers, over mountains, and through the deep snows of Armenia, ever harassed by the enemy and in want of food and clothing, was a heroic achievement. It proved that the Greeks had not lost their virility, and it laid bare the weakness of Persia. War between Lacodaman and Persia, beginning in 400. A result of this expedition was war between Lacodaman and Persia, for the Spartans had given aid to Cyrus. A Peloponnesian army accordingly invaded Asia Minor, and was reinforced by the remnant of the 10,000. Ultimately, all or nearly all, the Hellenic cities were liberated, and some native towns in the interior, including Pergamum, were taken. In 396, Agiselaus, king of Lacodaman, took command. Though far from brilliant, he was master of the art of war as taught in Sparta, and with an army of scarcely more than 20,000 men, he made headway against the forces of the empire. Encouraged by the expedition of Cyrus, he hoped to win for Hellas a great part of Asia Minor. General dissatisfaction with Spartan leadership. In the eyes of many Greeks, however, these achievements could not atone for the prodigious injustice inflicted upon them by Sparta. The Decarches and the 30 were but a fraction of the grievance. To neighbors and allies, the leading city seemed committed to a policy of self-aggrandizement. Opposition in a weaker state she crushed with war and devastation. Her greater allies were irritated by their total exclusion from the advantages of victory over Athens. Chief factor in bringing on the war, Corinth, had lost her colonies on the west of Greece, and had seen the ruin of her commerce and industry with no corresponding gain. Thebes had profited by the pillage of Attica, and by tightening her grip on the Boescian Federation. But in proportion to the exaltation of Sparta, both states suffered depression in the general council of Peloponnes. Both were split into patriotic and laconizing factions at bitter feud with each other, and when Sparta intermettled, the two states declared war. Argos, always at heart an enemy of Sparta, joined the coalition. Athens and the coalition against Lacedaemon. In Athens, since the fall of the 30, the radical democrats who usually controlled the government were hostile to Lacedaemon. To them it was a source of pride and of encouragement that the Persian king had appointed the Athenian Conan, admiral of a fleet to operate in the Aegean Sea against the Lacedaemonians. With the connivance of the 500, but against the judgment of the moderates, the extreme democrats secretly sent him men and supplies. Under these circumstances, they welcomed the opportunity to join with Thebes, Corinth, Argos, and a few lesser states in a coalition against Sparta. Thus arose the Corinthian War. The Corinthian War, 395-387. Early in the war, the Lacedaemonians found it necessary to recall a Giselaus from Asia. He obeyed, but it is clear that, though he had thus far cherished hopes for all Hellas, his spirit was henceforth embittered against those states which had thwarted his pan-Hellenic ambition. In fact, the war was a disastrous blunder, for Spartan oppression lost severity as the Helenes were already learning to safeguard their local liberties, while enjoying the benefits of national unity. Small victories were won by the Lacedaemonians, yet with little comfort to the winners. These gains, however, were more than offset by an overwhelming naval victory of Conan, off Nidus, over the Peloponnesian fleet, 394. Thus fell the Lacedaemonian naval supremacy, which 10 years earlier had been established by Persian gold. The first fruit of the victory was the liberation of the maritime states from the Laconian garrisons. In the following year, Conan sailed into the harbors of Piraeus. With the labor of his crews and with Persian money, increased by contributions from Thebes and other friendly states, he rebuilt the fortifications of the port town and the long walls. After the completion of these works, Athens again counted as a power in Helas. She recovered Scyros, Imbros, and Lemnos, long occupied by her colonists, and renewed her alliance with various Aegean states. A Lacedaemonian regiment destroyed 390. A graver misfortune befell Lacedaemon by land. Recent years had seen a great development of light infantry. A master of this branch of warfare was the Athenian Ephicrates, who had trained his light troops to a high pitch of efficiency. With this force in the neighborhood of Corinth, he attacked a heavy battalion, Mora of Lacedaemonians, 600 strong, and annihilated it. Among the slain were 250 Spartans. It was a terrible calamity for the whole Lacedaemonian force counted but six such battalions. The number of Spartans had so shrunk that they could entertain no hope of ever filling the vacant ranks. They were too conservative to adapt themselves to new military conditions, and the shock to their martial prestige proved irremediable. The Treaty of Antelsidus, 387. For some time, Sparta had been treating with Persia for peace, and now as the tide of war turned decidedly against her, she urged on the negotiations. Her deputy Antelsidus rewarned the king's support, which speedily restored to Sparta her dominance in the conflict. At the summons of the Satrap Tirabezis, accordingly, deputies from the Hellenic states met at Sardis to hear the terms of peace dictated by the king. When the assembly had convened, the Satrap pointed to the royal seal attached to the document and read the contents. King Artaxerxes deems it right that the cities of Asia, with the islands of Clasomeni and Cyprus, should belong to himself. The remaining Hellenic cities, small and great, he wishes to leave independent, with the exception of Lemnos, Imbros and Skiros, which three, as formerly, are to belong to Athens. Should any of the parties concerned not accept this peace, I, Artaxerxes, together with those who share my views, will war against him or them by land and sea with ships and with money. Effects of the Treaty. The Treaty required the Athenians to give up their maritime league. Thebes to grant independence to her Boescian allies, and Corinth and Argos, now closely united, to separate. All the greater enemies of Lacedaemen disliked the terms, but all were constrained to accept them. It was a disgrace to Helus that her Asiatic cities should be definitively surrendered to the king, and that he should become the arbiter of her fate. It was unfortunate, too, that the duty of enforcing the peace fell chiefly to the Lacedaemonians, who, having learned nothing by experience, exercised their renewed power with insolent brutality. During the decade immediately following this treaty, Helus was in a miserable plight, as Isocrates, riding in the midst of this wretchedness, testifies. Who could desire a condition of things in which pirates hold the seas, mercenaries occupy the cities, and instead of warring against foreigners in behalf of their country, the citizens fight with each other inside the walls. More cities have been taken in war than before we concluded the peace, and on account of the frequency of revolutions, the inhabitants of the states live in greater despondency than those who have been banished. Helus was full of exiles, who menaced their home states with violence or joined mercenary bans, to disturb the peace and to destroy property and life throughout their nation. In spite of these mischievous results, it will be made clear in the course of this chapter that the Treaty of Antalcidas served as a beginning of the most important peace movement in Hellenic history. Further aggressions of Sparta. To rid herself of possible enemies, Sparta compelled the Mantanians to destroy their city and to scatter in villages, 384. She treacherously seized the Citadel of Thebes in a season of peace, 383. At the same time, she was pushing her hegemony into northern Greece. In the later years of the Peloponnesian War, the Lachydemonians had gained control of the region about the Malian Gulf, including a part of Thessaly. Farther north, the Kingdom of Macedon, growing in power and menacing the Thessalian states, drove them into alliance with Sparta. Under these circumstances, the Lachydemonians steadily extended their influence northward. Rise of the Chalcitic League. Meanwhile, however, a rival was growing in Chalcides, where Olithus, by absorbing adjacent communities, had become the leading city. Hence, she made herself the center of a Chalcitic League of a type far more liberal and advanced than any other thus far known to Hellas. The citizens of every city had rights of holding property, transacting business, and contracting marriage in every other city. One body of laws and one citizenship were the common possessions of all. In a great degree, the Union had the character of a single state, in which the cities were municipalities. It was an aggressive power, ever intent on annexing new communities by persuasion or force, reaching out thraceward toward the gold mines of Mount Pangaeus and resting from sedition-ridden Macedon its very capital, Pella. Even those cities which were forcibly annexed readily lost in the advantages of their new connection, all love of political isolation. Here then was offered a solution of the peace problem of Hellas, a cure for the interminable interstate strife of internal revolutions, banishments, and massacres. At the request of neighboring Hellenic states whose sovereignty was threatened by Olithus, Lacodaman interfered, and in a war of four years, 383 to 379, she destroyed the Federation and forced Olithus into alliance with herself. The climax of Lacodamanian prosperity, 379. By these measures and others of a like nature, Sparta made herself supreme over all that part of eastern Hellas which she had not surrendered to Persia. She formed, too, a treaty of alliance with Dionysius, tyrant of Greek Sicily and Italy. Never before had Hellas attained to so high a degree of political unity. On every side, the affairs of Lacodaman had signally prospered. Thebes and the rest of the Boescian states lay absolutely at her feet. Corinth had become her most faithful ally. Argos was humbled to the dust, and lastly, those of her own allies who displayed a hostile feeling toward her had been punished, so that to all outward appearance the foundations of her empire were at length absolutely well and securely laid. Agiselas. The man who led his city to these achievements was Agiselas. The embodiment of the Lacodamanian spirit, patriotic, ambitious, and efficient, but with stunted ideals, unprogressive alike in military art, in statesmanship, and in humanism. A man who tested the right or wrong of every action by the sole advantage of Sparta, whose vision, limited to brute power, took no account of the moral forces roused through Hellas by his policy of blood and iron. Liberation of Thebes, 379-8. Abundant examples might be found alike in Hellenic and in foreign history to prove that the divine powers mark what is done to miss, winking neither at impiety nor at the commission of unhallowed acts, but at present I can find myself to the facts before me. The Lacodamanians, who had pledged themselves by oath to leave the states independent, had laid violent hands on the acropolis of Thebes, and were eventually punished by the victims of that iniquity single-handed, the Lacodamanians, be it noted, who had never before been mastered by living men. With these words, Xenophon, the historian, prepares the reader for the catastrophe in the drama of Lacodamanian supremacy. In a thrilling story, he then tells how a few patriots, who had fled to Athens, secretly returned to their native Thebes, destroyed the oligarchy set up by Sparta, and expelled the garrison from the citadel. Thebes was now free and at war with Lacodaman. No long time afterward, a Spartan attempt to seize Piraeus drove Athens into alliance with Thebes, 378. The 2nd Athenian Confederacy, organized 377. From the time of the battle off Nidus, 394, the former allies of Athens, having had enough of Lacodamanian tyranny, began returning to her. These alliances, dissolved by the king's treaty, 387, were almost immediately renewed. Now that she faced a new struggle with Paloponnes, Athens called upon all Hellenic states, and on all foreign states but Persia, to join in a league of protection from the common tyrant. In 377, it was decreed by the council and the assembly, in order that the Lacodamanians may allow the Hellenes to live in peace, free and autonomous, and to possess the respective territories and security, that if any of the Hellenes or of foreigners dwelling on the mainland, or of the islanders, except such as our subjects of the king, wish to be allies of the Athenians and of their allies, they may become such while preserving their freedom and autonomy, using the form of government that they desire, without either admitting a garrison or receiving a military governor or paying tribute, and upon the same terms as the Keyens, the Thebans, and the other allies. From the date of the Archonship of Nausinicus, it shall not be allowable for any Athenian, either in behalf of the state or as a private person, to acquire either a house or a piece of land in the territory of the allies, whether by purchase or by mortgage or in any other way. By this provision, some of the most irritating grievances of the former Confederacy, such as the imposition of tributes and colonization, were to be avoided. All members of the League were to send their representatives to a Congress at Athens, in which the Athenians alone were to have no part. A resolution passed by the Congress and the Athenian Assembly was to be binding on the League. Thus, Athens was made equal to her collective allies, but was debarred from tyranny over them. By resolution, duly adopted, military and naval forces and money contributions were to be levied as they were needed. The Constitution of the Second Confederacy, as it is named, was more equitable, but far looser and less efficient than had been that of the Fifth Century. War between the Confederacy and Peloponnes, 377-4. War with Peloponnes went on for several years. The Maritime Alliance, controlling a powerful navy and supported by Thebes with her splendid troops, outmatched the Doric League. No definite gain resulted, however, and in 374 all were ready for peace. In that year, deputies from the States concerned met in a second peace convention at Sparta. The King's Treaty was made the basis of the agreement, but the Persian sovereign was unrepresented. The Greeks were already learning that they could conduct their own affairs without his interference. The treaty left the Athenian Confederacy and the Peloponnesian League intact. The war renewed, 374-1. The agreement was immediately violated, however, and the war continued three years longer. Meanwhile, Thebes, abandoning the conflict with Lachidaemon, gave her attention to restoring the Boetian League under her supremacy. Far from limiting her ambition to Boetia, Thebes now attempted the subjugation of Fokus, a movement which brought a Peloponnesian army into central Greece and converted Athenian friendship into dislike. The Third Peace Convention, 371. Under these circumstances, Athens and Lachidaemon were all the more ready to conclude peace. In 371, accordingly, the Third Peace Convention assembled at Sparta. All the Greek governments sent their deputies, including even Dionysius, Archon of Sicily, and Amintas, King of Macedon, regarded by the Greeks as a foreign country. The Persian King's embassy was present to take part, though no longer to dictate. It was the most representative body that had thus far gathered in the history of the world, and was further notable for the fact that its purpose was not purely Hellenic but international. In other words, it was the first World Congress in the interest of peace. Speeches of the Athenian deputies. A few years earlier, Isocrates, the great Athenian publicist, had advocated an eternal peace among the Helenes and a common war upon Persia under the joint leadership of Lachidaemon and Athens. The speeches of the three Athenian envoys in this convention, apart from the question of hostility to Persia, seemed little more than echoes of his words. It were just and right, said one Athenian deputy to the Lachidaemonians. Even to refuse to bear arms against each other, since, as the story runs, the first strangers to whom our forefather Tryptolemus showed the unspeakable mystic rites of Demeter and Corre, mother and daughter were your ancestors, and to Peloponnes first he gave as a gift the seed of Demeter's grain. But if, as it would seem, it is a fixed decree of heaven that war shall never cease among men, yet ought we, your people and our people, to be as slow as possible to begin it, and being in it as swift as possible to bring it to an end. In the opinion of the speaker, permanent friendship was based on the gift and acceptance of a certain element of civilization. Another speaker, more practical, appealed to the motive of expediency. To revert once more to the topic of expediency and common interests, it is admitted, I presume, that, looking at the states collectively, half support your views, half ours, and in every single state one party is for Sparta and another for Athens. Suppose, then, that we were to shake hands, from what quarter can we reasonably anticipate danger and trouble? To put the case in so many words, as long as you are our friends, no one can vex us by land. No one, while we are your supporters, can injure you by sea. Wars like tempests gather and grow to a head from time to time, and again they are dispelled, that we all know. Some future day, if not now, we shall crave both of us for peace. Why, then, need we wait for that moment, holding on until we expire under the multitude of our ills, rather than take time by the forelock and, before irremediable mischief be tied, make peace? While we are yet in the heyday of our strength and fortune, shake hands in mutual amity. So assuredly shall we through you and you through us attain to an unprecedented pinnacle of glory throughout Hellas. Such arguments convince the assembly of deputies, which accordingly passed a resolution to make peace on the following terms. The withdrawal of Hormos from the cities, the disbanding of armaments, naval and military, and the guarantee of independence to the states. If any state transgresses these stipulations, it lies in the option of any power whatsoever to aid the states so injured, while conversely, to bring such aid is not compulsory on any power against its will. Implicitly, the Persian king was eliminated as an arbiter of Hellenic affairs, and the guardianship of the peace was entrusted in a democratic spirit to all the Helenes who should interest themselves in the matter. Naturally, the lead would be taken by the more powerful states. Here was clearly attained a condition far more favorable to peace and unity, on the basis of good will and common interest than the world had known before. Epaminandus against Ageselos. The good results, however, were negatived by the growing ambition of Thebes. In the preceding century, she had revealed in her federal coinage an intention to merge the League in a greater Theban state, and had attempted in vain to sign the King's Treaty of 387 with the name Thebans for all Boetia. Since that date, her unification of Boetia and her military improvements had vastly augmented her strength, and she was now represented in the convention by Epaminandus, whose name stands in the list of the world's most brilliant commanders. Athens signed for herself, leaving her allies to affix their individual names. When Sparta, for reasons unknown to us, was permitted to sign for her allies, Epaminandus wrote the name Thebans with the intention of making it include all Boetia. The convention accepted the signature for Thebes only, and was on the point of allowing the other states of the League to sign for themselves, when Epaminandus came forward with the request that the name Boetians be substituted for that of Thebans. Ageselos hotly objected, whereupon Epaminandus declared in substance that Thebes had as good a right to represent all the Boetians as Sparta to represent the Periocchi of Laconia. Ageselos, however, repudiated his claim and arbitrarily erased from the document the signature of Thebes, thus debarring that state from the peace. Boetian militarism. The Theban envoy had acted on mature deliberation and in full confidence of the ability of his own state to maintain the principle which he advocated. Boetia had developed a body of heavy infantry unequaled in that generation, and her cavalry far surpassed that of Peloponnes. Epaminandus, though thus far known chiefly as a man of culture, a philosopher of the Pythagorean school, was now revealing himself as a brilliant orator and a bold shrewd diplomatist. While facing Ageselos in the convention at Sparta, he doubtless felt certain that at need his state would not lack a general worthy of her brave, well-trained soldiers. The Battle of Luctra, 371. The convention was dissolved and the deputies returned to their homes while Thebes prepared for her great conflict with Peloponnes. The army sent by Lachidamon into focus, 10,000 strong, now received orders to invade Boetia. King Clem Brodis, its general, obeyed. An army of 6,000 under the Boetarchs, including Epaminandus, met him at Luctra. On his left wing Epaminandus massed his Thebans in a column 50 deep and led them in an irresistible charge upon the Lachidemonian force stationed opposite, while his Boetian allies, in echelon formation, barely came to close quarters with the Peloponnesians. In other words, the Theban commander won by throwing a superior force upon the critical point in his enemy's line. Of the 700 Spartans present, 400, including the king, were slain. Sparta acknowledged her defeat and withdrew the Peloponnesian army. Her supremacy was forever ended. Whether her collapse was for good or evil depended upon the years to come. Here it will suffice to repeat that the convention at Sparta preceding the Battle of Luctra was evidence of notable political progress and embodied a bright hope of international peace. Part 2, The Ascendancy of Thebes, 371-362. Effect of the Battle on the Spartans and on Peloponnes. After these events, a messenger was dispatched to Sparta with news of the disaster. He reached his destination on the last day of the Gymnopedia, precisely when the chorus of grown men had entered the theater. The Ephors heard the mournful tidings not without grief and pain, as needs they must, in my opinion. But for all that they did not dismiss the chorus but allowed the contest to run out its natural course. What they did was to deliver the names of the slain to their friends and families, with a word of warning to the women not to make any loud lamentation but to bear their sorrow in silence. And the next day it was a striking spectacle to see those who had relatives among the fallen, moving to and fro in public with bright and radiant looks. While of those whose friends were reported to be living, barely a man was to be seen. And these persons flitted by with lowered heads and scowling brows as if in humiliation. Narrow and illiberal, as were the Spartans, we cannot help admiring their resolution and their discipline. After the great loss at Lutra, there remained scarcely more than a thousand Spartans capable of bearing arms. And what was far worse, their military prestige had vanished. And they had accumulated no treasure of justice and mercy to draw the sympathy of men in the hour of need. No sooner had the allies become fully aware of the magnitude of the event at Lutra than they disregarded their Confederate obligations to pursue their individual interests. Throughout Peloponnes, a democratic effort to gain control of the states in opposition to Sparta affected in many a town and city, executions, banishments, revolutions, and massacres. Peloponnes was sinking into chaos. Fourth Peace Convention 371. In the desire to save for peace and order what they could from the general wreck, doubtless too in their own interest, the Athenians summoned a fourth peace convention to meet in their city. How many states were represented we do not know. At all events, the deputies adopted the following resolution. I will abide by the terms of treaty contained in the king's rescript and in the decrees of the Athenians and allies. If anyone assails any city among those which have taken this oath, I will render assistance to that city with all my strength. The pledge to support the treaty was a new element in the peace movement. Through this convention, Athens attempted to usurp the place of Sparta as head of the Peloponnesian states and placed herself under obligations to protect them if assailed. The Arcadian League founded 371 to 70. The first consequence of the treaty was the resolution of the Mantoneans to rebuild their city. They were aided by other Peloponnesians and Sparta dared not interfere. Next, Mantonea, Teghia, and all the communities of southern and central Arcadia organized themselves in a league as a capital they founded Megalopolis. In it met a council of 50 representing the communities according to their population and the assembly of the 10,000 including all the citizens of the league. As Leicodemon threatened the new federation, Thebes came to its assistance. Having recently gathered under her hegemony many states of central Greece, she was able to dispatch to Peloponnes an army which increased on the way by the forces of allies, amounted to 40,000 men or more, commanded by Epaminandus and his associate Boatarchs. For the first time in recorded history, Laconia was ravaged and Sparta threatened by invaders. No effective resistance could be offered. The liberation of Mycenia 369. The permanent result of the expedition, however, was the liberation of Mycenia. While the periocic towns of the south shore remained faithful to Sparta, the rest of the country was organized in a new state. The helots, now emancipated, became its citizens, increased in number by the return of exiles whose ancestors had escaped to other lands from hard bondage to the Spartans. It is an interesting fact that centuries of serfdom had not robbed these people of their love of freedom or degraded them below the capability for self-government. As a capital for the state recalled to life Mycenia was founded on Mount Ithomy, the strongest military position south of Corinth, extensive ruins of the city walls remained to the present day. It was only just that this brave manly folk should be rescued from serfdom, but it meant the doom of Sparta as a power in Helos. Nearly a half of Lacodaman, and that too the most fertile part, was rested from her. Thereafter, Helos had to work out its problems without her aid, for the rest of the Greeks were unwilling to sacrifice Mycenia to her, and she would enter into no agreement with them which did not involve the recovery of her lost territory. Thebes in northern Greece, Fifth Peace Convention, 368, Sixth Peace Convention, 367. Shortly afterward, through the campaigns of Pelopetus, who stood second to Epaminondas in generalship, Thebes forced her hegemony upon Thessaly and Macedon, but nowhere was she able to maintain peace or establish a firm control. Under these circumstances, an agent of a Persian satrap dared appear in Greece to bring about a settlement of affairs in the king's interest. A Fifth Peace Convention, accordingly, representing the principal state's concern, including Dionysius and the Persian king, Mededelphi. As Sparta and Thebes failed to agree on the Mycenian question, the meeting bore no fruit. Thereupon arose an undignified scramble for the king's favor. When their embassies met in his palace at Susa in a Sixth Peace Convention, and he believed himself to be once more, and with little effort of his own, the arbiter of Helos, he dictated among the terms of peace the independence of Mycenia and the disbanding of the Athenian navy, which had recently checked the expansion of Thebes. His terms were clearly a recognition of Theban hegemony, a favor won by Pelopetus, who headed the Theban legation. On hearing the terms, Leone and Athenian protested to his fellow deputies. Upon my word, Athenians, it seems to me high time that we look for some other friend than the king. These words well expressed the sentiment of the anti-Theban party throughout Helos. In like spirit, the Arcadian ambassador, returning home full of contempt for the Persian power, reported to the assembly of the Ten Thousand. The king appears to have a large army of confectioners and pastry cooks, butlers and doorkeepers, but as for men capable of doing battle with the Helenes, I looked carefully, yet could discover none. Besides all this, even the report of his wealth seems bombastic nonsense. Why, the golden plain tree, so be lauded, is not big enough to furnish shade to a single grasshopper. The report was an exaggeration, but admirably expressed the liberty-loving sentiment of a warlike mountain folk recently organized into a strong state. Seventh Peace Convention, 367-6. Immediately, a Seventh Peace Convention, the last in the series under consideration, met at Thebes to discuss the king's terms. The deputies protested, however, that they had come to hear the report, but had been given no instruction to ratify it. The Thebans accordingly sent an embassy among the other Greek states, with the demand that they swear to obey the king's rescript, for they were convinced that no Hellenic state would dare incur the enmity at once of Thebes and Persia. Corinth, however, refused to bind herself by oath to the king, and the other Greek states followed her example. Thus finally the Persian king lost his hold upon Helus, and the attempt of Pelopetus through negotiation to establish an empire for his city proved a mere cloud castle. It is more regrettable that the conventions, which had promised not only a Hellenic but an international peace, degenerated and died with little fruit. Waning prosperity of Thebes, naval campaign of Epaminandus, 364. Meanwhile, Epaminandus had been active. He had invaded Peloponnes a second and third time, but as he had accomplished nothing satisfactory there, the details of his campaigns may be omitted here. Theban affairs in Thessaly and Macedon were scarcely more prosperous. The great impediment to Theban supremacy, however, was the Athenian navy. Concluding therefore that he must by all means destroy it, Epaminandus built a fleet of a hundred triremes, and in 364 sailed forth to dispute with Athens the control of the Aegean. Fortunately for him the maritime states were resenting recent self-aggrandizements of Athens, and Byzantium passed over to him, while others wavered in their allegiance to Athens. His naval campaign was so great a success that Thebans may well have hoped in another summer to drive Athens from the sea. Approaching the catastrophe, the support of a navy, however, imposed upon them too greatly strained to be long and durable, especially at a time when their interests in the peninsula demanded their whole attention. In the year of the naval campaign, Pelopetus had to conduct a new Thessalian campaign in which he lost his life in battle. Although in the following year all Thessaly was reduced to obedience, the Thebans feared a disruption of their own league. They marched against Orchomenus, whose people they suspected of disloyalty, destroyed the city, executed the men as traitors, and enslaved the women and children. The horror aroused through Greece by this outrage foreboded the catastrophe in the drama of Theban greatness. An anti-Theban coalition. The ground for this event was preparing in Peloponnes, which had long seathed in chaos. In Arcadia, a strong party too proud and too devoted to local interests to submit to Theban hegemony had split the league in two and were building up a great anti-Theban coalition. Mantania, with a majority of Arcadian cantons, joined with Ellis, Akia, Athens, Sparta, and one or two lesser states on equal terms to prevent the enslavement of Peloponnes. Epaminandus had at his command, in addition to Boetians, troops from Euboea and Thessaly, and could count upon Argos, Tagaea, and some other Arcadian communities. His hope was that his presence in the south might win him an overwhelming alliance, so that by peaceful means he could quiet the turmoil and restore the ascendancy of his state. He attempted accordingly in a night march to take Sparta by surprise, and failing in that effort he hurriedly returned to Arcadia, where he tried to surprise the Mantanian population with their herds in the fields. When this strategy too proved fruitless and no hostile state came over to his side, nothing remained but to give battle. The Battle of Mantania 362. In spite of forced marches, his men were in high spirits. There was no labor which his troops would shrink from, either by night or by day. There was no danger they would flinch from, and with the scantiest provisions their discipline never failed them. When therefore he issued his last orders to them to prepare for battle, they promptly obeyed. He gave the word, the cavalry fell to whitening their helmets. The heavy infantry of the Arcadians began inscribing clubs as a crest on their shields, as though they were Thebans, and all were engaged in sharpening their lances and swords, and in polishing their heavy shields. The battleground was the plain of Mantania, surrounded by lofty ranges. His enemy numbered about 22,000. His own force about 33,000. He gained the advantage too of taking the enemy by surprise. The main tactic movement of Luctra was successfully repeated, but the great commander fell mortally wounded, in his last breath advising his countrymen to make peace. His death left the conflict undecided. The situation before and after the battle is summarized by Xenophon in one of his best passages. Effects of the battle. The effective result of these happenings was the opposite of that which the world at large expected. Here, where well nigh the whole of Helus was met together in one field, and the combatants stood rank against rank confronted, there was no one who doubted that, in the event of battle, the conquerors this day would rule, and that those who lost would be their subjects. But God so ordered it that both belligerents alike set up trophies as claiming victory, and neither interfered with the other in the act. Both parties alike gave back their enemies dead under a truce, and in right of victory. Both alike, in symbol of defeat, under a truce, took back their dead. Furthermore, though both claimed to have won the day, neither could show that he had thereby gained any accession of territory or state or empire, or was better situated than before the battle. In fact, uncertainty and confusion had gained ground, being tenfold greater throughout the length and breadth of Helus after the battle than before. Estimate of Epaminondus and of Theban ascendancy. Of the brilliant generalship of Epaminondus there can be no doubt. His private character too was lovable, and in public life he stood forth an unselfish patriot. Undoubtedly toward Helus he cherished loyal, benevolent feelings. It is impossible, however, to discover in him a sign of constructive statesmanship. As manifested by his conduct, his single idea was to substitute Thebes for Sparta as the head of Greece. And in working to that end, he made use of the methods long and vogue. From the beginning the task was hopeless. The Thebans were as narrow as the Spartans, and had far less experience in dealing with other states. Even in Boetia they could maintain their control in no other way than by a policy of frightfulness. More impotent were they to win the loyalty of other Greeks. Their sudden decline after the battle of Mantania proves that their ascendancy was largely due to one man. City-State Supremacy. The Hellenic Outlook. The idea of institutional union of all the Helens on terms of equal participation in the central government, and with guarantees for the rights of the weaker states, probably no one as yet had conceived. The City-State Supremacy had been essentially a tyranny, whether harsh or mild, and it was now at least proved that no Hellenic state was strong enough to force her rule upon the rest. The disintegration of Hellas resulting from the downfall of Sparta, the collapse of the Peloponnesian League, and the rise and decline of Thebes, was exceedingly discouraging to such men of broad vision and liberal mind as Isocrates. It was inevitable that the chaos should last long and wreak manifold injury upon the Greek world. For all that it should not be hastily assumed that Hellas was politically bankrupt, that her only salvation rested upon the interference of an outsider. The Helens were still a great creative people. Their expanding intelligence and liberality, more capable than ever of solving the problem of unity, were equaled only by their superb physical vitality and by the martial energy stored up in the agricultural areas of Greece, a reservoir of military strength which if rightly applied was capable not merely of protecting Hellas, but of conquering and ruling an empire. End of section 21