History of Greece, Volume 03 (of 12)

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Title: History of Greece, Volume 03 (of 12)
Author: Grote, George
Language: English
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

* Italics are denoted by underscores as in _italics_.
* Small caps are represented in upper case as in SMALL CAPS.
* Letter spaced Greek text is enclosed in tildes as in ~καὶ τὰ
λοιπά~.
* Footnotes have been renumbered. Each footnote is placed at the
end of the paragraph that includes its anchor.
* Obvious printer errors have been silently corrected, after
comparison with a later edition of this work. Greek text has
also been corrected after checking with this later edition and
with Perseus, when the reference was found.
* Original spelling, hyphenation and punctuation have been kept,
but variant spellings were made consistent when a predominant
usage was found.
* Nevetherless, no attempt has been made at normalizing proper
names (i.e. Rhegium and Rhêgium, Hêrakleia and Herakleia, Abydos
and Abydus, Arsacês and Arsakês, Krêtê and Krête and Krete,
Nabopolasar and Nabopolassar, Nanus and Nannus, Ninos and Ninus,
Perieget. and Periegêt. and Periêgêt., etc.). The author established
at the beginning of the first volume of this work some rules of
transcription for proper names, but neither he nor his publisher
follow them consistently.
* In p. 63, the word “different” has been inserted (“the members of
the same gens might belong to different demes”), after consulting
later editions.
* In p. 279, n. 534: the reference to c. xii, p. 227 has been changed
to “c. xii, p. 171” to preserve the meaning of the note.

HISTORY OF GREECE.

GEORGE GROTE, ESQ.

VOL. III.

REPRINTED FROM THE SECOND LONDON EDITION.

NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS
329 AND 331 PEARL STREET

CONTENTS.

VOL. III.

PART II.

CONTINUATION OF HISTORICAL GREECE.

CHAPTER IX.

CORINTH, SIKYON, AND MEGARA. — AGE OF THE GRECIAN DESPOTS.

Early commerce and enterprise of the Corinthians. — Oligarchy of
the Bacchiadæ. — Early condition of Megara. — Early condition of
Sikyôn. — Rise of the despots. — Earliest changes of government
in Greece. — Peculiarity of Sparta. — Discontinuance of kingship
in Greece generally. — Comparison with the Middle Ages of
Europe. — Anti-monarchical sentiment of Greece — Mr. Mitford. —
Causes which led to the growth of that sentiment. — Change to
oligarchical government. — Such change indicates an advance in
the Greek mind. — Dissatisfaction with the oligarchies — modes
by which the despots acquired power. — Examples. — Tendency
towards a better organized citizenship. — Character and working
of the despots. — The demagogue-despot of the earlier times
compared with the demagogue of later times. — Contrast between
the despot and the early heroic king. — Position of the despot. —
Good government impossible to him. — Conflict between oligarchy
and despotism preceded that between oligarchy and democracy. —
Early oligarchies included a multiplicity of different sections
and associations. — Government of the Geomori — a close order of
present or past proprietors. — Classes of the people. — Military
force of the early oligarchies consisted of cavalry. — Rise of
the heavy-armed infantry and of the free military marine — both
unfavorable to oligarchy. — Dorian states — Dorian and non-Dorian
inhabitants. — Dynasty of despots at Sikyôn — the Orthagoridæ. —
Violent proceedings of Kleisthenês. — Classes of the Sikyonian
population. — Fall of the Orthagoridæ — state of Sikyôn after
it. — The Sikyonian despots not put down by Sparta. — Despots at
Corinth — Kypselus. — Periander. — Great power of Corinth under
Periander. — Fall of the Kypselid dynasty. — Megara — Theagenês
the despot. — Disturbed government at Megara — The poet Theognis.
— Analogy of Corinth, Sikyôn, and Megara. _pages_ 1-47

CHAPTER X.

IONIC PORTION OF HELLAS. — ATHENS BEFORE SOLON.

History of Athens before Drako — only a list of names. — No king
after Kodrus. — Life archons. — Decennial archons. — Annual
archons, nine in number. — Archonship of Kreôn. B. C. 683 —
commencement of Attic chronology. — Obscurity of the civil
condition of Attica before Solon. — Alleged duodecimal division
of Attica in early times. — Four Ionic tribes — Geleontes,
Hoplêtes, Ægikoreis, Argadeis. — These names are not names of
castes or professions. — Component portions of the four tribes.
— The Trittys and the Naukrary. — The Phratry and the Gens. —
What constituted the gens or gentile communion. — Artificial
enlargement of the primitive family association. Ideas of
worship and ancestry coalesce. — Belief in a common divine
ancestor. — This ancestry fabulous, yet still accredited. —
Analogies from other nations. — Roman and Grecian gentes. —
Rights and obligations of the gentile and phratric brethren. —
The gens and phratry after the revolution of Kleisthenês became
extra-political. — Many distinct political communities originally
in Athens. — Theseus. — Long continuance of the cantonal feeling.
— What demes were originally independent of Athens. — Eleusis.
— Eupatridæ, Geômori, and Demiurgi. — Eupatridæ originally held
all political power. — Senate of Areopagus. — The nine archons
— their functions. — Drako and his laws. — Different tribunals
for homicide at Athens. — Regulations of Drako about the Ephetæ.
— Local superstitions at Athens about trial of homicide. —
Attempted usurpation by Kylôn. — His failure, and massacre of his
partisans by order of the Alkmæônids. — Trial and condemnation of
the Alkmæônids. — Pestilence and suffering at Athens. — Mystic
sects and brotherhoods in the sixth century B. C. — Epimenidês of
Krete. — Epimenidês visits and purifies Athens. — His life and
character. — Contrast of his age with that of Plato. 48-88

CHAPTER XI.

SOLONIAN LAWS AND CONSTITUTION.

Life, character, and poems of Solon. — War between Athens and
Megara about Salamis. — Acquisition of Salamis by Athens. —
Settlement of the dispute by Spartan arbitration in favor of
Athens. — State of Athens immediately before the legislation of
Solon. — Internal dissension — misery of the poorer population. —
Slavery of the debtors — law of debtor and creditor. — Injustice
and rapacity of the rich. — General mutiny, and necessity for
a large reform. — Solon made archon, and invested with full
powers of legislation. — He refuses to make himself despot.
— His seisachtheia, or relief-law for the poorer debtors. —
Debasing of the money standard. — General popularity of the
measure after partial dissatisfaction. — Different statements
afterwards as to the nature and extent of the seisachtheia. —
Necessity of the measure — mischievous contracts to which the
previous law had given rise. — Solon’s law finally settled the
question — no subsequent complaint as to private debts — respect
for contracts unbroken under the democracy. — Distinction made
in an early society between the principal and the interest of
a loan — interest disapproved of _in toto_. — This opinion was
retained by the philosophers after it had ceased to prevail in
the community generally. — Solonian seisachtheia never imitated
at Athens — money-standard honestly maintained afterwards. —
Solon is empowered to modify the political constitution. — His
census — four scales of property. — Graduated liability to
income-tax, of the three richest classes, one compared with
the other. — Admeasurement of political rights and franchises
according to this scale — a Timocracy. — Fourth or poorest class
— exercised powers only in assembly — chose magistrates and held
them to accountability. — Pro-bouleutic or pre-considering Senate
of Four Hundred. — Senate of Areopagus — its powers enlarged.
— Confusion frequently seen between Solonian and post-Solonian
institutions. — Loose language of the Athenian orators on this
point. — Solon never contemplated the future change or revision
of his own laws. — Solon laid the foundation of the Athenian
democracy, but his institutions are not democratical. — The real
Athenian democracy begins with Kleisthenês. — Athenian government
after Solon still oligarchical, but mitigated. — The archons
still continue to be judges until after the time of Kleisthenês.
— After-changes in the Athenian constitution overlooked by the
orators, but understood by Aristotle, and strongly felt at Athens
during the time of Periklês. — Gentes and Phratries under the
Solonian constitution — status of persons not included in them. —
Laws of Solon. — The Drakonian laws about homicide retained; the
rest abrogated. — Multifarious character of the laws of Solon: no
appearance of classification. — He prohibits the export of landed
produce from Attica, except oil. — The prohibition of little or
no effect. — Encouragement to artisans and industry. — Power of
testamentary bequest — first sanctioned by Solon. — Laws relating
to women. — Regulations about funerals. — About evil-speaking and
abusive language. — Rewards to the victors at the sacred games.
— Theft. — Censure pronounced by Solon upon citizens neutral in
a sedition. — Necessity, under the Grecian city-governments, of
some positive sentiment on the part of the citizens. — Contrast
in this respect between the age of Solon and the subsequent
democracy. — The same idea followed out in the subsequent
Ostracism. — Sentiment of Solon towards the Homeric poems and the
drama. — Difficulties of Solon after the enactment of the laws.
— He retires from Attica. — Visits Egypt and Cyprus. — Alleged
interview and conversation of Solon with Crœsus at Sardis. —
Moral lesson arising out of the narrative. — State of Attica
after the Solonian legislation. — Return of Solon to Athens. —
Rise of Peisistratus. — His memorable stratagem to procure a
guard from the people. — Peisistratus seizes the Akropolis and
becomes despot — courageous resistance of Solon. — Death of Solon
— his character. — Appendix, on the procedure of the Roman law
respecting principal and interest in a loan of money. 88-162

CHAPTER XII.

EUBŒA. — CYCLADES.

The islands called Cyclades. — Eubœa. — Its six or seven towns —
Chalkis, Eretria, etc. — How peopled. — Early power of Chalkis,
Eretria, Naxos etc. — Early Ionic festival at Dêlos; crowded
and wealthy. — Its decline about 560 B. C. — causes thereof.
— Homeric Hymn to the Delian Apollo — evidence as to early
Ionic life. — War between Chalkis and Eretria in early times —
extensive alliances of each. — Commerce and colonies of Chalkis
and Eretria — Euboic scale of money and weight. — Three different
Grecian scales — Æginæan, Euboic, and Attic — their ratio to each
other. 163-172

CHAPTER XIII.

ASIATIC IONIANS.

Twelve Ionic cities in Asia. — Legendary event called the Ionic
migration. — Emigrants to these cities — diverse Greeks. —
Great differences of dialect among the twelve cities. — Ionic
cities really founded by different migrations. — Consequences
of the mixture of inhabitants in these colonies — more activity
— more instability. — Mobility ascribed to the Ionic race as
compared with the Doric — arises from this cause. — Ionic
cities in Asia — mixed with indigenous inhabitants. — Worship
of Apollo and Artemis — existed on the Asiatic coast prior to
the Greek emigrants — adopted by them. — Pan-Ionic festival and
Amphiktyony on the promontory of Mykalê. — Situation of Milêtus
— of the other Ionic cities. — Territories interspersed with
Asiatic villages. — Magnêsia on the Mæander — Magnêsia on Mount
Sipylus. — Ephesus — Androklus the Œkist — first settlement
and distribution. — Increase and acquisitions of Ephesus. —
Kolophôn, its origin and history. — Temple of Apollo at Klarus,
near Kolophôn — its legends. — Lebedus, Teôs, Klazomenæ, etc. —
Internal distribution of the inhabitants of Teôs. — Erythræ and
Chios. — Klazomenæ — Phôkæa. — Smyrna. 172-189

CHAPTER XIV.

ÆOLIC GREEKS IN ASIA.

Twelve cities of Æolic Greeks. — Their situation — eleven near
together on the Elæitic gulf. — Legendary Æolic migration. —
Kymê — the earliest as well as the most powerful of the twelve.
— Magnêsia ad Sipylum. — Lesbos. — Early inhabitants of Lesbos
before the Æolians. — Æolic establishments in the region of
Mount Ida. — Continental settlements of Lesbos and Tenedos. —
Ante-Hellenic inhabitants in the region of Mount Ida — Mysians
and Teukrians. — Teukrians of Gergis. — Mitylênê — its political
dissensions — its poets. — Power and merit of Pittakus. — Alkæus
the poet — his flight from battle. — Bitter opposition of
Pittakus and Alkæus in internal politics. — Pittakus is created
Æsymnete, or Dictator of Mitylênê. 190-201

CHAPTER XV.

ASIATIC DORIANS.

Asiatic Dorians — their Hexapolis. — Other Dorians, not included
in the Hexapolis. — Exclusion of Halikarnassus from the
Hexapolis. 201-203

CHAPTER XVI.

NATIVES OF ASIA MINOR WITH WHOM THE GREEKS BECAME CONNECTED.

Indigenous nations of Asia Minor — Homeric geography. — Features
of the country. — Names and situations of the different people.
— Not originally aggregated into large kingdoms or cities.
— River Halys — the ethnographical boundary — Syro-Arabians
eastward of that river. — Thracian race — in the north of Asia
Minor. — Ethnical affinities and migrations. — Partial identity
of legends. — Phrygians. — Their influence upon the early Greek
colonists. — Greek musical scale — partly borrowed from the
Phrygians. — Phrygian music and worship among the Greeks in
Asia Minor. — Character of Phrygians, Lydians, and Mysians. —
Primitive Phrygian king or hero Gordius — Midas. 203-218

CHAPTER XVII.

LYDIANS. — MEDES. — CIMMERIANS. — SCYTHIANS.

Lydians — their music and instruments. — They and their capital
Sardis unknown to Homer. — Early Lydian kings. — Kandaulês
and Gygês. — The Mermnad dynasty succeeds to the Herakleid. —
Legend of Gygês in Plato. — Feminine influence running through
the legends of Asia Minor. — Distribution of Lydia into two
parts — Lydia and Torrhêbia. — Proceedings of Gygês. — His son
and successor Ardys. — Assyrians and Medes. — First Median
king — Dêïokês. — His history composed of Grecian materials,
not Oriental. — Phraortês — Kyaxarês. — Siege of Nineveh —
invasion of the Scythians and Cimmerians. — The Cimmerians. —
The Scythians. — Grecian settlements on the coast of the Euxine.
— Scythia as described by Herodotus. — Tribes of Scythians. —
Manners and worship. — Scythians formidable from numbers and
courage. — Sarmatians. — Tribes east and north of the Palus
Mæotis. — Tauri in the Crimea — Massagetæ. — Invasion of Asia
by Scythians and Cimmerians. — Cimmerians driven out of their
country by the Scythians. — Difficulties in the narrative of
Herodotus. — Cimmerians in Asia Minor. — Scythians in Upper
Asia. — Expulsion of these Nomads, after a temporary occupation.
— Lydian kings Sadyattês and Alyattês — war against Milêtus. —
Sacrilege committed by Alyattês — oracle — he makes peace with
Milêtus. — Long reign — death — and sepulchre, of Alyattês. —
Crœsus. — He attacks and conquers the Asiatic Greeks. — Want of
coöperation among the Ionic cities. — Unavailing suggestion of
Thalês — to merge the twelve Ionic cities into one Pan-Ionic city
at Teôs. — Capture of Ephesus. — Crœsus becomes king of all Asia
westward of the Halys. — New and important era for the Hellenic
world — commencing with the conquests of Crœsus. — Action of the
Lydian empire continued on a still larger scale by the Persians.
219-263

CHAPTER XVIII.

PHENICIANS.

Phenicians and Assyrians — members of the Semitic family of the
human race. — Early presence of Phenician ships in the Grecian
seas — in the Homeric times. — Situation and cities of Phenicia.
— Phenician commerce flourished more in the earlier than in the
later times of Greece. — Phenician colonies — Utica, Carthage,
Gadês, etc. — Commerce of the Phenicians of Gadês — towards
Africa on one side and Britain on the other. — Productive region
round Gadês, called Tartêssus. — Phenicians and Carthaginians —
the establishments of the latter combined views of empire with
views of commerce. — Phenicians and Greeks in Sicily and Cyprus —
the latter partially supplant the former. — Iberia and Tartêssus
— unvisited by the Greeks before about 630 B. C. — Memorable
voyage of the Samian Kôlæus to Tartêssus. — Exploring voyages
of the Phôkæans, between 630-570 B. C. — Important addition
to Grecian geographical knowledge, and stimulus to Grecian
fancy, thus communicated. — Circumnavigation of Africa by the
Phenicians. — This circumnavigation was really accomplished —
doubts of critics, ancient and modern, examined. — Caravan-trade
by land carried on by the Phenicians. 264-289

CHAPTER XIX.

ASSYRIANS. — BABYLON.

Assyrians — their name rests chiefly on Nineveh and Babylon. —
Chaldæans at Babylon — order of priests. — Their astronomical
observations. — Babylonia — its laborious cultivation and
fertility. — City of Babylon — its dimensions and walls. —
Babylon — only known during the time of its degradation — yet
even then the first city in Western Asia. — Immense command of
human labor possessed by the Babylonian kings. — Collective
civilization in Asia, without individual freedom or development.
— Graduated contrast between Egyptians, Assyrians, Phenicians,
and Greeks. — Deserts and predatory tribes surrounding the
Babylonians. — Appendix, “Nineveh and its Remains,” by Mr.
Layard. 290-307

CHAPTER XX.

EGYPTIANS.

Phenicians — the link of commerce between Egypt and Assyria. —
Herodotus — earliest Grecian informant about Egypt. — The Nile
in the time of Herodotus. — Thebes and Upper Egypt — of more
importance in early times than Lower Egypt, but not so in the
days of Herodotus. — Egyptian castes or hereditary professions. —
Priests. — The military order. — Different statements about the
castes. — Large town population of Egypt. — Profound submission
of the people. — Destructive toil imposed by the great monuments.
— Worship of animals. — Egyptian kings — taken from different
parts of the country. — Relations of Egypt with Assyria.
— Egyptian history not known before Psammetichus. — First
introduction of Greeks into Egypt under Psammetichus — stories
connected with it. — Importance of Grecian mercenaries to the
Egyptian kings — caste of interpreters. — Opening of the Kanôpic
branch of the Nile to Greek commerce — Greek establishment at
Naukratis. — Discontents and mutiny of the Egyptian military
order. — Nekôs son of Psammetichus — his active operations. —
Defeated by Nebuchadnezzar at Carchemisch. — Psammis, the son
of Nekôs. — Apriês. — Amasis — dethrones Apriês by means of the
native soldiers. — He encourages Grecian commerce. — Important
factory and religious establishment for the Greeks at Naukratis.
— Prosperity of Egypt under Amasis. — Appendix, on the Egyptian
chronology given by Manetho, as explained by M. Boeckh. 308-342

CHAPTER XXI.

DECLINE OF THE PHENICIANS. — GROWTH OF CARTHAGE.

Decline of the Phenicians — growth of Grecian marine and
commerce. — Effect of Phenicians, Assyrians, and Egyptians on the
Greek mind. — The alphabet. — The scale of money and weight. —
The gnomon — and the division of the day. — Carthage. — Era of
Carthage. — Dominion of Carthage. — Dido. — First known collision
of Greeks and Carthaginians — Massalia. — Amicable relations
between Tyre and Carthage. 342-348

CHAPTER XXII.

WESTERN COLONIES OF GREECE — IN EPIRUS, ITALY, SICILY, AND GAUL.

Early unauthenticated emigration from Greece. — Ante-Hellenic
population of Sicily — Sikels — Sikans — Elymi — Phenicians. —
Œnotria — Italia. — Pelasgi in Italy. — Latins — Œnotrians —
Epirots — ethnically cognate. — Analogy of languages — Greek,
Latin, and Oscan. — Grecian colonization of ascertained date in
Sicily — commences in 735 B. C. — Cumæ in Campania — earlier
— date unknown. — Prosperity of Cumæ between 700-500 B. C. —
Decline of Cumæ from 500 B. C. — Revolution — despotism of
Aristodêmus. — Invasion of Cumæ by Tuscans and Samnites from the
interior. — Rapid multiplication of Grecian colonies in Sicily
and Italy, beginning with 735 B. C. — Foundation of Naxos in
Sicily by Theoklês. — Spot where the Greeks first landed in
Sicily — memorable afterwards. — Ante-Hellenic distribution
of Sicily. — Foundation of Syracuse. — Leontini and Katana. —
Megara in Sicily. — Gela. — Zanklê, afterwards Messênê (Messina).
— Sub-colonies — Akræ, Kasmenæ, Kamarina, etc. — Agrigentum,
Selinûs, Himera, etc. — Prosperity of the Sicilian Greeks. —
Mixed character of the population. — Peculiarity of the monetary
and statical system, among the Sicilian and Italian Greeks. —
Sikels and Sikans gradually Hellenized. — Difference between the
Greeks in Sicily and those in Greece proper. — Native population
in Sicily not numerous enough to become formidable to the Greek
settlers. — Sikel prince Duketius. — Grecian colonies in southern
Italy. — Native population and territory. — Sybaris and Krotôn.
— Territory and colonies of Sybaris and Krotôn. — Epizephyrian
Lokri. — Original settlers of Lokri — their character and
circumstances. — Treachery towards the indigenous Sikels. —
Mixture of Sikels in their territory — Sikel customs adopted. —
Lokrian lawgiver Zaleukus. — Rigor of his laws — government of
Lokri. — Rhêgium. — Chalkidic settlements in Italy and Sicily
— Rhêgium, Zanklê, Naxos, Katana, Leontini. — Kaulônia and
Skyllêtium. — Siris or Hêrakleia. — Metapontium. — Tarentum —
circumstances of its foundation. — The Partheniæ — Phalanthus
the œkist. — Situation and territory of Tarentum. — Iapygians. —
Messapians. — Prosperity of the Italian Greeks between 700-500
B. C. — Ascendency over the Œnotrian population. — Krotôn and
Sybaris — at their maximum from 560-510 B. C. — The Sybarites —
their luxury — their organization, industry, and power. — Grecian
world about 560 B. C. — Ionic and Italic Greeks are then the most
prominent among Greeks. — Consequences of the fall of Sybaris. —
Krotoniates — their salubrity, strength, success in the Olympic
games, etc. — Massalia. 349-402

CHAPTER XXIII.

GRECIAN COLONIES IN AND NEAR EPIRUS.

Korkyra. — Early foundation of Korkyra from Corinth. — Relations
of Korkyra with Corinth. — Relations with Epirus. — Ambrakia
founded by Corinth. — Joint settlements by Corinth and Korkyra.
— Leukas and Anaktorium. — Apollonia and Epidamnus. — Relations
between these colonies — Commerce. 402-410

CHAPTER XXIV.

AKARNANIANS. — EPIROTS.

Akarnanians. — Their social and political condition. — Epirots —
comprising different tribes, with little or no ethnical kindred.
— Some of these tribes ethnically connected with those of
southern Italy; — others, with the Macedonians — impossible to
mark the boundaries. — Territory distributed into villages — no
considerable cities. — Coast of Epirus discouraging to Grecian
colonization. — Some Epirotic tribes governed by kings, others
not. 411-419

HISTORY OF GREECE.

PART II.

CONTINUATION OF HISTORICAL GREECE.

CHAPTER IX.

CORINTH, SIKYON, AND MEGARA. — AGE OF THE GRECIAN DESPOTS.

The preceding volume brought down the history of Sparta to the period
marked by the reign of Peisistratus at Athens; at which time she had
attained her maximum of territory, was confessedly the most powerful
state in Greece, and enjoyed a proportionate degree of deference from
the rest. I now proceed to touch upon the three Dorian cities on and
near to the Isthmus,—Corinth, Sikyôn, and Megara, as they existed at
this same period.

Even amidst the scanty information which has reached us, we trace
the marks of considerable maritime energy and commerce among the
Corinthians, as far back as the eighth century B. C. The foundation
of Korkyra and Syracuse, in the 11th Olympiad, or 734 B. C. (of
which I shall speak farther in connection with Grecian colonization
generally), by expeditions from Corinth, affords a good proof that
they knew how to turn to account the excellent situation which
connected them with the sea on both sides of Peloponnesus: and
Thucydides,[1] while he notices them as the chief liberators of the
sea, in early times, from pirates, also tells us that the first
great improvement in ship-building,—the construction of the trireme,
or ship of war, with a full deck and triple banks for the rowers,—was
the fruit of Corinthian ingenuity. It was in the year 703 B. C., that
the Corinthian Ameinoklês built four triremes for the Samians, the
first which those islanders had ever possessed: the notice of this
fact attests as well the importance attached to the new invention,
as the humble scale on which the naval force in those early days
was equipped. And it is a fact of not less moment, in proof of the
maritime vigor of Corinth in the seventh century B. C., that the
earliest naval battle known to Thucydides was one which took place
between the Corinthians and the Korkyræans, B. C. 664.[2]

[1] Thucyd. i, 13.

[2] Thucyd. i, 13.

It has already been stated, in the preceding volume, that the line of
Herakleid kings in Corinth subsides gradually, through a series of
empty names, into the oligarchy denominated Bacchiadæ, or Bacchiads,
under whom our first historical knowledge of the city begins. The
persons so named were all accounted descendants of Hêraklês, and
formed the governing caste in the city; intermarrying usually among
themselves, and choosing from their own number an annual prytanis,
or president, for the administration of affairs. Of their internal
government we have no accounts, except the tale respecting Archias
the founder of Syracuse,[3] one of their number, who had made himself
so detested by an act of brutal violence terminating in the death of
the beautiful youth Aktæôn, as to be forced to expatriate. That such
a man should have been placed in the distinguished post of œkist of
the colony of Syracuse, gives us no favorable idea of the Bacchiad
oligarchy: we do not, however, know upon what original authority the
story depends, nor can we be sure that it is accurately recounted.
But Corinth, under their government, was already a powerful
commercial and maritime city, as has already been stated.

[3] Plutarch, Amator. Narrat. c. 2, p. 772; Diodor. Fragm. lib.
viii, p. 26. Alexander, Ætolus (Fragm. i, 5, ed. Schneidewin),
and the Scholiast ad Apollon. Rhod. iv, 1212, seem to connect
this act of outrage with the expulsion of the Bacchiadæ from
Corinth, which did not take place until long afterwards.

Megara, the last Dorian state in this direction eastward, and
conterminous with Attica at the point where the mountains called
Kerāta descend to Eleusis and the Thracian plain, is affirmed to
have been originally settled by the Dorians of Corinth, and to have
remained for some time a dependency of that city. It is farther said
to have been at first merely one of five separate villages,—Megara,
Heræa, Peiræa, Kynosura, Tripodiskus,—inhabited by a kindred
population, and generally on friendly terms, yet sometimes distracted
by quarrels, and on those occasions carrying on war with a degree
of lenity and chivalrous confidence which reverses the proverbial
affirmation respecting the sanguinary character of enmities between
kindred. Both these two statements are transmitted to us (we know
not from what primitive source) as explanatory of certain current
phrases:[4] the author of the latter cannot have agreed with the
author of the former in considering the Corinthians as masters of the
Megarid, because he represents them as fomenting wars among these
five villages for the purpose of acquiring that territory. Whatever
may be the truth respecting this alleged early subjection of Megara,
we know it[5] in the historical age, and that too as early as the
14th Olympiad, only as an independent Dorian city, maintaining
the integrity of its territory under its leader Orsippus, the
famous Olympic runner, against some powerful enemies, probably the
Corinthians. It was of no mean consideration, possessing a territory
which extended across Mount Geraneia to the Corinthian gulf, on which
the fortified town and port of Pêgæ, belonging to the Megarians, was
situated; it was mother of early and distant colonies,—and competent,
during the time of Solon, to carry on a protracted contest with the
Athenians, for the possession of Salamis, wherein, although the
latter were at last victorious, it was not without an intermediate
period of ill-success and despair.

[4] The first account seems referred to Dêmôn (an author of about
280 B. C., and a collector of Attic archæology, or what is called
Ἀτθιδόγραφος. See Phanodêmi, Dêmônis, Clitodêmi, atque Istri,
Ἀτθίδων, Fragmenta, ed. Siebelis, Præfatio, pp. viii-xi), and is
given as the explanation of the locution—ὁ Διὸς Κόρινθος. See
Schol. ad Pindar. Nem. vii, ad finem; Schol. Aristophan. Ran.
440: the Corinthians seem to have represented their eponymous
hero as son of Zeus, though other Greeks did not believe them
(Pausan. ii, 1, 1). That the Megarians were compelled to come to
Corinth for demonstration of mourning on occasion of the decease
of any of the members of the Bacchiad oligarchy, is, perhaps, a
story copied from the regulation at Sparta regarding the Periœki
and Helots (Herod. vi, 57; Pausan. iv, 14, 3; Tyrtæus, Fragm.).
Pausanias conceives the victory of the Megarians over the
Corinthians, which he saw commemorated in the Megarian θησαυρὸς
at Olympia, as having taken place before the 1st Olympiad,
when Phorbas was life-archon at Athens: Phorbas is placed by
chronologers fifth in the series from Medon, son of Codrus
(Pausan. i, 39, 4; vi, 19, 9). The early enmity between Corinth
and Megara is alluded to in Plutarch, De Malignitate Herodoti, p.
868, c. 35.

The second story noticed in the text is given by Plutarch,
Quæstion. Græc. c. 17, p. 295, in illustration of the meaning of
the word Δορύξενος.

[5] Pausanias, i, 44, 1, and the epigram upon Orsippus in Boeckh,
Corpus Inscript. Gr. No. 1050, with Boeckh’s commentary.

Of the early history of Sikyôn, from the period when it became
Dorian down to the seventh century B. C., we know nothing. Our
first information respecting it, concerns the establishment of
the despotism of Orthagoras, about 680-670 B. C. And it is a
point deserving of notice, that all the three above-mentioned
towns,—Corinth, Sikyôn, and Megara,—underwent during the course of
this same century a similar change of government. In each of them
a despot established himself; Orthagoras in Sikyôn; Kypselus in
Corinth; Theagenês in Megara.

Unfortunately, we have too little evidence as to the state of things
by which this change of government was preceded and brought about, to
be able to appreciate fully its bearing. But what draws our attention
to it more particularly is, that the like phenomenon seems to have
occurred contemporaneously throughout a large number of cities,
continental, insular, and colonial, in many different parts of the
Grecian world. The period between 650 and 500 B. C., witnessed the
rise and downfall of many despots and despotic dynasties, each in
its own separate city. During the succeeding interval between 500
and 350 B. C., new despots, though occasionally springing up, become
more rare; political dispute takes another turn, and the question
is raised directly and ostensibly between the many and the few,—the
people and the oligarchy. But in the still later times which follow
the battle of Chæroneia, in proportion as Greece, declining in
civic not less than in military spirit, is driven to the constant
employment of mercenary troops, and humbled by the overruling
interference of foreigners,—the despot with his standing foreign
body-guard becomes again a characteristic of the time; a tendency
partially counteracted, but never wholly subdued, by Aratus, and the
Achæan league of the third century B. C.

It would have been instructive if we had possessed a faithful record
of these changes of government in some of the more considerable of
the Grecian towns; but in the absence of such evidence we can do
little more than collect the brief sentences of Aristotle and others
respecting the causes which produced them. For as the like change
of government was common, near about the same time, to cities very
different in locality, in race of inhabitants, in tastes and habits,
and in wealth, it must partly have depended upon certain general
causes which admit of being assigned and explained.

In the preceding volume, I tried to elucidate the heroic government
of Greece, so far as it could be known from the epic poems,—a
government founded (if we may employ modern phraseology) upon divine
right as opposed to the sovereignty of the people, but requiring,
as an essential condition, that the king shall possess force, both
of body and mind, not unworthy of the exalted breed to which he
belongs.[6] In this government, the authority which pervades the
whole society, all resides in the king; but on important occasions it
is exercised through the forms of publicity; he consults, and even
discusses, with the council of chiefs or elders,—he communicates
after such consultation with the assembled agora,—who hear and
approve, perhaps hear and murmur, but are not understood to exercise
an option or to reject. In giving an account of the Lykurgean system,
I remarked that the old primitive Rhetræ, or charters of compact,
indicated the existence of these same elements; a king of superhuman
lineage (in this particular case two coördinate kings),—a senate
of twenty-eight old men, besides the kings who sat in it,—and an
ekklesia, or public assembly of citizens, convened for the purpose of
approving or rejecting propositions submitted to them, with little
or no liberty of discussion. The elements of the heroic government
of Greece are thus found to be substantially the same as those
existing in the primitive Lykurgean constitution: in both cases the
predominant force residing in the kings,—and the functions of the
senate, still more those of the public assembly, being comparatively
narrow and restricted; in both cases the regal authority being upheld
by a certain religious sentiment, which tended to exclude rivalry
and to insure submission in the people up to a certain point, in
spite of misconduct or deficiency in the reigning individual. Among
the principal Epirotic tribes, this government subsisted down to the
third century B. C.[7], though some of them had passed out of it, and
were in the habit of electing annually a president out of the gens
to which the king belonged. Starting from these points, common to
the Grecian heroic government, and to the original Lykurgean system,
we find that in the Grecian cities generally, the king is replaced
by an oligarchy, consisting of a limited number of families,—while
at Sparta, the kingly authority, though greatly curtailed, is never
abolished. And the different turn of events at Sparta admits of
being partially explained. It so happened that, for five centuries,
neither of the two coördinate lines of Spartan kings was ever without
some male representatives, so that the sentiment of divine right,
upon which their preëminence was founded, always proceeded in an
undeviating channel. That sentiment never wholly died out in the
tenacious mind of Sparta, but it became sufficiently enfeebled to
occasion a demand for guarantees against abuse. If the senate had
been a more numerous body, composed of a few principal families,
and comprising men of all ages, it might, perhaps, have extended
its powers so much as to absorb those of the king: but a council of
twenty-eight very old men, chosen indiscriminately from all Spartan
families, was essentially an adjunct and secondary force. It was
insufficient even as a restraint upon the king,—still less was it
competent to become his rival; and it served indirectly even as a
support to him, by preventing the formation of any other privileged
order powerful enough to be an overmatch for his authority. This
insufficiency on the part of the senate was one of the causes
which occasioned the formation of the annually-renewed Council of
Five, called the Ephors; originally a defensive board, like the
Roman Tribunes, intended as a restraint upon abuse of power in the
kings, but afterwards expanding into a paramount and unresponsible
Executive Directory. Assisted by endless dissensions between the two
coördinate kings, the ephors encroached upon their power on every
side, limited them to certain special functions, and even rendered
them accountable and liable to punishment, but never aspired to
abolish the dignity. That which the regal authority lost in extent
(to borrow the just remark of king Theopompus)[8] it gained in
durability: the descendants of the twins Eurysthenês and Proklês
continued in possession of their double sceptre from the earliest
historical times down to the revolutions of Agis the Third, and
Kleomenês the Third,—generals of the military force, growing richer
and richer, and reverenced as well as influential in the state,
though the directory of ephors were their superiors. And the ephors
became, in time, quite as despotic, in reference to internal affairs,
as the kings could ever have been before them; for the Spartan mind,
deeply possessed with the feelings of command and obedience, remained
comparatively insensible to the ideas of control and responsibility,
and even averse to that open discussion and censure of public
measures, or officers, which such ideas imply. We must recollect
that the Spartan political constitution was both simplified in its
character, and aided in its working, by the comprehensive range of
the Lykurgean discipline, with its rigorous equal pressure upon rich
and poor, which averted many of the causes elsewhere productive of
sedition,—habituating the proudest and most refractory citizen to
a life of undeviating obedience,—satisfying such demand as existed
for system and regularity,—rendering Spartan personal habits of life
much more equal than even democratical Athens could parallel; but
contributing, at the same time, to engender a contempt for talkers,
and a dislike of methodical and prolonged speech, which of itself
sufficed to exclude all regular interference of the collective
citizens, either in political or judicial affairs.

[6] See a striking passage in Plutarch. Præcept. Reipubl. Gerend.
c. 5, p. 801.

[7] Plutarch, Pyrrh. c. 5. Aristot. Polit. v, 9, 1.

[8] Aristot. Polit. v, 9, 1.

Such were the facts at Sparta; but in the rest of Greece the
primitive heroic government was modified in a very different manner:
the people outgrew, much more decidedly, that feeling of divine right
and personal reverence which originally gave authority to the king.
Willing submission ceased on the part of the people, and still more
on the part of the inferior chiefs, and with it ceased the heroic
royalty. Something like a system or constitution came to be demanded.

Of this discontinuance of kingship, so universal in the political
march of Hellas, the prime cause is, doubtless, to be sought in
the smallness and concentrated residence of each distinct Hellenic
society. A single chief, perpetual and unresponsible, was noway
essential for the maintenance of union. In modern Europe, for the
most part, the different political societies which grew up out of
the extinction of the Roman empire embraced each a considerable
population and a wide extent of territory and the monarchical form
presented itself as the only known means of union between the parts,
the only visible and imposing symbol of a national identity. Both
the military character of the Teutonic invaders, as well as the
traditions of the Roman empire which they dismembered, tended towards
the establishment of a monarchical chief, the abolition of whose
dignity would have been looked upon as equivalent, and would really
have been equivalent, to the breaking up of the nation, since the
maintenance of a collective union by means of general assemblies was
so burdensome, that the kings themselves vainly tried to exact it by
force, and representative government was then unknown.

The history of the Middle Ages, though exhibiting constant resistance
on the part of powerful subjects, frequent deposition of individual
kings, and occasional changes of dynasty, contains few instances of
any attempt to maintain a large political aggregate united without a
king, either hereditary or elective. Even towards the close of the
last century, at the period when the federal constitution of the
United States of America was first formed, many reasoners regarded[9]
as an impossibility the application of any other system than the
monarchical to a territory of large size and population, so as to
combine union of the whole with equal privileges and securities to
each of the parts. And it might, perhaps, be a real impossibility
among any rude people, with strong local peculiarities, difficult
means of communication, and habits of representative government
not yet acquired. Hence, throughout all the larger nations of
mediæval and modern Europe, with few exceptions, the prevailing
sentiment has been favorable to monarchy; but wherever any single
city, or district, or cluster of villages, whether in the plains
of Lombardy, or in the mountains of Switzerland, has acquired
independence,—wherever any small fraction has severed itself from
the aggregate,—the opposite sentiment has been found, and the
natural tendency has been towards some modification of republican
government;[10] out of which, indeed, as in Greece, a despot has
often been engendered, but always through some unnatural mixture of
force and fraud. The feudal system, evolved out of the disordered
state of Europe between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries,
always presumed a permanent suzerain, vested with large rights of a
mixed personal and proprietary character over his vassals, though
subject, also, to certain obligations towards them the immediate
vassals of the king had subordinate vassals of their own, to whom
they stood in the same relation: and in this hierarchy[11] of power,
property, and territory blended together, the rights of the chief,
whether king, duke, or baron, were always conceived as constituting
a status apart, and neither conferred originally by the grant, nor
revocable at the pleasure, of those over whom they were exercised.
This view of the essential nature of political authority was a point
in which the three great elements of modern European society,—the
Teutonic, the Roman, and the Christian,—all concurred, though each
in a different way and with different modifications; and the result
was, a variety of attempts on the part of subjects to compromise with
their chief, without any idea of substituting a delegated executive
in his place. On particular points of these feudal monarchies there
grew up, gradually, towns with a concentrated population, among
whom was seen the remarkable combination of a republican feeling,
demanding collective and responsible management in their own local
affairs, with a necessity of union and subordination towards the
great monarchical whole; and hence again arose a new force tending
both to maintain the form, and to predetermine the march, of kingly
government.[12] And it has been found in practice possible to
attain this latter object,—to combine regal government with fixity
of administration, equal law impartially executed, security to
person and property, and freedom of discussion under representative
forms,—in a degree which the wisest ancient Greek would have deemed
hopeless.[13] Such an improvement in the practical working of this
species of government, speaking always comparatively with the kings
of ancient times in Syria, Egypt, Judæa, the Grecian cities, and
Rome,—coupled with the increased force of all established routine,
and the greater durability of all institutions and creeds which have
once obtained footing throughout any wide extent of territory and
people, has caused the monarchical sentiment to remain predominant in
the European mind, though not without vigorous occasional dissent,
throughout the increased knowledge and the enlarged political
experience of the last two centuries.

[9] See this subject discussed in the admirable collection of
letters, called the Federalist, written in 1787, during the time
when the federal constitution of the United States of America was
under discussion.—Letters 9, 10, 14, by Mr. Madison.

“Il est de la nature d’une république (says Montesquieu, Esprit
des Loix, viii, 16) de n’avoir qu’un petit territoire: sans cela,
elle ne peut guère subsister.”

[10] David Hume, in his Essay xii (vol. i, p. 159, ed. 1760),
after remarking “that all kinds of government, free and despotic,
seem to have undergone in modern times (_i. e._ as compared with
ancient) a great change for the better, with regard both to
foreign and domestic management,” proceeds to say:—

“But though all kinds of government be improved in modern times,
yet monarchical government seems to have made the greatest
advances towards perfection. It may now be affirmed of civilized
monarchies, what was formerly said in praise of republics alone,
that they are a government of laws, not of men. They are found
susceptible of order, method, and constancy to a surprising
degree. Property is there secure; industry encouraged; the arts
flourish; and the prince lives secure among his subjects, like
a father among his children. There are, perhaps, and have been
for two centuries, near two hundred absolute princes, great
and small, in Europe; and allowing twenty years to each reign,
we may suppose that there have been in the whole two thousand
monarchs, or tyrants, as the Greeks would have called them; yet
of these there has not been one, not even Philip the Second of
Spain, so bad as Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, Domitian, who were
four in twelve amongst the Roman emperors. It must, however, be
confessed, that though monarchical governments have approached
nearer to popular ones in gentleness and stability, they are
still much inferior. Our modern education and customs instil more
humanity and moderation than the ancient, but have not as yet
been able to overcome entirely the disadvantages of that form of
government.”

[11] See the Lectures of M. Guizot, Cours d’Histoire Moderne,
Leçon 30, vol. iii, p. 187, edit. 1829.

[12] M. Augustin Thierry observes, Lettres sur l’Histoire de
France, Lettre xvi, p. 235:—

“Sans aucun souvenir de l’histoire Grecque ou Romaine, les
bourgeois des onzième et douzième siècles, soit que leur ville
fut sous la seigneurie d’un roi, d’un comte, d’un duc, d’un
évêque ou d’une abbaye, allaient droit à la république: mais
la réaction du pouvoir établi les rejetait souvent en arrière.
Du balancement de ces deux forces opposées résultait pour la
ville une sort de gouvernement mixte, et c’est ce qui arriva, en
général, dans le nord de la France, comme le prouvent les chartes
de commune.”

Even among the Italian cities, which became practically
self-governing, and produced despots as many in number and as
unprincipled in character as the Grecian (I shall touch upon this
comparison more largely hereafter), Mr. Hallam observes, that
“the sovereignty of the emperors, though not very effective, was
in theory always admitted: their name was used in public acts and
appeared upon the coin.”—View of the Middle Ages, part i, ch. 3,
p. 346, sixth edit.

See also M. Raynouard, Histoire du Droit Municipal en France,
book iii, ch. 12, vol. ii. p. 156: “Cette séparation essentielle
et fondamentale entre les actes, les agens du gouvernement—et les
actes, les agens de l’administration locale pour les affaires
locales—cette démarcation politique, dont l’empire Romain avoit
donné l’exemple, et qui concilioit le gouvernement monarchique
avec une administration populaire—continua plus ou moins
expressément sous les trois dynasties.”

M. Raynouard presses too far his theory of the continuous
preservation of the municipal powers in towns from the Roman
empire down to the third French dynasty; but into this question
it is not necessary for my purpose to enter.

[13] In reference to the Italian republics of the Middle Ages, M.
Sismondi observes, speaking of Philip della Torre, denominated
_signor_ by the people of Como, Vercelli, and Bergamo, “Dans ces
villes, non plus que dans celles que son frère s’était auparavant
assujetties, le peuple ne croyoit point renoncer à sa liberté:
il n’avoit point voulu choisir un maître, mais seulement un
protecteur contre les nobles, un capitaine des gens de guerre,
et un chef de la justice. L’expérience lui apprit trop tard, que
ces prérogatives réunies constituoient un souverain.”—Républiques
Italiennes, vol. iii, ch. 20, p. 273.

It is important to show that the monarchical institutions and
monarchical tendencies prevalent throughout mediæval and modern
Europe have been both generated and perpetuated by causes peculiar
to those societies, whilst in Hellenic societies such causes had no
place,—in order that we may approach Hellenic phenomena in the proper
spirit, and with an impartial estimate of the feeling universal
among Greeks towards the idea of a king. The primitive sentiment
entertained towards the heroic king died out, passing first into
indifference, next,—after experience of the despots,—into determined
antipathy.

To an historian like Mr. Mitford, full of English ideas respecting
government, this anti-monarchical feeling appears of the nature of
insanity, and the Grecian communities like madmen without a keeper:
while the greatest of all benefactors is the hereditary king, who
conquers them from without,—the second-best is the home-despot, who
seizes the acropolis and puts his fellow-citizens under coercion.
There cannot be a more certain way of misinterpreting and distorting
Grecian phenomena than to read them in this spirit, which reverses
the maxims both of prudence and morality current in the ancient
world. The hatred of kings as it stood among the Greeks, whatever
may be thought about a similar feeling now, was a prëeminent virtue,
flowing directly from the noblest and wisest part of their nature:
it was a consequence of their deep conviction of the necessity
of universal legal restraint—it was a direct expression of that
regulated sociality which required the control of individual passion
from every one without exception, and most of all from him to whom
power was confided. The conception which the Greeks formed of an
unresponsible One, or of a king who could do no wrong, may be
expressed in the pregnant words of Herodotus:[14] “He subverts the
customs of the country: he violates women: he puts men to death
without trial.” No other conception of the probable tendencies of
kingship was justified either by a general knowledge of human nature,
or by political experience as it stood from Solon downward: no other
feeling than abhorrence could be entertained for the character so
conceived: no other than a man of unprincipled ambition would ever
seek to invest himself with it.

[14] Herod. iii, 80. Νóμαιά τε κινεῖ πάτρια, καὶ βιᾶται γυναῖκας,
κτείνει τε ἀκρίτους.

Our larger political experience has taught us to modify this
opinion by showing that, under the conditions of monarchy in the
best governments of modern Europe, the enormities described by
Herodotus do not take place,—and that it is possible, by means
of representative constitutions acting under a certain force of
manners, customs, and historical recollection, to obviate many of
the mischiefs likely to flow from proclaiming the duty of peremptory
obedience to an hereditary and unresponsible king, who cannot
be changed without extra-constitutional force. But such larger
observation was not open to Aristotle, the wisest as well as the most
cautious of ancient theorists; nor if it had been open, could he have
applied with assurance its lessons to the governments of the single
cities of Greece. The theory of a constitutional king, especially
as it exists in England, would have appeared to him impracticable:
to establish a king who will reign without governing,—in whose name
all government is carried on, yet whose personal will is in practice
of little or no effect,—exempt from all responsibility, without
making use of the exemption,—receiving from every one unmeasured
demonstrations of homage, which are never translated into act
except within the bounds of a known law,—surrounded with all the
paraphernalia of power, yet acting as a passive instrument in the
hands of ministers marked out for his choice by indications which
he is not at liberty to resist. This remarkable combination of the
fiction of superhuman grandeur and license with the reality of an
invisible strait-waistcoat, is what an Englishman has in his mind
when he speaks of a constitutional king: the events of our history
have brought it to pass in England, amidst an aristocracy the most
powerful that the world has yet seen,—but we have still to learn
whether it can be made to exist elsewhere, or whether the occurrence
of a single king, at once able, aggressive, and resolute, may not
suffice to break it up. To Aristotle, certainly, it could not have
appeared otherwise than unintelligible and impracticable: not likely
even in a single case,—but altogether inconceivable as a permanent
system and with all the diversities of temper inherent in the
successive members of an hereditary dynasty. When the Greeks thought
of a man exempt from legal responsibility, they conceived him as
really and truly such, in deed as well as in name, with a defenceless
community exposed to his oppressions;[15] and their fear and hatred
of him was measured by their reverence for a government of equal
law and free speech, with the ascendency of which their whole hopes
of security were associated,—in the democracy of Athens more perhaps
than in any other portion of Greece. And this feeling, as it was
one of the best in the Greek mind, so it was also one of the most
widely spread,—a point of unanimity highly valuable amidst so many
points of dissension. We cannot construe or criticize it by reference
to the feelings of modern Europe, still less to the very peculiar
feelings of England, respecting kingship: and it is the application,
sometimes explicit and sometimes tacit, of this unsuitable standard,
which renders Mr. Mitford’s appreciation of Greek politics so often
incorrect and unfair.

[15] Euripides (Supplices, 429) states plainly the idea of a
τύραννος, as received in Greece the antithesis to laws:—

Οὐδὲν τυράννου δυσμενέστερον πόλει·
Ὅπου, τὸ μὲν πρώτιστον, οὔκ εἰσιν νόμοι
Κοινοὶ, κρατεῖ δ᾽ εἷς, τὸν νόμον κεκτημένος
Αὐτὸς παρ᾽ αὑτῷ.

Compare Soph. Antigon. 737. See, also, the discussion in Aristot.
Polit. iii, sect. 10 and 11, in which the rule of the king is
discussed in comparison with the government of laws; compare
also iv, 8, 2-3. The person called “a king according to law” is,
in his judgment, no king at all: Ὁ μὲν γὰρ κατὰ νόμον λεγόμενος
βασιλεὺς οὔκ ἐστιν εἶδος καθάπερ εἴπομεν βασιλείας (iii, 11, 1).

Respecting ἰσονομίη, ἰσηγορίη, παῤῥησία,—equal laws and equal
speech,—as opposed to monarchy, see Herodot. iii, 142, v. 78-92;
Thucyd. iii, 62; Demosthen. ad Leptin. c. 6, p. 461; Eurip. Ion.
671.

Of Timoleon it was stated, as a part of the grateful vote passed
after his death by the Syracusan assembly,—ὅτι τοὺς τυράννους
καταλύσας,—ἀπέδωκε ~τοὺς νόμους~ τοῖς Σικελιώταις (Plutarch.
Timoleon. c. 39).

See Karl Fried. Hermann, Griech. Staatsalterthümer, sect. 61-65.

When we try to explain the course of Grecian affairs, not from the
circumstances of other societies, but from those of the Greeks
themselves, we shall see good reason for the discontinuance as
well as for the dislike of kingship. Had the Greek mind been as
stationary and unimproving as that of the Orientals, the discontent
with individual kings might have led to no other change than the
deposition of a bad king in favor of one who promised to be better,
without ever extending the views of the people to any higher
conception than that of a personal government. But the Greek mind
was of a progressive character, capable of conceiving and gradually
of realizing amended social combinations. Moreover, it is in the
nature of things that any government,—regal, oligarchical, or
democratical,—which comprises only a single city, is far less stable
than if it embraced a wider surface and a larger population: and when
that semi-religious and mechanical submission, which made up for the
personal deficiencies of the heroic king, became too feeble to serve
as a working principle, the petty prince was in too close contact
with his people, and too humbly furnished out in every way, to get
up a prestige or delusion of any other kind: he had no means of
overawing their imaginations by that combination of pomp, seclusion,
and mystery, which Herodotus and Xenophon so well appreciate among
the artifices of kingcraft.[16] As there was no new feeling upon
which a perpetual chief could rest his power, so there was nothing
in the circumstances of the community which rendered the maintenance
of such a dignity necessary for visible and effective union:[17]
in a single city, and a small circumjacent community, collective
deliberation and general rules, with temporary and responsible
magistrates, were practicable without difficulty.

[16] See the account of Deiokês, the first Median king, in
Herodotus, i, 98, evidently an outline drawn by Grecian
imagination: also, the Cyropædia of Xenophon, viii, 1, 40; viii,
3, 1-14; vii, 5, 37 ... οὐ τούτῳ μόνῳ ἐνόμιζε (Κῦρος) χρῆναι τοὺς
ἄρχοντας τῶν ἀρχομένων διαφέρειν τῷ βελτίονας αὐτῶν εἶναι, ἀλλὰ
καὶ καταγοητεύειν ᾤετο χρῆναι αὐτοὺς, etc.

[17] David Hume, Essay xvii, On the Rise and Progress of the Arts
and Sciences, p. 198, ed. 1760. The effects of the greater or
less extent of territory, upon the nature of the government, are
also well discussed in Destutt Tracy, Commentaire sur l’Esprit
des Loix de Montesquieu, ch. viii.

To maintain an unresponsible king, and then to contrive
accompaniments which shall extract from him the benefits of
responsible government, is in reality a highly complicated system,
though, as has been remarked, we have become familiar with it in
modern Europe: the more simple and obvious change is, to substitute
one or more temporary and responsible magistrates in place of the
king himself. Such was the course which affairs took in Greece. The
inferior chiefs, who had originally served as council to the king,
found it possible to supersede him, and to alternate the functions of
administration among themselves; retaining probably the occasional
convocation of the general assembly, as it had existed before,
and with as little practical efficacy. Such was in substance the
character of that mutation which occurred generally throughout the
Grecian states, with the exception of Sparta: kingship was abolished,
and an oligarchy took its place,—a council deliberating collectively,
deciding general matters by the majority of voices, and selecting
some individuals of their own body as temporary and accountable
administrators. It was always an oligarchy which arose on the
defeasance of the heroic kingdom: the age of democratical movement
was yet far distant, and the condition of the people—the general body
of freemen—was not immediately altered, either for better or worse,
by the revolution; the small number of privileged persons, among whom
the kingly attributes were distributed and put in rotation, being
those nearest in rank to the king himself, perhaps members of the
same large gens with him, and pretending to a common divine or heroic
descent. As far as we can make out, this change seems to have taken
place in the natural course of events and without violence. Sometimes
the kingly lineage died out and was not replaced; sometimes, on the
death of a king, his son and successor was acknowledged[18] only as
archon, or perhaps set aside altogether to make room for a prytanis,
or president, out of the men of rank around.

[18] Aristot. Polit. iii, 9, 7; iii, 10, 7-8.

M. Augustin Thierry remarks, in a similar spirit, that the great
political change, common to so large a portion of mediæval
Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, whereby the many
different _communes_ or city constitutions were formed, was
accomplished under great varieties of manner and circumstance;
sometimes by violence, sometimes by harmonious accord.

“C’est une controverse qui doit finir, que celle des franchises
municipales obtenues par l’insurrection et des franchises
municipales accordées. Quelque face du problême qu’on envisage,
il reste bien entendu que les constitutions urbaines du xii et du
xiii siècle, comme toute espèce d’institutions politiques dans
tous les temps, ont pu s’établir à force ouverte, s’octroyer de
guerre lasse ou de plein gré, être arrachées ou sollicitées,
vendues ou données gratuitement: les grandes révolutions sociales
s’accomplissent par tous ces moyens à la fois.”—(Aug. Thierry,
Récits des Temps Mérovingiens, Préface, p. 19, 2de édit.)

At Athens, we are told that Kodrus was the last king, and that his
descendants were recognized only as archons for life; after some
years, the archons for life were replaced by archons for ten years,
taken from the body of Eupatridæ, or nobles; subsequently, the
duration of the archonship was farther shortened to one year. At
Corinth, the ancient kings are said to have passed in like manner
into the oligarchy of the Bacchiadæ, out of whom an annual prytanis
was chosen. We are only able to make out the general fact of such
a change, without knowing how it was brought about,—our first
historical acquaintance with the Grecian cities beginning with these
oligarchies.

Such oligarchical governments, varying in their details but analogous
in general features, were common throughout the cities of Greece
proper as well as of the colonies, throughout the seventh century
B. C. Though they had little immediate tendency to benefit the mass
of the freemen, yet when we compare them with the antecedent heroic
government, they indicate an important advance,—the first adoption
of a deliberate and preconceived system in the management of public
affairs.[19] They exhibit the first evidences of new and important
political ideas in the Greek mind,—the separation of legislative and
executive powers; the former vested in a collective body, not merely
deliberating but also finally deciding,—while the latter is confided
to temporary individual magistrates, responsible to that body at
the end of their period of office. We are first introduced to a
community of citizens, according to the definition of Aristotle,—men
qualified, and thinking themselves qualified, to take turns in
command and obedience: the collective sovereign, called The City, is
thus constituted. It is true that this first community of citizens
comprised only a small proportion of the men personally free, but
the ideas upon which it was founded began gradually to dawn upon
the minds of all. Political power had lost its heaven-appointed
character, and had become an attribute legally communicable as well
as determined to certain definite ends; and the ground was thus laid
for those thousand questions which agitated so many of the Grecian
cities during the ensuing three centuries, partly respecting its
apportionment, partly respecting its employment,—questions sometimes
raised among the members of the privileged oligarchy itself,
sometimes between that order as a whole and the non-privileged
Many. The seeds of those popular movements, which called forth so
much profound emotion, so much bitter antipathy, so much energy and
talent, throughout the Grecian world, with different modifications
in each particular city, may thus be traced back to that early
revolution which erected the primitive oligarchy upon the ruins of
the heroic kingdom.

[19] Aristot. Polit. iii, 10, 7. Ἐπεὶ δὲ (_i. e._ after the early
kings had had their day) συνέβαινε γίγνεσθαι πολλοὺς ὁμοίους πρὸς
ἀρετὴν, οὔκετι ὑπέμενον (τὴν Βασίλειαν), ἀλλ’ ~ἐζήτουν κοινόν
τι~, καὶ πολίτειαν καθίστασαν.

Κοινόν τι, _a commune_, the great object for which the
European towns in the Middle Ages, in the twelfth century,
struggled with so much energy, and ultimately obtained: a
charter of incorporation, and a qualified privilege of internal
self-government.

How these first oligarchies were administered we have no direct
information; but the narrow and anti-popular interests naturally
belonging to a privileged few, together with the general violence
of private manners and passions, leave us no ground for presuming
favorably respecting either their prudence or their good feeling; and
the facts which we learn respecting the condition of Attica prior to
the Solonian legislation (to be recounted in the next chapter) raise
inferences all of an unfavorable character.

The first shock which they received, and by which so many of them
were subverted, arose from the usurpers called Despots, who employed
the prevalent discontents both as pretexts and as aids for their
own personal ambition, while their very frequent success seems to
imply that such discontents were wide-spread as well as serious.
These despots arose out of the bosom of the oligarchies, but not all
in the same manner.[20] Sometimes the executive magistrate, upon
whom the oligarchy themselves had devolved important administrative
powers for a certain temporary period, became unfaithful to his
choosers, and acquired sufficient ascendency to retain his dignity
permanently in spite of them,—perhaps even to transmit it to his son.
In other places, and seemingly more often, there arose that noted
character called the Demagogue, of whom historians both ancient and
modern commonly draw so repulsive a picture:[21] a man of energy
and ambition, sometimes even a member of the oligarchy itself, who
stood forward as champion of the grievances and sufferings of the
non-privileged Many, acquired their favor, and employed their
strength so effectively as to put down the oligarchy by force, and
constitute himself despot. A third form of despot, some presumptuous
wealthy man, like Kylôn at Athens, without even the pretence of
popularity, was occasionally emboldened by the success of similar
adventures in other places to hire a troop of retainers and seize
the acropolis; and there were examples, though rare, of a fourth
variety,—the lineal descendant of the ancient kings,—who, instead of
suffering himself to be restricted or placed under control by the
oligarchy, found means to subjugate them, and to extort by force
an ascendency as great as that which his forefathers had enjoyed
by consent. To these must be added, in several Grecian states, the
Æsymnête, or Dictator, a citizen formally invested with supreme
and unresponsible power, placed in command of the military force,
and armed with a standing body-guard, but only for a time named,
and in order to deal with some urgent peril or ruinous internal
dissension.[22] The person thus exalted, always enjoying a large
measure of confidence, and generally a man of ability, was sometimes
so successful, or made himself so essential to the community, that
the term of his office was prolonged, and he became practically
despot for life; or, even if the community were not disposed to
concede to him this permanent ascendency, he was often strong enough
to keep it against their will.

[20] The definition of a despot is given in Cornelius Nepos,
Vit. Miltiadis, c. 8: “Omnes habentur et dicuntur tyranni, qui
potestate sunt perpetuâ in eâ civitate, quæ libertate usa est:”
compare Cicero de Republicâ, ii, 26, 27; iii, 14.

The word τύραννος was said by Hippias the sophist to have
first found its way into the Greek language about the time of
Archilochus (B. C. 660): Boeckh thinks that it came from the
Lydians or Phyrgians (Comment. ad Corp. Inscrip. No. 3439).

[21] Aristot. Polit. v, 8, 2, 3, 4. Τύραννος—ἐκ προστατικῆς ῥίζης
καὶ οὐκ ἄλλοθεν ἐκβλαστάνει (Plato, Repub. viii, c. 17, p. 565).
Οὐδενὶ γὰρ δὴ ἄδηλον, ὅτι ~πᾶς~ τύραννος ἐκ δημοκόλακος φύεται
(Dionys. Halic. vi, 60): a proposition decidedly too general.

[22] Aristot. iii, 9, 5; iii, 10, 1-10; iv, 8, 2.
Αἰσυμνῆται—αὐτοκράτορες μόναρχοι ἐν τοῖς ἀρχαίοις Ἕλλησι—αἱρετὴ
τυραννίς: compare Theophrastus, fragment. περὶ Βασιλείας, and
Dionys. Hal. A. R. v, 73-74; Strabo, xiii, p. 617; and Aristot.
Fragment. Rerum Publicarum, ed. Neumann, p. 122, Κυμαίων Πολιτεία.

Such were the different modes in which the numerous Greek despots of
the seventh and sixth centuries B. C. acquired their power. Though
we know thus much in general terms from the brief statements of
Aristotle, yet, unhappily, we have no contemporary picture of any
one of these communities, so as to give us the means of appreciating
the change in detail. Of those persons who, possessing inherited
kingly dignity, stretched their paternal power so far as to become
despots, Aristotle gives us Pheidôn of Argos as an example, whose
reign has been already narrated in the preceding volume: of those
who made themselves despots by means of official power previously
held under an oligarchy, he names Phalaris, at Agrigentum, and the
despots at Miletus and other cities of the Ionic Greeks: of those who
raised themselves by becoming demagogues, he specifies Panætius in
the Sicilian town of Leontini, Kypselus at Corinth, and Peisistratus
at Athens;[23] of Æsymnêtes, or chosen despots, Pittakus of Mitylênê
is the prominent instance. The military and aggressive demagogue,
subverting an oligarchy which had degraded and ill-used him,
governing as a cruel despot for several years, and at last dethroned
and slain, is farther depicted by Dionysius of Halikarnassus, in the
history of Aristodêmus of the Italian Cumæ.[24]

[23] Aristot. Polit. v, 8, 2, 3, 4; v, 4, 5. Aristotle refers
to one of the songs of Alkæus as his evidence respecting the
elevation of Pittakus: a very sufficient proof doubtless,—but we
may see that he had no other informants, except the poets, about
these early times.

[24] Dionys. Hal. A. R. vii, 2, 12. The reign of Aristodemus
falls about 510 B. C.

From the general statement of Thucydides as well as of Aristotle,
we learn that the seventh and sixth centuries B. C. were centuries
of progress for the Greek cities generally, in wealth, in power,
and in population; and the numerous colonies founded during this
period, of which I shall speak in a future chapter, will furnish
farther illustration of such progressive tendencies. Now the changes
just mentioned in the Grecian governments, imperfectly as we know
them, are on the whole decided evidences of advancing citizenship.
For the heroic government, with which Grecian communities begin, is
the rudest and most infantine of all governments; destitute even of
the pretence of system or security, incapable of being in any way
foreknown, and depending only upon the accidental variations in the
character of the reigning individual, who, in most cases, far from
serving as a protection to the poor against the rich and great, was
likely to indulge his passions in the same unrestrained way as the
latter, and with still greater impunity.

The despots, who in so many towns succeeded and supplanted this
oligarchical government, though they governed on principles usually
narrow and selfish, and often oppressively cruel, “taking no
thought—to use the emphatic words of Thucydides—except for their
own body and their own family,”—yet since they were not strong
enough to crush the Greek mind, imprinted upon it a painful but
improving political lesson, and contributed much to enlarge the
range of experience as well as to determine the subsequent cast of
feeling.[25] They partly broke down the wall of distinction between
the people—properly so called, the general mass of freemen—and the
oligarchy; indeed, the demagogue-despots are interesting, as the
first evidence of the growing importance of the people in political
affairs. The demagogue stood forward as representing the feelings and
interests of the people against the governing few, probably availing
himself of some special cases of ill-usage, and taking pains to be
conciliatory and generous in his own personal behavior; and when the
people, by their armed aid, had enabled him to overthrow the existing
rulers, they had thus the satisfaction of seeing their own chief
in possession of the supreme power, but they acquired no political
rights and no increased securities for themselves. What measure of
positive advantage they may have reaped, beyond that of seeing their
previous oppressors humiliated, we know too little to determine;[26]
but even the worst of despots was more formidable to the rich than
to the poor, and the latter may perhaps have gained by the change,
in comparative importance, notwithstanding their share in the rigors
and exactions of a government which had no other permanent foundation
than naked fear.

[25] Thucyd. i, 17. Τύραννοι δὲ ὅσοι ἦσαν ἐν ταῖς Ἑλληνικαῖς
πόλεσι, τὸ ἐφ᾽ ἑαυτῶν μόνον προορώμενοι ἔς τε τὸ σῶμα καὶ ἐς τὸ
τὸν ἴδιον οἶκον αὔξειν δι᾽ ἀσφαλείας ὅσον ἐδύναντο μάλιστα, τὰς
πόλεις ᾤκουν.

[26] Wachsmuth (Hellenische Alterthumskunde, sect. 49-51) and
Tittmann (Griechisch. Staatsverfassungen, pp. 527-533) both make
too much of the supposed friendly connection and mutual good-will
between the despot and the poorer freemen. Community of antipathy
against the old oligarchy was a bond essentially temporary,
dissolved as soon as that oligarchy was put down.

A remark made by Aristotle deserves especial notice here, as
illustrating the political advance and education of the Grecian
communities. He draws a marked distinction between the early
demagogue of the seventh and sixth centuries, and the later
demagogue, such as he himself and the generations immediately
preceding had witnessed: the former was a military chief, daring and
full of resource, who took arms at the head of a body of popular
insurgents, put down the government by force, and made himself
the master both of those whom he deposed and of those by whose
aid he deposed them; while the latter was a speaker, possessed
of all the talents necessary for moving an audience, but neither
inclined to, nor qualified for, armed attack,—accomplishing all
his purposes by pacific and constitutional methods. This valuable
change,—substituting discussion and the vote of an assembly in place
of an appeal to arms, and procuring for the pronounced decision of
the assembly such an influence over men’s minds as to render it
final and respected even by dissentients,—arose from the continued
practical working of democratical institutions. I shall have
occasion, at a later period of this history, to estimate the value
of that unmeasured obloquy which has been heaped on the Athenian
demagogues of the Peloponnesian war,—Kleôn and Hyperbolus; but,
assuming the whole to be well-founded, it will not be the less true
that these men were a material improvement on the earlier demagogues,
such as Kypselus and Peisistratus, who employed the armed agency of
the people for the purpose of subverting the established government
and acquiring despotic authority for themselves. The demagogue
was essentially a leader of opposition, who gained his influence
by denouncing the men in real ascendency, and in actual executive
functions. Now, under the early oligarchies, his opposition could
be shown only by armed insurrection, and it conducted him either
to personal sovereignty or to destruction; but the growth of
democratical institutions insured both to him and to his political
opponents full liberty of speech, and a paramount assembly to
determine between them; whilst it both limited the range of his
ambition, and set aside the appeal to armed force. The railing
demagogue of Athens, at the time of the Peloponnesian war (even if
we accept literally the representations of his worst enemies), was
thus a far less mischievous and dangerous person than the fighting
demagogue of the earlier centuries; and the “growth of habits of
public speaking,”[27] to use Aristotle’s expression, was the cause
of the difference: the opposition of the tongue was a beneficial
substitute for the opposition of the sword.

[27] Aristot. Polit. v, 4, 4; 7, 3. Ἐπὶ δὲ τῶν ἀρχαίων,
ὅτε γένοιτο ὁ αὐτὸς δημαγωγὸς καὶ στρατηγὸς, εἰς τυραννίδα
μετέβαλλον· σχεδὸν γὰρ οἱ πλεῖστοι τῶν ἀρχαίων τυράννων ἐκ
δημαγωγῶν γεγόνασι. Αἴτιον δὲ τοῦ τότε μὲν γενέσθαι, νῦν δὲ μὴ,
ὅτι τότε μὲν, οἱ δημαγωγοὶ ἦσαν ἐκ τῶν στρατηγούντων· οὐ γάρ πω
δεινοὶ ἦσαν λέγειν· νῦν δὲ, τῆς ῥητορικῆς ηὐξημένης, οἱ δυνάμενοι
λέγειν δημαγωγοῦσι μὲν, δι’ ἀπειρίαν δὲ τῶν πολεμικῶν οὐκ
ἐπιτίθενται, πλὴν εἴ που βραχύ τι γέγονε τοιοῦτον.

The rise of these despots on the ruins of the previous oligarchies
was, in appearance, a return to the principles of the heroic
age,—the restoration of a government of personal will in place of
that systematic arrangement known as the City. But the Greek mind
had so far outgrown those early principles, that no new government
founded thereupon could meet with willing acquiescence, except under
some temporary excitement. At first, doubtless, the popularity
of the usurper,—combined with the fervor of his partizans and
the expulsion or intimidation of opponents, and farther enhanced
by the punishment of rich oppressors,—was sufficient to procure
for him obedience; and prudence on his part might prolong this
undisputed rule for a considerable period, perhaps even throughout
his whole life. But Aristotle intimates that these governments,
even when they began well, had a constant tendency to become worse
and worse: discontent manifested itself, and was aggravated rather
than repressed by the violence employed against it, until at length
the despot became a prey to mistrustful and malevolent anxiety,
losing any measure of equity or benevolent sympathy which might
once have animated him. If he was fortunate enough to bequeathe his
authority to his son, the latter, educated in a corrupt atmosphere
and surrounded by parasites, contracted dispositions yet more
noxious and unsocial: his youthful appetites were more ungovernable,
while he was deficient in the prudence and vigor which had been
indispensable to the self-accomplished rise of his father.[28] For
such a position, mercenary guards and a fortified acropolis were
the only stay,—guards fed at the expense of the citizens, and thus
requiring constant exactions on behalf of that which was nothing
better than a hostile garrison. It was essential to the security of
the despot that he should keep down the spirit of the free people
whom he governed; that he should isolate them from each other, and
prevent those meetings and mutual communications which Grecian cities
habitually presented in the school, the leschê, or the palæstra;
that he should strike off the overtopping ears of corn in the field
(to use the Greek locution) or crush the exalted and enterprising
minds.[29] Nay, he had even to a certain extent an interest in
degrading and impoverishing them, or at least in debarring them
from the acquisition either of wealth or leisure: and the extensive
constructions undertaken by Polykratês at Samos, as well as the rich
donations of Periander to the temple at Olympia, are considered by
Aristotle to have been extorted by these despots with the express
view of engrossing the time and exhausting the means of their
subjects.

[28] Aristot. Polit. v, 8, 20. The whole tenor of this eighth
chapter (of the fifth book) shows how unrestrained were the
personal passions,—the lust as well as the anger,—of a Grecian
τύραννος.

Τόν τοι τύραννον εὐσεβεῖν οὐ ῥᾴδιον (Sophokles ap. Schol.
Aristides, vol. iii, p. 291, ed. Dindorf).

[29] Aristot. Polit. iii, 8, 3; v, 8, 7. Herodot. v, 92.
Herodotus gives the story as if Thrasybulus had been the person
to suggest this hint by conducting the messenger of Periander
into a cornfield and there striking off the tallest ears with
his stick: Aristotle reverses the two, and makes Periander the
adviser: Livy (i, 54) transfers the scene to Gabii and Rome, with
Sextus Tarquinius as the person sending for counsel to his father
at Rome. Compare Plato, Republ. viii, c. 17, p. 565; Eurip.
Supplic. 444-455.

The discussion which Herodotus ascribes to the Persian
conspirators, after the assassination of the Magian king, whether
they should constitute the Persian government as a monarchy,
an oligarchy, or a democracy, exhibits a vein of ideas purely
Grecian, and altogether foreign to the Oriental conception
of government: but it sets forth,—briefly, yet with great
perspicuity and penetration,—the advantages and disadvantages of
all the three. The case made out against monarchy is by far the
strongest, while the counsel on behalf of monarchy assumes as a
part of his case that the individual monarch is to be the best
man in the state. The anti-monarchical champion Otanes concludes
a long string of criminations against the despot, with these
words above-noticed: “He subverts the customs of the country:
he violates women: he puts men to death untried.” (Herod. iii,
80-82.)

It is not to be imagined that all were alike cruel or unprincipled;
but the perpetual supremacy of one man and one family had become so
offensive to the jealousy of those who felt themselves to be his
equals, and to the general feeling of the people, that repression
and severity were inevitable, whether originally intended or not.
And even if an usurper, having once entered upon this career of
violence, grew sick and averse to its continuance, abdication only
left him in imminent peril, exposed to the vengeance[30] of those
whom he had injured,—unless, indeed, he could clothe himself with the
mantle of religion, and stipulate with the people to become priest
of some temple and deity; in which case his new function protected
him, just as the tonsure and the monastery sheltered a dethroned
prince in the Middle Ages.[31] Several of the despots were patrons
of music and poetry, and courted the good-will of contemporary
intellectual men by invitation as well as by reward; and there were
some cases, such as that of Peisistratus and his sons at Athens, in
which an attempt was made (analogous to that of Augustus at Rome) to
reconcile the reality of personal omnipotence with a certain respect
for preëxisting forms.[32] In such instances the administration,
though not unstained by guilt, never otherwise than unpopular, and
carried on by means of foreign mercenaries, was doubtless practically
milder. But cases of this character were rare, and the maxims usual
with Grecian despots were personified in Periander, the Kypselid of
Corinth,—a harsh and brutal person, but not destitute either of vigor
or intelligence.

[30] Thucyd. ii, 63. Compare again the speech of Kleon, iii,
37-40,—ὡς τυραννίδα γὰρ ἔχετε αὐτὴν, ἣν λαβεῖν μὲν ἄδικον δοκεῖ
εἶναι, ἀφεῖναι δὲ ἐπικίνδυνον.

The bitter sentiment against despots seems to be as old as
Alkæus, and we find traces of it in Solon and Theognis (Theognis,
38-50; Solon, Fragm. vii, p. 32, ed. Schneidewin). Phanias of
Eresus had collected in a book the “Assassinations of Despots
from revenge.” (Τυράννων ἀναιρέσεις ἐκ τιμωρίας,—Athenæus, iii,
p. 90; x, p. 438.)

[31] See the story of Mæandrius, minister and successor of
Polykratês of Samos, in Herodotus, iii, 142, 143.

[32] Thucyd. vi, 54. The epitaph of Archedikê, the daughter of
Hippias (which was inscribed at Lampsakus, where she died),
though written by a great friend of Hippias, conveys the sharpest
implied invective against the usual proceedings of the despots:—

Ἡ πατρός τε καὶ ἀνδρὸς ἀδελφῶν τ᾽ οὖσα τυράννων
Παιδῶν τ᾽, οὐχ ᾕρθη νοῦν ἐς ἀτασθαλίην (Thuc. vi, 59).

The position of Augustus at Rome, and of Peisistratus at Athens,
may be illustrated by a passage in Sismondi, Républiques
Italiennes, vol. iv, ch. 26, p. 208:—

“Les petits monarques de chaque ville s’opposaient eux-mêmes à
ce que leur pouvoir fût attribué à un droit héréditaire, parce
que l’hérédité aurait presque toujours été retorquée contre eux.
Ceux qui avaient succédé à une république, avaient abaissé des
nobles plus anciens et plus illustres qu’eux: ceux qui avaient
succédé à d’autres seigneurs n’avaient tenu aucun compte du droit
de leurs prédécesseurs, et se sentaient intéressés à le nier.
Ils se disaient donc mandataires du peuple: ils ne prenaient
jamais le commandement d’une ville, lors même qu’ils l’avaient
soumise par les armes, sans se faire attribuer par les anciens
ou par l’assemblée du peuple, selon que les uns ou les autres se
montraient plus dociles, le titre et les pouvoirs de seigneur
général, pour un an, pour cinq ans, ou pour toute leur vie, avec
une paie fixée, qui devoit être prise sur les deniers de la
communauté.”

The position of a Grecian despot, as depicted by Plato, by Xenophon
and by Aristotle,[33] and farther sustained by the indications in
Herodotus, Thucydides, and Isokrates, though always coveted by
ambitious men, reveals clearly enough “those wounds and lacerations
of mind,” whereby the internal Erinnys avenged the community upon
the usurper who trampled them down. Far from considering success
in usurpation as a justification of the attempt (according to the
theories now prevalent respecting Cromwell and Bonaparte, who are
often blamed because they kept out a legitimate king, but never
because they seized an unauthorized power over the people), these
philosophers regard the despot as among the greatest of criminals:
the man who assassinated him was an object of public honor and
reward, and a virtuous Greek would seldom have scrupled to carry his
sword concealed in myrtle branches, like Harmodius and Aristogeiton,
for the execution of the deed.[34] A station which overtopped the
restraints and obligations involved in citizenship, was understood
at the same time to forfeit all title to the common sympathy and
protection,[35] so that it was unsafe for the despot to visit in
person those great Pan-Hellenic games in which his own chariot
might perhaps have gained the prize, and in which the theors, or
sacred envoys, whom he sent as representatives of his Hellenic city,
appeared with ostentatious pomp. A government carried on under
these unpropitious circumstances could never be otherwise than
short-lived. Though the individual daring enough to seize it, often
found means to preserve it for the term of his own life, yet the
sight of a despot living to old age was rare, and the transmission of
his power to his son still more so.[36]

[33] Consult, especially, the treatise of Xenophon, called Hiero,
or Τυραννικὸς, in which the interior life and feelings of the
Grecian despot are strikingly set forth, in a supposed dialogue
with the poet Simonides. The tenor of Plato’s remarks in the
eighth and ninth books of the Republic, and those of Aristotle in
the fifth book (ch. 8 and 9) of the Politics, display the same
picture, though not with such fulness of detail. The speech of
one of the assassins of Euphrôn (despot of Sikyon) is remarkable,
as a specimen of Grecian feeling (Xenoph. Hellen. vii, 3, 7-12).
The expressions both of Plato and Tacitus, in regard to the
mental wretchedness of the despot, are the strongest which the
language affords: Καὶ πένης τῇ ἀληθείᾳ φαίνεται, ἐάν τις ὅλην
ψυχὴν ἐπίστηται θεάσασθαι, καὶ φόβου γέμων διὰ παντὸς τοῦ βίου,
σφαδασμῶν τε καὶ ὀδυνῶν πλήρης ... Ἀνάγκη καὶ εἶναι, καὶ ἔτι
μᾶλλον γίγνεσθαι αὐτῷ ἢ πρότερον διὰ τὴν ἀρχὴν, φθονερῷ, ἀπίστῳ,
ἀδίκῳ, ἀφίλῳ, ἀνοσίῳ, καὶ πάσης κακίας πανδοκεῖ τε καὶ τροφεῖ,
καὶ ἐξ ἁπάντων τούτων μάλιστα μὲν αὐτῷ δυστυχεῖ εἶναι, ἔπειτα δὲ
καὶ τοὺς πλησίον αὑτῷ τοιούτους ἀπεργάζεσθαι (Republic, ix, p.
580).

And Tacitus, in the well-known passage (Annal. vi, 6): “Neque
frustra præstantissimus sapientiæ firmare solitus est, si
recludantur tyrannorum mentes, posse aspici laniatus et ictus:
quando ut corpora verberibus, ita sævitiâ, libidine, malis
consultis, animus dilaceretur. Quippe Tiberium non fortuna, non
solitudines, protegebant, quin tormenta pectoris suasque ipse
pœnas fateretur.”

It is not easy to imagine power more completely surrounded with
all circumstances calculated to render it repulsive to a man
of ordinary benevolence: the Grecian despot had large means of
doing harm,—scarcely any means of doing good. Yet the acquisition
of power over others, under any conditions, is a motive so
all-absorbing, that even this precarious and anti-social sceptre
was always intensely coveted,—Τυραννὶς, χρῆμα σφαλερὸν, πολλοὶ δὲ
αὐτῆς ἐρασταί εἰσι (Herod. iii, 53). See the striking lines of
Solon (Fragment, vii, ed. Schneidewin), and the saying of Jason
of Pheræ, who used to declare that he felt incessant hunger until
he became despot,—πεινῇν, ὅτε μὴ τυραννοῖ· ὡς οὐκ ἐπιστάμενος
ἰδιώτης εἶναι (Aristot. Polit. iii, 2, 6).

[34] See the beautiful Skolion of Kallistratus, so popular at
Athens, xxvii, p. 456, apud Schneidewin, Poet. Græc.—Ἐν μύρτου
κλαδὶ τὸ ξίφος φορήσω, etc.

Xenophon, Hiero, ii, 8. Οἱ τύραννοι πάντες πανταχῆ ὡς διὰ
πολεμίας πορεύονται. Compare Isokrates, Or. viii (De Pace), p.
182; Polyb. ii, 59; Cicero, Orat. pro Milone, c. 29.

Aristot. Polit. ii, 4, 8. Επεὶ ἀδικοῦσί γε τὰ μέγιστα διὰ τὰς
ὑπερβολὰς, ᾿αλλ᾽ οὐ διὰ τἀναγκαῖα· οἶον τυραννοῦσιν, οὐχ ἵνα μὴ
ῥιγῶσι· διὸ καὶ αἱ τιμαὶ μεγάλαι, ἂν ἀποκτείνῃ τις, οὐ κλέπτην,
ἀλλὰ τύραννον.

There cannot be a more striking manifestation of the sentiment
entertained towards a despot in the ancient world, than the
remarks of Plutarch on Timoleon, for his conduct in assisting
to put to death his brother, the despot Timophanês (Plutarch,
Timoleon, c. 4-7, and Comp. of Timoleon with Paulus Æmilius,
c. 2). See also Plutarch, Comparison of Dion and Brutus, c. 3,
and Plutarch, Præcepta Reipublicæ Gerendæ, c. 11, p. 805; c.
17, p. 813; c. 32, p. 824,—he speaks of the putting down of a
despot (τυραννίδων κατάλυσις) as among the most splendid of human
exploits,—and the account given by Xenophon of the assassination
of Jason of Pheræ, Hellenic. vi, 4, 32.

[35] Livy, xxxviii, 50. “Qui jus æquum pati non possit, in eum
vim haud injustam esse.”

[36] Plutarch, Sept. Sapient. Conviv. c. 2, p. 147,—ὡς ἐρωτηθεὶς
ὑπὸ Μολπαγόρου τοῦ Ἴωνος, τί παραδοξότατον εἴης ἑωρακὼς,
ἀποκρίναιο, τύραννον γέροντα.—Compare the answer of Thales, in
the same treatise, c. 7, p. 152.

The orator Lysias, present at the Olympic games, and seeing the
theors of the Syracusan despot Dionysius also present, in tents
with gilding and purple, addressed an harangue, inciting the
assembled Greeks to demolish the tents (Lysiæ Λόγος Ὀλυμπιακὸς,
Fragm. p. 911, ed. Reisk.; Dionys. Halicar. De Lysiâ Judicium,
c. 29-30). Theophrastus ascribed to Themistokles a similar
recommendation, in reference to the theôrs and the prize-chariots
of the Syracusan despot Hiero (Plutarch, Themistokles, c. 25).

The common-places of the rhetors afford the best proof how
unanimous was the sentiment in the Greek mind to rank the
despot among the most odious criminals, and the man who put him
to death among the benefactors of humanity. The rhetor Theon,
treating upon _common-places_, says: Τόπος ἐστὶ λόγος αὐξητικὸς
~ὁμολογουμένου~ πράγματος, ἤτοι ἁμαρτήματος, ἢ ἀνδραγαθήματος.
Ἐστὶ γὰρ διττὸς ὁ τόπος· ὁ μέν τις, κατὰ τῶν ~πεπονηρευμένων~,
οἷον κατὰ ~τυράννου, προδότου, ἀνδροφόνου, ἀσώτου~· ὁ δέ τις,
ὑπὲρ τῶν ~χρηστόν~ τι διαπεπραγμένων· οἷον ὑπὲρ ~τυραννοκτόνου,
ἀριστέως, νομοθέτου~. (Theon, Progymnasmata, c. vii, ap. Walz.
Coll. Rhett. vol. i, p. 222. Compare Aphthonius, Progymn. c. vii,
p. 82 of the same volume, and Dionysius Halikarn. Ars Rhetorica,
x, 15, p. 390, ed. Reiske.)

Amidst the numerous points of contention in Grecian political
morality, this rooted antipathy to a permanent hereditary ruler
stood apart as a sentiment almost unanimous, in which the thirst
for preëminence felt by the wealthy few, and the love of equal
freedom in the bosoms of the many, alike concurred. It first began
among the oligarchies of the seventh and sixth centuries B. C., a
complete reversal of that pronounced monarchical sentiment which
we now read in the Iliad; and it was transmitted by them to the
democracies, which did not arise until a later period. The conflict
between oligarchy and despotism preceded that between oligarchy
and democracy, the Lacedæmonians standing forward actively on
both occasions to uphold the oligarchical principle: a mingled
sentiment of fear and repugnance led them to put down despotism in
several cities of Greece during the sixth century B. C., just as,
during their contest with Athens in the following century, they
assisted the oligarchical party, where-ever they could, to overthrow
democracy. And it was thus that the demagogue-despot of these earlier
times, bringing out the name of the people as a pretext, and the arms
of the people as a means of accomplishment, for his own ambitious
designs, served as a preface to the reality of democracy, which
manifested itself at Athens a short time before the Persian war, as a
development of the seed planted by Solon.

As far as our imperfect information enables us to trace, the early
oligarchies of the Grecian states, against which the first usurping
despots contended, contained in themselves far more repulsive
elements of inequality, and more mischievous barriers between the
component parts of the population, than the oligarchies of later
days. What was true of Hellas as an aggregate, was true, though in
a less degree, of each separate community which went to compose
that aggregate: each included a variety of clans, orders, religious
brotherhoods, and local or professional sections, which were very
imperfectly cemented together: and the oligarchy was not, like
the government so denominated in subsequent times, the government
of a rich few over the less rich and the poor, but that of a
peculiar order, sometimes a patrician order, over all the remaining
society. In such a case, the subject Many might number opulent and
substantial proprietors as well as the governing Few; but these
subject Many would themselves be broken into different heterogeneous
fractions, not heartily sympathizing with each other, perhaps not
intermarrying together, nor partaking of the same religious rites.
The country-population, or villagers, who tilled the land, seem
in these early times to have been held to a painful dependence on
the proprietors who lived in the fortified town, and to have been
distinguished by a dress and habits of their own, which often drew
upon them an unfriendly nickname. These town proprietors seem to have
often composed the governing class in early Grecian states, while
their subjects consisted,—1. Of the dependent cultivators living
in the district around, by whom their lands were tilled. 2. Of a
certain number of small self-working proprietors (αὐτουργοὶ), whose
possessions were too scanty to maintain more than themselves by the
labor of their own hands on their own plot of ground—residing either
in the country or the town, as the case might be. 3. Of those who
lived in the town, having no land but exercising handicraft, arts, or
commerce.

The governing proprietors went by the name of the Gamori, or
Geomori, according as the Doric or Ionic dialect might be used in
describing them, since they were found in states belonging to one
race as well as to the other. They appear to have constituted a
close order, transmitting their privileges to their children, but
admitting no new members to a participation,—for the principle
called by Greek thinkers a timocracy, the appointment of political
rights and privileges according to comparative property, appears to
have been little, if at all, applied in the earlier times, and we
know no example of it earlier than Solon. So that, by the natural
multiplication of families and mutation of property, there would
come to be many individual gamori possessing no land at all, and
perhaps worse off than those small freeholders who did not belong to
the order; while some of these latter freeholders, and some of the
artisans and traders in the towns, might at the same time be rising
in wealth and importance. Under a political classification such as
this, of which the repulsive inequality was aggravated by a rude
state of manners, and which had no flexibility to meet the changes
in relative position amongst individual inhabitants, discontent
and outbreaks were unavoidable, and the earliest despot, usually a
wealthy man of the disfranchised class, became champion and leader
of the malcontents.[37] However oppressive his rule might be, at
least it was an oppression which bore with indiscriminate severity
upon all the fractions of the population; and when the hour of
reaction against him or against his successor arrived, so that the
common enemy was expelled by the united efforts of all, it was hardly
possible to revive the preëxisting system of exclusion and inequality
without some considerable abatements.

[37] Thucyd. i, 13.

As a general rule, every Greek city-community included in its
population, independent of bought slaves, the three elements above
noticed,—considerable land proprietors with rustic dependents, small
self-working proprietors, and town-artisans,—the three elements
being found everywhere in different proportions. But the progress of
events in Greece, from the seventh century B. C. downwards, tended
continually to elevate the comparative importance of the two latter,
while in those early days the ascendency of the former was at its
maximum, and altered only to decline. The military force of most
of the cities was at first in the hands of the great proprietors,
and formed by them; it consisted of cavalry, themselves and their
retainers, with horses fed upon their lands. Such was the primitive
oligarchical militia, as it was constituted in the seventh and sixth
centuries B. C.,[38] at Chalkis and Eretria in Eubœa, as well as at
Kolophôn and other cities in Ionia, and as it continued in Thessaly
down to the fourth century B. C.; but the gradual rise of the small
proprietors and town-artisans was marked by the substitution of
heavy-armed infantry in place of cavalry; and a farther change not
less important took place when the resistance to Persia led to the
great multiplication of Grecian ships of war, manned by a host of
seamen who dwelt congregated in the maritime towns. All the changes
which we are able to trace in the Grecian communities tended to
break up the close and exclusive oligarchies with which our first
historical knowledge commences, and to conduct them either to
oligarchies rather more open, embracing all men of a certain amount
of property, or else to democracies. But the transition in both cases
was usually attained through the interlude of the despot.

[38] Aristot. Polit. iv, 3, 2; 11, 10. Aristot. Rerum Public.
Fragm. ed. Neumann. Fragm. v. Εὐβοέων πολιτεῖαι, p. 112; Strabo,
x, p. 447.

In enumerating the distinct and unharmonious elements of which the
population of these early Grecian communities was made up, we must
not forget one farther element which was to be found in the Dorian
states generally,—men of Dorian, as contrasted with men of non-Dorian
race. The Dorians were in all cases emigrants and conquerors,
establishing themselves along with and at the expense of the prior
inhabitants. Upon what terms the cohabitation was established, and in
what proportions invaders and invaded came together, we are without
information; and important as this circumstance is in the history of
these Dorian communities, we know it only as a general fact, and are
unable to follow its results in detail. But we see enough to satisfy
ourselves that in those revolutions which overthrew the oligarchies
both at Corinth and Sikyon,—perhaps also at Megara,—the Dorian and
non-Dorian elements of the community came into conflict more or less
direct.

The despots of Sikyon are the earliest of whom we have any distinct
mention: their dynasty lasted one hundred years, a longer period than
any other Grecian despots known to Aristotle; they are said,[39]
moreover, to have governed with mildness and with much practical
respect to the preëxisting laws. Orthagoras,[40] the beginner of
the dynasty, raised himself to the position of despot about 676
B. C., subverting the preëxisting Dorian oligarchy; but the cause
and circumstances of this revolution are not preserved. He is said
to have been originally a cook. In his line of successors we find
mention of Andreas, Myrôn, Aristônymus, and Kleisthenês; but we know
nothing of any of them until the last, except that Myrôn gained a
chariot victory at Olympia in the 33d Olympiad (648 B. C.), and
built, at the same holy place, a thesaurus containing two ornamented
alcoves of copper for the reception of commemorative offerings from
himself and his family.[41] Respecting Kleisthenês (whose age
must be placed between 600-560 B. C., but can hardly be determined
accurately,) some facts are reported to us highly curious, but of a
nature not altogether easy to follow or verify.

[39] Aristot. Polit. v, 9, 21. An oracle is said to have
predicted to the Sikyonians that they would be subjected for the
period of a century to the hand of the scourger (Diodor. Fragm.
lib. vii-x; Fragm. xiv, ed. Maii).

[40] Herodot. vi, 126; Pausan. ii, 8, 1. There is some confusion
about the names of Orthagoras and Andreas; the latter is called a
_cook_ in Diodorus (Fragment. Excerpt. Vatic. lib. vii-x, Fragm.
xiv). Compare Libanius in Sever. vol. iii, p. 251, Reisk. It has
been supposed, with some probability, that the same person is
designated under both names: the two names do not seem to occur
in the same author. See Plutarch, Ser. Numin. Vind. c. 7, p. 553.

Aristotle (Polit. v, 10, 3) seems to have conceived the dominion
as having passed direct from Myrôn to Kleisthenês, omitting
Aristônymus.

[41] Pausan. vi, 19, 2. The Eleians informed Pausanias that the
brass in these alcoves came from Tartessus (the south-western
coast of Spain from the Strait of Gibraltar to the territory
beyond Cadiz): he declines to guarantee the statement. But O.
Müller treats it as a certainty: “Two apartments inlaid with
Tartessian brass, and adorned with Doric and Ionic columns. Both
the architectural orders employed in this building, and the
Tartessian brass, which the Phocæans had then brought to Greece
in large quantities from the hospitable king Arganthonius, attest
the intercourse of Myrôn with the Asiatics.” (Dorians, i, 8, 2.)
So also Dr. Thirlwall states the fact: “Copper of Tartessus,
which had not long been introduced into Greece.” (Hist. Gr. ch.
x, p. 483, 2d ed.) Yet, if we examine the chronology of the
case, we shall see that the 33d Olympiad (648 B. C.) must have
been earlier even than the first discovery of Tartessus by the
Greeks,—before the accidental voyage of the Samian merchant
Kôlaeus first made the region known to them, and more than half a
century (at least) earlier than the commerce of the Phocæans with
Arganthonius. Compare Herod. iv. 152; i, 163, 167.

We learn from the narrative of Herodotus that the tribe to which
Kleisthenês[42] himself (and of course his progenitors Orthagoras
and the other Orthagoridæ also) belonged, was distinct from the
three Dorian tribes, who have been already named in my previous
chapter respecting the Lykurgean constitution at Sparta,—the Hylleis,
Pamphyli, and Dymanes. We also learn that these tribes were common to
the Sikyonians and the Argeians; and Kleisthenês, being in a state
of bitter hostility with Argos, tried in several ways to abolish
the points of community between the two. Sikyôn, originally Dorized
by settlers from Argos, was included in the “lot of Temenus,” or
among the towns of the Argeian confederacy: the coherence of this
confederacy had become weaker and weaker, partly without doubt
through the influence of the predecessors of Kleisthenês; but the
Argeians may perhaps have tried to revive it, thus placing themselves
in a state of war with the latter, and inducing him to disconnect,
palpably and violently, Sikyôn from Argos. There were two anchors by
which the connection held,—first, legendary and religious sympathy;
next, the civil rites and denominations current among the Sikyonian
Dorians: both of them were torn up by Kleisthenês. He changed the
names both of the three Dorian tribes, and of that non-Dorian tribe
to which he himself belonged: the last he called by the complimentary
title of archelai (commanders of the people); the first three he
styled by the insulting names of hyatæ, oneatæ, and chœreatæ, from
the three Greek words signifying a boar, an ass, and a little pig.
The extreme bitterness of this insult can only be appreciated when
we fancy to ourselves the reverence with which the tribes in a
Grecian city regarded the hero from whom their name was borrowed.
That these new denominations, given by Kleisthenês, involved an
intentional degradation of the Dorian tribes as well as an assumption
of superiority for his own, is affirmed by Herodotus, and seems
well-deserving of credit.

[42] Herodot. v. 67.

But the violence of which Kleisthenês was capable in his anti-Argeian
antipathy, is manifested still more plainly in his proceedings with
respect to the hero Adrastus and to the legendary sentiment of the
people. Something has already been said, in my former volume,[43]
about this remarkable incident, which must, however, be here again
briefly noticed. The hero Adrastus, whose chapel Herodotus himself
saw in the Sikyonian agora, was common both to Argos and to Sikyôn,
and was the object of special reverence at both: he figures in the
legend as king of Argos, and as the grandson and heir of Polybus,
king of Sikyôn. He was the unhappy leader of the two sieges of
Thebes, so famous in the ancient epic,—and the Sikyonians listened
with delight both to the exploits of the Argeians against Thebes, as
celebrated in the recitations of the epical rhapsodes, and to the
mournful tale of Adrastus and his family misfortunes, as sung in the
tragic chorus. Kleisthenês not only forbade the rhapsodes to come
to Sikyôn, but farther resolved to expel Adrastus himself from the
country,—such is the literal Greek expression,[44] the hero himself
being believed to be actually present and domiciled among the people.
He first applied to the Delphian oracle for permission to carry this
banishment into direct effect, but the Pythian priestess returned an
answer of indignant refusal,—“Adrastus is king of the Sikyonians, but
thou art a ruffian.” Thus baffled, he put in practice a stratagem
calculated to induce Adrastus to depart of his own accord.[45] He
sent to Thebes to beg that he might be allowed to introduce into
Sikyôn the hero Melanippus, and the permission was granted. Now
Melanippus was celebrated in the legend as the puissant champion of
Thebes against Adrastus and the Argeian besiegers, and as having
slain both Mêkisteus the brother, and Tydeus the son-in-law, of
Adrastus; and he was therefore preëminently odious to the latter.
Kleisthenês brought this anti-national hero into Sikyôn, assigning
to him consecrated ground in the prytaneium, or government-house,
and even in that part which was most strongly fortified[46] (for it
seems that Adrastus was conceived as likely to assail and do battle
with the intruder);—moreover, he took away both the tragic choruses
and the sacrifice from Adrastus, assigning the former to the god
Dionysus, and the latter to Melanippus.

[43] See above, vol. ii, p. 129, part i, ch. 21.

[44] Herod. v, 67. Τοῦτον ἐπεθύμησε ὁ Κλεισθένης, ἐόντα Ἀργεῖον,
ἐκβαλεῖν ἐκ τῆς χώρης.

[45] Herod. v, 67. Ἐφρόντιζε μηχανὴν τῇ αὐτὸς ὁ Ἄδρηστος
ἀπαλλάξεται.

[46] Ἐπαγαγόμενος δὲ ὁ Κλεισθένης τὸν Μελάνιππον, τέμενος οἱ
ἀπέδεξε ἐν αὐτῷ τῷ πρυτανηΐῳ, καί μιν ἐνθαῦτα ἵδρυσε ἐν τῷ
ἰσχυροτάτῳ. (Herod. _ib._)

The religious manifestations of Sikyôn being thus transferred from
Adrastus to his mortal foe, and from the cause of the Argeians in the
siege of Thebes to that of the Thebans, Adrastus was presumed to have
voluntarily retired from the place, and the purpose which Kleisthenês
contemplated, of breaking the community of feeling between Sikyôn and
Argos, was in part accomplished.

A ruler who could do such violence to the religious and legendary
sentiment of his community may well be supposed capable of inflicting
that deliberate insult upon the Dorian tribes which is implied in
their new appellations. As we are uninformed, however, of the state
of things which preceded, we know not how far it might have been a
retaliation for previous insult in the opposite direction. It is
plain that the Dorians of Sikyôn maintained themselves and their
ancient tribes quite apart from the remaining community, though what
the other constituent portions of the population were, or in what
relation they stood to these Dorians, we are not enabled to make out.
We hear, indeed, of a dependent rural population in the territory of
Sikyôn, as well as in that of Argos and Epidaurus, analogous to the
Helots in Laconia. In Sikyôn, this class was termed the Korynêphori
(club men), or the Katônakophori, from the thick woollen mantle
which they wore, with a sheepskin sewn on to the skirt: in Argos,
they were called Gymnêsii, from their not possessing the military
panoply or the use of regular arms: in Epidaurus, Konipodes, or the
dusty-footed.[47] We may conclude that a similar class existed in
Corinth, in Megara, and in each of the Dorian towns of the Argolic
Aktê. But besides the Dorian tribes and these rustics, there must
probably have existed non-Dorian proprietors and town residents,
and upon them we may suppose that the power of the Orthagoridæ and
of Kleisthenês was founded, perhaps more friendly and indulgent to
the rustic serfs than that of the Dorians had been previously. The
moderation, which Aristotle ascribes to the Orthagoridæ generally,
is belied by the proceedings of Kleisthenês: but we may probably
believe that his predecessors, content with maintaining the real
predominance of the non-Dorian over the Dorian population, meddled
very little with the separate position and civil habits of the
latter,—while Kleisthenês, provoked or alarmed by some attempt on
their part to strengthen alliance with the Argeians, resorted both
to repressive measures and to that offensive nomenclature which has
been above cited. The preservation of the power of Kleisthenês was
due to his military energy (according to Aristotle) even more than
to his moderation and popular conduct; it was aided, probably, by
his magnificent displays at the public games, for he was victor in
the chariot-race at the Pythian games 582 B. C., as well as at the
Olympic games besides. Moreover, he was in fact the last of the race,
nor did he transmit his power to any successor.[48]

[47] Julius Pollux, iii, 83; Plutarch, Quæst. Græc. c. 1, p. 291;
Theopompus ap. Athenæum, vi, p. 271; Welcker, Prolegomen. ad
Theognid. c. 19, p. xxxiv.

As an analogy to this name of Konipodes, we may notice the
ancient courts of justice called Courts of _Pie-powder_ in
England, _Pieds Poudrés_.

[48] Aristot. Polit. v, 9, 21; Pausan. x, 7, 3.

The reigns of the early Orthagoridæ, then, may be considered as
marking a predominance, newly acquired but quietly exercised, of the
non-Dorians over the Dorians in Sikyôn: the reign of Kleisthenês, as
displaying a strong explosion of antipathy from the former towards
the latter; and though this antipathy, and the application of those
opprobrious tribe-names in which it was conveyed, stand ascribed to
Kleisthenês personally, we may see that the non-Dorians in Sikyôn
shared it generally, because these same tribe-names continued to
be applied not only during the reign of that despot, but also for
sixty years longer, after his death. Of course, it is needless to
remark that such denominations could never have been acknowledged
or employed among the Dorians themselves. After the lapse of sixty
years from the death of Kleisthenês, the Sikyonians came to an
amicable adjustment of the feud, and placed the tribe-names on a
footing satisfactory to all parties; the old Dorian denominations
(Hylleis, Pamphyli, and Dymanes) were reëstablished, and the name
of the fourth tribe, or non-Dorians, was changed from Archelai
to Ægialeis,—Ægialeus son of Adrastus being constituted their
eponymus.[49] This choice of the son of Adrastus for an eponymus,
seems to show that the worship of Adrastus himself was then revived
in Sikyôn, since it existed in the time of Herodotus.

[49] Herod, v, 68. Τούτοισι τοῖσι οὐνόμασι τῶν φυλέων ἐχρέωντο οἱ
Σικυώνιοι, καὶ ἐπὶ Κλεισθένεος ἄρχοντος, καὶ ἐκείνου τεθνεῶτος
ἔτι ἐπ᾽ ἔτεα ἑξήκοντα· μετέπειτα μέντοι λόγον σφισι δόντες,
μετέβαλον ἐς τοὺς Ὑλλέας καὶ Παμφύλους καὶ Δυμανάτας· τετάρτους
δὲ αὐτοῖσι προσέθεντο ἐπὶ τοῦ Ἀδρήστου παιδὸς Αἰγιαλέος τὴν
ἐπωνυμίην ποιεύμενοι κεκλῆσθαι Αἰγιαλέας.

Of the war which Kleisthenês helped to conduct against Kirrha, for
the protection of the Delphian temple, I shall speak in another
place. His death and the cessation of his dynasty seem to have
occurred about 650 B. C., as far as the chronology can be made
out.[50] That he was put down by the Spartans, as K. F. Hermann,
O. Müller, and Dr. Thirlwall suppose,[51] can be hardly admitted
consistently with the narrative of Herodotus, who mentions the
continuance of the insulting names imposed by him upon the Dorian
tribes for many years after his death. Now, had the Spartans forcibly
interfered for the suppression of his dynasty, we may reasonably
presume that, even if they did not restore the decided preponderance
of the Dorians in Sikyôn, they would at least have rescued the
Dorian tribes from this obvious ignominy. But it seems doubtful
whether Kleisthenês had any son: and the extraordinary importance
attached to the marriage of his daughter, Agaristê, whom he bestowed
upon the Athenian Megaklês of the great family of Alkmæônidæ, seems
rather to evince that she was an heiress,—not to his power, but to
his wealth. There can be no doubt as to the fact of that marriage,
from which was born the Athenian leader Kleisthenês, afterwards the
author of the great democratical revolution at Athens after the
expulsion of the Peisistratidæ; but the lively and amusing details
with which Herodotus has surrounded it, bear much more the stamp of
romance than of reality. Dressed up, apparently, by some ingenious
Athenian, as a compliment to the Alkmæonid lineage of his city, which
comprised both Kleisthenês and Periklês, the narrative commemorates
a marriage-rivalry between that lineage and another noble Athenian
house, and at the same time gives a mythical explanation of a phrase
seemingly proverbial at Athens—“_Hippokleides don’t care._”[52]

[50] The chronology of Orthagoras and his dynasty is perplexing.
The commemorative offering of Myron at Olympia is marked for 648
B. C., and this must throw back the beginning of Orthagoras to a
period between 680-670. Then we are told by Aristotle that the
entire dynasty lasted one hundred years; but it must have lasted,
probably, somewhat longer, for the death of Kleisthenês can
hardly be placed earlier than 560 B. C. The war against Kirrha
(595 B. C.) and the Pythian victory (582 B. C.) fall within his
reign: but the marriage of his daughter Agaristê with Megaklês
can hardly be put earlier than 570 B. C., if so high; for
Kleisthenês the Athenian, the son of that marriage, effected the
democratical revolution at Athens in 509 or 508 B. C.: whether
the daughter, whom Megaklês gave in marriage to Peisistratus
about 554 B. C., was also the offspring of that marriage, as
Larcher contends, we do not know.

Megaklês was the son of that Alkmæon who had assisted the
deputies sent by Crœsus of Lydia into Greece to consult the
different oracles, and whom Crœsus rewarded so liberally as
to make his fortune (compare Herod. i, 46; vi, 125): and the
marriage of Megaklês was in the next generation after this
enrichment of Alkmæon,—μετὰ δὲ, γενεῇ δευτέρῃ ὕστερον (Herod. vi,
126). Now the reign of Crœsus extended from 560-546 B. C. and his
deputation to the oracles in Greece appears to have taken place
about 556 B. C.; and if this chronology be admitted, the marriage
of Megaklês with the daughter of the Sikyonian Kleisthenês cannot
have taken place until considerably after 556 B. C. See the long,
but not very satisfactory, note of Larcher, ad Herodot. v, 66.

But I shall show grounds for believing, when I recount the
interview between Solon and Crœsus, that Herodotus in his
conception of events misdates very considerably the reign and
proceedings of Crœsus as well as of Peisistratus: this is
a conjecture of Niebuhr which I think very just, and which
is rendered still more probable by what we find here stated
about the succession of the Alkmæonidæ. For it is evident that
Herodotus here conceives the adventure between Alkmæon and Crœsus
as having occurred one generation (about twenty-five or thirty
years) anterior to the marriage between Megaklês and the daughter
of Kleisthenês. That adventure will thus stand about 590-585 B.
C., which would be about the time of the supposed interview (if
real) between Solon and Crœsus, describing the maximum of the
power and prosperity of the latter.

[51] Müller, Dorians, book i, 8, 2; Thirlwall, Hist. of Greece,
vol. i, ch. x, p. 486, 2d ed.

[52] Herod. vi, 127-131. The locution explained is,—Οὐ φροντὶς
Ἱπποκλείδῃ: compare the allusions to it in the Parœmiographi,
Zenob. v, 31; Diogenian. vii, 21; Suidas, xi, 45, ed. Schott.

The convocation of the suitors at the invitation of Kleisthenês
from all parts of Greece, and the distinctive mark and character
of each, is prettily told, as well as the drunken freak whereby
Hippokleidês forfeits both the favor of Kleisthenês, and the hand
of Agaristê, which he was on the point of obtaining. It seems to
be a story framed upon the model of various incidents in the old
epic, especially the suitors of Helen.

On one point, however, the author of the story seems to have
overlooked both the exigencies of chronology and the historical
position and feelings of his hero Kleisthenês. For among the
suitors who present themselves at Sikyôn in conformity with
the invitation of the latter, one is Leôkêdês, son of Pheidôn
the despot of Argos. Now the hostility and vehement antipathy
towards Argos, which Herodotus ascribes in another place to
the Sikyonian Kleisthenês, renders it all but impossible that
the son of any king of Argos could have become a candidate for
the hand of Agaristê. I have already recounted the violence
which Kleisthenês did to the legendary sentiment of his native
town, and the insulting names which he put upon the Sikyonian
Dorians,—all under the influence of a strong anti-Argeian
feeling. Next, as to chronology: Pheidôn king of Argos lived some
time between 760-730; and his son can never have been a candidate
for the daughter of Kleisthenês, whose reign falls 600-500 B.
C. Chronologers resort here to the usual resource in cases of
difficulty: they recognize a second and later Pheidôn, whom they
affirm that Herodotus has confounded with the first: or they
alter the text of Herodotus, and in place of “son of Pheidôn,”
read “descendant of Pheidôn.” But neither of these conjectures
rests upon any basis: the text of Herodotus is smooth and clear,
and the second Pheidôn is nowhere else authenticated. See Larcher
and Wesseling, _ad loc._; compare also vol. ii, p. 419, part ii,
ch. 4, of this History.

Plutarch numbers Æschinês of Sikyôn[53] among the despots put down by
Sparta: at what period this took place, or how it is to be connected
with the history of Kleisthenês as given in Herodotus, we are unable
to say.

[53] Plutarch, De Herod. Malign. c. 21, p. 859.

Contemporaneous with the Orthagoridæ at Sikyôn,—but beginning a
little later and closing somewhat earlier,—we find the despots
Kypselus and Periander at Corinth. The former appears as the
subverter of the oligarchy called the Bacchiadæ. Of the manner in
which he accomplished his object we find no information: and this
historical blank is inadequately filled up by various religious
prognostics and oracles, foreshadowing the rise, the harsh rule, and
the dethronement, after two generations, of these powerful despots.

According to an idea deeply seated in the Greek mind, the destruction
of a great prince or of a great power is usually signified to him
by the gods beforehand, though either through hardness of heart
or inadvertence, no heed is taken of the warning. In reference
to Kypselus and the Bacchiadæ, we are informed that Melas, the
ancestor of the former, was one of the original settlers at Corinth
who accompanied the first Dorian chief Alêtês, and that Alêtês
was in vain warned by an oracle not to admit him;[54] again, too,
immediately before Kypselus was born, the Bacchiadæ received notice
that his mother was about to give birth to one who would prove their
ruin: the dangerous infant escaped destruction only by a hair’s
breadth, being preserved from the intent of his destroyers by lucky
concealment in a chest. Labba, the mother of Kypselus, was daughter
of Amphion, who belonged to the gens, or sept, of the Bacchiadæ;
but she was lame, and none of the gens would consent to marry her
with that deformity. Eetion, son of Echekratês, who became her
husband, belonged to a different, yet hardly less distinguished
heroic genealogy: he was of the Lapithæ, descended from Kæneus,
and dwelling in the Corinthian deme called Petra. We see thus that
Kypselus was not only a high-born man in the city, but a Bacchiad by
half-birth; both of these circumstances were likely to make exclusion
from the government intolerable to him. He rendered himself highly
popular with the people, and by their aid overthrew and expelled the
Bacchiadæ, continuing as despot at Corinth for thirty years until
his death (B. C. 655-625). According to Aristotle, he maintained
throughout life the same conciliatory behavior by which his power had
first been acquired; and his popularity was so effectually sustained
that he had never any occasion for a body-guard. But the Corinthian
oligarchy of the century of Herodotus,—whose tale that historian has
embodied in the oration of the Corinthian envoy Sosiklês[55] to the
Spartans,—gave a very different description, and depicted Kypselus
as a cruel ruler, who banished, robbed, and murdered by wholesale.

[54] Pausan. ii, 4, 9.

[55] Aristot. Polit. v, 9, 22; Herodot. v, 92. The tale
respecting Kypselus, and his wholesale exaction from the people,
contained in the spurious second book of the Œconomica of
Aristotle, coincides with the general view of Herodotus (Aristot.
Œconom. ii, 2); but I do not trust the statements of this
treatise for facts of the sixth or seventh centuries B. C.

His son and successor Periander, though energetic as a warrior,
distinguished as an encourager of poetry and music, and even numbered
by some among the seven wise men of Greece,—is, nevertheless,
uniformly represented as oppressive and inhuman in his treatment of
subjects. The revolting stories which are told respecting his private
life, and his relations with his mother and his wife, may for the
most part be regarded as calumnies suggested by odious associations
with his memory; but there seems good reason for imputing to him
tyranny of the worst character, and the sanguinary maxims of
precaution so often acted upon by Grecian despots were traced back in
ordinary belief to Periander,[56] and his contemporary Thrasybulus,
despot of Milêtus. He maintained a powerful body-guard, shed much
blood, and was exorbitant in his exactions, a part of which was
employed in votive offerings at Olympia; and this munificence to the
gods was considered by Aristotle and others as part of a deliberate
system, with the view of keeping his subjects both hard at work and
poor. On one occasion, we are told that he invited the women of
Corinth to assemble for the celebration of a religious festival,
and then stripped them of their rich attire and ornaments. By some
later writers, he is painted as the stern foe of everything like
luxury and dissolute habits,—enforcing industry, compelling every
man to render account of his means of livelihood, and causing the
procuresses of Corinth to be thrown into the sea.[57] Though the
general features of his character, his cruel tyranny no less than his
vigor and ability, may be sufficiently relied on, yet the particular
incidents connected with his name are all extremely dubious: the most
credible of all seems to be the tale of his inexpiable quarrel with
his son, and his brutal treatment of many noble Korkyræan youths, as
related in Herodotus. Periander is said to have put to death his
wife, Melissa, daughter of Proklês, despot of Epidaurus; and his son
Lykophrôn, informed of this deed, contracted an incurable antipathy
against him. After vainly trying, both by rigor and by conciliation,
to conquer this feeling on the part of his son, Periander sent him
to reside at Korkyra, then dependent upon his rule; but when he
found himself growing old and disabled, he recalled him to Corinth,
in order to insure the continuance of the dynasty. Lykophrôn still
obstinately declined all personal communication with his father, upon
which the latter desired him to come to Corinth, and engaged himself
to go over to Korkyra. So terrified were the Korkyræans at the idea
of a visit from this formidable old man, that they put Lykophrôn to
death,—a deed which Periander avenged by seizing three hundred youths
of their noblest families, and sending them over to the Lydian king,
Alyattês at Sardis, in order that they might be castrated and made
to serve as eunuchs. The Corinthian vessels in which the youths were
dispatched fortunately touched at Samos in the way; where the Samians
and Knidians, shocked at a proceeding which outraged all Hellenic
sentiment, contrived to rescue the youths from the miserable fate
intended for them, and, after the death of Periander, sent them back
to their native island.[58]

[56] Aristot. Polit. v, 9, 2-22; iii, 8, 3; Herodot. v, 92.

[57] Ephorus, Frag. 106, ed. Marx.; Herakleidês Ponticus, Frag.
v, ed. Köhler; Nicolaus Damasc. p. 50, ed. Orell.; Diogen. Laërt.
i, 96-98; Suidas, v. Κυψελίδων ἀνάθημα.

[58] Herodot. iii, 47-54. He details at some length this tragical
story. Compare Plutarch, De Herodoti Malignitat. c. 22, p. 860.

While we turn with displeasure from the political life of this man,
we are at the same time made acquainted with the great extent of
his power,—greater than that which was ever possessed by Corinth
after the extinction of his dynasty. Korkyra, Ambrakia, Leukas,
and Anaktorium, all Corinthian colonies, but in the next century
independent states, appear in his time dependencies of Corinth.
Ambrakia is said to have been under the rule of another despot named
Periander, probably also a Kypselid by birth. It seems, indeed, that
the towns of Anaktorium, Leukas, and Apollonia in the Ionian gulf,
were either founded by the Kypselids, or received reinforcements
of Corinthian colonists, during their dynasty, though Korkyra was
established considerably earlier.[59]

[59] Aristot. Polit. v, 3, 6; 8, 9. Plutarch, Amatorius, c. 23,
p. 768, and De Serâ Numinis Vindictâ, c. 7, p. 553. Strabo,
vii, p. 325; x, p. 452. Scymnus Chius, v, 454, and Antoninus
Liberalis, c. iv, who quotes the lost work called Ἀμβρακικὰ of
Athanadas.

The reign of Periander lasted for forty years (B. C. 625-585):
Psammetichus son of Gordius, who succeeded him, reigned three
years, and the Kypselid dynasty is then said to have closed, after
having continued for seventy-three years.[60] In respect of power,
magnificent display, and wide-spread connections both in Asia and
in Italy, they evidently stood high among the Greeks of their time.
Their offerings consecrated at Olympia excited great admiration,
especially the gilt colossal statue of Zeus, and the large chest of
cedar-wood dedicated in the temple of Hêrê, overlaid with various
figures in gold and ivory: the figures were borrowed from mythical
and legendary story, and the chest was a commemoration both of the
name of Kypselus and of the tale of his marvellous preservation
in infancy.[61] If Plutarch is correct, this powerful dynasty is
to be numbered among the despots put down by Sparta;[62] yet such
intervention of the Spartans, granting it to have been matter of
fact, can hardly have been known to Herodotus.

[60] See Mr. Clinton, Fasti Hellenici, ad ann. 625-585 B. C.

[61] Pausan. v, 2, 4; 17, 2. Strabo, viii, p. 353. Compare
Schneider, Epimetrum ad Xenophon. Anabas. p. 570. The chest was
seen at Olympia, both by Pausanias and by Dio Chrysostom (Or. xi,
p. 325, Reiske).

[62] Plutarch, De Herodot. Malign. c. 21, p. 859. If Herodotus
had known or believed that the dynasty of the Kypselids at
Corinth was put down by Sparta, he could not have failed to make
allusion to the fact, in the long harangue which he ascribes to
the Corinthian Sosiklês (v, 92). Whoever reads that speech, will
perceive that the inference from silence to ignorance is in this
case almost irresistible.

O. Müller ascribes to Periander a policy intentionally
anti-Dorian,—“prompted by the wish of utterly eradicating the
peculiarities of the Doric race. For this reason he abolished the
public tables, and prohibited the ancient education.” (O. Müller,
Dorians, iii, 8, 3.)

But it cannot be shown that any _public tables_ (συσσίτια),
or any peculiar education, analogous to those of Sparta, ever
existed at Corinth. If nothing more be meant by these συσσίτια
than public banquets on particular festive occasions (see
Welcker, Prolegom. ad Theognid. c. 20, p. xxxvii), these are
noway peculiar to Dorian cities. Nor does Theognis, v, 270, bear
out Welcker in affirming “syssitiorum vetus institutum” at Megara.

Coincident in point of time with the commencement of Periander’s
reign at Corinth, we find Theagenês despot at Megara, who is also
said to have acquired his power by demagogic arts, as well as by
violent aggressions against the rich proprietors, whose cattle he
destroyed in their pastures by the side of the river. We are not told
by what previous conduct on the part of the rich this hatred of the
people had been earned, but Theagenês carried the popular feeling
completely along with him, obtained by public vote a body of guards
ostensibly for his personal safety, and employed them to overthrow
the oligarchy.[63] But he did not maintain his power, even for his
own life: a second revolution dethroned and expelled him; on which
occasion, after a short interval of temperate government, the people
are said to have renewed in a still more marked way their antipathies
against the rich; banishing some of them with confiscation of
property, intruding into the houses of others with demands for forced
hospitality, and even passing a formal palintokia, or decree, to
require from the rich who had lent money on interest, the refunding
of all past interest paid to them by their debtors.[64] To appreciate
correctly such a demand, we must recollect that the practice of
taking interest for money lent was regarded by a large proportion of
early ancient society with feelings of unqualified reprobation; and
it will be seen, when we come to the legislation of Solon, how much
such violent reactionary feeling against the creditor was provoked by
the antecedent working of the harsh law determining his rights.

[63] Aristot. Polit. v, 4, 5; Rhetor. i, 2, 7.

[64] Plutarch, Quæst. Græc. c. 18, p. 295.

We hear in general terms of more than one revolution in the
government of Megara,—a disorderly democracy, subverted by returning
oligarchical exiles, and these again unable long to maintain
themselves;[65] but we are alike uninformed as to dates and details.
And in respect to one of these struggles, we are admitted to the
outpourings of a contemporary and a sufferer,—the Megarian poet
Theognis. Unfortunately, his elegiac verses, as we possess them,
are in a state so broken, incoherent, and interpolated, that we
make out no distinct conception of the events which call them
forth,—still less, can we discover in the verses of Theognis that
strength and peculiarity of pure Dorian feeling, which, since the
publication of O. Müller’s History of the Dorians, it has been the
fashion to look for so extensively. But we see that the poet was
connected with an oligarchy, of birth and not of wealth, which had
recently been subverted by the breaking in of the rustic population
previously subject and degraded,—that these subjects were contented
to submit to a single-headed despot, in order to escape from their
former rulers,—and that Theognis had himself been betrayed by his
own friends and companions, stripped of his property, and exiled,
through the wrong doing “of enemies whose blood he hopes one day to
be permitted to drink.”[66] The condition of the subject cultivators
previous to this revolution he depicts in sad colors;—they “dwelt
without the city, clad in goatskins, and ignorant of judicial
sanctions or laws:”[67] after it, they had become citizens, and
their importance had been immensely enhanced. And thus, according
to his impression, the vile breed has trodden down the noble,—the
bad have become masters, and the good are no longer of any account.
The bitterness and humiliation which attend upon poverty, and the
undue ascendency which wealth confers even upon the most worthless of
mankind,[68] are among the prominent subjects of his complaint, and
his keen personal feeling on this point would be alone sufficient to
show that the recent revolution had no way overthrown the influence
of property; in contradiction to the opinion of Welcker, who infers
without ground, from a passage of uncertain meaning, that the land of
the state had been formally redivided.[69] The Megarian revolution,
so far as we apprehend it from Theognis, appears to have improved
materially the condition of the cultivators around the town, and
to have strengthened a certain class whom he considers “the bad
rich,”—while it extinguished the privileges of that governing order,
to which he himself belonged, denominated in his language “the good
and the virtuous,” with ruinous effect upon his own individual
fortunes. How far this governing order was exclusively Dorian,
we have no means of determining. The political change by which
Theognis suffered, and the new despot whom he indicates as either
actually installed or nearly impending, must have come considerably
after the despotism of Theagenês; for the life of the poet seems to
fall between 570-490 B. C., while Theagenês must have ruled about
630-600 B. C. From the unfavorable picture, therefore, which the
poet gives as his own early experience of the condition of the rural
cultivators, it is evident that the despot Theagenês had neither
conferred upon them any permanent benefit, nor given them access to
the judicial protection of the city.

[65] Aristot. Polit. iv, 12, 10; v, 2, 6; 4, 3.

[66] Theognis, vv. 682, 715, 720, 750, 816, 914, Welcker’s
edition:—

Τῶν εἴη μέλαν αἷμα πιεῖν, etc.

[67] Theognis, v, 20.—

Κύρνε, πόλις μὲν ἔθ᾽ ἥδε πόλις, λαοὶ δὲ δὴ ἄλλοι,
Οἳ πρόσθ᾽ οὕτε δίκας ᾔδεσαν οὔτε νόμους,
Ἀλλ᾽ ἀμφὶ πλευρῇσι δορὰς αἰγῶν κατέτριβον,
Ἔξω δ᾽ ὥστ᾽ ἔλαφοι τῆσδ’ ἐνέμοντο πόλεος.

[68] See, especially, the lines from 500-560, 816-830, in
Welcker’s edition.

[69] Consult the Prolegomena to Welcker’s edition of Theognis;
also, those of Schneidewin (Delectus Elegiac. Poetar. pp. 46-55).

The Prolegomena of Welcker are particularly valuable and full of
instruction. He illustrates at great length the tendency common
to Theognis, with other early Greek poets, to apply the words
_good_ and _bad_, not with reference to any ethical standard,
but to wealth as contrasted with poverty,—nobility with low
birth,—strength with weakness,—conservative and oligarchical
politics as opposed to innovation (sect. 10-18). The ethical
meaning of these words is not absolutely unknown, yet rare, in
Theognis: it gradually grew up at Athens, and became popularized
by the Socratic school of philosophers as well as by the orators.
But the early or political meaning always remained, and the
fluctuation between the two has been productive of frequent
misunderstanding. Constant attention is necessary when we read
the expressions οἱ ἀγαθοὶ, ἐσθλοὶ, βέλτιστοι, καλοκἀγαθοὶ,
χρηστοὶ, etc., or on the other hand, οἱ κακοὶ, δειλοὶ, etc.,
to examine whether the context is such as to give to them the
ethical or the political meaning. Welcker seems to go a step too
far, when he says that the latter sense “fell into desuetude,
through the influence of the Socratic philosophy.” (Proleg. sect.
11, p. xxv.) The two meanings both remained extant at the same
time, as we see by Aristotle (Polit. iv, 8, 2),—σχεδὸν γὰρ παρὰ
τοῖς πλείστοις οἱ εὔποροι, τῶν καλῶν κἀγαθῶν δοκοῦσι κατέχειν
χώραν. A careful distinction is sometimes found in Plato and
Thucydides, who talk of the oligarchs as “the persons called
super-excellent,”—τοὺς καλοὺς κἀγαθοὺς ὀνομαζομένους (Thucyd.
viii, 48),—ὑπὸ τῶν πλουσίων τε καὶ καλῶν κἀγαθῶν λεγομένων ἐν τῇ
πόλει (Plato, Rep. viii, p. 569).

The same double sense is to be found equally prevalent in the
Latin language: “_Boni_que et _mali_ cives appellati, non ob
merita in rempublicam, omnibus pariter corruptis: sed uti quisque
locupletissimus, et injuriâ validior, quia præsentia defendebat,
pro bono habebatur.” (Sallust, Hist. Fragment. lib. i, p. 935,
Cort.) And again, Cicero (De Republ. i, 34): “Hoc errore vulgi
cum rempublicam opes paucorum, non virtutes, tenere cœperunt,
nomen illi principes _optimatium_ mordicus tenent, re autem
carent eo nomine.” In Cicero’s Oration pro Sextio (c. 45) the two
meanings are intentionally confounded together, when he gives his
definition of _optimus quisque_. Welcker (Proleg. s. 12) produces
several other examples of the like equivocal meaning. Nor are
there wanting instances of the same use of language in the laws
and customs of the early Germans,—boni homines, probi homines,
Rachinburgi, Gudemänner. See Savigny, Geschichte des Römisch.
Rechts im Mittelalter, vol. i, p. 184; vol. ii, p. xxii.

It is thus that the despots of Corinth, Sikyôn, and Megara serve
as samples of those revolutionary influences, which towards
the beginning of the sixth century B. C., seem to have shaken
or overturned the oligarchical governments in very many cities
throughout the Grecian world. There existed a certain sympathy and
alliance between the despots of Corinth and Sikyôn:[70] how far such
feeling was farther extended to Megara, we do not know. The latter
city seems evidently to have been more populous and powerful during
the seventh and sixth centuries B. C., than we shall afterwards find
her throughout the two brilliant centuries of Grecian history: her
colonies, found as far distant as Bithynia and the Thracian Bosphorus
on one side, and as Sicily on the other, argue an extent of trade as
well as naval force once not inferior to Athens: so that we shall be
the less surprised when we approach the life of Solon, to find her in
possession of the island of Salamis, and long maintaining it, at one
time with every promise of triumph, against the entire force of the
Athenians.

[70] Herod. vi. 128.

CHAPTER X.

IONIC PORTION OF HELLAS. — ATHENS BEFORE SOLON.

Having traced in the preceding chapters the scanty stream of
Peloponnesian history, from the first commencement of an authentic
chronology in 776 B. C. to the maximum of Spartan territorial
acquisition, and the general acknowledgment of Spartan primacy,
prior to 547 B. C., I proceed to state as much as can be made out
respecting the Ionic portion of Hellas during the same period. This
portion comprehends Athens and Eubœa,—the Cyclades Islands,—and
the Ionic cities on the coast of Asia Minor, with their different
colonies.

In the case of Peloponnesus, we have been enabled to discern
something like an order of real facts in the period alluded
to,—Sparta makes great strides, while Argos falls. In the case of
Athens, unfortunately, our materials are less instructive. The
number of historical facts, anterior to the Solonian legislation, is
very few indeed;—the interval between 776 B. C. and 624 B. C., the
epoch of Drako’s legislation a short time prior to Kylôn’s attempted
usurpation, gives us merely a list of archons, denuded of all
incident.

In compliment to the heroism of Kodrus, who had sacrificed his life
for the safety of his country, we are told that no person after
him was permitted to bear the title of king:[71] his son Medôn,
and twelve successors,—Akastus, Archippus, Thersippus, Phorbas,
Megaklês, Diognêtus, Phereklês, Ariphrôn, Thespieus, Agamestôr,
Æschylus, and Alkmæôn,—were all archons for life. In the second
year of Alkmæôn (752 B. C.), the dignity of archon was restricted
to a duration of ten years: and seven of these decennial archons
are numbered,—Charops, Æsimidês, Kleidikus, Hippomenês, Leokratês,
Apsandrus, Eryxias. With Kreôn, who succeeded Eryxias, the archonship
was not only made annual, but put into commission and distributed
among nine persons and these nine archons, annually changed, continue
throughout all the historical period, interrupted only by the few
intervals of political disturbance and foreign compression. Down
to Kleidikus and Hippomenês (714 B. C.), the dignity of archon had
continued to belong exclusively to the Medontidæ or descendants of
Medôn and Kodrus:[72] at that period it was thrown open to all the
Eupatrids, or order of nobility in the state.

[71] Justin. ii, 7.

[72] Pausan. i, 3, 2; Suidas, Ἱππομένης; Diogenian. Centur.
Proverb. iii, 1. Ἀσεβέστερον Ἱππομένους.

Such is the series of names by which we step down from the level
of legend to that of history. All our historical knowledge of
Athens is confined to the period of the annual archons; which
series of eponymous archons, from Kreôn downwards, is perfectly
trustworthy.[73] Above 683 B. C., the Attic antiquaries have provided
us with a string of names, which we must take as we find them,
without being able either to warrant the whole or to separate the
false from the true. There is no reason to doubt the general fact,
that Athens, like so many other communities of Greece, was in its
primitive times governed by an hereditary line of kings, and that
it passed from that form of government into a commonwealth, first
oligarchical, afterwards democratical.

[73] See Boeckh on the Parian Marble, in Corp. Inscrip. Græc.
part 12, sect. 6, pp. 307, 310, 332.

From the beginning of the reign of Medôn son of Kodrus, to the
first annual archon Kreôn, the Parian Marble computes 407 years,
Eusebius 387.

We are in no condition to determine the civil classification
and political constitution of Attica, even at the period of the
archonship of Kreôn, 683 B. C., when authentic Athenian chronology
first commences,—much less can we pretend to any knowledge of the
anterior centuries. Great political changes were introduced first by
Solon (about 594 B. C.), next by Kleisthenês (509 B. C.), afterwards
by Aristeidês, Periklês, and Ephialtês, between the Persian and
Peloponnesian wars: so that the old ante-Solonian,—nay, even the
real Solonian,—polity was thus put more and more out of date and out
of knowledge. But all the information which we possess respecting
that old polity, is derived from authors who lived after all or most
of these great changes,—and who, finding no records, nor anything
better than current legends, explained the foretime as well as
they could by guesses more or less ingenious, generally attached
to the dominant legendary names. They were sometimes able to found
their conclusions upon religious usages, periodical ceremonies, or
common sacrifices, still subsisting in their own time; and these
were doubtless the best evidences to be found respecting Athenian
antiquity, since such practices often continued unaltered throughout
all the political changes. It is in this way alone that we arrive
at some partial knowledge of the ante-Solonian condition of Attica,
though as a whole it still remains dark and unintelligible, even
after the many illustrations of modern commentators.

Philochorus, writing in the third century before the Christian era,
stated that Kekrops had originally distributed Attica into twelve
districts,—Kekropia, Tetrapolis, Epakria, Dekeleia, Eleusis, Aphidnæ,
Thorikus, Braurôn, Kythêrus, Sphêttus, Kêphisia, Phalêrus,—and
that these twelve were consolidated into one political society by
Theseus.[74] This partition does not comprise the Megarid, which,
according to other statements, is represented as united with
Attica, and as having formed part of the distribution made by king
Pandiôn among his four sons, Nisus, Ægeus, Pallas, and Lykus,—a
story as old as Sophoklês, at least.[75] In other accounts, again,
a quadruple division is applied to the tribes, which are stated to
have been four in number, beginning from Kekrops,—called in his
time Kekrŏpis, Autochthon, Aktæa, and Paralia. Under king Kranaus,
these tribes, we are told, received the names of Kranaïs, Atthis,
Mesogæa, and Diakria,[76]—under Erichthonius, those of Dias,
Athenaïs, Poseidonias, Hephæstias: at last, shortly after Erechtheus,
they were denominated after the four sons of Iôn (son of Kreusa,
daughter of Erechtheus, by Apollo), Geleontes, Hoplêtes, Ægikoreis,
Argadeis. The four Attic or Ionic tribes, under these last-mentioned
names, continued to form the classification of the citizens until
the revolution of Kleisthenês in 509 B. C. by which the ten tribes
were introduced, as we find them down to the period of Macedonian
ascendency. It is affirmed, and with some etymological plausibility,
that the denominations of these four tribes must originally have
had reference to the occupations of those who bore them,—the
Hoplêtes being the _warrior-class_, the Ægikoreis _goatherds_, the
Argadeis _artisans_, and the Geleontes (Teleontes, or Gedeontes)
_cultivators_: and hence some authors have ascribed to the ancient
inhabitants of Attica[77] an actual primitive distribution into
hereditary professions, or castes, similar to that which prevailed
in India and Egypt. If we should even grant that such a division
into castes might originally have prevailed, it must have grown
obsolete long before the time of Solon: but there seem no sufficient
grounds for believing that it ever did prevail. The names of the
tribes may have been originally borrowed from certain professions,
but it does not necessarily follow that the reality corresponded to
this derivation, or that every individual who belonged to any tribe
was a member of the profession from whence the name had originally
been derived. From the etymology of the names, be it ever so clear,
we cannot safely assume the historical reality of a classification
according to professions. And this objection (which would be weighty,
even if the etymology had been clear) becomes irresistible, when we
add that even the etymology is not beyond dispute;[78] that the names
themselves are written with a diversity which cannot be reconciled:
and that the four professions named by Strabo omit the goatherds and
include the priests; while those specified by Plutarch leave out the
latter and include the former.[79]

[74] Philochorus ap. Strabo, ix, p. 396. See Schömann, Antiq. J.
P. Græc. b. v, sect. 2-5.

[75] Strabo, ix, p. 392. Philochorus and Andrôn extended the
kingdom of Nisus from the isthmus of Corinth as far as the
Pythium (near Œnoê) and Eleusis (Str. _ib._); but there were many
different tales.

[76] Pollux, viii, c. 9, 109-111.

[77] Iôn, the father of the four heroes after whom these tribes
were named, was affirmed by one story to be the primitive
civilizing legislator of Attica, like Lykurgus, Numa, or
Deukaliôn (Plutarch. adv. Kolôten, c. 31, p. 1125).

[78] Thus Euripides derives the Αἰγικορεῖς, not from αἲξ, a
goat, but from Αἰγὶς, the Ægis of Athênê (Ion. 1581): he also
gives _Teleontes_, derived from an eponymous _Teleôn_, son of
Iôn, while the inscriptions at Kyzikus concur with Herodotus and
others in giving Geleontes. Plutarch (Solon, 25) gives Gedeontes.
In an Athenian inscription recently published by Professor Ross
(dating, seemingly, in the first century after the Christian
era), the worship of Zeus Geleôn at Athens has been for the first
time verified,—Διὸς Γελέοντος ἱεροκήρυξ (Ross, _Die Attischen
Demen_, pp. vii-ix. Halle 1846).

[79] Plutarch (Solon, c. 25); Strabo, viii, p. 383. Compare
Plato, Kritias, p. 110.

All that seems certain is, that these were the four ancient Ionic
tribes—analogous to the Hylleis, Pamphyli, and Dymanes among the
Dorians—which prevailed not only at Athens, but among several of
the Ionic cities derived from Athens. The Geleontes are mentioned
in inscriptions now remaining belonging to Teôs in Ionia, and all
the four are named in those of Kyzikus in the Propontis, which was
a foundation from the Ionic Miletus.[80] The four tribes, and the
four names (allowing for some variations of reading), are therefore
historically verified; but neither the time of their introduction
nor their primitive import are ascertainable matters, nor can any
faith be put in the various constructions of the legends of Iôn,
Erechtheus, and Kekrops, by modern commentators.

[80] Boeckh, Corp. Inscr. Nos. 3078, 3079, 3665. The elaborate
commentary on this last-mentioned inscription, in which Boeckh
vindicates the early historical reality of the classification by
professions, is noway satisfactory to my mind.

K. F. Hermann (Lehrbuch der Griechischen Staats Alterthümer,
sect. 91-96) gives a summary of all that can be known respecting
these old Athenian tribes. Compare Ilgen, De Tribubus Atticis,
p. 9, _seq._; Tittmann, Griechische Staats Verfassungen, pp.
570-582; Wachsmuth, Hellenische Alterthumskunde, sect. 43, 44.

These four tribes may be looked at either as religious and social
aggregates, in which capacity each of them comprised three phratries
and ninety gentes; or as political aggregates, in which point of view
each included three trittyes and twelve naukraries. Each phratry
contained thirty gentes; each trittys comprised four naukraries:
the total numbers were thus three hundred and sixty gentes and
forty-eight naukraries. Moreover, each gens is said to have contained
thirty heads of families, of whom therefore there would be a total of
ten thousand eight hundred.

Comparing these two distributions one with the other, we may remark
that they are distinct in their nature and proceed in opposite
directions. The trittys and the naukrary are essentially fractional
subdivisions of the tribe, and resting upon the tribe as their
higher unity; the naukrary is a local circumscription, composed
of the naukrars, or principal householders (so the etymology seems
to indicate), who levy in each respective district the quota of
public contributions which belongs to it, and superintend the
disbursement,—provide the military force incumbent upon the district,
being for each naukrary two horsemen and one ship,—and furnish
the chief district-officers, the prytanes of the naukrari.[81] A
certain number of foot soldiers, varying according to the demand,
must probably be understood as accompanying these horsemen, but
the quota is not specified, as it was perhaps thought unnecessary
to limit precisely the obligations of any except the wealthier men
who served on horseback,—at a period when oligarchical ascendency
was paramount, and when the bulk of the people was in a state of
comparative subjection. The forty-eight naukraries are thus a
systematic subdivision of the four tribes, embracing altogether the
whole territory, population, contributions, and military force of
Attica,—a subdivision framed exclusively for purposes connected with
the entire state.

[81] About the naukraries, see Aristot. Fragment. Rerum Public.,
p. 89, ed. Neumann; Harpokration, vv. Δήμαρχος, Ναυκραρικὰ;
Photius, v. Ναυκραρία; Pollux, viii, 108; Schol. ad Aristoph.
Nubes, 37.

Οἱ πρυτάνεις τῶν Ναυκράρων, Herodot. v, 71: they conducted the
military proceedings in resistance to the usurpation of Kylôn.

The statement that each naukrary was obliged to furnish one ship
can hardly be true of the time before Solon: as Pollux states
it, we should be led to conceive that he only infers it from the
name ναύκραρος (Pollux, viii, 108), though the real etymology
seems rather to be from ναίω (Wachsmuth, Hellen. Alt. sect.
44, p. 240). There may be some ground for believing that the
old meaning, also, of the word ναύτης connected it with ναίω;
such a supposition would smooth the difficulty in regard to
the functions of the ναυτόδικαι as judges in cases of illicit
admission into the phratores. See Hesychius and Harpokration, v.
Ναυτόδικαι; and Baumstark, De Curatoribus Emporii, Friburg, 1828,
p. 67, _seq._: compare, also, the fragment of the Solonian law, ἢ
ἱερῶν ὀργίων ἢ ναῦται, which Niebuhr conjecturally corrects. Rom.
Gesch. v. i, p. 323, 2d ed.; Hesychius, Ναυστῆρες—οἱ οἰκέται. See
Pollux, Ναῦλον, and Lobeck, Ῥηματικὸν, sect. 3, p. 7; Ἀειναῦται
παρὰ Μιλησίοις? Plutarch, Quæst. Græc. c. 32, p. 298.

But the phratries and gentes are a distribution completely different
from this. They seem aggregations of small primitive unities into
larger; they are independent of, and do not presuppose, the tribe;
they arise separately and spontaneously, without preconcerted
uniformity, and without reference to a common political purpose;
the legislator finds them preëxisting, and adapts or modifies them
to answer some national scheme. We must distinguish the general
fact of the classification, and the successive subordination in the
scale, of the families to the gens, of the gentes to the phratry, and
of the phratries to the tribe,—from the precise numerical symmetry
with which this subordination is invested, as we read it,—thirty
families to a gens, thirty gentes to a phratry, three phratries to
each tribe. If such nice equality of numbers could ever have been
procured, by legislative constraint[82] operating upon preëxistent
natural elements, the proportions could not have been permanently
maintained. But we may reasonably doubt whether it did ever so exist:
it appears more like the fancy of an author who pleased himself
by supposing an original systematic creation in times anterior to
records, by multiplying together the number of days in the month
and of months in the year. That every phratry contained an equal
number of gentes, and every gens an equal number of families, is
a supposition hardly admissible without better evidence than we
possess. But apart from this questionable precision of numerical
scale, the phratries and gentes themselves were real, ancient, and
durable associations among the Athenian people, highly important to
be understood.[83] The basis of the whole was the house, hearth, or
family,—a number of which, greater or less, composed the gens, or
genos. This gens was therefore a clan, sept, or enlarged, and partly
factitious, brotherhood, bound together by,—1. Common religious
ceremonies, and exclusive privilege of priesthood, in honor of the
same god, supposed to be the primitive ancestor, and characterized by
a special surname. 2. By a common burial-place. 3. By mutual rights
of succession to property. 4. By reciprocal obligations of help,
defence, and redress of injuries. 5. By mutual right and obligation
to intermarry in certain determinate cases, especially where there
was an orphan daughter or heiress. 6. By possession, in some cases
at least, of common property, an archon and a treasurer of their
own. Such were the rights and obligations characterizing the gentile
union:[84] the phratric union, binding together several gentes, was
less intimate, but still included some mutual rights and obligations
of an analogous character, and especially a communion of particular
sacred rites and mutual privileges of prosecution in the event of a
phrator being slain. Each phratry was considered as belonging to one
of the four tribes, and all the phratries of the same tribe enjoyed
a certain periodical communion of sacred rites, under the presidency
of a magistrate called the phylo-basileus, or tribe-king, selected
from the Eupatrids; Zeus Geleôn was in this manner the patron-god of
the tribe Geleontes. Lastly, all the four tribes were linked together
by the common worship of Apollo Patrôus, as their divine father and
guardian; for Apollo was the father of Iôn, and the eponyms of all
the four tribes were reputed sons of Iôn.

[82] Meier, De Gentilitate Atticâ, pp. 22-24, conceives that this
numerical completeness was enacted by Solon; but of this there
is no proof, nor is it in harmony with the general tendencies of
Solon’s legislation.

[83] So in reference to the Anglo-Saxon _Tythings_ and
_Hundreds_, and to the still more widely-spread division of
the _Hundred_, which seems to pervade the whole of Teutonic
and Scandinavian antiquity, much more extensively than the
_tything_;—there is no ground for believing that these precise
numerical proportions were in general practice realized: the
systematic nomenclature served its purpose by marking the idea
of graduation and the type to which a certain approach was
actually made. Mr. Thorpe observes, respecting the Hundred, in
his Glossary to the “Ancient Laws and Institutes of England,”
v. _Hundred_, _Tything_, _Frid-Borg_, etc. “In the Dialogus
de Scaccario, it is said that a Hundred ‘ex hydarum aliquot
centenariis, sed non determinatis, constat: quidam enim ex
pluribus, quidam ex paucioribus constat.’ Some accounts make
it consist of precisely a hundred hydes, others of a hundred
tythings, others of a hundred free families. Certain it is, that
whatever may have been its original organization, the Hundred, at
the time when it becomes known to us, differed greatly in extent
in various parts of England.”

[84] See the instructive inscription in Professor Ross’s work
(Über die Demen von Attika, p. 26) of the γένος Ἀμυνανδριδῶν,
commemorating the archon of that gens, the priest of Kekrops, the
Ταμίας, or treasurer, and the names of the members, with the deme
and tribe of each individual. Compare Bossler, De Gent. Atticis,
p. 53. About the peculiar religious rites of the gens called
Gephyræi, see Herodot. v, 61.

Such was the primitive religious and social union of the population
of Attica in its gradually ascending scale,—as distinguished from
the political union, probably of later introduction, represented
at first by the trittyes and naukraries, and in after times by the
ten Kleisthenean tribes, subdivided into trittyes and demes. The
religious and family bond of aggregation is the earlier of the two:
but the political bond, though beginning later, will be found to
acquire constantly increasing influence throughout the greater
part of this history. In the former, personal relation is the
essential and predominant characteristic,[85]—local relation being
subordinate: in the latter, property and residence become the chief
considerations, and the personal element counts only as measured by
these accompaniments. All these phratric and gentile associations,
the larger as well as the smaller, were founded upon the same
principles and tendencies of the Grecian mind,[86]—a coalescence
of the idea of worship with that of ancestry, or of communion in
certain special religious rites with communion of blood, real or
supposed. The god, or hero, to whom the assembled members offered
their sacrifices, was conceived as the primitive ancestor, to whom
they owed their origin; often through a long list of intermediate
names, as in the case of the Milesian Hekatæus, so often before
adverted to.[87] Each family had its own sacred rites and funereal
commemoration of ancestors, celebrated by the master of the house, to
which none but members of the family were admissible: the extinction
of a family, carrying with it the suspension of these religious
rites, was held by the Greeks to be a misfortune, not merely from
the loss of the citizens composing it, but also because the family
gods and the manes of deceased citizens were thus deprived of their
honors,[88] and might visit the country with displeasure. The
larger associations, called gens, phratry, tribe, were formed by
an extension of the same principle,—of the family considered as a
religious brotherhood, worshipping some common god or hero with an
appropriate surname, and recognizing him as their joint ancestor; and
the festivals Theoenia and Apaturia[89]—the first Attic, the second
common to all the Ionic race,—annually brought together the members
of these phratries and gentes for worship, festivity, and maintenance
of special sympathies; thus strengthening the larger ties without
effacing the smaller.

[85] Φυλαὶ γενικαὶ, opposed to φυλαὶ τοπικαί.—Dionys. Hal. Ant.
Rom. iv, 14.

[86] Plato, Euthydem. p. 302; Aristot. ap. Schol. in Platon.
Axioch. p. 465, ed. Bek. Ἀριστοτέλης φησί· τοῦ ὅλου πλήθους
διῃρημένου Ἀθήνῃσιν εἴς τε τοὺς γεωργοὺς καὶ τοὺς δημιουργοὺς,
φυλὰς αὐτῶν εἶναι τέσσαρας, τῶν δὲ φυλῶν ἑκάστις μοιρὰς
εἶναι τρεῖς, ἃς τριττύας τε καλοῦσι καὶ φρατρίας· ἑκάστης δὲ
τούτων τριάκοντα εἶναι γένη, τὸ δὲ γένος ἐκ τριάκοντα ἀνδρῶν
συνιστάναι· τούτους δὴ τοὺς εἰς τα γένη τεταγμένοις γεννήτας
καλοῦσι. Pollux, viii, 3. Οἱ μετέχοντες τοῦ γένους, γεννῆται καὶ
ὁμογάλακτες· γένει μὲν οὐ προσήκοντες, ἐκ δὲ τῆς συνόδου οὕτω
προσαγορευόμενοι: compare also iii, 52; Mœris. Atticist. p. 108.

Harpokrat. v. Ἀπόλλων Πατρῷος, Θεοίνιον, Γεννῆται, Ὀργεῶνες, etc.
Etymol. Magn. v. Γεννῆται; Suidas, v. Ὀργεῶνες; Pollux, viii, 85;
Demosthen. cont. Eubulid. p. 1319, εἶτα φράτορες, εἶτα Ἀπόλλωνος
πατρῴου καὶ Διὸς ἑκρίου γεννῆται; and cont. Neæram, p. 1365.
Isæus uses ὀργεῶνες as synonymous with γεννῆται (see Orat. ii,
pp. 19, 20-28, ed. Bek.). Schömann (Antiq. J. P. Græc. § xxvi)
considers the two as essentially distinct. Φρήτρη and φῦλον both
occur in the Iliad, ii, 362. See the Dissertation of Buttmann
Über den Begriff von φρατρία (Mythologus, c. 24, p. 305); and
that of Meier, De Gentilitate Atticâ, where the points of
knowledge attainable respecting the gentes are well put together
and discussed.

In the Theræan Inscription (No. 2448 ap. Boeckh. Corp. Inscr.,
see his comment, page 310) containing the testament of Epiktêta,
whereby a bequest is made to οἱ συγγενεῖς—ὁ ἀνδρεῖος τῶν
συγγενῶν,—this latter word does not mean kindred or blood
relations, but a variety of the gentile union—“thiasus,” or
“sodalitium.” Boeckh.

[87] Herodot. ii, 143. Ἑκαταίῳ—γενεηλογήσαντί τε ἑωυτὸν
καὶ ἀναδήσαντι τὴν πατριὴν ἐς ἑκκαιδέκατον θεόν. Again,
γενεηλογήσαντι ἑωυτὸν, καὶ ἀναδήσαντι ἐς ἑκκαιδέκατον θεόν. The
Attic expression,—ἀγχίστεια ἱερῶν καὶ ὁσίων,—illustrates the
intimate association between family relationship and common
religious privileges.—Isæus, Orat. vi, p. 89, ed. Bek.

[88] Isæus, Or. vi, p. 61; ii, p. 38; Demosth. adv. Makartatum,
pp. 1053-1075; adv. Leochar. p. 1093. Respecting this
perpetuation of the family sacred rites, the feeling prevalent
among the Athenians is much the same as what is now seen in China.

Mr. Davis observes: “Sons are considered in this country, where
the power over them is so absolute through life, as a sure
support, as well as a probable source of wealth and dignities,
should they succeed in learning. But the grand object is, the
perpetuation of the race, to sacrifice at the family tombs.
Without sons, a man lives without honor or satisfaction, and dies
unhappy; and as the only remedy, he is permitted to adopt the
sons of his younger brothers.

“It is not during life only, that a man looks for the service
of his sons. It is his consolation in declining years, to think
that they will continue the performance of the prescribed rites
in the hall of ancestors, and at the family tombs, when he is
no more: and it is the absence of this prospect which makes the
childless doubly miserable. The superstition derives influence
from the importance attached by the government to this species
of posthumous duty: a neglect of which is punishable, as we have
seen, by the laws. Indeed, of all the subjects of their care,
there are none which the Chinese so religiously attend to as the
tombs of their ancestors, conceiving that any neglect is sure to
be followed by worldly misfortune.”—(The Chinese, by John Francis
Davis, chap. ix, pp. 131-134. ed. Knight, 1840.)

Mr. Mill notices the same state of feeling among the
Hindoos.—(History of British India, book ii, chap. vii. p. 381,
ed. 8vo.)

[89] Xenoph. Hellen. i, 5, 8; Herodot. i, 147; Suidas,
Ἀπατουρία—Ζεὺς Φράτριος—Ἀθηναία φρατρία, the presiding god of the
phratric union.—Plato, Euthydem. c. 28, p. 302; Demosth. adv.
Makart. p. 1054. See Meier, De Gentilitate Atticâ, pp. 11-14.

The πάτριαι at Byzantium, which were different from θίασοι,
and which possessed corporate property (τά τε θιασωτικὰ καὶ τὰ
πατριωτικὰ, Aristot. Œconomic. ii, 4), are doubtless the parallel
of the Athenian phratries.

Such were the manifestations of Grecian sociality, as we read them in
the early constitution, not merely of Attica, but of other Grecian
states besides. To Aristotle and Dikæarchus, it was an interesting
inquiry to trace back all political society into certain assumed
elementary atoms, and to show by what motives and means the original
families, each having its separate meal-bin and fireplace,[90] had
been brought together into larger aggregates. But the historian
must accept as an ultimate fact the earliest state of things which
his witnesses make known to him; and in the case now before us, the
gentile and phratric unions are matters into the beginning of which
we cannot pretend to penetrate.

[90] Dikæarchus ap. Stephan. Byz. v. Πατρὰ; Aristot. Polit. i, 1,
6: Ὁμοσιπύος and ὁμοκάπνους are the old words cited by the latter
from Charondas and Epimenidês.

Pollux—probably from Aristotle’s lost work on the Constitutions of
Greece—informs us, distinctly, that the members of the same gens
at Athens were not commonly related by blood,—and even without any
express testimony we might have concluded such to be fact: to what
extent the gens, at the unknown epoch of its first formation, was
based upon actual relationship, we have no means of determining,
either with regard to the Athenian or the Roman gentes, which were
in all main points analogous. Gentilism is a tie by itself; distinct
from the family ties, but presupposing their existence and extending
them by an artificial analogy, partly founded on religious belief
and partly on positive compact, so as to comprehend strangers in
blood. All the members of one gens, or even of one phratry, believed
themselves to be sprung, not, indeed, from the same grandfather or
greatgrandfather, but from the same divine or heroic ancestor: all
the contemporary members of the phratry of Hekatæus had a common god
for their ancestor in the sixteenth degree; and this fundamental
belief, into which the Greek mind passed with so much facility,
was adopted and converted by positive compact into the gentile and
phratric principle of union. It is because such a transfusion, not
recognized by Christianity, is at variance with modern habits of
thought, and because we do not readily understand how such a legal
and religious fiction can have sunk deep into the Greek feelings,
that the phratries and gentes appear to us mysterious: but they are
in harmony with all the legendary genealogies which have been set
forth in the preceding volume. Doubtless Niebuhr, in his valuable
discussion of the ancient Roman gentes, is right in supposing that
they were not real families, procreated from any common historical
ancestor: but it is not the less true, though he seems to suppose
otherwise, that the idea of the gens involved _the belief_ in a
common first father, divine or heroic,—a genealogy which we may
properly call fabulous, but which was consecrated and accredited
among the members of the gens itself, and served as one important
bond of union between them.[91] And though an analytical mind
like Aristotle might discern the difference between the gens and
the family, so as to distinguish the former as the offspring of
some special compact, still, this is no fair test of the feelings
usual among early Greeks; nor is it certain that Aristotle himself,
son of the physician Nikomachus, who belonged to the gens of the
Asklepiads,[92] would have consented to disallow the procreative
origin of _all_ these religious families without any exception. The
natural families of course changed from generation to generation,
some extending themselves while others diminished or died out; but
the gens received no alterations, except through the procreation,
extinction, or subdivision of these component families; accordingly,
the relations of the families with the gens were in perpetual course
of fluctuation, and the gentile ancestorial genealogy, adapted as it
doubtless was to the early condition of the gens, became in process
of time partially obsolete and unsuitable. We hear of this genealogy
but rarely, because it is only brought before the public in certain
cases preëminent and venerable. But the humbler gentes had their
common rites, and common superhuman ancestor and genealogy, as well
as the more celebrated: the scheme and ideal basis was the same in
all.

[91] Niebuhr, Römische Geschichte, vol. i, pp. 317-337. Varro’s
language on that point is clear: “Ut in hominibus quædam
sunt cognationes et gentilitates, sic in verbis. Ut enim ab
Æmilio homines orti Æmilii et gentiles, sic ab Æmilii nomine
declinatæ voces in gentilitate nominali.” Paul. Diacon. p. 94.
“Gentilis dicitur ex eodem genere ortus, et is qui simili nomine
appellatur,” etc. See Becker, Handbuch der Römischen Alterthümer,
part 2, abth. 2, p. 36.

The last part of the definition ought to be struck out for
the Grecian gentes. The passage of Varro does not prove the
historical reality of the primitive father, or genarch, Æmilius,
but it proves that the members of the gens believed in him.

Dr. Wilda, in his learned work, “Das Deutsche Strafrecht,”
(Halle, 1842,) dissents from Niebuhr in the opposite direction,
and seems to maintain that the Grecian and Roman gentes were
really distant blood relations (p. 123). How this can be proved,
I do not know: and it is inconsistent with the opinion which he
advances in the preceding page (p. 122), very justly,—that these
quasi families are primordial facts in early human society,
beyond which we cannot carry our researches. “The farther we go
back in history, the more does the community exhibit the form of
a family, though in reality it is not a mere family. This is the
limit of historical research, which no man can transgress with
impunity,” (p. 122).

[92] Diogen. Laërt. v, 1.

Analogies, borrowed from very different people and parts of the
world, prove how readily these enlarged and factitious family
unions assort with the ideas of an early stage of society. The
Highland clan, the Irish sept,[93] the ancient legally constituted
families in Friesland and Dithmarsch, the phis, or phara, among
the Albanians, are examples of a similar practice:[94] and the
adoption of prisoners by the North American Indians, as well as
the universal prevalence and efficacy of the ceremony of adoption
in the Grecian and Roman world, exhibit to us a solemn formality
under certain circumstances, originating an union and affections
similar to those of kindred. Of this same nature were the phratries
and gentes at Athens, the curiæ and gentes at Rome, but they were
peculiarly modified by the religious imagination of the ancient
world, which always traced back the past time to gods and heroes:
and religion thus supplied both the common genealogy as their basis,
and the privileged communion of special sacred rites as means of
commemoration and perpetuity. The gentes, both at Athens and in
other parts of Greece, bore a patronymic name, the stamp of their
believed common paternity: we find the Asklepiadæ in many parts of
Greece,—the Aleuadæ in Thessaly,—the Midylidæ, Psalychidæ, Blepsiadæ,
Euxenidæ, at Ægina,—the Branchidæ at Miletus,—the Nebridæ at Kôs,—the
Iamidæ and Klytiadæ at Olympia,—the Akestoridæ at Argos,—the Kinyradæ
in Cyprus,—the Penthilidæ at Mitylene,[95]—the Talthybiadæ at
Sparta,—not less than the Kodridæ, Eumolpidæ, Phytalidæ, Lykomêdæ,
Butadæ, Euneidæ, Hesychidæ, Brytiadæ, &c., in Attica.[96] To each
of these corresponded a mythical ancestor more or less known, and
passing for the first father as well as the eponymous hero of the
gens,—Kodrus, Eumolpus, Butes, Phytalus, Hesychus, &c.

[93] See Colonel Leake’s Travels in Northern Greece, ch. 2, p. 85
(the Greek word φράτριαι seems to be adopted in Albania); Boué,
La Turquie en Europe, vol. ii, ch. 1, pp. 15-17; chap. 4, p. 530;
Spenser’s View of the State of Ireland (vol. vi, pp. 1542-1543,
of Tonson’s edition of Spenser’s Works, 1715); Cyprien Robert,
Die Slaven in Turkey, b. 1, chs. 1 and 2.

So, too, in the laws of king Alfred in England, on the subject
of murder, the guild-brethren, or members of the same guild,
are made to rank in the position of distant relatives, if there
happen to be no blood relatives:—

“If a man, kinless of paternal relatives, fight and slay a man,
then, if he have maternal relatives, let them pay a third of
the wēr: his guild-brethren a third part: for a third let him
flee. If he have no maternal relatives, let his guild-brethren
pay half: for half let him flee.... If a man kill a man thus
circumstanced, if he have no relatives, let half be paid to the
king, half to his guild-brethren.” (Thorpe, Ancient Laws and
Institutes of England, vol. i, pp. 79-81.) Again, in the same
work, Leges Henrici Primi, vol. i, p. 596, the ideas of the
kindred and the guild run together in the most intimate manner:
“Si quis hominem occidat,—Si eum tunc _cognatio sua_ deserat, et
pro eo _gildare_ nolit,” etc. In the Salic law, the members of a
_contubernium_ were invested with the same rights and obligations
one towards the other (Rogge, Gerichtswesen der Germanen, ch.
iii, p. 62). Compare Wilda, Deutsches Strafrecht, p. 389, and the
valuable special treatise of the same author (Das Gildenwesen
im Mittelalter. Berlin, 1831), where the origin and progress
of the guilds from the primitive times of German heathenism is
unfolded. He shows that these associations have their basis
in the earliest feelings and habits of the Teutonic race,—the
family was, as it were, a natural guild,—the guild, a factitious
family. Common religious sacrifices and festivals,—mutual defence
and help, as well as mutual responsibility,—were the recognized
bonds among the _congildones_: they were _sororitates_ as well as
_fraternitates_, comprehending both men and women (deren Genosser
wie die Glieder einer Familie enge unter einander verbunden
waren, p. 145). Wilda explains how this primitive social and
religious _phratry_ (sometimes this very expression _fratria_ is
used, see p. 109) passed into something like the more political
tribe, or _phylê_ (see pp. 43, 57, 60, 116, 126, 129, 344). The
sworn _commune_, which spread so much throughout Europe in the
beginning of the twelfth century, partakes both of the one and of
the other,—_conjuratio_,—_amicitia jurata_ (pp. 148, 169).

The members of an Albanian _phara_ are all jointly bound to
exact, and each severally exposed to suffer, the vengeance of
blood, in the event of homicide committed upon, or by, any one of
them (Boué, _ut supra_).

[94] See the valuable chapter of Niebuhr, Röm. Gesch. vol. i, pp.
317, 350, 2d edit.

The _Alberghi_ of Genoa in the Middle Ages were enlarged families
created by voluntary compact: “De tout temps (observes Sismondi)
les familles puissantes avaient été dans l’usage, à Gênes,
d’augmenter encore leur puissance en adoptant d’autres familles
moins riches, moins illustres, ou moins nombreuses,—auxquelles
elles communiquoient leur nom et leurs armes, qu’elles prenoient
ainsi l’engagement de protéger,—et qui en retour s’associoient à
toutes leurs quérelles. Les maisons dans lesquelles on entroit
ainsi par adoption, étoient nommées des alberghi (auberges),
et il y avoit peu de maisons illustres qui ne se fussent ainsi
récrutées a l’aide de quelque famille étrangère.” (Républiques
Italiennes, t. xv, ch. 120, p. 366.)

Eichhorn (Deutsche Staats und Rechts-Geschichte, sect. 18, vol.
i, p. 84, 5th edit.) remarks in regard to the ancient Germans,
that the German “familiæ et propinquitates,” mentioned by Tacitus
(Germ. c. 7), and the “gentibus cognationibusque hominum” of
Cæsar (B. G. vi. 22), bore more analogy to the Roman gens than to
relationship of blood or wedlock. According to the idea of some
of the German tribes, even blood-relationship might be formally
renounced and broken off, with all its connected rights and
obligations, at the pleasure of the individual: he might declare
himself ἐκποιητὸς, to use the Greek expression. See the Titul. 63
of the Salic law, as quoted by Eichhorn, _l. c._

Professor Koutorga of St. Petersburg (in his Essai sur
l’Organisation de la Tribu dans l’Antiquité, translated from
Russian into French by M. Chopin, Paris, 1839) has traced out
and illustrated the fundamental analogy between the social
classification, in early times, of Greeks, Romans, Germans, and
Russians (see especially, pp. 47, 213). Respecting the early
history of Attica, however, many of his positions are advanced
upon very untrustworthy evidence (see p. 123, _seq._).

[95] Pindar, Pyth. viii, 53; Isthm. vi, 92; Nem. vii, 103;
Strabo, ix, p. 421; Stephan. Byz. v. Κῶς; Herodot. v, 44; vii,
134; ix, 37; Pausan. x, 1, 4; Kallimachus, Lavacr. Pallad. 33;
Schol. Pindar. Pyth. ii. 27; Aristot. Pol. v, 8, 13: Ἀλευάδων
τοὺς πρώτους, Plato, Menon. 1, which marks them as a numerous
gens. See Buttmann, Dissert. on the Aleuadæ in the Mythologus,
vol. ii, p. 246. Bacchiadæ at Corinth, ἐδίδοσαν καὶ ἤγοντο ἐξ
ἀλλήλων (Herod. v, 92).

[96] Harpokration, v. Ἐτεοβουτάδαι, Βουτάδαι; Thucyd. viii, 53;
Plutarch, Theseus, 12; Themistoklês, 1; Demosth. cont. Neær. p.
1365: Polemo ap. Schol. ad Soph. Œdip. Kol. 489; Plutarch, Vit.
x, Orator. pp. 841-844. See the Dissertation of O. Müller, De
Minervâ Poliade, c. 2.

The revolution of Kleisthenês in 509 B. C. abolished the old
tribes for civil purposes, and created ten new tribes,—leaving
the phratries and gentes unaltered, but introducing the local
distribution according to demes, or cantons, as the foundation of
his new political tribes. A certain number of demes belonged to each
of the ten Kleisthenean tribes (the demes in the same tribes were
not usually contiguous, so that the tribe was not coincident with a
definite circumscription), and the deme, in which every individual
was then registered, continued to be that in which his descendants
were also registered. But the gentes had no connection, as such, with
these new tribes, and the members of the same gens might belong to
different demes.[97] It deserves to be remarked, however, that to a
certain extent, in the old arrangement of Attica, the division into
gentes coincided with the division into demes; that is, it happened
not unfrequently that the gennêtes or members of the same gens lived
in the same canton, so that the name of the gens and the name of the
deme was the same: moreover, it seems that Kleisthenês recognized
a certain number of new demes, to which he gave names derived from
some important gens resident near the spot. It is thus that we are
to explain the large number of the Kleisthenean demes which bear
patronymic names.[98]

[97] Demosth. cont. Neær. p. 1365. Tittmann (Griechische
Staatsverfass, p. 277) thinks that every citizen, after the
Kleisthenean revolution, was of necessity a member of some
phratry, as well as of some deme: but the evidence which he
produces is, in my judgment, insufficient. The ideas of the
phratry and the tribe are often confounded together; thus the
Ægeidæ of Sparta, whom Herodotus (iv, 149) calls a tribe, are
by Aristotle called a phratry of Thebans (ap. Schol. ad Pindar.
Isthm. vii, 18). Compare Wachsmuth, Hellenische Alterthumskunde,
sect. 83, p. 17.

A great many of the demes seem to have derived their names from
the shrubs or plants which grew in their neighborhood (Schol. ad
Aristophan. Plutus, 586, Μυρρινοῦς, Ῥαμνοῦς, etc.).

[98] For example, Æthalidæ, Butadæ, Kothôkidæ, Dædalidæ,
Eiresidæ, Epieikidæ, Erœadæ, Eupyridæ, Echelidæ, Keiriadæ,
Kydantidæ, Lakiadæ, Pambôtadæ, Peritheidæ, Persidæ, Semachidæ,
Skambônidæ, Sybridæ, Titakidæ, Thyrgonidæ, Hybadæ, Thymœtadæ,
Pæonidæ, Philaidæ, Chollidæ: all these names of demes, bearing
the patronymic form, are found in Harpokration and Stephanus Byz.
alone.

We do not know that the Κεραμεῖς ever constituted a γένος, but
the name of the deme Κεραμεῖς is evidently given, upon the same
principle, to a place chiefly occupied by potters. The gens
Κοιρώνιδαι are said to have been called Φιλιεῖς (? Φλυεῖς) and
Περιθοῖδαι as well as Κοιρώνιδαι: the names of gentes and those
of demes seem not always distinguishable.

The Butadæ, though a highly venerable gens, also ranked as a deme
(see the Psephism about Lykurgus in Plutarch, Vit. x. Orator,
p. 852): yet we do not know that there was any locality called
Butadæ. Perhaps some of the names above noticed may be simply
names of gentes, enrolled as demes, but without meaning to imply
any community of abode among the members.

The members of the Roman gens occupied adjoining residences,
on some occasions,—to what extent we do not know (Heiberg, De
Familiari Patriciorum Nexu, ch. 24, 25. Sleswic, 1829).

We find the same patronymic names of demes and villages
elsewhere: in Kôs and Rhodes (Ross, Inscr. Gr. ined., Nos. 15-26.
Halle, 1846); _Lêstadæ_ in Naxos (Aristotle ap. Athenæ. viii,
p. 348); _Botachidæ_ at Tegea (Steph. Byz. in v); _Branchidæ_,
near Miletus, etc.; and an interesting illustration is afforded,
in other times and other places, by the frequency of the ending
ikon in villages near Zurich in Switzerland,—Mezikon, Nennikon,
Wezikon, etc. Blüntschli, in his history of Zurich, shows that
these terminations are abridgments of _inghoven_, including an
original patronymic element,—indicating the primary settlement
of members of a family, or of a band bearing the name of its
captain, on the same spot (Blüntschli, Staats und Rechts
Geschichte der Stadt Zurich, vol. i, p. 26).

In other Inscriptions from the island of Kôs, published by
Professor Ross, we have a deme mentioned (without name), composed
of three coalescing gentes, “In hoc et sequente titulo alium
jam deprehendimus _demum Coum_, e tribus gentibus appellatione
patronymicâ conflatum, Antimachidarum, Ægiliensium, Archidarum.”
(Ross, Inscript. Græc. Ined. Fascic. iii, No. 307, p. 44.
Berlin, 1845.) This is a specimen of the process systematically
introduced by Kleisthenês in Attica.

There is one remarkable difference between the Roman and the Grecian
gens, arising from the different practice in regard to naming. A
Roman patrician bore habitually three names,—the gentile name, with
one name following it to denote his family, and another preceding it
peculiar to himself in that family. But in Athens, at least after
the revolution of Kleisthenês, the gentile name was not employed: a
man was described by his own single name, followed first by the name
of his father, and next by that of the deme to which he belonged,—as
_Æschinês, son of Atromêtus, a Kothôkid_. Such a difference in
the habitual system of naming, tended to make the gentile tie more
present to every one’s mind at Rome than in the Greek cities.

Before the pecuniary classification of the Atticans introduced by
Solon, the phratries and gentes, and the trittyes and naukraries,
were the only recognized bonds among them, and the only basis of
legal rights and obligations, over and above the natural family.
The gens constituted a close incorporation, both as to property
and as to persons. Until the time of Solon, no man had any power
of testamentary disposition: if he died without children, his
gennêtes succeeded to his property,[99] and so they continued to
do even after Solon, if he died intestate. An orphan girl might be
claimed in marriage of right by any member of the gens, the nearest
agnates being preferred;[100] if she was poor, and he did not choose
to marry her himself, the law of Solon compelled him to provide
her with a dowry proportional to his enrolled scale of property,
and to give her out in marriage to another; and the magnitude of
the dowry required to be given,—large, even as fixed by Solon,
and afterwards doubled,—seems a proof that the lawgiver intended
indirectly to enforce actual marriage.[101] If a man was murdered,
first his near relations, next his gennêtes and phrators, were both
allowed and required to prosecute the crime at law;[102] his fellow
demots, or inhabitants of the same deme, did not possess the like
right of prosecuting. All that we hear of the most ancient Athenian
laws is based upon the gentile and phratric divisions, which are
treated throughout as extensions of the family. It is to be observed
that this division is completely independent of any property
qualification,—rich men as well as poor being comprehended in the
same gens.[103] Moreover, the different gentes were very unequal in
dignity, arising chiefly from the religious ceremonies of which each
possessed the hereditary and exclusive administration, and which,
being in some cases considered as of preëminent sanctity in reference
to the whole city, were therefore nationalized. Thus the Eumolpidæ
and Kêrȳkes, who supplied the Hierophant, and superintended the
mysteries of the Eleusinian Dêmêtêr,—and the Butadæ, who furnished
the priestess of Athênê Polias as well as the priest of Poseidôn
Erechtheus in the acropolis,—seem to have been reverenced above all
the other gentes.[104] When the name Butadæ was adopted in the
Kleisthenean arrangement as the name of a deme, the holy gens so
called adopted the distinctive denomination of Eteobutadæ, or “The
True Butadæ.”[105]

[99] Plutarch, Solon. 21. We find a common cemetery exclusively
belonging to the gens, and tenaciously preserved (Demosth. cont.
Eubulid. p. 1307; Cicero, Legg. ii, 26).

[100] Demosth. cont. Makartat. p. 1068. See the singular
additional proviso in Plutarch, Solon, c. 20.

[101] See Meursius, Themis Attica, i, 13.

[102] That this was the primitive custom, and that the limitation
μέχρις ἀνεψιαδῶν (Meier, De Bonis Damnat. p. 23, cites ἀνεψιαδῶν
καὶ φρατόρων) was subsequently introduced (Demosth. cont. Euerg.
et Mnesib. p. 1161), we may gather from the law as it stands in
Demosth. cont. Makartat. p. 1069, which includes the phrators,
and therefore, _à fortiori_, the gennêtes, or gentiles.

The same word γένος is used to designate both the circle of
nameable relatives, brothers, first cousins (ἀγχιστεῖς, Demosth.
cont. Makartat. c. 9, p. 1058), etc., going beyond the οἶκος,—and
the quasi-family, or gens. As the gentile tie tended to become
weaker, so the former sense of the word became more and more
current, to the extinction of the latter. Οἱ ἐν γένει, or οἱ
προσήκοντες, would have borne a wider sense in the days of Drako
than in those of Demosthenes: Συγγενὴς usually belongs to γένος
in the narrower sense, γεννήτης to γένος in the wider sense; but
Isæus sometimes uses the former word as an exact equivalent of
the latter (Orat. vii, pp. 95, 99, 102, 103, Bekker). Τριακὰς
appears to be noted in Pollux as the equivalent of γένος, or
gens (viii, 111), but the word does not occur in the Attic
orators, and we cannot make out its meaning with certainty: the
Inscription of the Deme of Peiræeus given in Boeckh (Corp. Insc.
No. 101, p. 140,) rather adds to the confusion by revealing the
existence of a τριακὰς constituting the fractional part of a
deme, and not connected with a gens: compare Boeckh’s Comment.
_ad loc._ and his Addenda and Corrigenda, p. 900.

Dr. Thirlwall translates γένος, _house_; which I cannot but think
inconvenient, because that word is the natural equivalent of
οἶκος,—a very important word in reference to Attic feelings, and
quite different from γένος (Hist. of Greece, vol. ii, p. 14, ch.
11). It will be found impossible to translate it by any known
English word which does not at the same time suggest erroneous
ideas: which I trust will be accepted as my excuse for adopting
it untranslated into this History.

[103] Demosthen. cont. Makartat _l. c._

[104] See Æschines de Falsâ Legat. p. 292, c. 46; Lysias cont.
Andokid. p. 108; Andokid. de Mysteriis, p. 63, Reiske; Deinarchus
and Hellanikus ap. Harpokration. v. Ἱεροφάντης.

In case of crimes of impiety, particularly in offences against
the sanctity of the Mysteries, the Eumolpidæ had a peculiar
tribunal of their own number, before which offenders were brought
by the king archon. Whether it was often used, seems doubtful;
they had also certain unwritten customs of great antiquity,
according to which they pronounced (Demosthen. cont. Androtion.
p. 601; Schol. ad Demosth. vol. ii, p. 137, Reiske: compare Meier
and Schömann, Der Attische Prozess, p. 117). The Butadæ, also,
had certain old unwritten maxims (Androtion ap. Athenæ. ix, p.
374).

Compare Bossler, De Gentibus et Familiis Atticæ, p. 20, and
Ostermann, De Præconibus Græcor. sect. 2 and 3 (Marburg, 1845).

[105] Lykurgus the orator is described as τὸν δῆμον Βουτάδης,
γένους τοῦ τῶν Ἐτεοβουταδῶν (Plutarch, Vit. x. Orator. p. 841).

A great many of the ancient gentes of Attica are known to us by name;
but there is only one phratry (the Achniadæ) whose title has come
down to us.[106] These phratries and gentes probably never at any
time included the whole population of the country,—and the proportion
not included in them tended to become larger and larger, in the times
anterior to Kleisthenês,[107] as well as afterwards. They remained,
under his constitution, and throughout the subsequent history, as
religious quasi-families, or corporations, conferring rights and
imposing liabilities which were enforced in the regular dikasteries,
but not directly connected with the citizenship or with political
functions: a man might be a citizen without being enrolled in any
gens. The forty-eight naukraries ceased to exist, for any important
purposes, under his constitution: the deme, instead of the naukrary,
became the elementary political division, for military and financial
objects, and the demarch became the working local president, in place
of the chief of the naukrars. The deme, however, was not coincident
with a naukrary, nor the demarch with the previous chief of the
naukrary, though they were analogous and constituted for the like
purpose.[108] While the naukraries had been only forty-eight in
number, the demes formed smaller subdivisions, and, in later times at
least, amounted to a hundred and seventy-four.[109]

[106] In an inscription (apud Boeckh. Corpus Inscrip. No. 465).

Four names of the phratries at the Greek city of Neapolis, and
six names out of the thirty Roman curiæ, have been preserved
(Becker, Handbuch der Römischen Alterthümer, p. 32; Boeckh, Corp.
Inscript. ii, p. 650).

Each Attic phratry seems to have had its own separate laws
and customs, distinct from the rest, τοῖς φράτορσι, κατὰ τοὺς
~ἐκείνων~ νόμους (Isæus, Or. viii, p. 115, ed. Bek.; vii, p. 99;
iii, p. 49).

Bossler (De Gentibus et Familiis Atticæ, Darmstadt, 1833), and
Meier (De Gentilitate Atticâ, pp. 41-54) have given the names of
those Attic gentes that are known: the list of Meier comprises
seventy-nine in number (see Koutorga, Organis. Trib. p. 122).

[107] Tittmann (Griech. Staats Alterthümer, p. 271) is of
opinion that Kleisthenês augmented the number of phratries, but
the passage of Aristotle brought to support this opinion is
insufficient proof (Polit. vi, 2, 11). Still less can we agree
with Platner (Beyträge zur Kenntniss des Attischen Rechts, pp.
74-77), that three new phratries were assigned to each of the new
Kleisthenean tribes.

Allusion is made in Hesychius, Ἀτριάκαστοι, Ἔξω τριακάδος,
to persons not included in any gens, but this can hardly be
understood to refer to times anterior to Kleisthenês, as
Wachsmuth would argue (p. 238).

[108] The language of Photius on this matter (v. Ναυκραρία μὲν
~ὁποῖόν τι~ ἡ συμμορία καὶ ὁ δῆμος· ναύκραρος δὲ ὁποῖόν τι ὁ
δήμαρχος) is more exact than that of Harpokration, who identifies
the two completely,—v. Δήμαρχος. If it be true that the
naukraries were continued under the Kleisthenean constitution,
with the alteration that they were augmented to fifty in number,
five to every Kleisthenean tribe, they must probably have been
continued in name alone without any real efficiency or function.
Kleidêmus makes this statement, and Boeckh follows it (Public
Economy of Athens, l. ii, ch. 21, p. 256): yet I cannot but doubt
its correctness. For the τριττὺς (one-third of a Kleisthenean
tribe) was certainly retained and was a working and available
division (see Dêmosthenês de Symmoriis, c. 7, p. 184), and
it seems hardly probable that there should be two coexistent
divisions, one representing the third part, the other the fifth
part, of the same tribes.

[109] Strabo, ix, p. 396.

But though this early quadruple division into tribes is tolerably
intelligible in itself, there is much difficulty in reconciling it
with that severalty of government which we learn to have originally
prevailed among the inhabitants of Attica. From Kekrops down to
Theseus, says Thucydidês, there were many different cities in
Attica, each of them autonomous and self-governing, with its own
prytaneium and its own archons; and it was only on occasions of
some common danger that these distinct communities took counsel
together under the authority of the Athenian kings, whose city
at that time comprised merely the holy rock of Athênê on the
plain,[110]—afterwards so conspicuous as the acropolis of the
enlarged Athens,—together with a narrow area under it on the
southern side. It was Theseus, he states, who effected that great
revolution whereby the whole of Attica was consolidated into one
government, all the local magistracies and councils being made
to centre in the prytaneium and senate of Athens: his combined
sagacity and power enforced upon all the inhabitants of Attica the
necessity of recognizing Athens as the one city in the country, and
of occupying their own abodes simply as constituent portions of
Athenian territory. This important move, which naturally produced a
great extension of the central city, was commemorated throughout the
historical times by the Athenians in the periodical festival called
Synœkia, in honor of the goddess Athênê.[111]

[110] Strabo, ix, p. 396, πετρὰ ἐν πεδίῳ περιοικουμένη κύκλῳ.
Euripid. Ion, 1578, σκόπελον οἳ ναίουσ᾽ ἐμόν (Athênê).

[111] Thucyd. ii, 15; Theophrast. Charact. 29, 4. Plutarch
(Theseus, 24) gives the proceedings of Theseus in greater detail,
and with a stronger tinge of democracy.

Such is the account which Thucydidês gives of the original severalty
and subsequent consolidation of the different portions of Attica.
Of the general fact there is no reason to doubt, though the
operative cause assigned by the historian,—the power and sagacity
of Theseus,—belongs to legend and not to history. Nor can we
pretend to determine either the real steps by which such a change
was brought about, or its date, or the number of portions which
went to constitute the full-grown Athens,—farther enlarged at some
early period, though we do not know when, by voluntary junction of
the Bœotian, or semi-Bœotian, town Eleutheræ, situated among the
valleys of Kithærôn between Eleusis and Platæa. It was the standing
habit of the population of Attica, even down to the Peloponnesian
war,[112] to reside in their several cantons, where their ancient
festivals and temples yet continued as relics of a state of previous
autonomy: their visits to the city were made only at special times,
for purposes religious or political, and they yet looked upon the
country residence as their real home. How deep-seated this cantonal
feeling was among them, we may see by the fact that it survived the
temporary exile forced upon them by the Persian invasion, and was
resumed when the expulsion of that destroying host enabled them to
rebuild their ruined dwellings in Attica.[113]

[112] Pausan. i, 2, 4; 38, 2; Diodor. Sicul. iv, 2; Schol. ad
Aristophan. Acharn. 242.

The Athenians transferred from Eleutheræ to Athens both a
venerable statue of Dionysus and a religious ceremony in honor
of that god. The junction of the town with Athens is stated by
Pausanias to have taken place in consequence of the hatred of
its citizens for Thebes, and must have occurred before 509 B.
C., about which period we find Hysiæ to be the frontier deme of
Attica (Herodot. v, 72; vi, 108).

[113] Thucyd. ii, 15, 16. οὐδὲν ἄλλο ἢ πόλιν τὴν ἑαυτοῦ ἀπολείπων
ἕκαστος,—respecting the Athenians from the country who were
driven into Athens at the first invasion during the Peloponnesian
war.

How many of the demes recognized by Kleisthenês had originally
separate governments, or in what local aggregates they stood
combined, we cannot now make out; it will be recollected that the
city of Athens itself contained several demes, and Peiræeus also
formed a deme apart. Some of the twelve divisions, which Philochorus
ascribes to Kekrops, present probable marks of an ancient substantive
existence,—Kekropia, or the region surrounding and including the
city and acropolis; the tetrapolis, composed of Œnoê, Trikorythus,
Probalinthus, and Marathon;[114] Eleusis; Aphidnæ and Dekeleia,[115]
both distinguished by their peculiar mythical connection with Sparta
and the Dioskuri. But it is difficult to imagine that Phalêrum,
which is one of the separate divisions named by Philochorus, can
ever have enjoyed an autonomy apart from Athens. Moreover, we find
among some of the demes which Philochorus does not notice, evidences
of standing antipathies, and prohibitions of intermarriage, which
might seem to indicate that these had once been separate little
states.[116] Though in most cases we can infer little from the
legends and religious ceremonies which nearly every deme[117]
had peculiar to itself, yet those of Eleusis are so remarkable,
as to establish the probable autonomy of that township down to a
comparatively late period. The Homeric Hymn to Dêmêtêr, recounting
the visit of that goddess to Eleusis after the abduction of her
daughter, and the first establishment of the Eleusinian ceremonies,
specifies the eponymous prince Eleusis, and the various chiefs of the
place,—Keleos, Triptolemus, Dioklês, and Eumolpus; it also notices
the Rharian plain in the neighborhood of Eleusis, but not the least
allusion is made to Athens or to any concern of the Athenians in the
presence or worship of the goddess. There is reason to believe that
at the time when this Hymn was composed, Eleusis was an independent
town: what that time was we have no means of settling, though Voss
puts it as low as the 30th Olympiad.[118] And the proof hence derived
is so much the more valuable, because the Hymn to Dêmêtêr presents
a coloring strictly special and local; moreover, the story told by
Solon to Crœsus, respecting Tellus the Athenian, who perished in
battle against the neighboring townsmen of Eleusis,[119] assumes,
in like manner, the independence of the latter in earlier times.
Nor is it unimportant to notice that, even so low as 300 B. C., the
observant visitor Dikæarchus professes to detect a difference between
the native Athenians and the Atticans, as well in physiognomy as in
character and taste.[120]

[114] Etymologicon Magn. v. Ἐπακρία χωρά; Strabo, viii, p. 383;
Stephan. Byz. v. Τετράπολις.

The τετράκωμοι comprised the four demes, Πειραῖεις, Φαληρεῖς,
Ξυπετεῶνες, Θυμοίταδαι (Pollux, iv, 105): whether this is an
old division, however, has been doubted (see Ilgen, De Tribubus
Atticis, p. 51).

The Ἐπακρέων τριττὺς is mentioned in an inscription apud Ross
(Die Demen von Attika, p. vi). Compare Boeckh ad Corp. Inscr. No.
82: among other demes, it comprised the deme Plôtheia. Mesogæa
also (or rather the Mesogei, οἱ Μεσόγειοι) appears as a communion
for sacrifice and religious purposes, and as containing the deme
Batê. See Inscriptiones Atticæ nuper repertæ duodecim, by Ern.
Curtius; Berlin, 1843; Inscript. i, p. 3. The exact site of the
deme Batê in Attica is unknown (Ross, Die Demen von Attica, p.
64); and respecting the question, what portion of Attica was
called Mesogæa, very different conjectures have been started,
which there appears to be no means of testing. Compare Schömann
de Comitiis, p. 343, and Wordsworth, Athens and Attica, p. 229,
2d edit.

[115] Dikæarchus, Fragm. p. 109, ed. Fuhr; Plutarch, Theseus, c.
33.

[116] Such as that between the Pallenæans and Agnusians
(Plutarch, Theseus, 12).

Acharnæ was the largest and most populous deme in Attica
(see Ross, Die Demen von Attika, p. 62; Thucyd. ii, 21); yet
Philochorus does not mention it as having ever constituted a
substantive πόλις.

Several of the demes seem to have stood in repute for peculiar
qualities, good or bad: see Aristophan. Acharn. 177, with
Elmsley’s note.

[117] Strabo, ix, p. 396; Plutarch, Theseus, 14. Polemo had
written a book expressly on the eponymous heroes of the Attic
demes and tribes (Preller. Polemonis Fragm. p. 42): the
Atthidographers were all rich on the same subject: see the
Fragments of the Atthis of Hellanikus (p. 24, ed. Preller), also
those of Istrus, Philochorus, etc.

[118] J. H. Voss, Erlaüterungen, p. 1: see the Hymn, 96-106,
451-475: compare Hermesianax ap. Athen. xiii, p. 597.

[119] Herodot. i, 30.

[120] Dikæarch. Vita Græciæ, p. 141, Fragm. ed. Fuhr.

In the history set forth to us of the proceedings of Theseus, no
mention is made of these four Ionic tribes; but another and a totally
different distribution of the people into eupatridæ, geômori, and
demiurgi, which he is said to have first introduced, is brought
to our notice; Dionysius of Halikarnassus gives only a double
division,—eupatridæ and dependent cultivators; corresponding to his
idea of the patricians and clients in early Rome.[121] As far as we
can understand this triple distinction, it seems to be disparate and
unconnected with the four tribes above mentioned. The eupatridæ are
the wealthy and powerful men, belonging to the most distinguished
families in all the various gentes, and principally living in the
city of Athens, after the consolidation of Attica: from them are
distinguished the middling and lower people, roughly classified into
husbandmen and artisans. To the eupatridæ, is ascribed a religious as
well as a political and social ascendency; they are represented as
the source of all authority on matters both sacred and profane;[122]
they doubtless comprised those gentes, such as the Butadæ, whose
sacred ceremonies were looked upon with the greatest reverence by the
people: and we may conceive Eumolpus, Keleos, Dioklês, etc., as they
are described in the Homeric Hymn to Dêmêtêr, in the character of
eupatridæ of Eleusis. The humbler gentes, and the humbler members of
each gens, would appear in this classification confounded with that
portion of the people who belonged to no gens at all.

[121] Plutarch, Theseus, c. 25: Dionys. Hal. ii, 8.

[122] Etymologic. Magn. Εὐπατρίδαι—οἱ αὐτὸ τὸ ἄστυ οἰκοῦντες, καὶ
μετέχοντες τοῦ βασιλικοῦ γένους, καὶ τὴν τῶν ἱερῶν ἐπιμέλειαν
ποιούμενοι. The βασιλικὸν γένος includes not only the Kodrids,
but also the Erechtheids, Pandionids, Pallantids, etc. See also
Plutarch, Theseus, c. 24; Hesychius, Ἀγροιῶται.

Yet Isokratês seems to speak of the great family of the
Alkmæonidæ as _not_ included among the eupatridæ. (Orat. xvi, De
Bigis, p. 351, p. 506, Bek.)

From these eupatridæ exclusively, and doubtless by their selection,
the nine annual archons—probably also the prytanes of the
naukrari—were taken. That the senate of areopagus was formed of
members of the same order, we may naturally presume: the nine
archons all passed into it at the expiration of their year of
office, subject only to the condition of having duly passed the
test of accountability; and they remained members for life. These
are the only political authorities of whom we hear in the earliest
imperfectly known period of the Athenian government, after the
discontinuance of the king, and the adoption of the annual change
of archons. The senate of areopagus seems to represent the Homeric
council of old men;[123] and there were doubtless, on particular
occasions, general assemblies of the people, with the same formal and
passive character as the Homeric agora,—at least, we shall observe
traces of such assemblies anterior to the Solonian legislation.
Some of the writers of antiquity ascribed the first establishment
of the senate of areopagus to Solon, just as there were also some
who considered Lykurgus as having first brought together the Spartan
gerusia. But there can be little doubt that this is a mistake,
and that the senate of areopagus is a primordial institution,
of immemorial antiquity, though its constitution as well as its
functions underwent many changes. It stood at first alone as a
permanent and collegiate authority, originally by the side of the
kings and afterwards by the side of the archons: it would then
of course be known by the title of _The_ Boulê,—_The_ Senate, or
council; its distinctive title, “Senate of Areopagus,” borrowed from
the place where its sittings were held, would not be bestowed until
the formation by Solon of the second senate, or council, from which
there was need to discriminate it.

[123] Meier und Schömann, Der Attische Prozess. Einleitung, p. 10.

This seems to explain the reason why it was never mentioned in the
ordinances of Drako, whose silence supplied one argument in favor of
the opinion that it did not exist in his time, and that it was first
constituted by Solon.[124] We hear of the senate of areopagus chiefly
as a judicial tribunal, because it acted in this character constantly
throughout Athenian history, and because the orators have most
frequent occasion to allude to its decisions on matters of trial. But
its functions were originally of the widest senatorial character,
directive generally as well as judicial. And although the gradual
increase of democracy at Athens, as will be hereafter explained, both
abridged its powers and contributed still farther comparatively to
lower it, by enlarging the direct working of the people in assembly
and judicature, as well as that of the senate of Five Hundred, which
was a permanent adjunct and adminicle of the public assembly,—yet
it seems to have been, even down to the time of Periklês, the most
important body in the state. And after it had been cast into the
background by the political reforms of that great man, we still find
it on particular occasions stepping forward to reassert its ancient
powers, and to assume for the moment that undefined interference
which it had enjoyed without dispute in antiquity. The attachment
of the Athenians to their ancient institutions gave to the senate
of areopagus a constant and powerful hold on their minds, and this
feeling was rather strengthened than weakened when it ceased to be an
object of popular jealousy,—when it could no longer be employed as an
auxiliary of oligarchical pretensions.

[124] Plutarch, Solon, c. 19; Aristotle, Polit. ii. 9, 2; Cicero,
De Offic. i. 22. Pollux seems to follow the opinion that Solon
first instituted the senate of areopagus (viii, 125).

Of the nine archons, whose number continued unaltered from 638 B.
C. to the end of the free democracy, three bore special titles,—the
archon eponymus, from whose name the designation of the year was
derived, and who was spoken of as _The Archon_; the archon basileus
(king), or more frequently, the basileus; and the polemarch. The
remaining six passed by the general title of Thesmothetæ. Of the
first three, each possessed exclusive judicial competence in regard
to certain special matters: the thesmothetæ were in this respect all
on a par, acting sometimes as a board, sometimes individually. The
archon eponymus determined all disputes relative to the family, the
gentile, and the phratric relations: he was the legal protector of
orphans and widows.[125] The archon basileus, or king archon, enjoyed
competence in complaints respecting offences against the religious
sentiment and respecting homicide. The polemarch, speaking of times
anterior to Kleisthenês, was the leader of the military force and
judge in disputes between citizens and non-citizens. Moreover, each
of these three archons had particular religious festivals assigned
to him, which it was his duty to superintend and conduct. The six
thesmothetæ seem to have been judges in disputes and complaints,
generally, against citizens, saving the special matters reserved for
the cognizance of the first two archons. According to the proper
sense of the word thesmothetæ, all the nine archons were entitled to
be so called,[126] though the first three had especial designations
of their own: the word thesmoi, analogous to the themistes[127] of
Homer, includes in its meaning both general laws and particular
sentences,—the two ideas not being yet discriminated, and the general
law being conceived only in its application to some particular case.
Drako was the first thesmothet who was called upon to set down his
thesmoi in writing, and thus to invest them essentially with a
character of more or less generality.

[125] Pollux, viii, 89-91.

[126] We read the θεσμοθέτων ἀνάκρισις in Demosthen. cont.
Eubulidem, c. 17, p. 1319, and Pollux, viii, 85; a series of
questions which it was necessary for them to answer before they
were admitted to occupy their office. Similar questions must have
been put to the archon, the basileus, and the polemarch: so that
the words θεσμοθέτων ἀνάκρισις may reasonably be understood to
apply to all the nine archons, as, indeed, we find the words τοὺς
ἐννέα ἄρχοντας ἀνακρίνετε shortly afterwards, p. 1320.

[127] Respecting the word θέμιστες in the Homeric sense, see
above, vol. ii, ch. xx.

Both Aristotle (Polit. ii, 9, 9) and Dêmosthenês (contr. Euerg.
et Mnêsibul. c. 18, p. 1161) call the ordinances of Drako νόμοι,
not θεσμοί. Andokidês distinguishes the θεσμοὶ of Drako and
the νόμοι of Solon (De Mysteriis, p. 11). This is the adoption
of a phrase comparatively modern; Solon called his own laws
θεσμοί. The oath of the περίπολοι ἔφηβοι (the youth who formed
the armed police of Attica during the first two years of their
military age), as given in Pollux (viii, 106), seems to contain
at least many ancient phrases: this phrase,—καὶ τοῖς θεσμοῖς
τοῖς ἱδρυμένοις πείσομαι,—is remarkable, as it indicates the
ancient association of religious sanction which adhered to the
word θεσμοί; for ἱδρύεσθαι is the word employed in reference to
the establishment and domiciliation of the gods who protected
the country,—θέσθαι νόμους is the later expression for making
laws. Compare Stobæus De Republic. xliii, 48, ed. Gaisford, and
Dêmosthen. cont. Makartat. c. 13, p. 1069.

In the later and better-known times of Athenian law, we find these
archons deprived in great measure of their powers of judging and
deciding, and restricted to the task of first hearing the parties and
collecting the evidence, next, of introducing the matter for trial
into the appropriate dikastery, over which they presided. Originally,
there was no separation of powers: the archons both judged and
administered, sharing among themselves those privileges which had
once been united in the hands of the king, and probably accountable
at the end of their year of office to the senate of areopagus. It
is probable also, that the functions of that senate, and those of
the prytanes of the naukrars, were of the same double and confused
nature. All of these functionaries belonged to the eupatrids, and all
of them doubtless acted more or less in the narrow interest of their
order: moreover, there was ample room for favoritism, in the way of
connivance as well as antipathy, on the part of the archons. That
such was decidedly the case, and that discontent began to be serious,
we may infer from the duty imposed on the thesmothet Drako, B. C.
624, to put in writing the thesmoi, or ordinances, so that they might
be “shown publicly,” and known beforehand.[128] He did not meddle
with the political constitution, and in his ordinances Aristotle
finds little worthy of remark except the extreme severity[129] of the
punishments awarded: petty thefts, or even proved idleness of life,
being visited with death or disfranchisement.

[128] Ὅτε θεσμὸς ~ἐφάνη ὅδε~,—such is the exact expression of
Solon’s law (Plutarch, Solon, c. 19); the word θεσμὸς is found in
Solon’s own poems, θεσμοὺς δ᾽ ὁμοίους τῷ κακῷ τε κἀγαθῷ.

[129] Aristot. Polit. ii, 9, 9; Rhetoric. ii. 25, 1; Aulus Gell.
N. A. xi, 18; Pausanias, ix, 36, 4; Plutarch, Solon, c. 19;
though Pollux (viii, 42) does not agree with him. Taylor, Lectt.
Lysiacæ, ch. 10.

Respecting the θεσμοὶ of Drako, see Kuhn. ad Ælian. V. II. viii,
10. The preliminary sentence which Porphyry (De Abstinentiâ, iv,
22) ascribes to Drako can hardly be genuine.

But we are not to construe this remark as demonstrating any special
inhumanity in the character of Drako, who was not invested with
the large power which Solon afterwards enjoyed, and cannot be
imagined to have imposed upon the community severe laws of his own
invention. Himself of course an eupatrid, he set forth in writing
such ordinances as the eupatrid archons had before been accustomed to
enforce without writing, in the particular cases which came before
them; and the general spirit of penal legislation had become so
much milder, during the two centuries which followed, that these
old ordinances appeared to Aristotle intolerably rigorous. Probably
neither Drako, nor the Lokrian Zaleukus, who somewhat preceded him
in date, were more rigorous than the sentiment of the age: indeed,
the few fragments of the Drakonian tables which have reached us, far
from exhibiting indiscriminate cruelty, introduce, for the first
time, into the Athenian law, mitigating distinctions in respect to
homicide;[130] founded on the variety of concomitant circumstances.
He is said to have constituted the judges called Ephetæ, fifty-one
elders belonging to some respected gens or possessing an exalted
position, who held their sittings for trial of homicide in three
different spots, according to the difference of the cases submitted
to them. If the accused party, admitting the fact, denied any
culpable intention and pleaded accident, the case was tried at the
place called the palladium; when found guilty of accidental homicide,
he was condemned to a temporary exile, unless he could appease the
relatives of the deceased, but his property was left untouched.
If, again, admitting the fact, he defended himself by some valid
ground of justification, such as self-defence, or flagrant adultery
with his wife on the part of the deceased, the trial took place on
ground consecrated to Apollo and Artemis, called the Delphinium. A
particular spot called the Phreattys, close to the sea-shore, was
also named for the trial of a person, who, while under sentence of
exile for an unintentional homicide, might be charged with a second
homicide, committed of course without the limits of the territory:
being considered as impure from the effects of the former sentence,
he was not permitted to set foot on the soil, but stood his trial on
a boat hauled close in shore. At the prytaneium, or government-house
itself, sittings were held by the four phylo-basileis, or
tribe-kings, to try any inanimate object (a piece of wood or
stone, etc.) which had caused death to any one, without the proved
intervention of a human hand: the wood or stone, when the fact was
verified, was formally cast beyond the border.[131] All these
distinctions of course imply the preliminary investigation of the
case, called anakrisis, by the king-archon, in order that it might be
known what was the issue, and where the sittings of the ephetæ were
to be held.

[130] Pausanias, ix, 36, 4. Δράκοντος Ἀθηναίοις θεσμοθετήσαντος
ἐκ τῶν ἐκείνου κατέστη νόμων οὓς ἔγραφεν ἐπὶ τῆς ἀρχῆς, ἄλλων
τε ὁπόσων ἄδειαν εἶναι χρή, καὶ δὴ καὶ τιμωρίας μοιχοῦ: compare
Dêmosthen. cont. Aristokrat. p. 637; Lysias de Cæde Eratosthen.
p. 31.

[131] Harpokration, vv. Ἐφέται, Ἐπὶ Δελφινίῳ, Ἐπὶ Παλλαδίῳ,
Ἐν Φρεαττοῖ; Pollux, viii, 119, 124, 125; Photius, v. Ἐφέται;
Hesychius, ἐς Φρέατου; Dêmosthen. cont. Aristokrat. c. 15-18, pp.
642-645; cont. Makartat. c. 13, p. 1068. When Pollux speaks of
the five courts in which the ephetæ judged, he probably includes
the areopagus (see Dêmosth. cont. Aristokrat. c. 14, p. 641).

About the judges ἐν Φρεαττοῖ, see Aristot. Polit. iv, 13, 2.
On the general subject of this ancient and obscure criminal
procedure, see Matthiæ, De Judiciis Atheniensium (in Miscellan.
Philologie, vol. i, p. 143, _seq._); also Schömann, Antiq. Jur.
Pub. Att. sect. 61, p. 288; Platner, Prozess und Klagen bey den
Attikern, b. i, ch. 1; and E. W. Weber, Comment. ad Dêmosthen.
cont. Aristokrat. pp. 627, 641; Meier und Schömann, Attisch.
Prozess, pp. 14-19.

I cannot consider the ephetæ as judges in appeal, and I agree
with those (Schömann, Antiq. Jur. Pub. Gr. p. 171; Meier und
Schömann, Attisch. Prozess, p. 16; Platner, Prozess und Klagen,
t. i, p. 18) who distrust the etymology which connects this word
with ἐφέσιμος. The active sense of the word, akin to ἐφίεμαι
(Æsch. Prom. 4) and ἐφετμὴ, meets the case better: see O. Müller,
Prolegg. ad Mythol. p. 424 (though there is no reason for
believing the ephetæ to be older than Drako): compare, however,
K. F. Hermann, Lehrbuch der Griechischen Staats Alterthümer,
sects. 103, 104, who thinks differently.

The trial, condemnation, and banishment of inanimate objects
which had been the cause of death, was founded on feelings widely
diffused throughout the Grecian world (see Pausan. vi, 11, 2;
and Theokritus, Idyll, xxiii, 60): analogous in principle to the
English law respecting deodand, and to the spirit pervading the
ancient Germanic codes generally (see Dr. C. Trümmer, Die Lehre
von der Zurechnung, c. 28-38. Hamburg, 1845).

The Germanic codes do not content themselves with imposing a
general obligation to appease the relatives and gentiles of the
slain party, but determine beforehand the sum which shall be
sufficient to the purpose, which, in the case of involuntary
homicide, is paid to the surviving relatives as a compensation;
for the difference between culpable homicide, justifiable
homicide, and accidental homicide, see the elaborate treatise
of Wilda, Das Deutsche Strafrecht, ch. viii, pp. 544-559, whose
doctrine, however, is disputed by Dr. Trümmer, in the treatise
above noticed.

At Rome, according to the Twelve Tables, and earlier, involuntary
homicide was to be expiated by the sacrifice of a ram (Walter,
Geschichte des Römisch. Rechts, sect. 768).

So intimately was the mode of dealing with homicide connected with
the religious feelings of the Athenians, that these old regulations
were never formally abrogated throughout the historical times,
and were read engraved on their column by the contemporaries of
Dêmosthenês.[132] The areopagus continued in judicial operation, and
the ephetæ are spoken of as if they were so, even through the age of
Dêmosthenês; though their functions were tacitly usurped or narrowed,
and their dignity impaired,[133] by the more popular dikasteries
afterwards created. It is in this way that they have become known
to us, while the other Drakonian institutions have perished: but
there is much obscurity respecting them, particularly in regard to
the relation between the ephetæ and the areopagites. Indeed, so
little was known on the subject, even by the historical inquirers of
Athens, that most of them supposed the council of areopagus to have
received its first origin from Solon: and even Aristotle, though
he contradicts this view, expresses himself in no very positive
language.[134] That judges sat at the areopagus for the trial of
homicide, previous to Drako, seems implied in the arrangements of
that lawgiver respecting the ephetæ, inasmuch as he makes no new
provision for trying the direct issue of intentional homicide,
which, according to all accounts, fell within the cognizance of
the areopagus: but whether the ephetæ and the areopagites were
the same persons, wholly or partially, our information is not
sufficient to discover. Before Drako, there existed no tribunal
for trying homicide, except the senate, sitting at the areopagus,
and we may conjecture that there was something connected with that
spot,—legends, ceremonies, or religious feelings,—which compelled
judges there sitting to condemn every man proved guilty of homicide,
and forbade them to take account of extenuating or justifying
circumstances.[135] Drako appointed the ephetæ to sit at different
places; and these places are so pointedly marked, and were so
unalterably maintained, that we may see in how peculiar a manner
those special issues, of homicide under particular circumstances,
which he assigned to each, were adapted, in Athenian belief, to the
new sacred localities chosen,[136] each having its own distinct
ceremonial and procedure appointed by the gods themselves. That
the religious feelings of the Greeks were associated in the most
intimate manner with particular localities, has already been often
remarked; and Drako proceeded agreeably to them in his arrangements
for mitigating the indiscriminate condemnation of every man found
guilty of homicide, which was unavoidable so long as the areopagus
remained the only place of trial. The man who either confessed, or
was proved to have shed the blood of another, could not be acquitted,
or condemned to less than the full penalty (of death or perpetual
exile, with confiscation of property) by the judges on the hill of
Arês, whatever excuse he might have to offer: but the judges at the
palladium and delphinium might hear him, and even admit his plea,
without contracting the taint of irreligion. Drako did not directly
meddle with, nor indeed ever mention, the judges sitting in areopagus.

[132] Dêmosthen. cont. Euerg. et Mnêsib. p. 1161.

[133] Dêmosthen. cont. Aristokrat. p. 647. τοσούτοις
δικαστηρίοις, ἃ θεοὶ κατέδειξαν, καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα ἄνθρωποι χρῶνται
πάντα τὸν χρόνον, p. 643.—οἱ ταῦτ᾽ ἐξαρχῆς τὰ νόμισμα διαθέντες,
οἵτινές ποθ᾽ ἦσαν, εἴθ᾽ ἥρωες, εἴτε θεοί. See also the Oration
cont. Makartat. p. 1069; Æschin. cont. Ktesiphon. p. 636; Antiph.
De Cæde Herodis, c. 14.

The popular dikastery, in the age of Isokratês and Dêmosthenês,
held sittings ἐπὶ Παλλαδίῳ for the trial of charges of
unintentional homicide,—a striking evidence of the special
holiness of the place for that purpose (see Isokrat. cont.
Kallimachum, Or. xviii, p. 381; Dêmosth. cont. Neær. p. 1348).

The statement of Pollux (viii, 125), that the ephetæ became
despised, is not confirmed by the language of Dêmosthenês.

[134] Plutarch, Solon, c. 19; Aristot. Polit. ii, 9, 2.

[135] Read on this subject the maxims laid down by Plato (Legg.
xii, p. 941). Nevertheless, Plato copies, to a great degree,
the arrangements of the ephetic tribunals in his provisions for
homicide (Legg. ix. pp. 865-873).

[136] I know no place in which the special aptitude of particular
localities consecrated each to its own purpose, is so powerfully
set forth, as in the speech of Camillus against the transfer of
Rome to Veii (Livy, v, 52).

In respect to homicide, then, the Drakonian ordinances were partly a
reform of the narrowness, partly a mitigation of the rigor, of the
old procedure; and these are all that have come down to us, having
been preserved unchanged from the religious respect of the Athenians
for antiquity on this peculiar matter. The rest of his ordinances are
said to have been repealed by Solon, on account of their intolerable
severity. So they doubtless appeared, to the Athenians of a later
day, who had come to measure offences by a different scale; and even
to Solon, who had to calm the wrath of a suffering people in actual
mutiny.

That under this eupatrid oligarchy and severe legislation the people
of Attica were sufficiently miserable, we shall presently see, when
I recount the proceedings of Solon: but the age of democracy had not
yet begun, and the government received its first shock from the hands
of an ambitious eupatrid who aspired to the despotism. Such was the
phase, as has been remarked in the preceding chapter, through which,
during the century now under consideration, a large proportion of the
Grecian governments passed.

Kylôn, an Athenian patrician, who superadded to a great family
position the personal celebrity of a victory at Olympia, as runner
in the double stadium, conceived the design of seizing the acropolis
and constituting himself despot. Whether any special event had
occurred at home to stimulate this project, we do not know: but he
obtained both encouragement and valuable aid from his father-in-law
Theagenês of Megara, who, by means of his popularity with the
people, had already subverted the Megarian oligarchy, and become
despot of his native city. Previous to so hazardous an attempt,
however, Kylôn consulted the Delphian oracle, and was advised by
the god in reply, to take the opportunity of “the greatest festival
of Zeus” for seizing the acropolis. Such expressions, in the
natural interpretation put upon them by every Greek, designated
the Olympic games in Peloponnesus,—to Kylôn, moreover himself an
Olympic victor, that interpretation came recommended by an apparent
peculiar propriety. But Thucydidês, not indifferent to the credit of
the oracle, reminds his readers that no question was asked nor any
express direction given, _where_ the intended “greatest festival of
Zeus” was to be sought,—whether in Attica or elsewhere,—and that the
public festival of the Diasia, celebrated periodically and solemnly
in the neighborhood of Athens, was also denominated the “greatest
festival of Zeus Meilichius.” Probably no such exegetical scruples
presented themselves to any one, until after the miserable failure of
the conspiracy; least of all to Kylôn himself, who, at the recurrence
of the next ensuing Olympic games, put himself at the head of a
force, partly furnished by Theagenês, partly composed of his friends
at home, and took sudden possession of the sacred rock of Athens.
But the attempt excited general indignation among the Athenian
people, who crowded in from the country to assist the archons and the
prytanes of the naukrari in putting it down. Kylôn and his companions
were blockaded in the acropolis, where they soon found themselves
in straits for want of water and provisions; and though many of the
Athenians went back to their homes, a sufficient besieging force was
left to reduce the conspirators to the last extremity. After Kylôn
himself had escaped by stealth, and several of his companions had
died of hunger, the remainder, renouncing all hope of defence, sat
down as suppliants at the altar. The archon Megaklês, on regaining
the citadel, found these suppliants on the point of expiring with
hunger on the sacred ground, and to prevent such a pollution, engaged
them to quit the spot by a promise of sparing their lives. No sooner,
however, had they been removed into profane ground, than the promise
was violated and they were put to death: some even, who, seeing the
fate with which they were menaced, contrived to throw themselves
upon the altar of the venerable goddesses, or eumenides, near the
areopagus, received their death-wounds in spite of that inviolable
protection.[137]

[137] The narrative is given in Thucyd. i, 126; Herod. v, 71;
Plutarch, Solon, 12.

Though the conspiracy was thus put down, and the government
upheld, these deplorable incidents left behind them a long train
of calamity,—profound religious remorse mingled with exasperated
political antipathies. There still remained, if not a considerable
Kylonian party, at least a large body of persons who resented the
way in which the Kylonians had been put to death, and who became in
consequence bitter enemies of Megaklês the archon, and of the great
family of the Alkmæônidæ, to which he belonged. Not only Megaklês
himself and his personal assistants were denounced as smitten
with a curse, but the taint was supposed to be transmitted to his
descendants, and we shall hereafter find the wound reopened, not only
in the second and third generation, but also two centuries after the
original event.[138] When we see that the impression left by the
proceeding was so very serious, even after the length of time which
had elapsed, we may well believe that it was sufficient, immediately
afterwards, to poison altogether the tranquillity of the state.
The Alkmæônids and their partisans long defied their opponents,
resisting any public trial,—and the dissensions continued without
hope of termination, until Solon, then enjoying a lofty reputation
for sagacity and patriotism, as well as for bravery, persuaded them
to submit to judicial cognizance,—at a moment so far distant from the
event, that several of the actors were dead. They were accordingly
tried before a special judicature of three hundred eupatrids, Myrôn,
of the deme Phlyeis, being their accuser. In defending themselves
against the charge that they had sinned against the reverence due to
the gods and the consecrated right of asylum, they alleged that the
Kylonian suppliants, when persuaded to quit the holy ground, had tied
a cord round the statue of the goddess and clung to it for protection
in their march; but on approaching the altar of the eumenides, the
cord accidentally broke,—and this critical event, so the accused
persons argued, proved that the goddess had herself withdrawn from
them her protecting hand and abandoned them to their fate.[139]
Their argument, remarkable as an illustration of the feelings of
the time, was not, however, accepted as an excuse: they were found
guilty, and while such of them as were alive retired into banishment,
those who had already died were disinterred and cast beyond the
borders. Yet their exile, continuing as it did only for a time, was
not held sufficient to expiate the impiety for which they had been
condemned. The Alkmæônids, one of the most powerful families in
Attica, long continued to be looked upon as a tainted race,[140] and
in cases of public calamity were liable to be singled out as having
by their sacrilege drawn down the judgment of the gods upon their
countrymen.[141]

[138] Aristophan. Equit. 445, and the Scholia; Herodot. v, 70.

[139] Plutarch, Solon, c. 12. If the story of the breaking of the
cord had been true, Thucydidês could hardly have failed to notice
it; but there is no reason to doubt that it was the real defence
urged by the Alkmæônids.

When Ephesus was besieged by Crœsus, the inhabitants sought
protection to their town by dedicating it to Artemis: they
carried a cord from the walls of the town to the shrine of the
goddess, which was situated without the walls (Herod. i, 26).
The Samian despot Polykratês, when he consecrated to the Delian
Apollo the neighboring island of Rhêneia, connected it with the
island of Delos by means of a chain (Thucyd. iii, 104).

These analogies illustrate the powerful effect of visible or
material continuity on the Grecian imagination.

[140] Herodot. i, 61.

[141] See Thucyd. v, 16, and his language respecting Pleistoanax
of Sparta.

Nor was the banishment of the guilty parties adequate in other
respects to restore tranquillity. Not only did pestilential disorders
prevail, but the religious susceptibilities and apprehensions of
the Athenian community also remained deplorably excited: they were
oppressed with sorrow and despondency, saw phantoms and heard
supernatural menaces, and felt the curse of the gods upon them
without abatement.[142] In particular, it appears that the minds of
the women—whose religious impulses were recognized generally by the
ancient legislators as requiring watchful control—were thus disturbed
and frantic. The sacrifices offered at Athens did not succeed in
dissipating the epidemic, nor could the prophets at home, though they
recognized that special purifications were required, discover what
were the new ceremonies capable of appeasing the divine wrath. The
Delphian oracle directed them to invite a higher spiritual influence
from abroad, and this produced the memorable visit of the Kretan
prophet and sage Epimenidês to Athens.

[142] Plutarch, Solon, c. 12. Καὶ φόβοι τινὲς ἐκ δεισιδαιμονίας
ἅμα καὶ φάσματα κατεῖχε τὴν πόλιν, etc.

The century between 620 and 500 B. C. appears to have been remarkable
for the first diffusion and potent influence of distinct religious
brotherhoods, mystic rites, and expiatory ceremonies, none of which,
as I have remarked in a former chapter, find any recognition in
the Homeric epic. To this age belong Thalêtas, Aristeas, Abaris,
Pythagoras, Onomakritus, and the earliest provable agency of the
Orphic sect.[143] Of the class of men here noticed, Epimenidês, a
native of Phæstus or Knossus in Krete,[144] was one of the most
celebrated,—and the old legendary connection between Athens and
Krete, which shows itself in the tales of Theseus and Minos, is
here again manifested in the recourse which the Athenians had to
this island to supply their spiritual need. Epimenidês seems to
have been connected with the worship of the Kretan Zeus, in whose
favor he stood so high as to receive the denomination of the new
Kurête[145]—the Kurêtes having been the primitive ministers and
organizers of that worship. He was said to be the son of the nymph
Baltê; to be supplied by the nymphs with constant food, since he was
never seen to eat; to have fallen asleep in his youth in a cave, and
to have continued in this state without interruption for fifty-seven
years; though some asserted that he remained all this time a wanderer
in the mountains, collecting and studying medicinal botany in the
vocation of an Iatromantis, or leech and prophet combined. Such
narratives mark the idea entertained by antiquity of Epimenidês,
the Purifier,[146] who was now called in to heal both the epidemic
and the mental affliction prevalent among the Athenian people, in
the same manner as his countryman and contemporary Thalêtas had
been, a few years before, invited to Sparta to appease a pestilence
by the effect of his music and religious hymns.[147] The favor of
Epimenidês with the gods, his knowledge of propitiatory ceremonies,
and his power of working upon the religious feeling, was completely
successful in restoring both health and mental tranquillity at
Athens. He is said to have turned out some black and white sheep on
the areopagus, directing attendants to follow and watch them, and to
erect new altars to the appropriate local deities on the spots where
the animals lay down.[148] He founded new chapels and established
various lustral ceremonies; and more especially, he regulated the
worship paid by the women, in such a manner as to calm the violent
impulses which had before agitated them. We know hardly anything
of the details of his proceeding, but the general fact of his
visit, and the salutary effects produced in removing the religious
despondency which oppressed the Athenians, are well attested:
consoling assurances and new ritual precepts, from the lips of a
person supposed to stand high in the favor of Zeus, were the remedy
which this unhappy disorder required. Moreover, Epimenidês had the
prudence to associate himself with Solon, and while he thus doubtless
obtained much valuable advice, he assisted indirectly in exalting
the reputation of Solon himself, whose career of constitutional
reform was now fast approaching. He remained long enough at Athens
to restore completely a more comfortable tone of religious feeling,
and then departed, carrying with him universal gratitude and
admiration, but refusing all other reward, except a branch from the
sacred olive-tree in the acropolis.[149] His life is said to have
been prolonged to the unusual period of one hundred and fifty-four
years, according to a statement which was current during the time
of his younger contemporary Xenophanês of Kolophon;[150] and the
Kretans even ventured to affirm that he lived three hundred years.
They extolled him not merely as a sage and a spiritual purifier, but
also as a poet,—very long compositions on religious and mythical
subjects being ascribed to him; according to some accounts, they even
worshipped him as a god. Both Plato and Cicero considered Epimenidês
in the same light in which he was regarded by his contemporaries, as
a prophet divinely inspired, and foretelling the future under fits
of temporary ecstasy: but according to Aristotle, Epimenidês himself
professed to have received from the gods no higher gift than that of
divining the unknown phenomena of the past.[151]

[143] Lobeck, Aglaophamus, ii, p. 313; Hoeckh, Kreta, iii, 2, p.
252.

[144] The statements respecting Epimenidês are collected and
discussed in the treatise of Heinrich, Epimenides aus Kreta.
Leipsic, 1801.

[145] Diogen. Laërt. i, 114, 115.

[146] Plutarch, Solon, c. 12; Diogen. Laërt. i, 109-115; Pliny,
H. N. vii, 52. θεοφιλὴς καὶ σοφὸς περὶ τὰ θεῖα τὴν ἐνθουσιαστικὴν
καὶ ~τελεστικὴν σοφίαν~, etc. Maxim. Tyrius, xxxviii, 3, δεινὸς
τὰ θεῖα, οὐ μαθὼν ἀλλ᾽ ὕπνον αὐτῷ διηγεῖτο μακρὸν καὶ ὄνειρον
διδάσκαλον.

Ἰατρόμαντις, Æschyl. Supplic. 277; Καθαρτὴς, Iamblichus, Vit.
Pythagor. c. 28.

Plutarch (Sept. Sapient. Conviv. p. 157) treats Epimenidês
simply as having lived up to the precepts of the Orphic life, or
vegetable diet: to this circumstance, I presume, Plato (Legg.
iii, p. 677) must be understood to refer, though it is not very
clear. See the Fragment of the lost _Krêtes_ of Euripides, p. 98,
ed. Dindorf.

Karmanor of Tarrha in Krete had purified Apollo himself for the
slaughter of Pytho (Pausan. ii, 30, 3).

[147] Plutarch, De Musicâ, pp. 1134-1146; Pausanias, i, 14, 3.

[148] Cicero (Legg. ii, 11) states that Epimenidês directed a
temple to be erected at Athens to Ὕβρις and Ἀναίδεια (Violence
and Impudence): Clemens said that he had erected _altars_ to the
same two goddesses (Protrepticon, p. 22): Theophrastus said that
there were _altars_ at Athens (without mentioning Epimenidês) to
these same (ap. Zenobium, Proverb. Cent. iv, 36). Ister spoke
of a ἱερὸν Ἀναιδείας at Athens (Istri Fragm. ed. Siebelis, p.
62). I question whether this story has any other foundation than
the fact stated by Pausanias, that the stones which were placed
before the tribunal of areopagus, for the accuser and the accused
to stand upon, were called by these names,—Ὕβρεως, that of the
accused; Ἀναιδείας, that of the accuser (i, 28, 5). The confusion
between stones and altars is not difficult to be understood. The
other story, told by Neanthês of Kyzikus, respecting Epimenidês,
that he had offered two young men as human sacrifices, was
distinctly pronounced to be untrue by Polemo: and it reads
completely like a romance (Athenæus, xiii, p. 602).

[149] Plutarch. Præcept. Reipubl. Gerend. c. 27, p. 820.

[150] Diogen. Laërt. _l. c._

[151] Plato, Legg. i, p. 642; Cicero, De Divinat. i, 18; Aristot.
Rhet. iii, 17.

Plato places Epimenidês ten years before the Persian invasion
of Greece, whereas his real date is near upon 600 B. C.; a
remarkable example of carelessness as to chronology.

The religious mission of Epimenidês to Athens, and its efficacious
as well as healing influence on the public mind, deserve notice
as characteristics of the age in which they occurred.[152] If we
transport ourselves two centuries forward, to the Peloponnesian
war, when rational influences and positive habits of thought had
acquired a durable hold upon the superior minds, and when practical
discussions on political and judicial matters were familiar to every
Athenian citizen, no such uncontrollable religious misery could well
have subdued the entire public; and if it had, no living man could
have drawn to himself such universal veneration as to be capable of
effecting a cure. Plato,[153] admitting the real healing influence
of rites and ceremonies, fully believed in Epimenidês as an inspired
prophet during the past; but towards those who preferred claims to
supernatural power in his own day, he was not so easy of faith. He,
as well as Euripides and Theophrastus, treated with indifference,
and even with contempt, the orpheotelestæ of the later times, who
advertised themselves as possessing the same patent knowledge of
ceremonial rites, and the same means of guiding the will of the
gods, as Epimenidês had wielded before them. These orpheotelestæ
unquestionably numbered a considerable tribe of believers, and
speculated with great effect, as well as with profit to themselves,
upon the timorous consciences of rich men:[154] but they enjoyed no
respect with the general public, or with those to whose authority
the public habitually looked up. Degenerate as they were, however,
they were the legitimate representatives of the prophet and purifier
from Knossus, to whose presence the Athenians had been so much
indebted two centuries before: and their altered position was owing
less to any falling off in themselves, than to an improvement in
the mass upon whom they sought to operate. Had Epimenidês himself
come to Athens in those days, his visit would probably have been
as much inoperative to all public purposes as a repetition of the
stratagem of Phyê, clothed and equipped as the goddess Athênê, which
had succeeded so completely in the days of Peisistratus,—a stratagem
which even Herodotus treats as incredibly absurd, although, a century
before his time, both the city of Athens and the demes of Attica
had obeyed, as a divine mandate, the orders of this magnificent and
stately woman, to restore Peisistratus.[155]

[152] Respecting the characteristics of this age, see the second
chapter of the treatise of Heinrich, above alluded to, Kreta und
Griechenland in Hinsicht auf Wunderglauben.

[153] Plato, Kratylus, p. 405; Phædr. p. 244.

[154] Eurip. Hippolyt. 957; Plato, Republ. ii, p. 364;
Theophrast. Charact. c. 16.

[155] Herodot. i, 60.

CHAPTER XI.

SOLONIAN LAWS AND CONSTITUTION.

We now approach a new era in Grecian history,—the first known example
of a genuine and disinterested constitutional reform, and the first
foundation-stone of that great fabric, which afterwards became the
type of democracy in Greece. The archonship of the eupatrid Solon
dates in 594 B. C., thirty years after that of Drako, and about
eighteen years after the conspiracy of Kylôn, assuming the latter
event to be correctly placed B. C. 612.

The life of Solon by Plutarch and by Diogenês, especially the
former, are our principal sources of information respecting this
remarkable man; and while we thank them for what they have told
us, it is impossible to avoid expressing disappointment that they
have not told us more. For Plutarch certainly had before him both
the original poems, and the original laws, of Solon, and the few
transcripts which he gives from one or the other form the principal
charm of his biography: but such valuable materials ought to have
been made available to a more instructive result than that which he
has brought out. There is hardly anything more to be deplored, amidst
the lost treasures of the Grecian mind, than the poems of Solon; for
we see by the remaining fragments, that they contained notices of
the public and social phenomena before him, which he was compelled
attentively to study,—blended with the touching expression of his own
personal feelings, in the post, alike honorable and difficult, to
which the confidence of his countrymen had exalted him.

Solon, son of Exekestidês, was a eupatrid of middling fortune,[156]
but of the purest heroic blood, belonging to the gens or family of
the Kodrids and Neleids, and tracing his origin to the god Poseidôn.
His father is said to have diminished his substance by prodigality,
which compelled Solon in his earlier years to have recourse to trade,
and in this pursuit he visited many parts of Greece and Asia. He was
thus enabled to enlarge the sphere of his observation, and to provide
material for thought as well as for composition: and his poetical
talents displayed themselves at a very early age, first on light,
afterwards on serious subjects. It will be recollected that there was
at that time no Greek prose writing, and that the acquisitions as
well as the effusions of an intellectual man, even in their simplest
form, adjusted themselves not to the limitations of the period and
the semicolon, but to those of the hexameter and pentameter: nor in
point of fact do the verses of Solon aspire to any higher effect
than we are accustomed to associate with an earnest, touching,
and admonitory prose composition. The advice and appeals which he
frequently addressed to his countrymen[157] were delivered in this
easy metre, doubtless far less difficult than the elaborate prose of
subsequent writers or speakers, such as Thucydidês, Isokratês, or
Demosthenês. His poetry and his reputation became known throughout
many parts of Greece, and he was classed along with Thalês of
Milêtus, Bias of Priênê, Pittakus of Mytilênê, Periander of Corinth,
Kleobulus of Lindus, Cheilôn of Lacedæmon,—altogether forming the
constellation afterwards renowned as the Seven wise men.

[156] Plutarch, Solon, i; Diogen. Laërt. iii, 1; Aristot. Polit.
iv, 9, 10.

[157] Plutarch, Solon, v.

The first particular event in respect to which Solon appears as an
active politician, is the possession of the island of Salamis, then
disputed between Megara and Athens. Megara was at that time able
to contest with Athens, and for sometime to contest with success,
the occupation of this important island,—a remarkable fact, which
perhaps may be explained by supposing that the inhabitants of Athens
and its neighborhood carried on the struggle with only partial aid
from the rest of Attica. However this may be, it appears that the
Megarians had actually established themselves in Salamis, at the
time when Solon began his political career, and that the Athenians
had experienced so much loss in the struggle, as to have formally
prohibited any citizen from ever submitting a proposition for
its reconquest. Stung with this dishonorable abnegation, Solon
counterfeited a state of ecstatic excitement, rushed into the agora,
and there, on the stone usually occupied by the official herald,
pronounced to the crowd around a short elegiac poem,[158] which he
had previously composed on the subject of Salamis. He enforced upon
them the disgrace of abandoning the island, and wrought so powerfully
upon their feelings, that they rescinded the prohibitory law: “Rather
(he exclaimed) would I forfeit my native city, and become a citizen
of Pholegandrus, than be still named an Athenian, branded with the
shame of surrendered Salamis!” The Athenians again entered into the
war, and conferred upon him the command of it,—partly, as we are
told, at the instigation of Peisistratus, though the latter must
have been at this time (600-594 B. C.) a very young man, or rather a
boy.[159]

[158] Plutarch, Solon, viii. It was a poem of one hundred lines,
χαριέντως πάνυ πεποιημένων.

Diogenês tells us, that “Solon read the verses to the people
through the medium of the herald,”—a statement not less deficient
in taste than in accuracy, and which spoils the whole effect of
the vigorous exordium, Ἀυτὸς κήρυξ ἦλθον ἀφ᾽ ἱμερτῆς Σαλαμῖνος,
etc.

[159] Plutarch, _l. c._; Diogen. Laërt. i, 47. Both Herodotus (i,
59) and some authors read by Plutarch ascribed to Peisistratus
an active part in the war against the Megarians, and even the
capture of Nisæa, the port of Megara. Now the first usurpation of
Peisistratus was in 560 B. C., and we can hardly believe that he
can have been prominent and renowned in a war no less than forty
years before.

It will be seen hereafter—see the note on the interview
between Solon and Krœsus, towards the end of this chapter—that
Herodotus, and perhaps other authors also, conceived the Solonian
legislation to date at a period later than it really does;
instead of 594 B. C., they placed it nearer to the usurpation of
Peisistratus.

The stories in Plutarch, as to the way in which Salamis was
recovered, are contradictory as well as apocryphal, ascribing
to Solon various stratagems to deceive the Megarian occupiers;
unfortunately, no authority is given for any of them. According
to that which seems the most plausible, he was directed by the
Delphian god, first to propitiate the local heroes of the island;
and he accordingly crossed over to it by night, for the purpose of
sacrificing to the heroes Periphêmus and Kychreus, on the Salaminian
shore. Five hundred Athenian volunteers were then levied for the
attack of the island, under the stipulation that if they were
victorious they should hold it in property and citizenship.[160] They
were safely landed on an outlying promontory, while Solon, having
been fortunate enough to seize a ship which the Megarians had sent to
watch the proceedings, manned it with Athenians, and sailed straight
towards the city of Salamis, to which the five hundred Athenians who
had landed also directed their march. The Megarians marched out from
the city to repel the latter, and during the heat of the engagement,
Solon, with his Megarian ship, and Athenian crew, sailed directly to
the city: the Megarians, interpreting this as the return of their
own crew, permitted the ship to approach without resistance, and the
city was thus taken by surprise. Permission having been given to the
Megarians to quit the island, Solon took possession of it for the
Athenians, erecting a temple to Enyalius, the god of war, on Cape
Skiradium, near the city of Salamis.[161]

[160] Plutarch, Solon, κυρίους εἶναι τοῦ πολιτεύματος. The strict
meaning of these words refers only to the _government_ of the
island; but it seems almost certainly implied that they would
be established in it as klêruchs, or proprietors of land, not
meaning necessarily that _all_ the preëxisting proprietors would
be expelled.

[161] Plutarch, Solon, 8, 9, 10. Daïmachus of Platæa, however,
denied to Solon any personal share in the Salaminian war
(Plutarch, comp. Solon and Public. c. 4).

Polyænus (i, 20) ascribes a different stratagem to Solon:
compare Ælian, V. H. vii, 19. It is hardly necessary to say that
the account which the Megarians gave of the way in which they
lost the island was totally different: they imputed it to the
treachery of some exiles (Pausan. i, 40, 4): compare Justin, ii,
7.

The citizens of Megara, however, made various efforts for the
recovery of so valuable a possession, so that a war ensued long as
well as disastrous to both parties. At last, it was agreed between
them to refer the dispute to the arbitration of Sparta, and five
Spartans were appointed to decide it,—Kritolaidas, Amompharetus,
Hypsêchidas, Anaxilas, and Kleomenês. The verdict in favor of Athens
was founded on evidence which it is somewhat curious to trace.
Both parties attempted to show that the dead bodies buried in the
island conformed to their own peculiar mode of interment, and both
parties are said to have cited verses from the catalogue of the
Iliad,[162]—each accusing the other of error or interpolation. But
the Athenians had the advantage on two points; first, there were
oracles from Delphi, wherein Salamis was mentioned with the epithet
Ionian; next, Philæus and Eurysakês, sons of the Telamonian Ajax,
the great hero of the island, had accepted the citizenship of
Athens, made over Salamis to the Athenians, and transferred their
own residences to Braurôn and Melitê in Attica, where the deme or
gens Philaidæ still worshipped Philæus as its eponymous ancestor.
Such a title was held sufficient, and Salamis was adjudged by the
five Spartans to Attica,[163] with which it ever afterwards remained
incorporated until the days of Macedonian supremacy. Two centuries
and a half later, when the orator Æschinês argued the Athenian right
to Amphipolis against Philip of Macedon, the legendary elements of
the title were indeed put forward, but more in the way of preface or
introduction to the substantial political grounds.[164] But in the
year 600 B. C., the authority of the legend was more deep-seated and
operative, and adequate by itself to determine a favorable verdict.

[162] Aristot. Rhet. i, 16, 3.

[163] Plutarch, Solon, 10: compare Aristot. Rhet. i, 16.
Alkibiadês traced up his γένος to Eurysakês (Plutarch, Alkibiad.
c. 1); Miltiadês traced up his to Philæus (Herodot. vi, 35).

According to the statement of Hêreas the Megarian, both his
countrymen and the Athenians had the same way of interment:
both interred the dead with their faces towards the west. This
statement, therefore, affords no proof of any peculiarity of
Athenian custom in burial.

The Eurysakeium, or precinct sacred to the hero Eurysakês, stood
in the deme of Melitê (Harpokrat. ad v), which formed a portion
of the city of Athens.

[164] Æschin. Fals. Legat. p. 250, c. 14.

In addition to the conquest of Salamis, Solon increased his
reputation by espousing the cause of the Delphian temple against the
extortionate proceedings of the inhabitants of Kirrha, of which more
will be said in a coming chapter; and the favor of the oracle was
probably not without its effect in procuring for him that encouraging
prophecy with which his legislative career opened.

It is on the occasion of Solon’s legislation, that we obtain our
first glimpse—unfortunately, but a glimpse—of the actual state of
Attica and its inhabitants. It is a sad and repulsive picture,
presenting to us political discord and private suffering combined.

Violent dissensions prevailed among the inhabitants of Attica, who
were separated into three factions,—the pedieis, or men of the
plain, comprising Athens, Eleusis, and the neighboring territory,
among whom the greatest number of rich families were included; the
mountaineers in the east and north of Attica, called diakrii, who
were on the whole the poorest party; and the paralii in the southern
portion of Attica, from sea to sea, whose means and social position
were intermediate between the two.[165] Upon what particular points
these intestine disputes turned we are not distinctly informed; they
were not, however, peculiar to the period immediately preceding the
archontate of Solon; they had prevailed before, and they reappear
afterwards prior to the despotism of Peisistratus, the latter
standing forward as the leader of the diakrii, and as champion, real
or pretended, of the poorer population.

[165] Plutarch, Solon, c. 13. The language of Plutarch, in
which he talks of the pedieis as representing the oligarchical
tendency, and the diakrii as representing the democratical,
is not quite accurate when applied to the days of Solon.
Democratical pretensions, as such, can hardly be said to have
then existed.

But in the time of Solon these intestine quarrels were aggravated
by something much more difficult to deal with,—a general mutiny
of the poorer population against the rich, resulting from misery
combined with oppression. The thêtes, whose condition we have already
contemplated in the poems of Homer and Hesiod, are now presented to
us as forming the bulk of the population of Attica,—the cultivating
tenants, metayers, and small proprietors of the country. They are
exhibited as weighed down by debts and dependence, and driven in
large numbers out of a state of freedom into slavery,—the whole mass
of them, we are told, being in debt to the rich, who are proprietors
of the greater part of the soil.[166] They had either borrowed money
for their own necessities, or they tilled the lands of the rich as
dependent tenants, paying a stipulated portion of the produce, and in
this capacity they were largely in arrear.

[166] Plutarch, Solon, 13. Ἅπας μὲν γὰρ ὁ δῆμος ἦν ὑπόχρεως τῶν
πλουσίων· ἢ γὰρ ἐγεώργουν ἐκείνοις ἕκτα τῶν γινομένων τελοῦντες,
ἑκτημόριοι προσαγορευόμενοι καὶ θῆτες· ἢ χρέα λαμβάνοντες ἐπὶ
τοῖς σώμασιν, ἀγώγιμοι τοῖς δανείζουσιν ἦσαν· οἱ μὲν αὐτοῦ
δουλεύοντες, οἱ δὲ ἐπὶ τῇ ξένῃ πιπρασκόμενοι. Πολλοὶ δὲ καὶ
παῖδας ἰδίους ἠναγκάζοντο πωλεῖν, καὶ τὴν πόλιν φεύγειν διὰ
τὴν χαλεπότητα τῶν δανειστῶν. Οἱ δὲ πλεῖστοι καὶ ῥωμαλεώτατοι
συνίσταντο καὶ παρεκάλουν ἀλλήλους μὴ περιορᾷν, etc.

Respecting these hektêmori, “tenants paying one-sixth portion,”
we find little or no information: they are just noticed in
Hesychius (v. Ἑκτήμοροι, Ἐπίμορτος) and in Pollux, vii, 151; from
whom we learn that ἐπίμορτος γῆ was an expression which occurred
in one of the Solonian laws. Whether they paid to the landlord
one-sixth, or retained for themselves only one-sixth, has been
doubted (see Photius, Πελάται).

Dionysius Hal. (A. R. ii, 9) compares the thêtes in Attica to the
Roman clients: that both agreed in being relations of personal
and proprietary dependence is certain; but we can hardly carry
the comparison farther, nor is there any evidence in Attica of
that sanctity of obligation which is said to have bound the Roman
patron to his client.

All the calamitous effects were here seen of the old harsh law of
debtor and creditor,—once prevalent in Greece, Italy, Asia, and a
large portion of the world,—combined with the recognition of slavery
as a legitimate status, and of the right of one man to sell himself
as well as that of another man to buy him. Every debtor unable to
fulfil his contract was liable to be adjudged as the slave of his
creditor, until he could find means either of paying it or working
it out; and not only he himself, but his minor sons and unmarried
daughters and sisters also, whom the law gave him the power of
selling.[167] The poor man thus borrowed upon the security of his
body, to translate literally the Greek phrase, and upon that of
the persons of his family; and so severely had these oppressive
contracts been enforced, that many debtors had been reduced from
freedom to slavery in Attica itself,—many others had been sold for
exportation,—and some had only hitherto preserved their own freedom
by selling their children. Moreover, a great number of the smaller
properties in Attica were under mortgage, signified,—according to
the formality usual in the Attic law, and continued down throughout
the historical times,—by a stone pillar erected on the land,
inscribed with the name of the lender and the amount of the loan.
The proprietors of these mortgaged lands, in case of an unfavorable
turn of events, had no other prospect except that of irremediable
slavery for themselves and their families, either in their own native
country, robbed of all its delights, or in some barbarian region
where the Attic accent would never meet their ears. Some had fled the
country to escape legal adjudication of their persons, and earned a
miserable subsistence in foreign parts by degrading occupations: upon
several, too, this deplorable lot had fallen by unjust condemnation
and corrupt judges; the conduct of the rich, in regard to money
sacred and profane, in regard to matters public as well as private,
being thoroughly unprincipled and rapacious.

[167] So the Frisii, when unable to pay the tribute imposed by
the Roman empire, “primo boves ipsos, mox agros, postremo corpora
conjugum et liberorum, servitio tradebant.” (Tacit. Annal. iv,
72.) About the selling of children by parents, to pay the taxes,
in the later times of the Roman empire see Zosimus, ii, 38;
Libanius, t. ii, p. 427, ed. Paris, 1627.

The manifold and long-continued suffering of the poor under this
system, plunged into a state of debasement not more tolerable than
that of the Gallic plebs,—and the injustices of the rich, in whom
all political power was then vested, are facts well attested by
the poems of Solon himself, even in the short fragments preserved
to us:[168] and it appears that immediately preceding the time of
his archonship, the evils had ripened to such a point,—and the
determination of the mass of sufferers, to extort for themselves
some mode of relief, had become so pronounced,—that the existing
laws could no longer be enforced. According to the profound remark
of Aristotle,—that seditions are generated by great causes but out
of small incidents,[169]—we may conceive that some recent events had
occurred as immediate stimulants to the outbreak of the debtors,—like
those which lend so striking an interest to the early Roman annals,
as the inflaming sparks of violent popular movements for which the
train had long before been laid. Condemnations by the archons,
of insolvent debtors, may have been unusually numerous, or the
maltreatment of some particular debtor, once a respected freeman, in
his condition of slavery, may have been brought to act vividly upon
the public sympathies,—like the case of the old plebeian centurion
at Rome,[170]—first impoverished by the plunder of the enemy, then
reduced to borrow, and lastly adjudged to his creditor as an
insolvent,—who claimed the protection of the people in the forum,
rousing their feelings to the highest pitch by the marks of the
slave-whip visible on his person. Some such incidents had probably
happened, though we have no historians to recount them; moreover, it
is not unreasonable to imagine, that that public mental affliction
which the purifier Epimenidês had been invoked to appease, as it
sprung in part from pestilence, so it had its cause partly in years
of sterility, which must of course have aggravated the distress of
the small cultivators. However this may be, such was the condition
of things in 594 B. C., through mutiny of the poor freemen and
thêtes, and uneasiness of the middling citizens, that the governing
oligarchy, unable either to enforce their private debts or to
maintain their political power, were obliged to invoke the well-known
wisdom and integrity of Solon. Though his vigorous protest—which
doubtless rendered him acceptable to the mass of the people—against
the iniquity of the existing system had already been proclaimed in
his poems, they still hoped that he would serve as an auxiliary, to
help them over their difficulties, and they therefore chose him,
nominally, as archon along with Philombrotus, but with power in
substance dictatorial.

[168] See the Fragment περὶ τῆς Ἀθηναίων πολιτείας, No. 2,
Schneidewin.

Δήμου θ᾽ ἡγεμόνων ἄδικος νόος, οἶσιν ἕτοιμος
Ὕβριος ἐκ μεγάλης ἄλγεα πολλὰ παθεῖν.
... Οὔθ᾽ ἱερῶν κτεάνων οὔτε τι δημοσίων
Φειδόμενοι, κλέπτουσιν ἐφ᾽ ἁρπαγῇ ἄλλοθεν ἄλλος,
Οὐδὲ φυλάσσονται σεμνὰ δίκης θέμεθλα.
... Ταῦτα μὲν ἐν δήμῳ στρέφεται κακά· τῶν δὲ πενιχρῶν
Ἱκνεῦνται πολλοὶ γαῖαν ἐς ἀλλοδαπὴν
Πραθέντες, δεσμοῖσι τ᾽ ἀεικελίοισι δεθέντες.

[169] Aristot. Polit. γίγνονται δὲ αἱ στάσεις οὐ περὶ μικρῶν,
ἀλλ᾽ ἐκ μικρῶν.

[170] Livy, ii, 23; Dionys. Hal. A. R. vi, 26: compare Livy, vi,
34-36.

“An placeret, fœnore circumventam plebem, potius quam sorte
creditum solvat, corpus in nervum ac supplicia dare? et gregatim
quotidie de foro addictos duci, et repleri vinctis nobiles domos?
et ubicumque patricius habitet, ibi carcerem privatum esse?”

The exposition of Niebuhr, respecting the old Roman law of debtor
and creditor (Röm. Gesch. i, p. 602, _seq._; Arnold’s Roman
Hist., ch. viii, vol. i, p. 135), and the explanation which he
there gives of the nexi, as distinguished from the addicti, have
been shown to be incorrect by M. von Savigny, in an excellent
Dissertation Über das Altrömische Schuldrecht (Abhandlungen
Berlin Academ. 1833, pp. 70-73), an abstract of which will be
found in an Appendix, at the close of this chapter.

It had happened in several Grecian states, that the governing
oligarchies, either by quarrels among their own members or by the
general bad condition of the people under their government, were
deprived of that hold upon the public mind which was essential to
their power; and sometimes, as in the case of Pittakus of Mitylênê,
anterior to the archonship of Solon, and often in the factions of
the Italian republics in the Middle Ages, the collision of opposing
forces had rendered society intolerable, and driven all parties to
acquiesce in the choice of some reforming dictator. Usually, however,
in the early Greek oligarchies, this ultimate crisis was anticipated
by some ambitious individual, who availed himself of the public
discontent, to overthrow the oligarchy, and usurp the powers of a
despot; and so, probably, it might have happened in Athens, had not
the recent failure of Kylôn, with all its miserable consequences,
operated as a deterring motive. It is curious to read, in the words
of Solon himself, the temper in which his appointment was construed
by a large portion of the community, but most especially by his own
friends: and we are to bear in mind that at this early day, so far
as our knowledge goes, democratical government was a thing unknown in
Greece,—all Grecian governments were either oligarchical or despotic,
the mass of the freemen having not yet tasted of constitutional
privilege. His own friends and supporters were the first to urge him,
while redressing the prevalent discontents, to multiply partisans
for himself personally, and seize the supreme power: they even “chid
him as a madman, for declining to haul up the net when the fish were
already enmeshed.”[171] The mass of the people, in despair with their
lot, would gladly have seconded him in such an attempt, and many even
among the oligarchy might have acquiesced in his personal government,
from the mere apprehension of something worse, if they resisted it.
That Solon might easily have made himself despot, admits of little
doubt; and though the position of a Greek despot was always perilous,
he would have had greater facility for maintaining himself in it than
Peisistratus possessed after him; so that nothing but the combination
of prudence and virtue which marks his lofty character, restricted
him within the trust specially confided to him. To the surprise of
every one,—to the dissatisfaction of his own friends,—under the
complaints alike, as he says, of various extreme and dissentient
parties, who required him to adopt measures fatal to the peace of
society,[172]—he set himself honestly to solve the very difficult and
critical problem submitted to him.

[171] See Plutarch, Solon, 14; and above all the Trochaic
tetrameters of Solon himself, addressed to Phôkus, Fr. 24-26,
Schneidewin:—

Οὐκ ἔφυ Σόλων βαθύφρων, οὐδὲ βουλήεις ἀνήρ,
Ἐσθλὰ γὰρ θεοῦ δίδοντος, αὐτὸς οὐκ ἐδέξατο.
Περιβαλὼν δ᾽ ἄγραν, ἀγασθεὶς οὐκ ἀνέσπασεν μέγα
Δίκτυον, θυμοῦ θ’ ἁμαρτῆ καὶ φρενῶν ἀποσφαλείς.

[172] Aristides, Περὶ τοῦ Παραφθέγματος, ii, p. 397; and Fragm.
29, Schn. of the Iambics of Solon:—

... εἰ γὰρ ἤθελον
Ἃ τοῖς ἐναντίοισιν ἥνδανεν τότε,
Αὖθις δ᾽ ἃ τοῖσιν ἁτέροις δρᾶσαι ...
Πολλῶν ἂν ἀνδρῶν ἥδ᾽ ἐχηρώθη πόλις.

Of all grievances, the most urgent was the condition of the poorer
class of debtors; and to their relief Solon’s first measure, the
memorable seisachtheia, or shaking off of burdens, was directed. The
relief which it afforded was complete and immediate. It cancelled
at once all those contracts in which the debtor had borrowed on the
security of either his person or of his land: it forbade all future
loans or contracts in which the person of the debtor was pledged
as security: it deprived the creditor in future of all power to
imprison, or enslave, or extort work from his debtor, and confined
him to an effective judgment at law, authorizing the seizure of
the property of the latter. It swept off all the numerous mortgage
pillars from the landed properties in Attica, and left the land
free from all past claims. It liberated, and restored to their
full rights, all those debtors who were actually in slavery under
previous legal adjudication; and it even provided the means—we do
not know how—of repurchasing in foreign lands, and bringing back to
a renewed life of liberty in Attica, many insolvents who had been
sold for exportation.[173] And while Solon forbade every Athenian to
pledge or sell his own person into slavery, he took a step farther
in the same direction, by forbidding him to pledge or sell his son,
his daughter, or an unmarried sister under his tutelage,—excepting
only the case in which either of the latter might be detected in
unchastity.[174] Whether this last ordinance was contemporaneous
with the seisachtheia, or followed as one of his subsequent reforms,
seems doubtful.

[173] See the valuable fragment of his Iambics, preserved by
Plutarch and Aristidês, the expression of which is rendered more
emphatic by the appeal to the _personal Earth_, as having passed
by his measures from slavery into freedom (compare Plato, Legg.
v, pp. 740-741):—

Συμμαρτυροίη ταῦτ᾽ ἂν ἐν δίκῃ Χρόνου
Μήτηρ, μεγίστη δαιμόνων Ὀλυμπίων,
Ἄριστα, Γῆ μέλαινα, τῆς ἐγώ ποτε
Ὅρους ἀνεῖλον πολλαχῇ πεπηγότας,
Πρόσθεν δὲ δουλεύουσα, νῦν ἐλευθέρα.
Πολλοὺς δ᾽ Ἀθήνας, πατρίδ᾽ εἰς θεόκτιτον
Ἀνήγαγον πραθέντας, ἄλλον ἐκδίκως,
Ἄλλον δικαίως· τοὺς δ᾽ ἀναγκαίης ὕπο
Χρειοῦς φυγόντας, γλῶσσαν οὔκετ᾽ Ἀττικὴν
Ἱέντας, ὡς ἂν πολλαχῇ πλανωμένους·
Τοὺς δ’ ἐνθάδ᾽ αὐτοῦ δουλίην ἀεικέα
Ἔχοντας, ἤδη δεσπότας τρομευμένους,
Ἐλευθέρους ἔθηκα.

also Plutarch, Solon, c. 15.

[174] Plutarch, Solon, c. 23: compare c. 13. The statement
in Sextus Empiricus (Pyrrhon. Hypot. iii, 24, 211), that
Solon enacted a law permitting fathers to kill (φονεύειν)
their children, cannot be true, and must be copied from some
untrustworthy authority: compare Dionys. Hal. A. R. ii, 26, where
he contrasts the prodigious extent of the _patria potestas_ among
the early Romans, with the restrictions which all the Greek
legislators alike,—Solon, Pittakus, Charondas,—either found
or introduced: he says, however, that the Athenian father was
permitted to disinherit legitimate male children, which does not
seem to be correct.

Meier (Der Attische Prozess, iii, 2, p. 427) rejects the
above-mentioned statement of Sextus Empiricus, and farther
contends that the exposure of new-born infants was not only
rare, but discountenanced as well by law as by opinion; the
evidence in the Latin comedies to the contrary, he considers
as manifestations of Roman, and not of Athenian, manners. In
this latter opinion I do not think that he is borne out, and I
agree in the statement of Schömann (Ant. J. P. Græc. sect. 82),
that the practice and feeling of Athens as well as of Greece
generally, left it to the discretion of the father whether he
would consent, or refuse, to bring up a new-born child.

By this extensive measure the poor debtors,—the thêtes, small
tenants, and proprietors,—together with their families, were rescued
from suffering and peril. But these were not the only debtors in
the state: the creditors and landlords of the exonerated thêtes
were doubtless in their turn debtors to others, and were less able
to discharge their obligations in consequence of the loss inflicted
upon them by the seisachtheia. It was to assist these wealthier
debtors, whose bodies were in no danger,—yet without exonerating them
entirely,—that Solon resorted to the additional expedient of debasing
the money standard; he lowered the standard of the drachma in a
proportion something more than twenty-five per cent., so that one
hundred drachmas of the new standard contained no more silver than
seventy-three of the old, or one hundred of the old were equivalent
to one hundred and thirty-eight of the new. By this change, the
creditors of these more substantial debtors were obliged to submit
to a loss, while the debtors acquired an exemption, to the extent of
about twenty-seven per cent.[175]

[175] Plutarch, Solon, c. 15. See the full exposition given of
this debasement of the coinage, in Boeckh’s Metrologie, ch. ix,
p. 115.

M. Boeckh thinks (ch. xv, s. 2) that Solon not only debased the
coin, but also altered the weights and measures. I dissent from
his opinion on this latter point, and have given my reasons for
so doing, in a review of his valuable treatise in the Classical
Museum, No. 1.

Lastly, Solon decreed that all those who had been condemned by the
archons to atīmy (civil disfranchisement) should be restored to their
full privileges of citizens,—excepting, however, from this indulgence
those who had been condemned by the ephetæ, or by the areopagus, or
by the phylo-basileis (the four kings of the tribes), after trial
in the prytaneium, on charges either of murder or treason.[176] So
wholesale a measure of amnesty affords strong grounds for believing
that the previous judgments of the archons had been intolerably
harsh; and it is to be recollected that the Drakonian ordinances were
then in force.

[176] Plutarch, Solon, c. 19. In the general restoration of
exiles throughout the Greek cities, proclaimed first by order of
Alexander the Great, afterwards by Polysperchon, exception is
made of men exiled for sacrilege or homicide (Diodor. xvii, 109;
xviii, 8-46).

Such were the measures of relief with which Solon met the dangerous
discontent then prevalent. That the wealthy men and leaders of the
people, whose insolence and iniquity he has himself so sharply
denounced in his poems, and whose views in nominating him he had
greatly disappointed,[177] should have detested propositions which
robbed them without compensation of so many of their legal rites,
it is easy to imagine. But the statement of Plutarch, that the poor
emancipated debtors were also dissatisfied, from having expected that
Solon would not only remit their debts, but also redivide the soil of
Attica, seems utterly incredible; nor is it confirmed by any passage
now remaining of the Solonian poems.[178] Plutarch conceives the
poor debtors as having in their minds the comparison with Lykurgus,
and the equality of property at Sparta, which, as I have already
endeavored to show,[179] is a fiction; and even had it been true,
as matter of history long past and antiquated, would not have been
likely to work upon the minds of the multitude of Attica in the
forcible way that the biographer supposes. The seisachtheia must have
exasperated the feelings and diminished the fortunes of many persons;
but it gave to the large body of thêtes and small proprietors all
that they could possibly have hoped. And we are told that after a
short interval it became eminently acceptable in the general public
mind, and procured for Solon a great increase of popularity,—all
ranks concurring in a common sacrifice of thanksgiving and
harmony.[180] One incident there was which occasioned an outcry of
indignation. Three rich friends of Solon, all men of great family
in the state, and bearing names which will hereafter reappear in
this history as borne by their descendants,—Konôn, Kleinias, and
Hipponikus,—having obtained from Solon some previous hint of his
designs, profited by it, first, to borrow money, and next, to make
purchases of lands; and this selfish breach of confidence would have
disgraced Solon himself, had it not been found that he was personally
a great loser, having lent money to the extent of five talents.
We should have been glad to learn what authority Plutarch had for
this anecdote, which could hardly have been recorded in Solon’s own
poems.[181]

[177] Plutarch, Solon, c. 15. οὐδὲ μαλακῶς, οὐδ᾽ ὑπείκων τοῖς
δυναμένοις, οὐδὲ πρὸς ἡδονὴν τῶν ἑλομένων, ἔθετο τοὺς νόμους, etc.

[178] Plutarch, Solon, c. 16.

[179] See above, vol. ii, part ii, ch. vi.

[180] Plutarch, _l. c._ ἔθυσάν τε κοινῇ, Σεισάχθειαν τὴν θυσίαν
ὀνομάζοντες, etc.

[181] The anecdote is again noticed, but without specification of
the names of the friends, in Plutarch, Reipub. Gerend. Præcep. p.
807.

In regard to the whole measure of the seisachtheia, indeed, though
the poems of Solon were open to every one, ancient authors gave
different statements, both of its purport and of its extent. Most
of them construed it as having cancelled indiscriminately all money
contracts; while Androtion, and others, thought that it did nothing
more than lower the rate of interest and depreciate the currency
to the extent of twenty-seven per cent., leaving the letter of the
contracts unchanged. How Androtion came to maintain such an opinion
we cannot easily understand, for the fragments now remaining from
Solon seem distinctly to refute it, though, on the other hand,
they do not go so far as to substantiate the full extent of the
opposite view entertained by many writers,—that all money contracts
indiscriminately were rescinded:[182] against which there is also
a farther reason, that, if the fact had been so, Solon could have
had no motive to debase the money standard. Such debasement supposes
that there must have been _some_ debtors, at least, whose contracts
remained valid, and whom, nevertheless, he desired partially to
assist. His poems distinctly mention three things: 1. The removal
of the mortgage pillars. 2. The enfranchisement of the land. 3. The
protection, liberation, and restoration of the persons of endangered
or enslaved debtors. All these expressions point distinctly to the
thêtes and small proprietors, whose sufferings and peril were the
most urgent, and whose case required a remedy immediate as well as
complete: we find that his repudiation of debts was carried far
enough to exonerate them, but no farther.

[182] Plutarch, Solon, c. 15. The statement of Dionysius of Hal.,
in regard to the bearing of the seisachtheia, is in the main
accurate,—χρεῶν ἄφεσιν ψηφισαμένην τοῖς ~ἀπόροις~ (v, 65),—to the
debtors who were liable on the security of their bodies and their
lands, and who were chiefly poor,—not to _all_ debtors.

Herakleidês Pontic. (Πολιτ. c. 1) and Dio Chrysostom (Or. xxxi,
p. 331) express themselves loosely.

Both Wachsmuth (Hell. Alterth. v. i, p. 249) and K. F. Hermann
(Gr. Staats Alter. c. s. 106) quote the heliastic oath, and its
energetic protest against repudiation, as evidence of the bearing
of the Solonian seisachtheia. But that oath is referable only
to a later period; it cannot be produced in proof of any matter
applicable to the time of Solon; the mere mention of the senate
of Five Hundred in it, shows that it belongs to times subsequent
to the Kleisthenean revolution. Nor does the passage from Plato
(Legg. iii, p. 684) apply to the case.

Both Wachsmuth and Hermann appear to me to narrow too much
the extent of Solon’s measure in reference to the clearing of
debtors. But on the other hand, they enlarge the effect of his
measures in another way, without any sufficient evidence,—they
think that he raised _the villein tenants_ into _free
proprietors_. Of this I see no proof, and think it improbable. A
large proportion of the small debtors whom Solon exonerated were
probably free proprietors before; the existence of the ὅροι, or
mortgage pillars, upon their land proves this.

It seems to have been the respect entertained for the character
of Solon which partly occasioned these various misconceptions of
his ordinances for the relief of debtors: Androtion in ancient,
and some eminent critics in modern times, are anxious to make out
that he gave relief without loss or injustice to any one. But this
opinion is altogether inadmissible: the loss to creditors, by the
wholesale abrogation of numerous prëexisting contracts, and by the
partial depreciation of the coin, is a fact not to be disguised.
The seisachtheia of Solon, unjust so far as it rescinded previous
agreements, but highly salutary in its consequences, is to be
vindicated by showing that in no other way could the bonds of
government have been held together, or the misery of the multitude
alleviated. We are to consider, first, the great personal cruelty of
these preëxisting contracts, which condemned the body of the free
debtor and his family to slavery; next, the profound detestation
created by such a system in the large mass of the poor, against both
the judges and the creditors by whom it had been enforced, which
rendered their feelings unmanageable, so soon as they came together
under the sentiment of a common danger, and with the determination to
insure to each other mutual protection. Moreover, the law which vests
a creditor with power over the person of his debtor, so as to convert
him into a slave, is likely to give rise to a class of loans, which
inspire nothing but abhorrence,—money lent with the foreknowledge
that the borrower will be unable to repay it, but also in the
conviction that the value of his person as a slave will make good
the loss; thus reducing him to a condition of extreme misery, for
the purpose sometimes of aggrandizing, sometimes of enriching, the
lender. Now the foundation on which the respect for contracts rests,
under a good law of debtor and creditor, is the very reverse of this;
it rests on the firm conviction that such contracts are advantageous
to both parties as a class, and that to break up the confidence
essential to their existence would produce extensive mischief
throughout all society. The man whose reverence for the obligation of
a contract is now the most profound, would have entertained a very
different sentiment if he had witnessed the dealings of lender and
borrower at Athens, under the old ante-Solonian law. The oligarchy
had tried their best to enforce this law of debtor and creditor,
with its disastrous series of contracts, and the only reason why
they consented to invoke the aid of Solon, was because they had lost
the power of enforcing it any longer, in consequence of the newly
awakened courage and combination of the people. That which they could
not do for themselves, Solon could not have done for them, even had
he been willing; nor had he in his possession the means either of
exempting or compensating those creditors, who, separately taken,
were open to no reproach; indeed, in following his proceedings, we
see plainly that he thought compensation due, not to the creditors,
but to the past sufferings of the enslaved debtors, since he redeemed
several of them from foreign captivity, and brought them back to
their home. It is certain that no measure, simply and exclusively
prospective, would have sufficed for the emergency: there was an
absolute necessity for overruling all that class of preëxisting
rights which had produced so violent a social fever. While
therefore, to this extent, the seisachtheia cannot be acquitted of
injustice, we may confidently affirm that the injustice inflicted
was an indispensable price, paid for the maintenance of the peace
of society, and for the final abrogation of a disastrous system as
regarded insolvents.[183] And the feeling as well as the legislation
universal in the modern European world, by interdicting beforehand
all contracts for selling a man’s person or that of his children into
slavery, goes far to sanction practically the Solonian repudiation.

[183] That which Solon did for the Athenian people in regard to
debts, is less than what was _promised_ to the Roman plebs (at
the time of its secession to the Mons Sacer in 491 B. C.) by
Menenius Agrippa, the envoy of the senate, to appease them, but
which does not seem to have been ever _realized_ (Dionys. Hal.
vi, 83). He promised an abrogation of all the debts of debtors
unable to pay, without exception,—if the language of Dionysius is
to be trusted, which probably it cannot be.

Dr. Thirlwall justly observes respecting Solon, “He must be
considered as an arbitrator, to whom all the parties interested
submitted their claims, with the avowed intent that they should
be decided by him, not upon the footing of legal right, but
according to his own view of the public interest. It was in this
light that he himself regarded his office, and he appears to have
discharged it faithfully and discreetly.” (History of Greece, ch.
xi. vol. ii, p. 42.)

One thing is never to be forgotten in regard to this measure,
combined with the concurrent amendments introduced by Solon in the
law,—it settled finally the question to which it referred. Never
again do we hear of the law of debtor and creditor as disturbing
Athenian tranquillity. The general sentiment which grew up at Athens,
under the Solonian money-law, and under the democratical government,
was one of high respect for the sanctity of contracts. Not only was
there never any demand in the Athenian democracy for new tables or
a depreciation of the money standard, but a formal abnegation of
any such projects was inserted in the solemn oath taken annually by
the numerous diakasts, who formed the popular judicial body, called
hêliæa, or the hêliastic jurors,—the same oath which pledged them to
uphold the democratical constitution, also bound them to repudiate
all proposals either for an abrogation of debts or for a redivision
of the lands.[184] There can be little doubt that under the Solonian
law, which enabled the creditor to seize the property of his debtor,
but gave him no power over the person, the system of money-lending
assumed a more beneficial character: the old noxious contracts,
mere snares for the liberty of a poor freeman and his children,
disappeared, and loans of money took their place, founded on the
property and prospective earnings of the debtor, which were in the
main useful to both parties, and therefore maintained their place in
the moral sentiment of the public. And though Solon had found himself
compelled to rescind all the mortgages on land subsisting in his
time, we see money freely lent upon this same security, throughout
the historical times of Athens, and the evidentiary mortgage pillars
remaining ever after undisturbed.

[184] Dêmosthen. cont. Timokrat. p. 746. οὐδὲ τῶν χρεῶν τῶν
ἰδίων ἀποκοπὰς, οὐδὲ γῆς ἀναδασμὸν τῆς Ἀθηναίων, οὐδ᾽ οἰκιῶν
(ψηφιοῦμαι): compare Dio Chrysostom, Orat. xxxi, p. 332, who
also dwells upon the anxiety of various Grecian cities to fix a
curse upon all propositions for χρεῶν ἀποκοπὴ and γῆς ἀναδασμός.
What is not less remarkable is, that Dio seems not to be aware
of any one well-authenticated case in Grecian history, in which
a redivision of lands had ever actually taken place—ὃ μηδ᾽ ὅλως
ἴσμεν εἴ ποτε συνέβη. (_l. c._)

For the law of debtor and creditor, as it stood during the times
of the Orators at Athens, see Heraldus, Animadv. ad Salmasium,
pp. 174-286; Meier und Schömann, Der Attische Prozess, b. iii,
c. 2, p. 497, _seqq._ (though I doubt the distinction which they
there draw between χρέος and δανεῖον); Platner, Prozess und
Klagen, b. ii, absch. 11, pp. 349, 361.

There was one exceptional case, in which the Attic law always
continued to the creditor that power over the person of the
insolvent debtor which all creditors had possessed originally,—it
was when the creditor had lent money for the express purpose of
ransoming the debtor from captivity (Dêmosthen. cont. Nikostr. p.
1249),—analogous to the actio depensi in the old Roman law.

Any citizen who owed money to the public treasury, and whose debt
became overdue, was deprived for the time of all civil rights
until he had cleared it off.

Diodorus (i, 79) gives us an alleged law of the Egyptian king
Bocchoris, releasing the persons of debtors and rendering their
properties only liable, which is affirmed to have served as
an example for Solon to copy. If we can trust this historian,
lawgivers in other parts of Greece still retained the old severe
law enslaving the debtor’s person: compare a passage in Isokratês
(Orat. xiv, Plataicus, p. 305; p. 414, Bek.)

In the sentiment of an early society, as in the old Roman law,
a distinction is commonly made between the principal and the
interest of a loan, though the creditors have sought to blend them
indissolubly together. If the borrower cannot fulfil his promise to
repay the principal, the public will regard him as having committed
a wrong which he must make good by his person; but there is not the
same unanimity as to his promise to pay interest: on the contrary,
the very exaction of interest will be regarded by many in the same
light in which the English law considers usurious interest, as
tainting the whole transaction. But in the modern mind, principal,
and interest within a limited rate, have so grown together, that we
hardly understand how it can ever have been pronounced unworthy of an
honorable citizen to lend money on interest; yet such is the declared
opinion of Aristotle, and other superior men of antiquity; while the
Roman Cato, the censor, went so far as to denounce the practice as a
heinous crime.[185] It was comprehended by them among the worst of
the tricks of trade,—and they held that all trade, or profit derived
from interchange, was unnatural, as being made by one man at the
expense of another: such pursuits, therefore, could not be commended,
though they might be tolerated to a certain extent as matter of
necessity, but they belonged essentially to an inferior order of
citizens.[186] What is remarkable in Greece is, that the antipathy
of a very early state of society against traders and money-lenders
lasted longer among the philosophers than among the mass of the
people,—it harmonized more with the social _idéal_ of the former,
than with the practical instincts of the latter.

[185] Aristot. Polit. i, 4, 23; Cato ap. Cicero. de Offic. ii,
25. Plato, in his Treatise de Legg. (v, p. 742) forbids all
lending on interest: indeed, he forbids any private citizen to
possess either gold or silver.

To illustrate the marked difference made in the early Roman
law, between the claim for the principal and that for the
interest, I insert in an Appendix, at the end of this chapter,
the explanation given by M. von Savigny, of the treatment of the
nexi and addicti,—connected as it is by analogy with the Solonian
seisachtheia.

[186] Aristot. Polit. i, 4, 23. Τὴς δὲ μεταβλητικῆς ~ψεγομένης
διακίως~ (οὐ γὰρ κατὰ φύσιν, ἀλλ᾽ ἀπ᾽ ἀλλήλων ἔστιν), εὐλογώτατα
μισεῖται ἡ ὀβολοστατική, etc. Compare Ethic. Nikom. iv, 1.

Plutarch borrows from Aristotle the quibble derived from the
word ~τόκος~ (the Greek expression for interest), which has
given birth to the well-known dictum of Aristotle,—that money
being naturally _barren_, to extract _offspring_ from it must
necessarily be _contrary to nature_ (see Plutarch, De Vit. Ær.
Al. p. 829).

In a rude condition, such as that of the ancient Germans described
by Tacitus, loans on interest are unknown: habitually careless of
the future, the Germans were gratified both in giving and receiving
presents, but without any idea that they thereby either imposed or
contracted an obligation.[187] To a people in this state of feeling,
a loan on interest presents the repulsive idea of making profit out
of the distress of the borrower; moreover, it is worthy of remark,
that the first borrowers must have been for the most part men driven
to this necessity by the pressure of want, and contracting debt as a
desperate resource, without any fair prospect of ability to repay:
debt and famine run together, in the mind of the poet Hesiod.[188]
The borrower is, in this unhappy state, rather a distressed man
soliciting aid, than a solvent man capable of making and fulfilling
a contract; and if he cannot find a friend to make him a free gift
in the former character, he will not, under the latter character,
obtain a loan from a stranger, except by the promise of exorbitant
interest,[189] and by the fullest eventual power over his person
which he is in a condition to grant. In process of time a new class
of borrowers rise up, who demand money for temporary convenience or
profit, but with full prospect of repayment,—a relation of lender
and borrower quite different from that of the earlier period, when
it presented itself in the repulsive form of misery on the one side,
set against the prospect of very large profit on the other. If the
Germans of the time of Tacitus had looked to the condition of the
poor debtors in Gaul, reduced to servitude under a rich creditor,
and swelling by hundreds the crowd of his attendants, they would not
have been disposed to regret their own ignorance of the practice of
money-lending.[190] How much the interest of money was then regarded
as an undue profit extorted from distress, is powerfully illustrated
by the old Jewish law; the Jew being permitted to take interest
from foreigners (whom the lawgiver did not think himself obliged to
protect), but not from his own countrymen.[191] The Koran follows
out this point of view consistently, and prohibits the taking of
interest altogether. In most other nations, laws have been made
to limit the rate of interest, and at Rome, especially, the legal
rate was successively lowered,—though it seems, as might have been
expected, that the restrictive ordinances were constantly eluded. All
such restrictions have been intended for the protection of debtors;
an effect which large experience proves them never to produce,
unless it be called protection to render the obtaining of money on
loan impracticable for the most distressed borrowers. But there was
another effect which they _did_ tend to produce,—they softened down
the primitive antipathy against the practice generally, and confined
the odious name of usury to loans lent above the fixed legal rate.

[187] Tacit. Germ. 26. “Fœnus agitare et in usuras extendere,
ignotum: ideoque magis servatur quam si vetitum esset,” (c.
21.) “Gaudent muneribus: sed nec data imputant, nec acceptis
obligantur.”

[188] Hesiod, Opp. Di. 647, 404. Βούληαι χρέα τε προφυγεῖν, καὶ
λιμὸν ἀτερπῆ. Some good observations on this subject are to be
found in the excellent treatise of M. Turgot, written in 1763,
“Mémoire sur les Prêts d’Argent:”—

“Les causes qui avoient autrefois rendu odieux le prêt à
intérêt, ont cessé d’agir avec tant de force.... De toutes ces
circonstances réunies, il est résulté que les emprunts faits
par le pauvre pour subsister ne sont plus qu’un objet à peine
sensible dans la somme totale d’emprunts: que la plus grande
partie des prêts se font à l’homme riche, ou du moins à l’homme
industrieux, qui espère se procurer de grands profits par
l’emploi de l’argent qu’il emprunte.... Les prêteurs sur gage
à gros intérêt, les seuls qui prêtent véritablement au pauvre
pour ses besoins journaliers et non pour le mettre en état de
gagner, ne font point le même mal que les anciens usuriers qui
conduisoient par degrés à la misère et à l’esclavage les pauvres
citoyens auxquels ils avoient procuré des secours funestes....
Le créancier qui pouvait réduire son débiteur en esclavage y
trouvait un profit: c’étoit un esclave qu’il acquérait: mais
aujourd’hui le créancier sait qu’en privant son débiteur de la
liberté, il n’y gagnera autre chose que d’être obligé de le
nourrir en prison: aussi ne s’avise-t-on pas de faire contracter
à un homme qui n’a rien, et qui est réduit à emprunter pour
vivre, des engagemens qui emportent la contrainte par corps. La
seule sûreté vraiment solide contre l’homme pauvre est le gage:
et l’homme pauvre s’estime heureux de trouver un secours pour le
moment sans autre danger que de perdre ce gage. Aussi le peuple
a-t-il plutôt de la reconnoissance pour ces petits usuriers qui
le secourent dans son besoin, quoiqu’ils lui vendent assez cher
ce secours.” (Mémoire sur les Prêts d’Argent, in the collection
of Œuvres de Turgot, by Dupont de Nemours, vol. v, sects. xxx,
xxxi, pp. 326, 327, 329, written in 1763.)

[189] “In Bengal (observes Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, b. i,
ch. 9, p. 143, ed. 1812) money is frequently lent to the farmers
at 40, 50, and 60 per cent., and the succeeding crop is mortgaged
for the payment.”

Respecting this commerce at Florence in the Middle Ages, M.
Depping observes: “Il semblait que l’esprit commercial fût inné
chez les Florentins: déjà aux 12me et 13me siècles, on les
voit tenir des banques et prêter de l’argent aux princes. Ils
ouvrirent partout des maisons de prêt, marchèrent de pair avec
les Lombards, et, il faut le dire, ils furent souvent maudits,
comme ceux-ci, par leurs débiteurs, à cause de leur rapacité.
Vingt pour cent par an était le taux ordinaire des prêteurs
Florentins: et il n’était pas rare qu’ils en prissent trente
et quarante.” Depping, Histoire du Commerce entre le Levant et
l’Europe, vol. i, p. 235.

Boeckh (Public Economy of Athens, book i, ch. 22) gives from
12 to 18 per cent. per annum as the common rate of interest at
Athens in the time of the orators.

The valuable Inscription (No. 1845, in his Corpus Inser. Pars
viii, p. 23, sect. 3) proves, that at Korkyra a rate of 2 per
cent. per month, or 24 per cent. per annum, might be obtained
from perfectly solvent and responsible borrowers. For this is a
decree of the Korkyræan government, prescribing what shall be
done with a sum of money given to the state for the Dionysiac
festivals,—placing that money under the care of certain men of
property and character, and directing them to lend it out exactly
at 2 per cent. per month, _neither more nor less_, until a given
sum shall be accumulated. This Inscription dates about the third
or second century B. C., according to Boeckh’s conjecture.

The Orchomenian Inscription, No. 1569, to which Boeckh refers in
the passage above alluded to, is unfortunately defective in the
words determining the rate of interest payable to Eubulus: but
there is another, the Theræan Inscription (No. 2446), containing
the Testament of Epiktêta, wherein the annual sum payable in lieu
of a principal sum bequeathed, is calculated at 7 per cent.;
a rate which Boeckh justly regards as moderate considered in
reference to ancient Greece.

[190] Cæsar, B. G. i, 4, respecting the Gallic chiefs and
plebs: “Die constitutâ causæ dictionis, Orgetorix ad judicium
omnem suam familiam, ad hominum millia decem, undique coëgit:
et omnes clientes, _obœratos_que suos, quorum magnum numerum
habebat, eodem conduxit: per eos, ne caussam diceret, se
eripuit.” Ibid. vi, 13: “Plerique, cum aut _ære alieno_, aut
magnitudine tributorum, aut injuriâ potentiorum, premuntur, sese
in servitutem dicant nobilibus. In hos eadem omnia sunt jura, quæ
dominis in servos.” The wealthy Romans cultivated their large
possessions partly by the hands of adjudged debtors, in the time
of Columella (i, 3, 14): “More præpotentium, qui possident fines
gentium, quos ... aut occupatos nexu civium, aut ergastulis,
tenent.”

According to the Teutonic codes also, drawn up several centuries
subsequently to Tacitus, it seems that the insolvent debtor
falls under the power of his creditor and is subject to personal
fetters and chastisement (Grimm, Deutsche Rechts Alterthümer, pp.
612-615): both he and Von Savigny assimilate it to the terrible
process of personal execution and addiction in the old law of
Rome, against the insolvent debtor on loan. King Alfred exhorts
the creditor to lenity (Laws of King Alfred, Thorpe, Ancient Laws
of England, vol. i, p. 53, law 35).

A striking evidence of the alteration of the character and
circumstances of debtors, between the age of Solon and that of
Plutarch, is afforded by the treatise of the latter, “De Vitando
Ære Alieno,” wherein he sets forth in the most vehement manner
the miserable consequences of getting into debt. “_The poor_” he
says, “_do not get into debt, for no one will lend them money_
(τοῖς γὰρ ἀπόροις οὐ δανείζουσιν, ἀλλὰ βουλομένοις εὐπορίαν τινα
ἑαυτοῖς κτᾶσθαι καὶ μάρτυρα δίδωσι καὶ βεβαιώτην ἄξιον, ὅτι ἔχει
πιστεύεσθαι): the borrowers are men who have still some property
and some security to offer, but who wish to keep up a rate of
expenditure beyond what they can afford, and become utterly
ruined by contracting debts.” (Plut. pp. 827, 830.) This shows
how intimately the multiplication of poor debtors was connected
with the liability of their persons to enslavement. Compare
Plutarch, De Cupidine Divitiarum, c. 2, p. 523.

[191] Levitic. 25: 35-36; Deuteron. 23: 20. This enactment
seems sufficiently intelligible; yet M. Salvador (Histoire des
Institutions de Moïse, liv. iii, ch. 6) puzzles himself much
to assign to it some far-sighted commercial purpose. “Unto thy
brother thou shalt not lend upon _usury_, but unto a stranger
thou mayst lend upon _usury_:”—it is of more importance to remark
that the word here translated _usury_ really means _any interest_
for money, great or small;—see the opinion of the Sanhedrim of
seventy Jewish doctors, assembled at Paris in 1807, cited in M.
Salvador’s work, _l. c._

The Mosaic law, therefore, (as between Jew and Jew, or even
as between Jew and the μέτοικος, or _resident stranger_,
distinguished from the _foreigner_,) went as far as the Koran
in prohibiting all taking of interest. That its enactments were
not much observed, any more than those of the Koran, we have one
proof at least in the proceeding of Nehemiah at the building of
the second temple,—which presents so curious a parallel in many
respects to the Solonian seisachtheia, that I transcribe the
account of it from Prideaux, Connection of Sacred and Profane
History, part i, b. 6, p. 290:—

“The burden which the people underwent in the earning on of
this work, and the incessant labor which they were enforced to
undergo to bring it to so speedy a conclusion, being very great,
... care was taken to relieve them from a much greater burden,
the oppression of usurers; which they then in great misery lay
under, and had much greater reason to complain of. For the
rich, taking advantage of the necessities of the meaner sort,
had exacted heavy usury of them, making them pay the centesima
for all moneys lent them; that is, 1 per cent. for every month,
which amounted to 12 per cent. for the whole year; so that they
were forced to mortgage their lands, and sell their children
into servitude, to have wherewith to buy bread for the support
of themselves and their families; which being a manifest breach
of the law of God, given them by Moses (for that forbids all the
race of Israel to take usury of any of their brethren), Nehemiah,
on his hearing hereof, resolved forthwith to remove so great an
iniquity; in order whereto he called a general assembly of all
the people, where having set forth unto them the nature of the
offence, how great a breach it was of the divine law, and how
heavy an oppression upon their brethren, and how much it might
provoke the wrath of God against them, he caused it to be enacted
by the general suffrage of that whole assembly, that all should
return to their brethren whatsoever had been exacted of them upon
usury, and also _release all the lands, vineyards, olive-yards,
and houses_, which had been taken of them upon _mortgage_ on the
account hereof.”

The measure of Nehemiah appears thus to have been not merely a
seisachtheia such as that of Solon, but also a παλιντοκία, or
refunding of interest paid by the debtor in past time,—analogous
to the proceeding of the Megarians on emancipating themselves
from their oligarchy, as recounted above, chapter ix, p. 44.

In this way alone could they operate beneficially, and their
tendency to counterwork the previous feeling was at that time not
unimportant, coinciding as it did with other tendencies arising
out of the industrial progress of society, which gradually
exhibited the relation of lender and borrower in a light more
reciprocally beneficial, and less repugnant to the sympathies of the
bystander.[192]

[192] In every law to limit the rate of interest, it is of course
implied that the law not only ought to fix, but can fix, the
maximum rate at which money is to be lent. The tribunes at Rome
followed out this proposition with perfect consistency: they
passed successive laws for the reduction of the rate of interest,
until at length they made it illegal to take any interest at
all: “Gemecium, tribunum plebis, tulisse ad populum, ne fœnerari
liceret.” (Liv. vii, 42.) History shows that the law, though
passed, was not carried into execution.

At Athens, the more favorable point of view prevailed throughout
all the historical times,—the march of industry and commerce, under
the mitigated law which prevailed subsequently to Solon, had been
sufficient to bring it about at a very early period, and to suppress
all public antipathy against lenders at interest.[193] We may remark,
too, that this more equitable tone of opinion grew up spontaneously,
without any legal restriction on the rate of interest,—no such
restriction having ever been imposed, and the rate being expressly
declared free by a law ascribed to Solon himself.[194] The same may
probably be said of the communities of Greece generally,—at least
there is no information to make us suppose the contrary. But the
feeling against lending money at interest remained in the bosoms of
the philosophical men long after it had ceased to form a part of the
practical morality of the citizens, and long after it had ceased to
be justified by the appearances of the case as at first it really had
been. Plato, Aristotle, Cicero,[195] and Plutarch, treat the practice
as a branch of that commercial and money-getting spirit which they
are anxious to discourage; and one consequence of this was, that
they were less disposed to contend strenuously for the inviolability
of existing money-contracts. The conservative feeling on this
point was stronger among the mass than among the philosophers.
Plato even complains of it as inconveniently preponderant,[196]
and as arresting the legislator in all comprehensive projects of
reform. For the most part, indeed, schemes of cancelling debts and
redividing lands were never thought of except by men of desperate
and selfish ambition, who made them stepping-stones to despotic
power. Such men were denounced alike by the practical sense of the
community and by the speculative thinkers; but when we turn to the
case of the Spartan king Agis the Third, who proposed a complete
extinction of debts and an equal redivision of the landed property
of the state, not with any selfish or personal views, but upon pure
ideas of patriotism, well or ill understood, and for the purpose
of renovating the lost ascendency of Sparta,—we find Plutarch[197]
expressing the most unqualified admiration of this young king and
his projects, and treating the opposition made to him as originating
in no better feelings than meanness and cupidity. The philosophical
thinkers on politics conceived—and to a great degree justly, as I
shall show hereafter—that the conditions of security, in the ancient
world, imposed upon the citizens generally the absolute necessity
of keeping up a military spirit and willingness to brave at all
times personal hardship and discomfort; so that increase of wealth,
on account of the habits of self-indulgence which it commonly
introduces, was regarded by them with more or less of disfavor. If
in their estimation any Grecian community had become corrupt, they
were willing to sanction great interference with preëxisting rights
for the purpose of bringing it back nearer to their ideal standard:
and the real security for the maintenance of these rights lay in the
conservative feelings of the citizens generally, much more than in
the opinions which superior minds imbibe from the philosophers.

[193] Boeckh (Public Econ. of Athens, b. i, ch. 22, p. 128)
thinks differently,—in my judgment, contrary to the evidence: the
passages to which he refers, especially that of Theophrastus,
are not sufficient to sustain his opinion, and there are other
passages which go far to contradict it.

[194] Lysias cont. Theomnêst. A. c. 5, p. 360.

[195] Cicero, De Officiis, i, 42.

[196] Plato, Legg. iii, p. 684. ὡς ἐπιχειροῦντι δὴ νομοθέτῃ
κινεῖν τῶν τοιούτων τι πᾶς ἀπαντᾷ, λέγων, μὴ κινεῖν τὰ ἀκίνητα,
καὶ ἐπαρᾶται γῆς τε ἀναδασμοὺς εἰσηγούμενον καὶ χρεῶν ἀποκοπὰς,
ὥστ᾽ εἰς ἀπορίαν καθίστασθαι πάντα ἄνδρα, etc.: compare also
v, pp. 736-737, where similar feelings are intimated not less
emphatically.

Cicero lays down very good principles about the mischief of
destroying faith in contracts; but his admonitions to this effect
seem to be accompanied with an impracticable condition: the
lawgiver is to take care that debts shall not be contracted to
an extent hurtful to the state: “Quamobrem ne sit æs alienum,
quod reipublicæ noceat, providendum est (quod _multis rationibus_
caveri potest): non, si fuerit, ut locupletes suum perdant,
debitores lucrentur alienum,” etc. What the _multæ rationes_
were, which Cicero had in his mind, I do not know: compare his
opinion about _fœneratores_, Offic. i, 42 ii, 25.

[197] See Plutarch’s Life of Agis, especially ch. 13, about the
bonfire in which the κλάρια, or mortgage-deeds, of the creditors
were all burnt, in the agora of Sparta: compare also the
comparison of Agis with Gracchus, c. 2.

Those conservative feelings were in the subsequent Athenian
democracy peculiarly deep-rooted: the mass of the Athenian people
identified inseparably the maintenance of property, in all its
various shapes, with that of their laws and constitution. And it is
a remarkable fact, that though the admiration entertained at Athens
for Solon, was universal, the principle of his seisachtheia, and
of his money-depreciation, was not only never imitated, but found
the strongest tacit reprobation; whereas at Rome, as well as in
most of the kingdoms of modern Europe, we know that one debasement
of the coin succeeded another,—the temptation, of thus partially
eluding the pressure of financial embarrassments, proved, after one
successful trial, too strong to be resisted, and brought down the
coin by successive depreciations from the full pound of twelve ounces
to the standard of half an ounce. It is of some importance to take
notice of this fact, when we reflect how much “Grecian faith” has
been degraded by the Roman writers into a byword for duplicity in
pecuniary dealings.[198] The democracy of Athens,—and, indeed, the
cities of Greece generally, both oligarchies and democracies,—stands
far above the senate of Rome, and far above the modern kingdoms of
France and England, until comparatively recent times, in respect
of honest dealing with the coinage:[199] moreover, while there
occurred at Rome several political changes which brought about new
tables,[200] or at least a partial depreciation of contracts, no
phenomenon of the same kind ever happened at Athens, during the
three centuries between Solon and the end of the free working of
the democracy. Doubtless there were fraudulent debtors at Athens,
and the administration of private law, though it did not in any way
connive at their proceedings, was far too imperfect to repress them
as effectually as might have been wished. But the public sentiment
on the point was just and decided, and it may be asserted with
confidence, that a loan of money at Athens was quite as secure as
it ever was at any time or place of the ancient world,—in spite
of the great and important superiority of Rome with respect to
the accumulation of a body of authoritative legal precedent, the
source of what was ultimately shaped into the Roman jurisprudence.
Among the various causes of sedition or mischief in the Grecian
communities,[201] we hear little of the pressure of private debt.

[198] “Græcâ fide mercari.” Polybius puts the Greeks greatly
below the Romans in point of veracity and good faith (vi, 56); in
another passage, he speaks not quite so confidently (xviii, 17).
Even the testimony of the Roman writers is sometimes given in
favor of Attic good faith, not against it—“ut semper et in omni
re, quicquid sincerâ fide gereretur, id Romani, _Atticâ fieri_,
prædicarent.” (Velleius Paterc. ii, 23.)

The language of Heffter (Athenäische Gerichts Verfassung, p.
466), especially, degrades very undeservedly the state of good
faith and credit at Athens.

The whole tone and argument of the Oration of Dêmosthenês
against Leptinês is a remarkable proof of the respect of the
Athenian dikastery for vested interests, even under less obvious
forms than that of pecuniary possession. We may add a striking
passage of Dêmosthenês cont. Timokrat. wherein he denounces the
rescinding of past transactions (τὰ πεπραγμένα λῦσαι, contrasted
with prospective legislation) as an injustice peculiar to an
oligarchy, and repugnant to the feelings of a democracy (cont.
Timokrat. c. 20, p. 724; c. 36, 747).

[199] A similar credit, in respect to monetary probity, may be
claimed for the republic of Florence. M. Sismondi says, “Au
milieu des révolutions monétaires de tous les pays voisins et
tandis que la mauvaise foi des gouvernemens altéroit le numéraire
d’une extrémité à l’autre de l’Europe, le florin ou séquin de
Florence est toujours resté le même: il est du même poids, du
même titre: il porte la même empreinte que celui qui fut battu en
1252.” (Républiques Italiennes, vol. iii, ch. 18, p. 176.)

M. Boeckh (Public Econ. of Athens, i, 6; iv, 19), while
affirming, justly and decidedly, that the Athenian republic
always set a high value on maintaining the integrity of their
silver money,—yet thinks that the gold pieces which were coined
in Olymp. 93, 2, (408 B. C.) under the archonship of Antigenês
(out of the golden ornaments in the acropolis, and at a time of
public embarrassments) were debased and made to pass for more
than their value. The only evidence in support of this position
appears to be the passage in Aristophanês (Ran. 719-737) with
the Scholia; but this very passage seems to me rather to prove
the contrary. “The Athenian people (says Aristophanês) deal
with their public servants as they do with their coins: they
prefer the new and bad to the old and good.” If the people were
so exceedingly, and even extravagantly, desirous of obtaining
the new coins, this is a strong proof that they were _not_
depreciated, and that no loss was incurred by giving the old
coins in exchange for them.

[200] “Sane vetus Urbi fœnebre malum (says Tacitus, Ann. vi, 16)
et seditionum discordiarumque creberrima causa,” etc: compare
Appian, Bell. Civil. Præfat.; and Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois,
l. xxii, c. 22.

The constant hopes and intrigues of debtors at Rome, to get rid
of their debts by some political movement, are nowhere more
forcibly brought out than in the second Catilinarian Oration of
Cicero, c. 8-9: read also the striking harangue of Catiline to
his fellow-conspirators (Sallust, B. Catilin. c. 20-21).

[201] The insolvent debtor, in some of the Bœotian towns, was
condemned to sit publicly in the agora with a basket on his head,
and then disfranchised (Nikolaus Damaskenus, Frag. p. 152, ed.
Orelli).

According to Diodorus, the old severe law against the body of
a debtor, long after it had been abrogated by Solon at Athens,
still continued in other parts of Greece (i, 79).

By the measures of relief above described,[202] Solon had
accomplished results surpassing his own best hopes. He had healed the
prevailing discontents; and such was the confidence and gratitude
which he had inspired, that he was now called upon to draw up a
constitution and laws for the better working of the government
in future. His constitutional changes were great and valuable:
respecting his laws, what we hear is rather curious than important.

[202] Solon, Frag. 27, ed. Schneid.—

Ἃ μὲν ἄελπτα σὺν θεοῖσιν ἤνυσ᾽, ἄλλα δ’ οὐ μάτην
Ἔρδον.

It has been already stated that, down to the time of Solon, the
classification received in Attica was that of the four Ionic tribes,
comprising in one scale the phratries and gentes, and in another
scale the three trittyes and forty-eight naukraries,—while the
eupatridæ, seemingly a few specially respected gentes, and perhaps
a few distinguished families in all the gentes, had in their hands
all the powers of government. Solon introduced a new principle of
classification, called, in Greek, the timocratic principle. He
distributed all the citizens of the tribes, without any reference
to their gentes or phratries, into four classes, according to the
amount of their property, which he caused to be assessed and entered
in a public schedule. Those whose annual income was equal to five
hundred medimni of corn (about seven hundred imperial bushels) and
upwards,—one medimnus being considered equivalent to one drachma in
money,—he placed in the highest class; those who received between
three hundred and five hundred medimni, or drachms, formed the
second class; and those between two hundred and three hundred, the
third.[203] The fourth and most numerous class comprised all those
who did not possess land yielding a produce equal to two hundred
medimni. The first class, called pentakosiomedimni, were alone
eligible to the archonship and to all commands: the second were
called the knights or horsemen of the state, as possessing enough
to enable them to keep a horse and perform military service in that
capacity: the third class, called the zeugitæ, formed the heavy-armed
infantry, and were bound to serve, each with his full panoply.
Each of these three classes was entered in the public schedule as
possessed of a taxable capital, calculated with a certain reference
to his annual income, but in a proportion diminishing according to
the scale of that income,—and a man paid taxes to the state according
to the sum for which he stood rated in the schedule; so that this
direct taxation acted really like a graduated income-tax. The
ratable property of the citizens belonging to the richest class, the
pentakosiomedimnus, was calculated and entered on the state-schedule
at a sum of capital equal to twelve times his annual income: that
of the hippeus, or knight, at a sum equal to ten times his annual
income: that of the zeugite, at a sum equal to five times his annual
income. Thus a pentakosiomedimnus, whose income was exactly five
hundred drachms, the minimum qualification of his class, stood rated
in the schedule for a taxable property of six thousand drachms, or
one talent, being twelve times his income,—if his annual income
were one thousand drachms, he would stand rated for twelve thousand
drachms, or two talents, being the same proportion of income to
ratable capital. But when we pass to the second class, or knights,
the proportion of the two is changed,—the knight possessing an
income of just three hundred drachms, or three hundred medimni,
would stand rated for three thousand drachms, or ten times his real
income, and so in the same proportion for any income above three
hundred and below five hundred. Again, in the third class. or below
three hundred, the proportion is a second time altered,—the zeugite
possessing exactly two hundred drachms of income, was rated upon a
still lower calculation, at one thousand drachms, or a sum equal to
five times his income; and all incomes of this class, between two
hundred and three hundred drachms, would in like manner be multiplied
by five in order to obtain the amount of ratable capital. Upon these
respective sums of scheduled capital, all direct taxation was levied:
if the state required one per cent, of direct tax, the poorest
pentakosiomedimnus would pay (upon six thousand drachms) sixty
drachms; the poorest hippeus would pay (upon three thousand drachms)
thirty; the poorest zeugite would pay (upon one thousand drachms)
ten drachms. And thus this mode of assessment would operate like
a _graduated_ income-tax, looking at it in reference to the three
different classes,—but as an _equal_ income-tax, looking at it in
reference to the different individuals comprised in one and the same
class.[204]

[203] Plutarch, Solon, 18-23; Pollux, viii. 130; Aristot. Polit.
ii, 9, 4; Aristot. Fragm. περὶ Πολιτείων, Fr. 51, ed. Neumann;
Harpokration and Photius, v. Ἱππάς; Etymolog. Mag. Ζευγίσιον,
Θητικόν; the Etym. Mag. Ζευγίσιον, and the Schol. Aristoph.
Equit. 627, recognize only three classes.

He took a medimnus (of wheat or barley?) as equivalent to a
drachm, and a sheep at the same value (_ib._ c. 23).

The medimnus seems equal to about 1 2/5 (1·4) English imperial
bushel: consequently 500 medimni = 700 English imperial bushels,
or 87 1/2 quarters.

[204] The excellent explanation of the Solonian (τίμημα)
property-schedule and graduated qualification, first given by
Boeckh, in his Staatshaushaltung der Athener (b. iii, c. 5), has
elucidated a subject which was, before him, nothing but darkness
and mystery. The statement of Pollux (viii, 130), given in very
loose language, had been, before Boeckh, erroneously apprehended;
ἀνήλισκον εἰς τὸ δημόσιον, does not mean the sums which the
pentakosiomedimnus, the hippeus, or the zeugite, _actually paid_
to the state, but the sums for which each was rated, or which
each was _liable_ to pay, if called upon: of course, the state
does not call for _the whole_ of a man’s rated property, but
exacts an equal proportion of it from each.

On one point I cannot concur with Boeckh. He fixes the pecuniary
qualification of the third class, or zeugites, at one hundred and
fifty drachms, not at two hundred. All the positive testimonies
(as he himself allows, p. 31) agree in fixing two hundred, and
not one hundred and fifty; and the inference drawn from the old
law, quoted in Dêmosthenês (cont. Makartat. p. 1067) is too
uncertain to outweigh this concurrence of authorities.

Moreover, the whole Solonian schedule becomes clearer and
more symmetrical if we adhere to the statement of two hundred
drachms, and not one hundred and fifty, as the lowest scale
of zeugite income; for the scheduled capital is then, in all
the three scales, a definite and exact multiple of the income
returned,—in the richest class it is twelve times,—in the middle
class, ten times,—in the poorest, five times the income. But this
correspondence ceases, if we adopt the supposition of Boeckh,
that the lowest zeugite income was one hundred and fifty drachms;
for the sum of one thousand drachms (at which the lowest zeugite
was rated in the schedule) is no exact multiple of one hundred
and fifty drachms. In order to evade this difficulty, Boeckh
supposes that the adjustment of income to scheduled capital was
effected in a way both roundabout and including nice fractions:
he thinks that the income of each was converted into capital
by multiplying by twelve, and that, in the case of the richest
class, or pentakosiomedimni, the _whole_ sum so obtained was
entered in the schedule,—in the case of the second class, or
hippeis, five-sixths of the sum,—and in the case of the third
class, or zeugites, five-ninths of the sum. Now this process
seems to me rather complicated, and the employment of a fraction
such as five-ninths (both difficult and not much above the simple
fraction of one-half) very improbable: moreover, Boeckh’s own
table, p. 41, gives fractional sums in the third class, when none
appear in the first or second.

Such objections, of course, would not be admissible, if there
were any positive evidence to prove the point. But in this case
they are in harmony with all the positive evidence, and are
amply sufficient, in my judgment, to countervail the presumption
arising from the old law on which Boeckh relies.

All persons in the state whose annual income amounted to less than
two hundred medimni, or drachms, were placed in the fourth class,
and they must have constituted the large majority of the community.
They were not liable to any direct taxation, and, perhaps, were not
at first even entered upon the taxable schedule, more especially as
we do not know that any taxes were actually levied upon this schedule
during the Solonian times. It is said that they were all called
thêtes, but this appellation is not well sustained, and cannot be
admitted: the fourth compartment in the descending scale was indeed
termed the thetic census, because it contained all the thêtes, and
because most of its members were of that humble description; but
it is not conceivable that a proprietor whose land yielded to him
a clear annual return of one hundred, one hundred and twenty, one
hundred and forty, or one hundred and eighty drachms, could ever have
been designated by that name.[205]

[205] See Boeckh, Staatshaushaltung der Athener, _ut suprà_.
Pollux gives an Inscription describing Anthemion son of
Diphilus,—Θητικοῦ ἀντὶ τέλους ἱππάδ᾽ ἀμειψάμενος. The word
τελεῖν does not necessarily mean _actual_ payment, but “the
being included in a class with a certain aggregate of duties and
liabilities,”—equivalent to _censeri_ (Boeckh, p. 36).

Plato, in his treatise De Legibus, admits a quadripartite census
of citizens, according to more or less of property (Legg. v,
p. 744; vi, p. 756). Compare Tittmann, Griechische Staats
Verfassungen pp. 648, 653; K. F. Hermann, Lehrbuch der Gr. Staats
Alt. § 108.

Such were the divisions in the political scale established by
Solon, called by Aristotle a timocracy, in which the rights,
honors, functions, and liabilities of the citizens were measured
out according to the assessed property of each. Though the scale is
stated as if nothing but landed property were measured by it, yet we
may rather presume that property of other kinds was intended to be
included, since it served as the basis of every man’s liability to
taxation. The highest honors of the state,—that is, the places of
the nine archons annually chosen, as well as those in the senate of
areopagus, into which the past archons always entered,—perhaps also
the posts of prytanes of the naukrari,—were reserved for the first
class: the poor eupatrids became ineligible; while rich men, not
eupatrids, were admitted. Other posts of inferior distinction were
filled by the second and third classes, who were, moreover, bound to
military service, the one on horseback, the other as heavy-armed
soldiers on foot. Moreover, the liturgies of the state, as they
were called,—unpaid functions, such as the trierarchy, chorêgy,
gymnasiarchy, etc., which entailed expense and trouble on the holder
of them,—were distributed in some way or other between the members
of the three classes, though we do not know how the distribution was
made in these early times. On the other hand, the members of the
fourth or lowest class were disqualified from holding any individual
office of dignity,—performed no liturgies, served in case of war
only as light-armed, or with a panoply provided by the state, and
paid nothing to the direct property-tax, or eisphora. It would be
incorrect to say that they paid _no_ taxes; for indirect taxes, such
as duties on imports, fell upon them in common with the rest; and we
must recollect that these latter were, throughout a long period of
Athenian history, in steady operation, while the direct taxes were
only levied on rare occasions.

But though this fourth class, constituting the great numerical
majority of the free people, were shut out from individual office,
their collective importance was in another way greatly increased.
They were invested with the right of choosing the annual archons, out
of the class of pentakosiomedimni; and what was of more importance
still, the archons and the magistrates generally, after their year of
office, instead of being accountable to the senate of areopagus, were
made formally accountable to the public assembly sitting in judgment
upon their past conduct. They might be impeached and called upon to
defend themselves, punished in case of misbehavior, and debarred from
the usual honor of a seat in the senate of areopagus.

Had the public assembly been called upon to act alone, without aid
or guidance, this accountability would have proved only nominal. But
Solon converted it into a reality by another new institution, which
will hereafter be found of great moment in the working out of the
Athenian democracy. He created the pro-bouleutic or pre-considering
senate, with intimate and especial reference to the public
assembly,—to prepare matters for its discussion, to convoke and
superintend its meetings, and to insure the execution of its decrees.
This senate, as first constituted by Solon, comprised four hundred
members, taken in equal proportions from the four tribes,—not chosen
by lot, as they will be found to be in the more advanced stage of the
democracy, but elected by the people, in the same way as the archons
then were,—persons of the fourth or poorest class of the census,
though contributing to elect, not being themselves eligible.

But while Solon thus created the new pre-considering senate,
identified with and subsidiary to the popular assembly, he manifested
no jealousy of the preëxisting areopagitic senate: on the contrary,
he enlarged its powers, gave to it an ample supervision over the
execution of the laws generally, and imposed upon it the censorial
duty of inspecting the lives and occupations of the citizens, as well
as of punishing men of idle and dissolute habits. He was himself, as
past archon, a member of this ancient senate, and he is said to have
contemplated that, by means of the two senates, the state would be
held fast, as it were with a double anchor, against all shocks and
storms.[206]

[206] Plutarch, Solon, 18, 19, 23; Philochorus, Frag. 60, ed.
Didot. Athenæus, iv, p. 168; Valer. Maxim. ii, 6.

Such are the only new political institutions, apart from the laws
to be noticed presently, which there are grounds for ascribing to
Solon, when we take proper care to discriminate what really belongs
to Solon and his age, from the Athenian constitution as afterwards
remodelled. It has been a practice common with many able expositors
of Grecian affairs, and followed partly, even by Dr. Thirlwall,[207]
to connect the name of Solon with the whole political and judicial
state of Athens as it stood between the age of Periklês and that of
Dêmosthenês,—the regulations of the senate of five hundred, the
numerous public dikasts or jurors taken by lot from the people, as
well as the body annually selected for law-revision, and called
nomothets, and the prosecution, called the graphê paranomôn, open
to be instituted against the proposer of any measure illegal,
unconstitutional, or dangerous. There is, indeed, some countenance
for this confusion between Solonian and post-Solonian Athens, in
the usage of the orators themselves; for Dêmosthenês and Æschinês
employ the name of Solon in a very loose manner, and treat him as
the author of institutions belonging evidently to a later age for
example, the striking and characteristic oath of the heliastic
jurors, which Demosthenês[208] ascribes to Solon, proclaims itself
in many ways as belonging to the age after Kleisthenês, especially
by the mention of the senate of five hundred, and not of four
hundred. Among the citizens who served as jurors or dikasts, Solon
was venerated generally as the author of the Athenian laws; and
the orator, therefore, might well employ his name for the purpose
of emphasis, without provoking any critical inquiry whether the
particular institution, which he happened to be then impressing upon
his audience, belonged really to Solon himself or to the subsequent
periods. Many of those institutions, which Dr. Thirlwall mentions in
conjunction with the name of Solon, are among the last refinements
and elaborations of the democratical mind of Athens,—gradually
prepared, doubtless, during the interval between Kleisthenês and
Periklês, but not brought into full operation until the period of
the latter (460-429 B. C.); for it is hardly possible to conceive
these numerous dikasteries and assemblies in regular, frequent,
and long-standing operation, without an assured payment to the
dikasts who composed them. Now such payment first began to be made
about the time of Periklês, if not by his actual proposition;[209]
and Dêmosthenês had good reason for contending that, if it were
suspended, the judicial as well as the administrative system of
Athens would at once fall to pieces.[210] And it would be a marvel,
such as nothing short of strong direct evidence would justify us
in believing, that in an age when even partial democracy was yet
untried, Solon should conceive the idea of such institutions: it
would be a marvel still greater, that the half-emancipated thêtes and
small proprietors, for whom he legislated,—yet trembling under the
rod of the eupatrid archons, and utterly inexperienced in collective
business,—should have been found suddenly competent to fulfil these
ascendent functions, such as the citizens of conquering Athens in
the days of Periklês,—full of the sentiment of force and actively
identifying themselves with the dignity of their community,—became
gradually competent, and not more than competent, to exercise with
effect. To suppose that Solon contemplated and provided for the
periodical revision of his laws by establishing a nomothetic jury,
or dikastery, such as that which we find in operation during the
time of Dêmosthenês, would be at variance, in my judgment, with any
reasonable estimate either of the man or of the age. Herodotus says
that Solon, having exacted from the Athenians solemn oaths that
_they_ would not rescind any of his laws for ten years, quitted
Athens for that period, in order that he might not be compelled
to rescind them himself: Plutarch informs us that he gave to his
laws force for a century absolute.[211] Solon himself, and Drako
before him, had been lawgivers, evoked and empowered by the special
emergency of the times; the idea of a frequent revision of laws, by a
body of lot-selected dikasts, belongs to a far more advanced age, and
could not well have been present to the minds of either. The wooden
rollers of Solon, like the tables of the Roman decemvirs,[212] were
doubtless intended as a permanent “fons omnis publici privatique
juris.”

[207] Meursius, Solon, _passim_; Sigonius, De Republ. Athen. i,
p. 39 (though in some passages he makes a marked distinction
between the time before and after Kleisthenês, p. 28). See
Wachsmuth, Hellenische Alterthumskunde, vol. i, sects. 46, 47;
Tittmann, Griechische Staatsverfassungen, p. 146; Platner, Der
Attische Prozess, book ii, ch. 5, pp 28-38; Dr. Thirlwall,
History of Greece, vol. ii, ch. xi, pp. 46-57.

Niebuhr, in his brief allusions to the legislation of Solon,
keeps duly in view the material difference between Athens
as constituted by Solon, and Athens as it came to be after
Kleisthenês; but he presumes a closer analogy between the Roman
patricians and the Athenian eupatridæ than we are entitled to
count upon.

[208] Dêmosthen. cont. Timokrat. p. 746. Æschinês ascribes this
oath to ὁ νομοθέτης (c. Ktesiphon. p. 389).

Dr. Thirlwall notices the oath as prescribed by Solon (History of
Greece, vol. ii, ch. xi, p. 47).

So again Dêmosthenês and Æschinês, in the orations against
Leptinês (c. 21, p. 486) and against Timokrat. pp.
706-707,—compare Æschin. c. Ktesiph. p. 429,—in commenting upon
the formalities enjoined for repealing an existing law and
enacting a new one, while ascribing the whole to Solon,—say,
among other things, that Solon directed the proposer “to post up
his project of law before the eponymi,” (ἐκθεῖναι πρόσθεν τῶν
Ἐπωνύμων): now the eponymi were (the statues of) the heroes from
whom the ten Kleisthenean tribes drew their names, and the law
making mention of these statues, proclaims itself as of a date
subsequent to Kleisthenês. Even the law defining the treatment
of the condemned murderer who returned from exile, which both
Dêmosthenês and Doxopater (ap. Walz. Collect. Rhetor. vol. ii, p.
223) call a law of Drako, is really later than Solon, as may be
seen by its mention of the ἄξων (Dêmosth. cont. Aristok. p. 629).

Andokidês is not less liberal in his employment of the name of
Solon (see Orat. i, De Mysteriis, p. 13), where he cites as a law
of Solon, an enactment which contains the mention of the tribe
Æantis and the senate of five hundred (obviously, therefore,
subsequent to the revolution of Kleisthenês), besides other
matters which prove it to have been passed even subsequent to
the oligarchical revolution of the four hundred, towards the
close of the Peloponnesian war. The prytanes, the proëdri, and
the division of the year into ten portions of time, each called
by the name of _a prytany_,—so interwoven with all the public
proceedings of Athens,—do not belong to the Solonian Athens, but
to Athens as it stood after the ten tribes of Kleisthenês.

Schömann maintains emphatically, that the sworn nomothetæ,
as they stood in the days of Dêmosthenês, were instituted by
Solon; but he admits at the same time that all the allusions of
the orators to this institution include both words and matters
essentially post-Solonian, so that modifications subsequent to
Solon must have been introduced. This admission seems to me fatal
to the cogency of his proof: see Schömann, De Comitiis, ch. vii,
pp. 266-268; and the same author, Antiq. J. P. Att. sect. xxxii.
His opinion is shared by K. F. Hermann, Lehrbuch der Griech.
Staats Alterth. sect. 131; and Platner, Attischer Prozess, vol.
ii, p. 38.

Meier, De Bonis Damnatorum, p. 2, remarks upon the laxity
with which the orators use the name of Solon: “Oratores
Solonis nomine sæpe utuntur, ubi omnino legislatorem quemquam
significare volunt, etiamsi a Solone ipso lex lata non est.”
Herman Schelling, in his Dissertation De Solonis Legibus ap.
Oratt. Attic. (Berlin, 1842), has collected and discussed
the references to Solon and to his laws in the orators. He
controverts the opinion just cited from Meier, but upon arguments
no way satisfactory to me (pp. 6-8); the more so, as he himself
admits that the dialect in which the Solonian laws appear in the
citation of the orators can never have been the original dialect
of Solon himself (pp. 3-5), and makes also substantially the same
admission at Schömann, in regard to the presence of post-Solonian
matters in the supposed Solonian laws (pp. 23-27).

[209] See Boeckh, Public Economy of Athens, book ii, c. 15.

[210] Demosthen. cont. Timokrat. c. 26, p. 731: compare
Aristophanês Ekklesiazus. 302.

[211] Herodot. i, 29; Plutarch, Solon, c. 25. Aulus Gellius
affirms that the Athenians swore, under strong religious
penalties, to observe them forever (ii, 12).

[212] Livy iii, 34.

If we examine the facts of the case, we shall see that nothing more
than the bare foundation of the democracy of Athens as it stood
in the time of Periklês, can reasonably be ascribed to Solon. “I
gave to the people,” Solon says, in one of his short remaining
fragments,[213] “as much strength as sufficed for their needs,
without either enlarging or diminishing their dignity: for those
too who possessed power and were noted for wealth, I took care that
no unworthy treatment should be reserved. I stood with the strong
shield cast over both parties, so as not to allow an unjust triumph
to either.” Again, Aristotle tells us that Solon bestowed upon the
people no greater measure of power than was barely necessary,[214]—to
elect their magistrates and to hold them to accountability: if the
people had had less than this, they could not have been expected
to remain tranquil,—they would have been in slavery and hostile to
the constitution. Not less distinctly does Herodotus speak, when he
describes the revolution subsequently operated by Kleisthenês—the
latter, he tells us, found “the Athenian people excluded from
everything.”[215] These passages seem positively to contradict the
supposition, in itself sufficiently improbable, that Solon is the
author of the peculiar democratical institutions of Athens, such as
the constant and numerous dikasts for judicial trials and revision
of laws. The genuine and forward democratical movement of Athens
begins only with Kleisthenês, from the moment when that distinguished
Alkmæônid, either spontaneously, or from finding himself worsted
in his party strife with Isagoras, purchased by large popular
concessions the hearty coöperation of the multitude under very
dangerous circumstances. While Solon, in his own statement as well
as in that of Aristotle, gave to the people as much power as was
strictly needful, but no more,—Kleisthenês (to use the significant
phrase of Herodotus), “being vanquished in the party contest with
his rival, _took the people into partnership_.”[216] It was thus
to the interests of the weaker section, in a strife of contending
nobles, that the Athenian people owed their first admission to
political ascendency,—in part, at least, to this cause, though the
proceedings of Kleisthenês indicate a hearty and spontaneous popular
sentiment. But such constitutional admission of the people would
not have been so astonishingly fruitful in positive results, if the
course of public events for the half-century after Kleisthenês had
not been such as to stimulate most powerfully their energy, their
self-reliance, their mutual sympathies, and their ambition. I shall
recount in a future chapter those historical causes, which, acting
upon the Athenian character, gave such efficiency and expansion
to the great democratical impulse communicated by Kleisthenês: at
present, it is enough to remark that that impulse commences properly
with Kleisthenês, and not with Solon.

[213] Solon, Fragm. ii, 3, ed. Schneidewin:—

Δήμῳ μὲν γὰρ ἔδωκα τόσον κράτος, ὅσσον ἐπαρκεῖ,
Τιμῆς οὔτ᾽ ἀφελὼν, οὔτ᾽ ἐπορεξάμενος·
Οἳ δ᾽ εἶχον δύμαμιν καὶ χρήμασιν ἦσαν ἀγητοὶ,
Καὶ τοῖς ἐφρασάμην μηδὲν ἀεικὲς ἔχειν.
Ἔστην δ᾽ ἀμφιβαλὼν κρατερὸν σάκος ἀμφοτέροισι,
Νικᾷν δ᾽ οὐκ εἴασ᾽ οὐδετέρους ἀδίκως.

The reading ἐπαρκεῖ in the first line is not universally
approved: Brunck adopts ἐπαρκεῖν, which Niebuhr approves. The
latter construes it to mean, “I gave to the people only so much
power as could not be withheld from them.” (Röm. Geschicht. t.
ii, p. 346, 2d ed.) Taking the first two lines together, I think
Niebuhr’s meaning is substantially correct, though I give a more
literal translation myself. Solon seems to be vindicating himself
against the reproach of having been too democratical, which was,
doubtless, addressed to him in every variety of language.

[214] Aristot. Polit. ii, 9, 4. Ἐπεὶ Σόλων γ᾽ ἔοικε τὴν
ἀναγκαιοτάτην ἀποδιδόναι τῷ δημῳ δύναμιν, τὸ τὰς ἀρχὰς αἱρεῖσθαι
καὶ εὐθύνειν· μηδὲ γὰρ τούτου κύριος ὢν ὁ δῆμος, δοῦλος ἂν εἴη
λαὶ πολέμιος.

In this passage respecting Solon (containing sections 2, 3, 4
of the edition of M. Barthélemy St. Hilaire), Aristotle first
gives the opinion of certain critics who praised Solon, with the
reasons upon which it is founded; next, the opinion of certain
critics who blamed him, with _their_ reasons; thirdly, his own
judgment. The first of these three contains sect. 2 (from Σόλωνα
δ᾽ ἔνιοι, down to τὰ δικαστήρια ποιήσας ἐκ πάντων). The second
contains the greater part of sect. 3 (from Διὸ καὶ μέμφονταί
τινες αὐτῷ, down to τὴν νῦν δημοκρατίαν). The remainder is his
own judgment. I notice this, because sections 2 and 3 are not to
be taken as the opinion of Aristotle himself, but of those upon
whom he was commenting, who considered Solon as the author of the
dikasteries selected by lot.

[215] Herodot. v, 69. τὸν Ἀθηναίων δῆμον, πρότερον ἀπωσμένον
πάντων, etc.

[216] Herodot. v, 66-69. Οὗτοι οἱ ἄνδρες (Kleisthenês and
Isagoras) ἐστασίασαν περὶ δυνάμεως· ἑσσούμενος δὲ ὁ Κλεισθένης
τὸν δῆμον προσεταιρίζεται ...

... Ὡς γὰρ δὴ τὸν Ἀθηναίων δῆμον, πρότερον ἀπωσμένον πάντων,
τότε πρὸς τὴν ἑωϋτοῦ μοίρην προσεθήκατο, (Kleisthenês) τὰς φυλὰς
μετωνόμασε ... ἦν δὲ, τὸν δῆμον προσθέμενος πολλῷ κατύπερθε τῶν
ἀντιστασιώτεων.

As to the marked democratical tendency of the proceedings of
Kleisthenês, see Aristot. Polit. vi, 2, 11; iii, 1, 10.

But the Solonian constitution, though only the foundation, was yet
the indispensable foundation, of the subsequent democracy; and if
the discontents of the miserable Athenian population, instead of
experiencing his disinterested and healing management, had fallen
at once into the hands of selfish power-seekers, like Kylôn or
Peisistratus, the memorable expansion of the Athenian mind during
the ensuing century would never have taken place, and the whole
subsequent history of Greece would probably have taken a different
course. Solon left the essential powers of the state still in the
hands of the oligarchy, and the party combats—to be recounted
hereafter—between Peisistratus, Lykurgus, and Megaklês, thirty years
after his legislation, which ended in the despotism of Peisistratus,
will appear to be of the same purely oligarchical character as they
had been before he was appointed archon. But the oligarchy which he
established was very different from the unmitigated oligarchy which
he found, so teeming with oppression and so destitute of redress, as
his own poems testify.

It was he who first gave both to the citizens of middling property
and to the general mass, a _locus standi_ against the eupatrids; he
enabled the people partially to protect themselves, and familiarized
them with the idea of protecting themselves, by the peaceful exercise
of a constitutional franchise. The new force, through which this
protection was carried into effect, was the public assembly called
heliæa,[217] regularized and armed with enlarged prerogatives, and
farther strengthened by its indispensable ally,—the pro-bouleutic
or pre-considering senate. Under the Solonian constitution, this
force was merely secondary and defensive, but after the renovation
of Kleisthenês, it became paramount and sovereign; it branched out
gradually into those numerous popular dikasteries which so powerfully
modified both public and private Athenian life, drew to itself the
undivided reverence and submission of the people, and by degrees
rendered the single magistracies essentially subordinate functions.
The popular assembly as constituted by Solon, appearing in modified
efficiency, and trained to the office of reviewing and judging the
general conduct of a past magistrate,—forms the intermediate stage
between the passive Homeric agora, and those omnipotent assemblies
and dikasteries which listened to Periklês or Dêmosthenês. Compared
with these last, it has in it but a faint streak of democracy,—and
so it naturally appeared to Aristotle, who wrote with a practical
experience of Athens in the time of the orators; but compared with
the first, or with the ante-Solonian constitution of Attica, it
must doubtless have appeared a concession eminently democratical.
To impose upon the eupatrid archon the necessity of being elected,
or put upon his trial of after-accountability, by the _rabble_ of
freemen (such would be the phrase in eupatrid society), would be
a bitter humiliation to those among whom it was first introduced;
for we must recollect that this was the most extensive scheme of
constitutional reform yet propounded in Greece, and that despots
and oligarchies shared between them at that time the whole Grecian
world. As it appears that Solon, while constituting the popular
assembly with its pro-bouleutic senate, had no jealousy of the senate
of areopagus, and indeed even enlarged its powers,—we may infer
that his grand object was, not to weaken the oligarchy generally,
but to improve the administration and to repress the misconduct
and irregularities of the individual archons; and that too, not by
diminishing their powers, but by making some degree of popularity the
condition both of their entry into office, and of their safety or
honor after it.

[217] Lysias cont. Theomnest. A. c. 5, p. 357, who gives ἐὰν
μὴ προστιμήσῃ ἡ Ἡλίαια as a Solonian phrase; though we are led
to doubt whether Solon can ever have employed it, when we find
Pollux (vii, 5, 22) distinctly stating that Solon used the word
ἐπαίτια to signify what the orators called προστιμήματα.

The original and proper meaning of the word Ἡλίαια is, the public
assembly (see Tittmann, Griech. Staatsverfass. pp. 215-216); in
subsequent times we find it signifying at Athens—1. The aggregate
of six thousand dikasts chosen by lot annually and sworn, or the
assembled people considered as exercising judicial functions; 2.
Each of the separate fractions into which this aggregate body was
in practice subdivided for actual judicial business. Ἐκκλησία
became the term for the public deliberative assembly properly
so called, which could never be held on the same day that the
dikasteries sat (Dêmosthen. cont. Timokrat. c. 21, p. 726): every
dikastery is in fact always addressed as if it were the assembled
people engaged in a specific duty.

I imagine the term Ἡλίαια in the time of Solon to have been
used in its original meaning,—the public assembly, perhaps
with a connotation of employment in judicial proceeding. The
fixed number of six thousand does not date before the time of
Kleisthenês, because it is essentially connected with the ten
tribes; while the subdivision of this body of six thousand into
various bodies of jurors for different courts and purposes
did not commence, probably, until after the first reforms of
Kleisthenês. I shall revert to this point when I touch upon the
latter, and his times.

It is, in my judgment, a mistake to suppose that Solon transferred
the judicial power of the archons to a popular dikastery; these
magistrates still continued self-acting judges, deciding and
condemning without appeal,—not mere presidents of an assembled jury,
as they afterwards came to be during the next century.[218] For the
general exercise of such power they were accountable after their
year of office; and this accountability was the security against
abuse,—a very insufficient security, yet not wholly inoperative.
It will be seen, however, presently, that these archons, though
strong to coerce, and perhaps to oppress, small and poor men,—had no
means of keeping down rebellious nobles of their own rank, such as
Peisistratus, Lykurgus, and Megaklês, each with his armed followers.
When we compare the drawn swords of these ambitious competitors,
ending in the despotism of one of them, with the vehement
parliamentary strife between Themistoklês and Aristeidês afterwards,
peaceably decided by the vote of the sovereign people, and never
disturbing the public tranquillity,—we shall see that the democracy
of the ensuing century fulfilled the conditions of order, as well as
of progress, better than the Solonian constitution.

[218] The statement of Plutarch, that Solon gave an appeal
from the decision of the archon to the judgment of the popular
dikastery (Plutarch, Solon, 18), is distrusted by most of the
expositors, though Dr. Thirlwall seems to admit it, justifying it
by the analogy of the ephetæ, or judges of appeal, constituted by
Drako (Hist. of Greece, vol. ii, ch. xi, p. 46).

To me it appears that the Drakonian ephetæ were not really
judges in _appeal_: but be that as it may, the supposition of
an appeal from the judgment of the archon is inconsistent with
the known course of Attic procedure, and has apparently arisen
in Plutarch’s mind from confusion with the Roman _provocatio_,
which really was an appeal from the judgment of the consul to
that of the people. Plutarch’s comparison of Solon with Publicola
leads to this suspicion,—Καὶ τοῖς φεύγουσι δίκη, ἐπικαλεῖσθαι
τὸν δῆμον, ὥσπερ ὁ Σόλων τοὺς δικαστὰς, ἔδωκε (Publicola). The
Athenian archon was first a judge without appeal; and afterwards,
ceasing to be a judge, he became president of a dikastery,
performing only those preparatory steps which brought the case to
an issue fit for decision: but he does not seem ever to have been
a judge subject to appeal.

It is hardly just to Plutarch to make him responsible for
the absurd remark that Solon rendered his laws intentionally
obscure, in order that the dikasts might have more to do and
greater power: he gives the remark, himself, only with the saving
expression λέγεται, “it is said;” and we may well doubt whether
it was ever seriously intended even by its author, whoever he may
have been.

To distinguish this Solonian constitution from the democracy which
followed it, is essential to a due comprehension of the progress of
the Greek mind, and especially of Athenian affairs. That democracy
was achieved by gradual steps, which will be hereafter described:
Dêmosthenês and Æschinês lived under it as a system consummated and
in full activity, when the stages of its previous growth were no
longer matter of exact memory; and the dikasts then assembled in
judgment were pleased to hear the constitution to which they were
attached identified with the names either of Solon, or of Theseus,
to which they were no less partial. Their inquisitive contemporary
Aristotle was not thus misled: but even the most common-place
Athenians of the century preceding would have escaped the same
delusion. For during the whole course of the democratical movement
from the Persian invasion down to the Peloponnesian war, and
especially during the changes proposed by Periklês and Ephialtês,
there was always a strenuous party of resistance, who would not
suffer the people to forget that they had already forsaken, and were
on the point of forsaking still more, the orbit marked out by Solon.
The illustrious Periklês underwent innumerable attacks both from the
orators in the assembly and from the comic writers in the theatre;
and among these sarcasms on the political tendencies of the day, we
are probably to number the complaint breathed by the poet Kratinus,
of the desuetude into which both Solon and Drako had fallen. “I
swear,[219] said he, in a fragment of one of his comedies, by
Solon and Drako, whose wooden tablets (of laws) are now employed by
people to roast their barley.” The laws of Solon respecting penal
offences, respecting inheritance and adoption, respecting the private
relations generally, etc., remained for the most part in force; his
quadripartite census also continued, at least for financial purposes
until the archonship of Nausinikus in 377 B. C.; so that Cicero and
others might be warranted in affirming that his laws still prevailed
at Athens: but his political and judicial arrangements had undergone
a revolution[220] not less complete and memorable than the character
and spirit of the Athenian people generally. The choice, by way of
lot, of archons and other magistrates, and the distribution by lot
of the general body of dikasts or jurors into pannels for judicial
business, may be decidedly considered as not belonging to Solon,
but adopted after the revolution of Kleisthenês;[221] probably, the
choice of senators by lot also. The lot was a symptom of pronounced
democratical spirit, such as we must not seek in the Solonian
institutions.

[219] Kratinus ap. Plutarch. Solon. 25.—

Πρὸς τοῦ Σόλωνος καὶ Δράκοντος, οἷσι νῦν
Φρύγουσιν ἤδη τὰς κάχρυς τοῖς κύρβεσιν.

Isokratês praises the moderate democracy in early Athens, as
compared with that under which he lived; but in the Orat. vii
(Areopagitic.) he connects the former with the names of Solon and
Kleisthenês, while in the Orat. xii (Panathenaic.), he considers
the former to have lasted from the days of Theseus to those of
Solon and Peisistratus. In this latter oration he describes
pretty exactly the power which the people possessed under the
Solonian constitution,—τοῦ τὰς ἀρχὰς καταστῆσαι καὶ λαβεῖν δίκην
παρὰ τῶν ἐξαμαρτανόντων, which coincides with the phrase of
Aristotle—τὰς ἀρχὰς αἱρεῖσθαι καὶ εὐθύνειν,—supposing ἀρχόντων to
be understood as the substantive of ἐξαμαρτανόντων.

Compare Isokratês, Or. vii, p. 143 (p. 192 Bek.) and p. 150 (202
Bek.) and Orat. xii, pp. 260-264 (351-356 Bek.).

[220] Cicero, Orat. pro Sext. Roscio, c. 25; Ælian, V. H. viii,
10.

[221] This seems to be the opinion of Dr. Thirlwall, against
Wachsmuth though he speaks with doubt. (History of Greece, vol.
ii, ch. 11, p. 48, 2d ed.)

It is not easy to make out distinctly what was the political position
of the ancient gentes and phratries, as Solon left them. The four
tribes consisted altogether of gentes and phratries, insomuch that
no one could be included in any one of the tribes who was not
also a member of some gens and phratry. Now the new pro-bouleutic
or pre-considerate senate consisted of four hundred members,—one
hundred from each of the tribes: persons not included in any gens or
phratry could therefore have had no access to it. The conditions of
eligibility were similar, according to ancient custom, for the nine
archons,—of course, also, for the senate of areopagus. So that there
remained only the public assembly, in which an Athenian not a member
of these tribes could take part: yet he was a citizen, since he could
give his vote for archons and senators, and could take part in the
annual decision of their accountability, besides being entitled to
claim redress for wrong from the archons in his own person,—while
the alien could only do so through the intervention of an avouching
citizen, or prostatês. It seems, therefore, that all persons not
included in the four tribes, whatever their grade of fortune might
be, were on the same level in respect to political privilege as the
fourth and poorest class of the Solonian census. It has already been
remarked that, even before the time of Solon, the number of Athenians
not included in the gentes or phratries was probably considerable:
it tended to become greater and greater, since these bodies were
close and unexpansive, while the policy of the new lawgiver tended
to invite industrious settlers from other parts of Greece to
Athens. Such great and increasing inequality of political privilege
helps to explain the weakness of the government in repelling the
aggressions of Peisistratus, and exhibits the importance of the
revolution afterwards wrought by Kleisthenês, when he abolished (for
all political purposes) the four old tribes, and created ten new
comprehensive tribes in place of them.

In regard to the regulations of the senate and the assembly of
the people, as constituted by Solon, we are altogether without
information: nor is it safe to transfer to the Solonian constitution
the information, comparatively ample, which we possess respecting
these bodies under the later democracy.

The laws of Solon were inscribed on wooden rollers and triangular
tablets, in the species of writing called boustrophêdon (lines
alternating first from left to right, and next from right to left,
like the course of the ploughman), and preserved first in the
acropolis, subsequently in the prytaneium. On the tablets, called
kyrbeis, were chiefly commemorated the laws respecting sacred rites
and sacrifices:[222] on the pillars, or rollers, of which there were
at least sixteen, were placed the regulations respecting matters
profane. So small are the fragments which have come down to us, and
so much has been ascribed to Solon by the orators, which belongs
really to the subsequent times, that it is hardly possible to form
any critical judgment respecting the legislation as a whole, or to
discover by what general principles or purposes he was guided.

[222] Plutarch, Solon, 23-25. He particularly mentions the
sixteenth ἄξων: we learn, also, that the thirteenth ἄξων
contained the eighth law (c. 19): the twenty-first law is alluded
to in Harpokration, v. Ὅτι οἱ ποιητοί.

Some remnants of these wooden rollers existed in the days of
Plutarch, in the Athenian prytaneium. See Harpokration and
Photius, v. Κύρβεις; Aristot. περὶ Πολιτειῶν, Frag. 35, ed.
Neumann; Euphorion ap. Harpokrat. Ὁ κάτωθεν νόμος. Bekker,
Anecdota, p. 413.

What we read respecting the ἄξονες and the κύρβεις does not
convey a clear idea of them. Besides Aristotle, both Seleukus
and Didymus are named as having written commentaries expressly
about them (Plutarch, Solon, i; Suidas, v. Ὀργεῶνες; compare also
Meursius, Solon, c. 24; Vit. Aristotelis ap. Westermann. Vitarum
Scriptt. Græc. p. 404), and the collection in Stephan. Thesaur.
p. 1095.

He left unchanged all the previous laws and practices respecting
the crime of homicide, connected as they were intimately with the
religious feelings of the people. The laws of Drako on this subject
therefore remained, but on other subjects, according to Plutarch,
they were altogether abrogated:[223] there is, however, room for
supposing, that the repeal cannot have been so sweeping as this
biographer represents.

[223] Plutarch, Solon, c. 17; Cyrill. cont. Julian, v, p.
169, ed. Spanheim. The enumeration of the different admitted
justifications for homicide, which we find in Dêmosth. cont.
Aristokrat. p. 637, seems rather too copious and systematic for
the age of Drako; it may have been amended by Solon, or, perhaps,
in an age subsequent to Solon.

The Solonian laws seem to have borne more or less upon all the
great departments of human interest and duty. We find regulations
political and religious, public and private, civil and criminal,
commercial, agricultural, sumptuary, and disciplinarian. Solon
provides punishment for crimes, restricts the profession and status
of the citizen, prescribes detailed rules for marriage as well as
for burial, for the common use of springs and wells, and for the
mutual interest of conterminous farmers in planting or hedging their
properties. As far as we can judge, from the imperfect manner in
which his laws come before us, there does not seem to have been any
attempt at a systematic order or classification. Some of them are
mere general and vague directions, while others again run into the
extreme of speciality.

By far the most important of all was the amendment of the law
of debtor and creditor which has already been adverted to, and
the abolition of the power of fathers and brothers to sell their
daughters and sisters into slavery. The prohibition of all contracts
on the security of the body, was itself sufficient to produce a
vast improvement in the character and condition of the poorer
population,—a result which seems to have been so sensibly obtained
from the legislation of Solon, that Boeckh and some other eminent
authors suppose him to have abolished villenage and conferred upon
the poor tenants a property in their lands, annulling the seignorial
rights of the landlord. But this opinion rests upon no positive
evidence, nor are we warranted in ascribing to him any stronger
measure in reference to the land, than the annulment of the previous
mortgages.[224]

[224] See Boeckh, Public Economy of the Athenians, book iii,
sect. 5. Tittmann (Griechisch. Staatsverfass. p. 651) and others
have supposed (from Aristot. Polit. ii, 4, 4) that Solon enacted
a law to limit the quantity of land which any individual citizen
might acquire. But the passage does not seem to me to bear out
such an opinion.

The first pillar of his laws contained a regulation respecting
exportable produce. He forbade the exportation of all produce of the
Attic soil, except olive-oil alone, and the sanction employed to
enforce observance of this law deserves notice, as an illustration
of the ideas of the time;—the archon was bound, on pain of
forfeiting one hundred drachms, to pronounce solemn curses against
every offender.[225] We are probably to take this prohibition in
conjunction with other objects said to have been contemplated by
Solon, especially the encouragement of artisans and manufacturers at
Athens. Observing, we are told, that many new emigrants were just
then flocking into Attica to seek an establishment, in consequence
of its greater security, he was anxious to turn them rather to
manufacturing industry than to the cultivation of a soil naturally
poor.[226] He forbade the granting of citizenship to any emigrants,
except such as had quitted irrevocably their former abodes, and come
to Athens for the purpose of carrying on some industrious profession;
and in order to prevent idleness, he directed the senate of areopagus
to keep watch over the lives of the citizens generally, and punish
every one who had no course of regular labor to support him. If a
father had not taught his son some art or profession, Solon relieved
the son from all obligation to maintain him in his old age. And
it was to encourage the multiplication of these artisans, that he
insured, or sought to insure, to the residents in Attica a monopoly
of all its landed produce except olive-oil, which was raised in
abundance more than sufficient for their wants. It was his wish that
the trade with foreigners should be carried on by exporting the
produce of artisan labor, instead of the produce of land.[227]

[225] Plutarch, Solon, 24. The _first law_, however, is said
to have related to the insuring of a maintenance to wives and
orphans (Harpokration, v. Σῖτος).

By a law of Athens (which marks itself out as belonging to the
century after Solon, by the fulness of its provisions, and by the
number of steps and official persons named in it), the rooting
up of an olive-tree in Attica was forbidden, under a penalty
of two hundred drachms for each tree so destroyed,—except for
sacred purposes, or to the extent of two trees per annum for the
convenience of the proprietor (Dêmosthen. cont. Makartat c. 16,
p. 1074).

[226] Plutarch, Solon, 22. ταῖς τέχναις ἀξίωμα περιέθηκε.

[227] Plutarch, Solon, 22-24. According to Herodotus, Solon had
enacted that the authorities should punish every man with death
who could not show a regular mode of industrious life (Herod. ii,
177; Diodor. i, 77).

So severe a punishment is not credible; nor is it likely that
Solon borrowed his idea from Egypt.

According to Pollux (viii, 6) idleness was punished by atimy
(civil disfranchisement) under Drako: under Solon, this
punishment only took effect against the person who had been
convicted of it on three successive occasions. See Meursius,
Solon, c. 17; and the “Areopagus” of the same author, c. 8 and 9;
and Taylor, Lectt. Lysiac. cap. 10.

This commercial prohibition is founded on principles substantially
similar to those which were acted upon in the early history of
England, with reference both to corn and to wool, and in other
European countries also. In so far as it was at all operative, it
tended to lessen the total quantity of produce raised upon the
soil of Attica, and thus to keep the price of it from rising,—a
purpose less objectionable—if we assume that the legislator is to
interfere at all—than that of our late Corn Laws, which were destined
to prevent the price of grain from falling. But the law of Solon
must have been altogether inoperative, in reference to the great
articles of human subsistence; for Attica imported, both largely and
constantly, grain and salt provisions,—probably, also, wool and flax
for the spinning and weaving of the women, and certainly timber for
building. Whether the law was ever enforced with reference to figs
and honey, may well be doubted; at least these productions of Attica
were in after-times generally consumed and celebrated throughout
Greece. Probably also, in the time of Solon, the silver-mines of
Laureium had hardly begun to be worked: these afterwards became
highly productive, and furnished to Athens a commodity for foreign
payments not less convenient than lucrative.[228]

[228] Xenophon, De Vectigalibus, iii, 2.

It is interesting to notice the anxiety, both of Solon and of
Drako, to enforce among their fellow-citizens industrious and
self-maintaining habits;[229] and we shall find the same sentiment
proclaimed by Periklês, at the time when Athenian power was at
its maximum. Nor ought we to pass over this early manifestation
in Attica, of an opinion equitable and tolerant towards sedentary
industry, which in most other parts of Greece was regarded as
comparatively dishonorable. The general tone of Grecian sentiment
recognized no occupations as perfectly worthy of a free citizen
except arms, agriculture, and athletic and musical exercises; and the
proceedings of the Spartans, who kept aloof even from agriculture,
and left it to their Helots, were admired, though they could not be
copied throughout most part of the Hellenic world. Even minds like
Plato, Aristotle, and Xenophon concurred to a considerable extent in
this feeling, which they justified on the ground that the sedentary
life and unceasing house-work of the artisan was inconsistent with
military aptitude: the town-occupations are usually described by a
word which carries with it contemptuous ideas, and though recognized
as indispensable to the existence of the city, are held suitable
only for an inferior and semi-privileged order of citizens. This,
the received sentiment among Greeks, as well as foreigners, found
a strong and growing opposition at Athens, as I have already
said,—corroborated also by a similar feeling at Corinth.[230] The
trade of Corinth, as well as of Chalkis in Eubœa, was extensive,
at a time when that of Athens had scarce any existence. But while
the despotism of Periander can hardly have failed to operate as
a discouragement to industry at Corinth, the contemporaneous
legislation of Solon provided for traders and artisans a new
home at Athens, giving the first encouragement to that numerous
town-population both in the city and in the Peiræeus, which we find
actually residing there in the succeeding century. The multiplication
of such town-residents, both citizens and metics, or non-freemen, was
a capital fact in the onward march of Athens, since it determined not
merely the extension of her trade, but also the preëminence of her
naval force,—and thus, as a farther consequence, lent extraordinary
vigor to her democratical government. It seems, moreover, to have
been a departure from the primitive temper of Atticism, which
tended both to cantonal residence and rural occupation. We have,
therefore, the greater interest in noting the first mention of it as
a consequence of the Solonian legislation.

[229] Thucyd. ii, 40 (the funeral oration delivered by
Periklês),—καὶ τὸ πένεσθαι οὐχ ὁμολογεῖν τινι αἰσχρὸν, ἀλλὰ μὴ
διαφεύγειν ἔργῳ αἴσχιον.

[230] Herodot. ii, 167-177: compare Xenophon, Œconomic. iv, 3.

The unbounded derision, however, which Aristophanes heaps
upon Kleôn as a tanner, and upon Hyperbolus as a lamp-maker,
proves that, if any manufacturer engaged in politics, his party
opponents found enough of the old sentiment remaining to turn it
to good account against him.

To Solon is first owing the admission of a power of testamentary
bequest at Athens, in all cases in which a man had no legitimate
children. According to the preëxisting custom, we may rather presume
that if a deceased person left neither children nor blood relations,
his property descended, as at Rome, to his gens and phratry.[231]
Throughout most rude states of society, the power of willing is
unknown, as among the ancient Germans,—among the Romans prior to
the twelve tables,—in the old laws of the Hindus,[232] etc. Society
limits a man’s interest or power of enjoyment to his life, and
considers his relatives as having joint reversionary claims to his
property, which take effect, in certain determinate proportions,
after his death; and this view was the more likely to prevail at
Athens, inasmuch as the perpetuity of the family sacred rites,
in which the children and near relatives partook of right, was
considered by the Athenians as a matter of public as well as of
private concern. Solon gave permission to every man dying without
children to bequeathe his property by will as he should think fit,
and the testament was maintained, unless it could be shown to have
been procured by some compulsion or improper seduction. Speaking
generally, this continued to be the law throughout the historical
times of Athens. Sons, wherever there were sons, succeeded to the
property of their father in equal shares, with the obligation of
giving out their sisters in marriage along with a certain dowry. If
there were no sons, then the daughters succeeded, though the father
might by will, within certain limits, determine the person to whom
they should be married, with their rights of succession attached
to them; or might, with the consent of his daughters, make by will
certain other arrangements about his property. A person who had no
children, or direct lineal descendants, might bequeathe his property
at pleasure: if he died without a will, first his father, then his
brother or brother’s children, next his sister or sister’s children
succeeded: if none such existed, then the cousins by the father’s
side, next the cousins by the mother’s side,—the male line of descent
having preference over the female. Such was the principle of the
Solonian laws of succession, though the particulars are in several
ways obscure and doubtful.[233] Solon, it appears, was the first
who gave power of superseding by testament the rights of agnates
and gentiles to succession,—a proceeding in consonance with his
plan of encouraging both industrious occupation and the consequent
multiplication of individual acquisitions.[234]

[231] This seems the just meaning of the words, ἐν τῷ γένει τοῦ
τεθνηκότος ἔδει τὰ χρήματα καὶ τὸν οἶκον καταμένειν, for that
early day (Plutarch, Solon, 21): compare Meier, De Gentilitate
Atticâ, p. 33.

[232] Tacitus, German, c. 20; Halhed, Preface to Gentoo Code, p.
i, iii; Mill’s History of British India, b. ii, ch. iv, p. 214.

[233] See the Dissertation of Bunsen, De Jure Hereditario
Atheniensium. pp. 28, 29; and Hermann Schelling. De Solonis
Legibus ap. Oratt. Atticos, ch. xvii.

The adopted son was not allowed to bequeathe by will that
property of which adoption had made him the possessor: if he left
no legitimate children, the heirs at law of the adopter claimed
it as of right (Dêmosthen. cont. Leochar p. 1100; cont. Stephan.
B. p. 1133; Bunsen, _ut sup._ pp. 55-58).

[234] Plutarch, Solon, 21. τὰ χρήματα, κτήματα τῶν ἐχόντων
ἐποίησεν.

It has been already mentioned that Solon forbade the sale of
daughters or sisters into slavery, by fathers or brothers,—a
prohibition which shows how much females had before been looked upon
as articles of property. And it would seem that before his time the
violation of a free woman must have been punished at the discretion
of the magistrates; for we are told that he was the first who enacted
a penalty of one hundred drachms against the offender, and twenty
drachms against the seducer of a free woman.[235] Moreover, it is
said that he forbade a bride when given in marriage to carry with her
any personal ornaments and appurtenances, except to the extent of
three robes and certain matters of furniture not very valuable.[236]
Solon farther imposed upon women several restraints in regard to
proceedings at the obsequies of deceased relatives: he forbade
profuse demonstrations of sorrow, singing of composed dirges, and
costly sacrifices and contributions; he limited strictly the quantity
of meat and drink admissible for the funeral banquet, and prohibited
nocturnal exit, except in a car and with a light. It appears that
both in Greece and Rome, the feelings of duty and affection on the
part of surviving relatives prompted them to ruinous expense in
a funeral, as well as to unmeasured effusions both of grief and
conviviality; and the general necessity experienced for interference
of the law is attested by the remark of Plutarch, that similar
prohibitions to those enacted by Solon were likewise in force at his
native town of Chæroneia.[237]

[235] According to Æschinês (cont. Timarch. pp. 16-78), the
punishment enacted by Solon against the προαγωγὸς, or procurer,
in such cases of seduction, was death.

[236] Plutarch, Solon, 20. These φερναὶ were independent of the
dowry of the bride, for which the husband, when he received it,
commonly gave security, and repaid it in the event of his wife’s
death: see Bunsen, De Jure Hered. Ath. p. 43.

[237] Plutarch, _l. c._ The Solonian restrictions on the subject
of funerals were to a great degree copied in the twelve tables
at Rome: see Cicero, De Legg. ii, 23, 24. He esteems it a right
thing to put the rich and the poor on a level in respect to
funeral ceremonies. Plato follows an opposite idea, and limits
the expense of funerals upon a graduated scale, according to the
census of the deceased (Legg. xii, p. 959).

Dêmosthenês (cont. Makartat. p 1071) gives what he calls the
Solonian law on funerals, different from Plutarch on several
points.

Ungovernable excesses of grief among the female sex are sometimes
mentioned in Grecian towns: see the μανικὸν πένθος among the
Milesian women (Polyæn. viii, 63): the Milesian women, however,
had a tinge of Karian feeling.

Compare an instructive inscription, recording a law of the
Greek city of Gambreion in Æolic Asia Minor, wherein the dress,
the proceedings, and the time of allowed mourning, for men,
women, and children who had lost their relatives, are strictly
prescribed under severe penalties (Franz, Fünf Inschriften und
fünf Städte in Kleinasien, Berlin, 1840, p. 17). Expensive
ceremonies in the celebration of marriage are forbidden by
some of the old Scandinavian laws (Wilda, Das Gildenwesen im
Mittelalter, p. 18).

Other penal enactments of Solon are yet to be mentioned. He forbade
absolutely evil-speaking with respect to the dead: he forbade it
likewise with respect to the living, either in a temple or before
judges or archons, or at any public festival,—on pain of a forfeit
of three drachms to the person aggrieved, and two more to the public
treasury. How mild the general character of his punishments was, may
be judged by this law against foul language, not less than by the law
before mentioned against rape: both the one and the other of these
offences were much more severely dealt with under the subsequent law
of democratical Athens. The peremptory edict against speaking ill of
a deceased person, though doubtless springing in a great degree from
disinterested repugnance, is traceable also in part to that fear of
the wrath of the departed which strongly possessed the early Greek
mind.

It seems generally that Solon determined by law the outlay for the
public sacrifices, though we do not know what were his particular
directions: we are told that he reckoned a sheep and a medimnus (of
wheat or barley?) as equivalent, either of them, to a drachm, and
that he also prescribed the prices to be paid for first-rate oxen
intended for solemn occasions. But it astonishes us to see the large
recompense which he awarded out of the public treasury to a victor at
the Olympic or Isthmian games: to the former five hundred drachms,
equal to one year’s income of the highest of the four classes on
the census; to the latter one hundred drachms. The magnitude of
these rewards strikes us the more when we compare them with the
fines on rape and evil speaking; and we cannot be surprised that the
philosopher Xenophanês noticed, with some degree of severity, the
extravagant estimate of this species of excellence, current among the
Grecian cities.[238] At the same time, we must remember both that
these Pan-Hellenic sacred games presented the chief visible evidence
of peace and sympathy among the numerous communities of Greece, and
that in the time of Solon, factitious reward was still needful to
encourage them. In respect to land and agriculture, Solon proclaimed
a public reward of five drachms for every wolf brought in, and one
drachm for every wolf’s cub: the extent of wild land has at all
times been considerable in Attica. He also provided rules respecting
the use of wells between neighbors, and respecting the planting
in conterminous olive-grounds. Whether any of these regulations
continued in operation during the better-known period of Athenian
history cannot be safely affirmed.[239]

[238] Plutarch, Solon, 23. Xenophanês, Frag. 2, ed. Schneidewin.
If Diogenês is to be trusted, the rewards were even larger
anterior to Solon: he reduced them (Diog. l. i, 55).

[239] Plutarch, Solon, c. 23. See Suidas, v. Φεισόμεθα.

In respect to theft, we find it stated that Solon repealed the
punishment of death which Drako had annexed to that crime, and
enacted as a penalty, compensation to an amount double the value
of the property stolen. The simplicity of this law perhaps affords
ground for presuming that it really does belong to Solon, but the law
which prevailed during the time of the orators respecting theft[240]
must have been introduced at some later period, since it enters into
distinctions and mentions both places and forms of procedure, which
we cannot reasonably refer to the 46th Olympiad. The public dinners
at the prytaneium, of which the archons and a select few partook in
common, were also either first established, or perhaps only more
strictly regulated, by Solon: he ordered barley cakes for their
ordinary meals, and wheaten loaves for festival days, prescribing
how often each person should dine at the table.[241] The honor of
dining at the table of the prytaneium was maintained throughout as a
valuable reward at the disposal of the government.

[240] See the laws in Dêmosthen. cont. Timokrat. pp. 733-736.
Notwithstanding the opinion both of Heraldus (Animadversion.
in Salmas. iv, 8) and of Meier (Attischer Prozess, p. 356), I
cannot imagine anything more than the basis of these laws to
be Solonian,—they indicate a state of Attic procedure too much
elaborated for that day (Lysias c. Theomn. p. 356). The word
ποδοκάκκῃ belongs to Solon, and probably the penalty of five
days’ confinement in the stocks, for the thief who had not
restored what he had stolen.

Aulus Gell. (xi, 18) mentions the simple _pœna dupli_: in the
authors from whom he copied, it is evident that Solon was stated
to have enacted this law generally for _all_ thefts: we cannot
tell from whom he copied, but in another part of his work, he
copies a Solonian law from the wooden ἄξονες on the authority of
Aristotle (ii, 12).

Plato, in his Laws, prescribes the _pœna dupli_ in all cases of
theft, without distinction of circumstances (Legg. ix, p. 857;
xii, p. 941); it was also the primitive law of Rome: “Posuerunt
furem duplo condemnari, fœneratorem quadruplo.” (Cato, De Re
Rusticâ, Proœmium),—that is to say, in cases of _furtum nec
manifestum_ (Walter, Geschichte des Römisch. Rechts. sect. 757).

[241] Plutarch, Solon, 24; Athenæ. iv, p. 137; Diogen. Laërt. i,
58: καὶ πρῶτος τὴν συναγωγὴν τῶν ἐννέα ἀρχόντων ἐποίησεν, εἰς τὸ
~συνειπεῖν~,—where perhaps, ~συνδειπνεῖν~ is the proper reading.

Among the various laws of Solon, there are few which have attracted
more notice than that which pronounces the man, who in a sedition
stood aloof and took part with neither side, to be dishonored and
disfranchised.[242] Strictly speaking, this seems more in the nature
of an emphatic moral denunciation, or a religious curse, than a
legal sanction capable of being formally applied in an individual
case and after judicial trial,—though the sentence of atīmy, under
the more elaborated Attic procedure, was both definite in its
penal consequences and also judicially delivered. We may, however,
follow the course of ideas under which Solon was induced to write
this sentence on his tables, and we may trace the influence of
similar ideas in later Attic institutions. It is obvious that his
denunciation is confined to that special case in which a sedition
has already broken out: we must suppose that Kylôn has seized the
acropolis, or that Peisistratus, Megaklês, and Lykurgus are in arms
at the head of their partisans. Assuming these leaders to be wealthy
and powerful men, which would in all probability be the fact, the
constituted authority—such as Solon saw before him in Attica, even
after his own organic amendments—was not strong enough to maintain
the peace; it became, in fact, itself one of the contending parties.
Under such given circumstances, the sooner every citizen publicly
declared his adherence to some one of them, the earlier this
suspension of legal authority was likely to terminate. Nothing was so
mischievous as the indifference of the mass, or their disposition to
let the combatants fight out the matter among themselves, and then
to submit to the victor:[243] nothing was so likely to encourage
aggression on the part of an ambitious malcontent, as the conviction
that, if he could once overpower the small amount of physical force
which surrounded the archons and exhibit himself in armed possession
of the prytaneium or the acropolis, he might immediately count upon
passive submission on the part of all the freemen without. Under the
state of feeling which Solon inculcates, the insurgent leader would
have to calculate that every man who was not actively in his favor
would be actively against him, and this would render his enterprise
much more dangerous; indeed, he could then never hope to succeed
except on the double supposition of extraordinary popularity in his
own person, and universal detestation of the existing government.
He would thus be placed under the influence of powerful deterring
motives, and mere ambition would be far less likely to seduce him
into a course which threatened nothing but ruin, unless under such
encouragements from the preëxisting public opinion as to make his
success a result desirable for the community. Among the small
political societies of Greece,—and especially in the age of Solon,
when the number of despots in other parts of Greece seems to have
been at its maximum,—every government, whatever might be its form,
was sufficiently weak to make its overthrow a matter of comparative
facility. Unless upon the supposition of a band of foreign
mercenaries,—which would render it a government of naked force, and
which the Athenian lawgiver would of course never contemplate,—there
was no other stay for it except a positive and pronounced feeling
of attachment on the part of the mass of citizens: indifference on
their part would render them a prey to every daring man of wealth
who chose to become a conspirator. That they should be ready to come
forward not only with voice but with arms,—and that they should be
known beforehand to be so,—was essential to the maintenance of every
good Grecian government. It was salutary in preventing mere personal
attempts at revolution, and pacific in its tendency, even where the
revolution had actually broken out,—because, in the greater number of
cases, the proportion of partisans would probably be very unequal,
and the inferior party would be compelled to renounce their hopes.

[242] Plutarch, Solon, 20, and De Serâ Numinis Vindictâ, p. 550;
Aulus Gell. ii, 12.

[243] See a case of such indifference manifested by the people of
Argos, in Plutarch’s Life of Aratus, c. 27.

It will be observed that in this enactment of Solon, the existing
government is ranked merely as one of the contending parties. The
virtuous citizen is enjoined not to come forward in its support,
but to come forward at all events, either for it or against it:
positive and early action is all that is prescribed to him as matter
of duty. In the age of Solon, there was no political idea or system
yet current which could be assumed as an unquestionable datum,—no
conspicuous standard to which the citizens could be pledged under
all circumstances to attach themselves. The option lay only between
a mitigated oligarchy in possession and a despot in possibility; a
contest wherein the affections of the people could rarely be counted
upon in favor of the established government. But this neutrality
in respect to the constitution was at an end after the revolution
of Kleisthenês, when the idea of the sovereign people and the
democratical institutions became both familiar and precious to every
individual citizen. We shall hereafter find the Athenians binding
themselves by the most sincere and solemn oaths to uphold their
democracy against all attempts to subvert it; we shall discover
in them a sentiment not less positive and uncompromising in its
direction, than energetic in its inspirations. But while we notice
this very important change in their character, we shall at the same
time perceive that the wise precautionary recommendation of Solon,
to obviate sedition by an early declaration of the impartial public
between two contending leaders, was not lost upon them. Such, in
point of fact, was the purpose of that salutary and protective
institution which is called Ostracism. When two party-leaders, in the
early stages of the Athenian democracy, each powerful in adherents
and influence, had become passionately embarked in bitter and
prolonged opposition to each other, such opposition was likely to
conduct one or other to violent measures. Over and above the hopes
of party triumph, each might well fear that if he himself continued
within the bounds of legality, he might fall a victim to aggressive
proceedings on the part of his antagonists. To ward off this
formidable danger, a public vote was called for to determine which of
the two should go into temporary banishment, retaining his property
and unvisited by any disgrace. A number of citizens, not less than
six thousand, voting secretly and therefore independently, were
required to take part, pronouncing upon one or other of these eminent
rivals a sentence of exile for ten years: the one who remained
became of course more powerful, yet less in a situation to be driven
into anti-constitutional courses, than he was before. I shall in a
future chapter speak again of this wise precaution, and vindicate it
against some erroneous interpretations to which it has given rise;
at present, I merely notice its analogy with the previous Solonian
law, and its tendency to accomplish the same purpose of terminating
a fierce party-feud by artificially calling in the votes of the mass
of impartial citizens against one or other of the leaders,—with this
important difference, that while Solon assumed the hostile parties to
be actually in arms, the ostracism averted that grave public calamity
by applying its remedy to the premonitory symptoms.

I have already considered, in a previous chapter, the directions
given by Solon for the more orderly recital of the Homeric poems;
and it is curious to contrast his reverence for the old epic with
the unqualified repugnance which he manifested towards Thespis and
the drama,—then just nascent, and holding out little promise of its
subsequent excellence. Tragedy and comedy were now beginning to be
grafted on the lyric and choric song. First, one actor was provided
to relieve the chorus,—subsequently, two actors were introduced to
sustain fictitious characters and carry on a dialogue, in such manner
that the songs of the chorus and the interlocution of the actors
formed a continuous piece. Solon, after having heard Thespis acting
(as all the early composers did, both tragic and comic) in his own
comedy, asked him afterwards if he was not ashamed to pronounce such
falsehoods before so large an audience. And when Thespis answered
that there was no harm in saying and doing such things merely for
amusement, Solon indignantly exclaimed, striking the ground with his
stick,[244] “If once we come to praise and esteem such amusement
as this, we shall quickly find the effects of it in our daily
transactions.” For the authenticity of this anecdote it would be
rash to vouch, but we may at least treat it as the protest of some
early philosopher against the deceptions of the drama; and it is
interesting, as marking the incipient struggles of that literature in
which Athens afterwards attained such unrivalled excellence.

[244] Plutarch, Solon, 29; Diogen. Laërt. i, 59.

It would appear that all the laws of Solon were proclaimed,
inscribed, and accepted without either discussion or resistance. He
is said to have described them, not as the best laws which he could
himself have imagined, but as the best which he could have induced
the people to accept; he gave them validity for the space of ten
years, for which period[245] both the senate collectively and the
archons individually swore to observe them with fidelity, under
penalty, in case of non-observance, of a golden statue, as large
as life, to be erected at Delphi. But though the acceptance of the
laws was accomplished without difficulty, it was not found so easy
either for the people to understand and obey, or for the framer to
explain them. Every day, persons came to Solon either with praise,
or criticism, or suggestions of various improvements, or questions
as to the construction of particular enactments; until at last he
became tired of this endless process of reply and vindication, which
was seldom successful either in removing obscurity or in satisfying
complainants. Foreseeing that, if he remained, he would be compelled
to make changes, he obtained leave of absence from his countrymen for
ten years, trusting that before the expiration of that period they
would have become accustomed to his laws. He quitted his native city,
in the full certainty that his laws would remain unrepealed until his
return; for, says Herodotus, “the Athenians _could not_ repeal them,
since they were bound by solemn oaths to observe them for ten years.”
The unqualified manner in which the historian here speaks of an oath,
as if it created a sort of physical necessity, and shut out all
possibility of a contrary result, deserves notice as illustrating
Grecian sentiment.[246]

[245] Plutarch, Solon, 15.

[246] Herodot. i, 29. Σόλων, ἀνὴρ Ἀθηναῖος, ὃς Ἀθηναίοισι νόμους
κελεύσασι ποιήσας, ἀπεδήμησε ἔτεα δέκα, ἵνα δὴ μή τινα τῶν νόμων
ἀναγκάσθῃ λῦσαι τῶν ἔθετο· αὐτοὶ γὰρ ~οὐκ οἷοί τε ἦσαν αὐτὸ
ποιῆσαι Ἀθηναῖοι· ὁρκίοισι γὰρ μεγάλοισι κατείχοντο~, δέκα ἔτεα
χρήσεσθαι νόμοισι τοὺς ἄν σφι Σόλων θῆται.

One hundred years is the term stated by Plutarch (Solon, 25).

On departing from Athens, Solon first visited Egypt, where he
communicated largely with Psenôphis of Heliopolis and Sonchis of
Saïs, Egyptian priests, who had much to tell respecting their
ancient history, and from whom he learned matters, real or
pretended, far transcending in alleged antiquity the oldest Grecian
genealogies,—especially the history of the vast submerged island
of Atlantis, and the war which the ancestors of the Athenians had
successfully carried on against it, nine thousand years before.
Solon is said to have commenced an epic poem upon this subject, but
he did not live to finish it, and nothing of it now remains. From
Egypt he went to Cyprus, where he visited the small town of Æreia,
said to have been originally founded by Demophôn, son of Theseus; it
was then under the dominion of the prince Philokyprus,—each town in
Cyprus having its own petty prince. It was situated near the river
Klarius, in a position precipitous and secure, but inconvenient
and ill-supplied; and Solon persuaded Philokyprus to quit the old
site, and establish a new town down in the fertile plain beneath.
He himself stayed and became œkist of the new establishment, making
all the regulations requisite for its safe and prosperous march,
which was indeed so decisively manifested that many new settlers
flocked into the new plantation, called by Philokyprus _Soli_, in
honor of Solon. To our deep regret, we are not permitted to know
what these regulations were; but the general fact is attested
by the poems of Solon himself, and the lines, in which he bade
farewell to Philokyprus on quitting the island, are yet before us.
On the dispositions of this prince, his poem bestowed unqualified
commendation.[247]

[247] Plutarch, Solon, 26; Herodot. v, 113. The statements of
Diogenês that Solon founded Soli in Kilikia, and that he died in
Cyprus, are not worthy of credit (Diog. Laërt. i, 51-62).

Besides his visit to Egypt and Cyprus, a story was also current of
his having conversed with the Lydian king Crœsus, at Sardis; and the
communication said to have taken place between them, has been woven
by Herodotus into a sort of moral tale, which forms one of the most
beautiful episodes in his whole history. Though this tale has been
told and retold as if it were genuine history, yet, as it now stands,
it is irreconcilable with chronology,—although, very possibly, Solon
may at some time or other have visited Sardis, and seen Crœsus as
hereditary prince.[248]

[248] Plutarch tells us that several authors rejected the reality
of this interview as being chronologically impossible. It is to
be recollected that the question all turns upon the interview _as
described by Herodotus_ and its alleged sequel; for that there
may have been an interview between Solon and Crœsus at Sardis, at
some period between B. C. 594 and 560, is possible, though not
shown.

It is evident that Solon made no mention of any interview with
Crœsus in his poems; otherwise, the dispute would have been
settled at once. Now this, in a man like Solon, amounts to
negative evidence of some value for he noticed in his poems both
Egypt and the prince Philokyprus in Cyprus, and had there been
any conversation so impressive as that which Herodotus relates,
between him and Crœsus, he could hardly have failed to mention it.

Wesseling, Larcher, Volney, and Mr. Clinton, all try to obviate
the chronological difficulties, and to save the historical
character of this interview, but in my judgment unsuccessfully.
See Mr. Clinton’s F. H. ad ann. 546 B. C., and Appendix, c. 17,
p. 298. The chronological data are these,—Crœsus was born in 595
B. C., one year before the legislation of Solon: he succeeded
to his father at the age of thirty-five, in 560 B. C.: he was
overthrown, and Sardis captured, in 546 B. C., by Cyrus.

Mr. Clinton, after Wesseling and the others, supposes that Crœsus
was king jointly with his father Halyattês, during the lifetime
of the latter, and that Solon visited Lydia and conversed with
Crœsus during this joint reign in 570 B. C. “We may suppose that
Solon left Athens in B. C. 575, about twenty years after his
archonship, and returned thither in B. C. 565, about five years
before the usurpation of Peisistratus.” (p. 300.) Upon which
hypothesis we may remark:—

1. The arguments whereby Wesseling and Mr. Clinton endeavor
to show that Crœsus was king jointly with his father, do not
sustain the conclusion. The passage of Nikolaus Damaskenus,
which is produced to show that it was Halyattês (and not Crœsus)
who conquered Karia, only attests that Halyattês _marched_ with
an armed force into Karia (ἐπὶ Καρίαν στρατεύων): this same
author states, that Crœsus was deputed by Halyattês to govern
_Adramyttium and the plain of Thêbê_ (ἄρχειν ἀποδεδειγμένος),
but Mr. Clinton stretches this testimony to an inadmissible
extent when he makes it tantamount to a conquest of _Æolis_ by
Halyattês, (“_so that Æolis is already conquered_.”) Nothing at
all is said about Æolis, or the cities of the Æolic Greeks, in
this passage of Nikolaus, which represents Crœsus as governing
a sort of satrapy under his father Halyattês, just as Cyrus the
younger did in after-times under Artaxerxês. And the expression
of Herodotus, ἐπεί τε, δόντος τοῦ πατρὸς, ἐκράτησε τῆς ἀπχῆς ὁ
Κροῖσος, appears to me, when taken along with the context, to
indicate a bequest or nomination of successor, and not a donation
during life.

2. The hypothesis, therefore, that Crœsus was king 570 B. C.,
during the lifetime of his father, is one purely gratuitous,
resorted to on account of the chronological difficulties
connected with the account of Herodotus. But it is quite
insufficient for such a purpose; it does not save us from the
necessity of contradicting Herodotus in most of his particulars;
there may, perhaps, have been an _interview_ between Solon and
Crœsus in B. C. 570, but it cannot be _the interview_ described
by Herodotus. That interview takes place within ten years after
the promulgation of Solon’s laws,—at the maximum of the power
of Crœsus, and after numerous conquests effected by himself as
king,—at a time when Crœsus had a son old enough to be married
and to command armies (Herod, i, 35),—at a time, moreover,
immediately preceding the turn of his fortunes from prosperity
to adversity, first in the death of his son, succeeded by two
years of mourning, which were put an end to (πένθεος ἀπέπαυσε,
Herod. i, 46) by the stimulus of war with the Persians. That war,
if we read the events of it as described in Herodotus, cannot
have lasted more than three or four years,—so that the interview
between Solon and Crœsus, _as Herodotus conceived it_, may be
fairly stated to have occurred within seven years before the
capture of Sardis.

If we put together all these conditions, it will appear that
the interview recounted by Herodotus is a chronological
impossibility: and Niebuhr (Rom. Gesch. vol. i, p. 579) is
right in saying that the historian has fallen into a mistake of
ten olympiads, or forty years; his recital would consist with
chronology, if we suppose that the Solonian legislation were
referable to 554 B. C., and not 594.

In my judgment, this is an illustrative tale, in which certain
real characters,—Crœsus and Solon; and certain real facts,—the
great power and succeeding ruin of the former by the victorious
arm of Cyrus,—together with certain facts probably altogether
fictitious, such as the two sons of Crœsus, the Phyrgian Adrastus
and his history, the hunting of the mischievous wild boar on
Mount Olympus, the ultimate preservation of Crœsus, etc., are
put together so as to convey an impressive moral lesson. The
whole adventure of Adrastus and the son of Crœsus is depicted in
language eminently beautiful and poetical.

Plutarch treats the impressiveness and suitableness of this
narrative as the best proof of its historical truth, and puts
aside the chronological tables as unworthy of trust. Upon which
reasoning Mr. Clinton has the following very just remarks:
“Plutarch must have had a very imperfect idea of the nature of
historical evidence, if he could imagine that the suitableness of
a story to the character of Solon was a better argument for its
authenticity than the number of witnesses by whom it is attested.
Those who invented the scene (assuming it to be a fiction) would
surely have had the skill to adapt the discourse to the character
of the actors.” (p. 300.)

To make this remark quite complete, it would be necessary to add
the words “_trustworthiness and means of knowledge_,” in addition
to the “_number,_” of attesting witnesses. And it is a remark the
more worthy of notice, inasmuch as Mr. Clinton here pointedly
adverts to the existence of _plausible fiction_, as being
completely distinct from attested matter of fact,—a distinction
of which he took no account in his vindication of the historical
credibility of the early Greek legends.

But even if no chronological objections existed, the moral purpose
of the tale is so prominent, and pervades it so systematically,
from beginning to end, that these internal grounds are of themselves
sufficiently strong to impeach its credibility as a matter of fact,
unless such doubts happen to be outweighed—which in this case they
are not—by good contemporary testimony. The narrative of Solon and
Crœsus can be taken for nothing else but an illustrative fiction,
borrowed by Herodotus from some philosopher, and clothed in his
own peculiar beauty of expression, which on this occasion is more
decidedly poetical than is habitual with him. I cannot transcribe,
and I hardly dare to abridge it. The vainglorious Crœsus, at the
summit of his conquests and his riches, endeavors to win from his
visitor Solon an opinion that he is the happiest of mankind. The
latter, after having twice preferred to him modest and meritorious
Grecian citizens, at length reminds him that his vast wealth and
power are of a tenure too precarious to serve as an evidence of
happiness,—that the gods are jealous and meddlesome, and often
make the show of happiness a mere prelude to extreme disaster,—and
that no man’s life can be called happy until the whole of it has
been played out, so that it may be seen to be out of the reach
of reverses. Crœsus treats this opinion as absurd, but “a great
judgment from God fell upon him, after Solon was departed,—probably
(observes Herodotus) because he fancied himself the happiest of all
men.” First, he lost his favorite son Atys, a brave and intelligent
youth,—his only other son being dumb. For the Mysians of Olympus,
being ruined by a destructive and formidable wild boar which they
were unable to subdue, applied for aid to Crœsus, who sent to the
spot a chosen hunting force, and permitted, though with great
reluctance, in consequence of an alarming dream,—that his favorite
son should accompany them. The young prince was unintentionally
slain by the Phrygian exile Adrastus, whom Crœsus had sheltered
and protected;[249] and he had hardly recovered from the anguish
of this misfortune, when the rapid growth of Cyrus and the Persian
power induced him to go to war with them, against the advice of his
wisest counsellors. After a struggle of about three years he was
completely defeated, his capital Sardis taken by storm, and himself
made prisoner. Cyrus ordered a large pile to be prepared, and placed
upon it Crœsus in fetters, together with fourteen young Lydians, in
the intention of burning them alive, either as a religious offering,
or in fulfilment of a vow, “or perhaps (says Herodotus) to see
whether some of the gods would not interfere to rescue a man so
preëminently pious as the king of Lydia.”[250] In this sad extremity,
Crœsus bethought him of the warning which he had before despised,
and thrice pronounced, with a deep groan, the name of Solon. Cyrus
desired the interpreters to inquire whom he was invoking, and learned
in reply the anecdote of the Athenian lawgiver, together with the
solemn memento which he had offered to Crœsus during more prosperous
days, attesting the frail tenure of all human greatness. The remark
sunk deep into the Persian monarch, as a token of what might happen
to himself: he repented of his purpose, and directed that the pile,
which had already been kindled, should be immediately extinguished.
But the orders came too late; in spite of the most zealous efforts
of the bystanders, the flame was found unquenchable, and Crœsus would
still have been burned, had he not implored with prayers and tears
the succor of Apollo, to whose Delphian and Theban temples he had
given such munificent presents. His prayers were heard, the fair sky
was immediately overcast, and a profuse rain descended, sufficient
to extinguish the flames.[251] The life of Crœsus was thus saved,
and he became afterwards the confidential friend and adviser of his
conqueror.

[249] Herod, i, 32. Ὦ Κροῖσε, ἐπιστάμενόν με τὸ θεῖον, πᾶν ἐὸν
φθονερόν τε καὶ ταραχώδες, ἐπειρωτᾷς με ἀνθρωπηΐων πρηγμάτων
πέρι. i, 34. Μετὰ δὲ Σόλωνα οἰχόμενον, ἔλαβεν ἐκ θεοῦ νέμεσις
μεγάλη Κροῖσον, ὡς εἰκάσαι ὅτι ἐνόμισε ἑωϋτὸν εἶναι ἀνθρώπων
ἁπάντων ὀλβιώτατον.

The hunting-match, and the terrible wild boar with whom the
Mysians cannot cope, appear to be borrowed from the legend
of Kalydôn. The whole scene of Adrastus, returning after the
accident in a state of desperate remorse, praying for death with
outstretched hands, spared by Crœsus, and then killing himself on
the tomb of the young prince, is deeply tragic (Herod. i, 44-45).

[250] Herodot. i, 85.

[251] Herodot. i, 86, 87: compare Plutarch, Solon, 27-28. See a
similar story about Gygês king of Lydia (Valerius Maxim. vii, 1,
2).

Such is the brief outline of a narrative which Herodotus has given
with full development and with impressive effect. It would have
served as a show-lecture to the youth of Athens, not less admirably
than the well-known fable of the Choice of Hêraklês, which the
philosopher Prodikus,[252] a junior contemporary of Herodotus,
delivered with so much popularity. It illustrates forcibly the
religious and ethical ideas of antiquity; the deep sense of the
jealousy of the gods, who would not endure pride in any one except
themselves;[253] the impossibility, for any man, of realizing to
himself more than a very moderate share of happiness; the danger from
reactionary nemesis, if at any time he had overpassed such limit; and
the necessity of calculations taking in the whole of life, as a basis
for rational comparison of different individuals; and as a practical
consequence from these feelings, a constant protest on the part of
the moralists against vehement impulses and unrestrained aspirations.
The more valuable this narrative appears, in its illustrative
character, the less can we presume to treat it as a history.

[252] Xenoph. Memorab. ii, 1, 21. Πρόδικος ὁ σοφὸς ἐν
τῷ συγγράμματι τῷ περὶ Ἡρακλέους, ὅπερ δὴ καὶ πλείστοις
ἐπιδείκνυται, etc.

[253] Herodot. vii, 10. φιλέει γὰρ ὁ θεὸς τὰ ὑπερέχοντα πάντα
κολούειν.... οὐ γὰρ ἐᾷ φρονέειν μέγα ὁ θεὸς ἄλλον ἢ ἑωϋτόν.

It is much to be regretted that we have no information respecting
events in Attica immediately after the Solonian laws and
constitution, which were promulgated in 594 B. C., so as to
understand better the practical effect of these changes. What we
next hear respecting Solon in Attica refers to a period immediately
preceding the first usurpation of Peisistratus in 560 B. C., and
after the return of Solon from his long absence. We are here again
introduced to the same oligarchical dissensions as are reported to
have prevailed before the Solonian legislation: the pedieis, or
opulent proprietors of the plain round Athens, under Lykurgus; the
parali of the south of Attica, under Megaklês: and the diakrii,
or mountaineers of the eastern cantons, the poorest of the three
classes, under Peisistratus, are in a state of violent intestine
dispute. The account of Plutarch represents Solon as returning to
Athens during the height of this sedition. He was treated with
respect by all parties, but his recommendations were no longer
obeyed, and he was disqualified by age from acting with effect in
public. He employed his best efforts to mitigate party animosities,
and applied himself particularly to restrain the ambition of
Peisistratus, whose ulterior projects he quickly detected.

The future greatness of Peisistratus is said to have been first
portended by a miracle which happened, even before his birth, to his
father Hippokratês at the Olympic games. It was realized, partly by
his bravery and conduct, which had been displayed in the capture of
Nisæa from the Megarians,[254]—partly by his popularity of speech
and manners, his championship of the poor,[255] and his ostentatious
disavowal of all selfish pretensions,—partly by an artful mixture
of stratagem and force. Solon, after having addressed fruitless
remonstrances to Peisistratus himself, publicly denounced his
designs in verses addressed to the people. The deception, whereby
Peisistratus finally accomplished his design, is memorable in Grecian
tradition.[256] He appeared one day in the agora of Athens in his
chariot with a pair of mules: he had intentionally wounded both his
person and the mules, and in this condition he threw himself upon the
compassion and defence of the people, pretending that his political
enemies had violently attacked him. He implored the people to grant
him a guard, and at the moment when their sympathies were freshly
aroused both in his favor and against his supposed assassins, Aristo
proposed formally to the ekklesia,—the pro-bouleutic senate, being
composed of friends of Peisistratus, had previously authorized the
proposition,[257]—that a company of fifty club-men should be assigned
as a permanent body-guard for the defence of Peisistratus. To this
motion Solon opposed a strenuous resistance,[258] but found himself
overborne, and even treated as if he had lost his senses. The poor
were earnest in favor of it, while the rich were afraid to express
their dissent; and he could only comfort himself, after the fatal
vote had been passed, by exclaiming that he was wiser than the former
and more determined than the latter. Such was one of the first known
instances in which this memorable stratagem was played off against
the liberty of a Grecian community.

[254] Herodot. i, 59. I record this allusion to Nisæa and the
Megarian war, because I find it distinctly stated in Herodotus;
and because it _may_ possibly refer to some other _later_
war between Athens and Megara than that which is mentioned
in Plutarch’s Life of Solon as having taken place before the
Solonian legislation (that is, before 594 B. C.), and therefore
nearly forty years before this movement of Peisistratus to
acquire the despotism. Peisistratus must then have been so young
that he could not with any propriety be said to have “captured
Nisæa” (Νισαιάν τε ἑλών): moreover, the public reputation, which
was found useful to the ambition of Peisistratus in 560 B. C.,
must have rested upon something more recent than his bravery
displayed about 597 B. C.; just as the celebrity which enabled
Napoleon to play the game of successful ambition on the 18th
Brumaire (Nov. 1799) was obtained by victories gained within the
preceding five years, and could not have been represented by any
historian as resting upon victories gained in the Seven Years’
war, between 1756-1763.

At the same time, my belief is that the words of Herodotus
respecting Peisistratus do really refer to the Megarian war
mentioned in Plutarch’s Life of Solon, and that Herodotus
supposed that Megarian war to have been much more near to the
despotism of Peisistratus than it really was. In the conception
of Herodotus, and by what (after Niebuhr) I venture to call a
mistake in his chronology, the interval between 600-560 B. C.
shrinks from forty years to little or nothing. Such mistake
appears, not only on the present occasion, but also upon two
others: first, in regard to the alleged dialogue between Solon
and Crœsus, described and commented upon a few pages above; next,
in regard to the poet Alkæus and his inglorious retreat before
the Athenian troops at Sigeium and Achilleium, where he lost
his shield, when the Mityleneans were defeated. The reality of
this incident is indisputable, since it was mentioned by Alkæus
himself in one of his songs; but Herodotus represents it to have
occurred in an Athenian expedition _directed by Peisistratus_.
Now the war in which Alkæus incurred this misfortune, and which
was brought to a close by the mediation of Periander of Corinth,
must have taken place earlier than 584 B. C., and probably took
place before the legislation of Solon; long before the time when
Peisistratus had the direction of Athenian affairs,—though the
latter may have carried on, and probably did carry on, _another
and a later war_ against the Mityleneans in those regions, which
led to the introduction of his illegitimate son, Hegesistratus,
as despot of Sigeium (Herod. v. 94-95).

If we follow the representation given by Herodotus of these
three different strings of events, we shall see that the same
chronological mistake pervades all of them,—he jumps over nearly
ten olympiads, or forty years. Alkæus is the contemporary of
Pittakus and Solon.

I have already remarked, in the previous chapter respecting
the despots of Sikyôn (ch. ix.), another instance of confused
chronology in Herodotus respecting the events of this
period,—respecting Crœsus, Megaklês, Alkmæôn and Kleisthenês of
Sikyôn.

[255] Aristot. Politic. v, 4, 5; Plutarch, Solon, 29.

[256] Plato, Republic, viii, p. 565. τὸ τυραννικὸν αἴτημα τὸ
πολυθρυλλητὸν ... αἰτεῖν τὸν δῆμον φύλακάς τινας τοῦ σώματος, ἵνα
σῶς αὐτοῖς ᾖ ὁ τοῦ δήμου βοηθός.

[257] Diog. Laërt. i, 49. ἡ βουλὴ, Πεισιστατίδαι ὄντες, etc.

[258] Plutarch, Solon, 29-30; Diog. Laërt. i, 50-51.

The unbounded popular favor which had procured the passing of this
grant, was still farther manifested by the absence of all precautions
to prevent the limits of the grant from being exceeded. The number
of the body-guard was not long confined to fifty, and probably
their clubs were soon exchanged for sharper weapons. Peisistratus
thus found himself strong enough to throw off the mask and seize
the acropolis. His leading opponents, Megaklês and the Alkmæônids,
immediately fled the city, and it was left to the venerable age and
undaunted patriotism of Solon to stand forward almost alone in a
vain attempt to resist the usurpation. He publicly presented himself
in the market-place, employing encouragement, remonstrance, and
reproach, in order to rouse the spirit of the people. To prevent this
despotism from coming, he told them would have been easy; to shake it
off now was more difficult, yet at the same time more glorious.[259]
But he spoke in vain; for all who were not actually favorable to
Peisistratus listened only to their fears, and remained passive; nor
did any one join Solon, when, as a last appeal, he put on his armor
and planted himself in military posture before the door of his house.
“I have done my duty, he exclaimed at length; I have sustained to the
best of my power my country and the laws:” and he then renounced
all farther hope of opposition,—though resisting the instances of
his friends that he should flee, and returning for answer, when they
asked him on what he relied for protection, “On my old age.” Nor did
he even think it necessary to repress the inspirations of his Muse:
some verses yet remain, composed seemingly at a moment when the
strong hand of the new despot had begun to make itself sorely felt,
in which he tells his countrymen: “If ye have endured sorrow from
your own baseness of soul, impute not the fault of this to the gods.
Ye have yourselves put force and dominion into the hands of these
men, and have thus drawn upon yourselves wretched slavery.”

[259] Plutarch, Solon, 30; Diogen. Laërt. i, 49; Diodor.
Excerpta., lib. vii-x, ed. Maii. Fr. xix-xxiv.

It is gratifying to learn that Peisistratus, whose conduct throughout
his despotism was comparatively mild, left Solon untouched. How long
this distinguished man survived the practical subversion of his own
constitution, we cannot certainly determine; but according to the
most probable statement he died the very next year, at the advanced
age of eighty.

We have only to regret that we are deprived of the means of following
more in detail his noble and exemplary character. He represents the
best tendencies of his age, combined with much that is personally
excellent; the improved ethical sensibility; the thirst for enlarged
knowledge and observation, not less potent in old age than in youth;
the conception of regularized popular institutions, departing
sensibly from the type and spirit of the governments around him, and
calculated to found a new character in the Athenian people; a genuine
and reflecting sympathy with the mass of the poor, anxious not merely
to rescue them from the oppressions of the rich, but also to create
in them habits of self-relying industry; lastly, during his temporary
possession of a power altogether arbitrary, not merely an absence
of all selfish ambition, but a rare discretion in seizing the mean
between conflicting exigencies. In reading his poems we must always
recollect that what now appears common-place was once new, so that
to his comparatively unlettered age, the social pictures which he
draws were still fresh, and his exhortations calculated to live in
the memory. The poems composed on moral subjects, generally inculcate
a spirit of gentleness towards others and moderation in personal
objects; they represent the gods as irresistible, retributive,
favoring the good and punishing the bad, though sometimes very
tardily. But his compositions on special and present occasions
are usually conceived in a more vigorous spirit; denouncing the
oppressions of the rich at one time, and the timid submission to
Peisistratus at another,—and expressing, in emphatic language, his
own proud consciousness of having stood forward as champion of the
mass of the people. Of his early poems hardly anything is preserved;
the few lines which remain seem to manifest a jovial temperament,
which we may well conceive to have been overlaid by the political
difficulties against which he had to contend,—difficulties arising
successively out of the Megarian war, the Kylonian sacrilege, the
public despondency healed by Epimenidês, and the task of arbiter
between a rapacious oligarchy and a suffering people. In one of his
elegies, addressed to Mimnermus, he marked out the sixtieth year as
the longest desirable period of life, in preference to the eightieth
year, which that poet had expressed a wish to attain;[260] but his
own life, as far as we can judge, seems to have reached the longer
of the two periods, and not the least honorable part of it—the
resistance to Peisistratus—occurs immediately before his death.

[260] Solon, Fragment 22, ed. Bergk. Isokratês affirms that Solon
was the first person to whom the appellation Sophist—in later
times carrying with it so much obloquy—was applied, (Isokratês,
Or. xv, De Permutatione, p. 344; p. 496, Bek.)

There prevailed a story, that his ashes were collected and scattered
around the island of Salamis, which Plutarch treats as absurd,—though
he tells us at the same time that it was believed both by Aristotle,
and by many other considerable men: it is at least as ancient as the
poet Kratinus, who alluded to it in one of his comedies, and I do not
feel inclined to reject it.[261] The inscription on the statue of
Solon at Athens described him as a Salaminian: he had been the great
means of acquiring the island for his country,—and it seems highly
probable that among the new Athenian citizens who went to settle
there, he may have received a lot of land and become enrolled among
the Salaminian demots. The dispersion of his ashes in various parts
of the island connects him with it as in some sort the œkist; and we
may construe that incident, if not as the expression of a public
vote, at least as a piece of affectionate vanity on the part of his
surviving friends.[262]

[261] Plutarch, Solon, 32; Kratinus ap. Diogen. Laërt. i, 62.

[262] Aristidês, in noticing this story of the spreading of
the ashes of Solon in Salamis, treats him as Ἀρχηγέτης of the
island (Orat. xlvi, Ὑπὲρ τῶν τεττάρων, p. 172; p. 230, Dindorf).
The inscription on his statue, which describes him as born in
Salamis, can hardly have been literally true: for when he was
born, Salamis was not incorporated in Attica; but it may have
been true by a sort of adoption (see Diogen. Laërt. i, 62). The
statue seems to have been erected by the Salaminians themselves,
a long time after Solon: see Menage ad Diogen. Laërt. _l. c._

We have now reached the period of the usurpation of Peisistratus
(B. C. 560), whose dynasty governed Athens—with two temporary
interruptions during the life of Peisistratus himself—for fifty
years. The history of this despotism, milder than Grecian despotism
generally, and productive of important consequences to Athens, will
be reserved for a succeeding chapter.

APPENDIX.

The explanation which M. von Savigny gives of the Nexi and
Addicti under the old Roman law of debtor and creditor (after
he has refuted the elucidation of Niebuhr on the same subject),
while it throws great light on the historical changes in Roman
legislation on that important subject, sets forth at the same
time the marked difference made in the procedure of Rome, between
the demand of the creditor for repayment of _principal_, and the
demand for payment of _interest_.

The primitive Roman law distinguished a debt arising from
money lent (_pecunia certa credita_) from debts arising out of
contract, delict, sale, etc., or any other source: the creditor
on the former ground had a quick and easy process, by which he
acquired the fullest power over the person and property of his
debtor. After the debt on loan was either confessed or proved
before the magistrate, thirty days were allowed to the debtor for
payment: if payment was not made within that time, the creditor
laid hold of him (_manûs injectio_) and carried him before the
magistrate again. The debtor was now again required either to pay
or to find a surety (_vindex_); if neither of these demands were
complied with, the creditor took possession of him and carried
him home, where he kept him in chains for two months; during
which interval he brought him before the prætor publicly on
three successive nundinæ. If the debt was not paid within these
two months, the sentence of addiction was pronounced, and the
creditor became empowered either to put his debtor to death, or
to sell him for a slave (p. 81), or to keep him at forced work,
without any restriction as to the degree of ill usage which might
be inflicted upon him. The judgment of the magistrate authorized
him, besides, to seize the property of his debtor wherever he
could find any, within the limits sufficient for payment: this
was one of the points which Niebuhr had denied.

Such was the old law of Rome, with respect to the consequences
of an action for money had and received, for more than a century
after the Twelve Tables. But the law did not apply this stringent
personal execution to any debt except that arising from loan,—and
even in that debt only to the principal money, not to the
interest,—which latter had to be claimed by a process both more
gentle and less efficient, applying to the property only and not
to the person of the debtor. Accordingly, it was to the advantage
of the creditor to devise some means for bringing his claim of
interest under the same stringent process as his claim for the
principal; it was also to his advantage, if his claim arose, not
out of money lent, but out of sale, compensation for injury,
or any other source, to give it _the form_ of an action for
money lent. Now the nexum, or nexi obligatio, was an artifice—a
fictitious loan—whereby this purpose was accomplished. The severe
process which legally belonged only to the recovery of the
principal money, was extended by the nexum so as to comprehend
the interest; and so as to comprehend, also, claims for money
arising from all other sources (as well as from loan), wherein
the law gave no direct recourse except against the property of a
debtor. The debitor nexus was made liable by this legal artifice
to pass into the condition of an addictus, either without having
borrowed money at all, or for the interest as well as for the
principal of that which he had borrowed.

The Lex Pœtelia, passed about B. C. 325, liberated all the nexi
then under liability, and interdicted the nexi obligatio forever
afterwards (Cicero, De Republ. ii, 34; Livy, viii, 28). Here,
as in the seisachtheia of Solon, the existing contracts were
cancelled, at the same time that the whole class of similar
contracts were forbidden for the future.

But though the nexi obligatio was thus abolished, the old
stringent remedy still continued against the debtor on loan,
_as far as the principal sum borrowed_, apart from interest.
Some mitigations were introduced: by a Lex Julia, the still
more important provision was added, that the debtor by means of
a cessio bonorum might save his person from seizure. But this
cessio bonorum was coupled with conditions which could not always
be fulfilled, nor was the debtor admitted to the benefit of it,
if he had been guilty of carelessness or dishonesty. Accordingly,
the old stringent process, and the addiction in which it ended,
though it became less frequent, still continued throughout the
course of Imperial Rome, and even down to the time of Justinian.
The private prison, with adjudicated debtors working in it, was
still the appendage to a Roman money-lender’s house, even in the
third and fourth centuries after the Christian era, though the
practice seems to have become rarer and rarer. The status of the
_addictus debitor_, with its peculiar rights and obligations, is
discussed by Quintilian (vii, 3); and Aulus Gellius observes:
“Addici namque _nunc_ et vinciri multos _videmus_, quia
vinculorum pœnam deterrimi homines contemnunt,” (xx, 1.)

If the _addictus debitor_ was adjudged to several creditors, they
were allowed by the Twelve Tables to divide his body among them.
No example was known of this power having been ever carried into
effect, but the law was understood to give the power distinctly.

It is useful to have before us the old Roman law of debtor and
creditor, partly as a point of comparison with the ante-Solonian
practice in Attica, partly to illustrate the difference drawn in
an early state of society between the claim for the principal and
the claim for the interest.

See the Abhandlung of Von Savigny in the Transactions of the
Berlin Academy for 1833, pp. 70-103; the subject is also treated
by the same admirable expositor, in his System des heutigen
Römischen Rechts, vol. v, sect. 219, and in Beilage xiv, 10-11 of
that volume.

The same peculiar stringent process, which was available in
the case of an action for _pecunia certa credita_, was also
specially extended to the surety, who had paid down money to
liquidate another man’s debt; the debtor, if solvent, became his
addictus,—this was the _actio depensi_. I have already remarked
in a former note, that in the Attic law, a case analogous to this
was the only one in which the original remedy against the person
of the debtor was always maintained. When a man had paid money to
redeem a citizen from captivity, the latter, if he did not repay
it, became the slave of the party who had advanced the money.

Walter (Geschichte des Römischen Rechts, sects. 583-715, 2d
ed.) calls in question the above explanation of Von Savigny, on
grounds which do not appear to me sufficient.

How long the feeling continued, that it was immoral and
irreligious to receive any interest at all for money lent, may be
seen from the following notice respecting the state of the law in
France even down to 1789:—

“Avant la Révolution Française (de 1789) le prêt à intérêt
n’était pas également admis dans les diverses parties du royaume.
Dans les pays de droit écrit, il était permis de stipuler
l’intérêt des déniers prêtés: mais la jurisprudence des parlemens
resistait souvent à cet usage. Suivant le droit commun des pays
coutumiers, on ne pouvait stipuler aucun intérêt pour le prêt
appelé en droit _mutuum_. On tenait pour maxime que l’argent ne
produisant rien par lui-même, un tel prêt devait être gratuit:
que la perception d’intérêts était une usure: à cet égard, on
admettait assez généralement les principes du droit canonique. Du
reste, la législation et la jurisprudence variaient suivant les
localités et suivant la nature des contrâts et des obligations.”
(Carette, Lois Annotées, ou Lois, Décrets, Ordonnances, Paris
1843; Note sur le Décret de l’Assemblée Nationale concernant le
Prêt et Intérêt. Août 11, 1789.)

The National Assembly declared the legality of all loans on
interest, “suivant le taux déterminé par la loi,” but did not
then fix any special rate. “Le décret du 11 Avril, 1793, défendit
la vente et l’achat du numéraire.” “La loi du 6 floréal, an III,
déclara que l’or et l’argent sont marchandises; mais elle fut
rapportée par le décret du 2 prairial suivant. Les articles 1905
et 1907 du Code Civil permettent le prêt à intérêt, mais au taux
fixé ou autorisé par la loi. La loi du 3 Sept. 1807 a fixé le
taux d’intérêt à 5 per cent. en matière civile et à 6 per cent.
en matière commerciale.”

The article on Lending-houses, in Beckmann’s History of
Inventions (vol. iii, pp. 9-50), is highly interesting and
instructive on the same subject. It traces the gradual calling in
question, mitigation, and disappearance, of the ancient antipathy
against taking interest for money, an antipathy long sanctioned
by the ecclesiastics as well as by the jurists. Lending-houses,
or Monts de Piété, were first commenced in Italy about the
middle of the fifteenth century, by some Franciscan monks, for
the purpose of rescuing poor borrowers from the exorbitant
exactions of the Jews: Pope Pius the Second (Æneas Silvius, one
of the ablest of the popes, about 1458-1464), was the first who
approved of one of them at Perugia, but even the papal sanction
was long combated by a large proportion of ecclesiastics. At
first, it was to be purely charitable; not only neither giving
interest to those who contributed money, nor taking interest
from the borrowers,—but not even providing fixed pay to the
administrators: interest was tacitly taken, but the popes
were a long time before they would formally approve of such a
practice. “At Vicenza, in order to avoid the reproach of usury,
the artifice was employed of not demanding any interest, but
admonishing the borrowers that they should give a remuneration
according to their piety and ability,” (p. 31.) The Dominicans,
partisans of the old doctrine, called these establishments
Montes _Impietatis_. A Franciscan monk Bernardinus, one of the
most active promoters of the Monts de Piété, did not venture to
defend, but only to excuse as an unavoidable evil, the payment
of wages to the clerks and administrators: “Speciosius et
religiosius fatebatur Bernardinus fore, si absque ullo penitus
obolo et pretio mutuum daretur et commodaretur libere pecunia,
sed pium opus et pauperum subsidium exiguo sic duraturum tempore.
Non enim (inquit) tantus est ardor hominum, ut gubernatores
et officiales, Montium ministerio necessarii, velint laborem
hunc omnem gratis subire: quod si remunerandi sint ex sorte
principali, vel ipso deposito, seu exili Montium ærario, brevi
exhaurietur, et commodum opportunumque istud pauperum refugium
ubique peribit.” (p. 33.)

The Council of Trent, during the following century, pronounced
in favor of the legality and usefulness of these lending-houses,
and this has since been understood to be the sentiment of the
Catholic church generally.

To trace this gradual change of moral feeling is highly
instructive,—the more so, as that general basis of sentiment,
of which the antipathy against lending money on interest is
only a particular case, still prevails largely in society and
directs the current of moral approbation and disapprobation. In
some nations, as among the ancient Persians before Cyrus, this
sentiment has been carried so far as to repudiate and despise all
buying and selling (Herodot. i, 153). With many, the principle
of reciprocity in human dealings appears, when conceived in
theory, odious and contemptible, and goes by some bad name, such
as egoism, selfishness, calculation, political economy, etc: the
only sentiment which they will admit in theory, is, that the man
who has, ought to be ready at all times to give away what he has
to him who has not; while the latter is encouraged to expect and
require such gratuitous donation.

CHAPTER XII.

EUBŒA. — CYCLADES.

Among the Ionic portion of Hellas are to be reckoned (besides Athens)
Eubœa, and the numerous group of islands included between the
southernmost Eubœan promontory, the eastern coast of Peloponnesus,
and the north-western coast of Krête. Of these islands some are to be
considered as outlying prolongations, in a south-easterly direction,
of the mountain-system of Attica; others, of that of Eubœa; while
a certain number of them lie apart from either system, and seem
referable to a volcanic origin.[263] To the first class belong Keôs,
Kythnus, Serīphus, Pholegandrus, Sikinus, Gyarus, Syra, Paros, and
Antiparos; to the second class, Andros, Tênos, Mykonos, Dêlos, Naxos,
Amorgos; to the third class, Kimôlus, Mêlos, Thêra. These islands
passed amongst the ancients by the general name of the Cyclades and
the Sporades; the former denomination being commonly understood to
comprise those which immediately surrounded the sacred island of
Dêlos,—the latter being given to those which lay more scattered and
apart. But the names are not applied with uniformity or steadiness
even in ancient times: at present, the whole group are usually known
by the title of Cyclades.

[263] See Fiedler, Reisen durch Griechenland, vol. ii, p. 87.

The population of these islands was called Ionic,—with the exception
of Styra and Karystus in the southern part of Eubœa, and the island
of Kythnus, which were peopled by dryopes,[264] the same tribe as
those who have been already remarked in the Argolic peninsula; and
with the exception also of Mêlos and Thêra, which were colonies from
Sparta.

[264] Herodot. viii, 46; Thucyd. vii, 57.

The island of Eubœa, long and narrow like Krête, and exhibiting a
continuous backbone of lofty mountains from north-west to south-east,
is separated from Bœotia at one point by a strait so narrow
(celebrated in antiquity under the name of the Eurīpus), that the
two were connected by a bridge for a large portion of the historical
period of Greece, erected during the later times of the Peloponnesian
war by the inhabitants of Chalkis.[265] Its general want of breadth
leaves little room for plains: the area of the island consists
principally of mountain, rock, dell, and ravine, suited in many
parts for pasture, but rarely convenient for grain-culture or town
habitations. Some plains there were, however, of great fertility,
especially that of Lelantum,[266] bordering on the sea near Chalkis,
and continuing from that city in a southerly direction towards
Eretria. Chalkis and Eretria, both situated on the western coast, and
both occupying parts of this fertile plain, were the two principal
places in the island: the domain of each seems to have extended
across the island from sea to sea.[267] Towards the northern end of
the island were situated Histiæa, afterwards called Oreus,—as well as
Kêrinthus and Dium, Athênæ Diades, Ædêpsus, Ægæ, and Orobiæ, are also
mentioned on the north-western coast, over against Lokris. Dystus,
Styra, and Karystus are made known to us in the portion of the island
south of Eretria,—the two latter opposite to the Attic demes Halæ,
Araphênides, and Prasiæ.[268] The large extent of the island of Eubœa
was thus distributed between six or seven cities, the larger and
central portion belonging to Chalkis and Eretria. But the extensive
mountain lands, applicable only for pastures in the summer,—for the
most part public lands, let out for pasture to such proprietors as
had the means of providing winter sustenance elsewhere for their
cattle,—were never visited by any one except the shepherds; and were
hardly better known to the citizens resident in Chalkis and Eretria
than if they had been situated on the other side of the Ægean.[269]

[265] Diodor. xiii, 47.

[266] Kallimachus, Hymn. ad Delum, 289, with Spanheim’s note;
Theognis, v, 888; Theophrast. Hist. Plant. 8, 5.

See Leake, Travels in Northern Greece, vol. ii, ch. 14, p. 254,
_seq._ The passage of Theognis leads to the belief that Kêrinthus
formed a part of the territory of Chalkis.

[267] Skylax (c. 59) treats the island of Skyrus as opposite to
Eretria, the territory of which must, therefore, have included a
portion of the eastern coast of Eubœa, as well as the western.
He recognizes only four cities in the island,—Karystus, Eretria,
Chalkis, and Hestiæa.

[268] Mannert, Geograph. Gr. Röm. part viii, book i, c. 16, p.
248; Strabo, x, pp. 445-449.

[269] The seventh Oration of Dio Chrysostom, which describes
his shipwreck near Cape Kaphareus, on the island of Eubœa,
and the shelter and kindness which he experienced from a
poor mountain huntsman, presents one of the most interesting
pictures remaining, of this purely rustic portion of the Greek
population (Or. vii, p. 221, _seq._),—men who never entered
the city, and were strangers to the habits, manners, and dress
there prevailing,—men who drank milk and were clothed in skins
(γαλακτοπότας ἀνὴρ, οὐρειβάτας, Eurip. Elektr. 169), yet
nevertheless (as it seems) possessing right of citizenship (p.
238) which they never exercised. The industry of the poor men
visited by Dion had brought into cultivation a little garden and
field in a desert spot near Kaphareus.

Two-thirds of the territory of this Euboic city consisted of
barren mountain (p. 232); it must probably have been Karystus.

The high lands of Eubœa were both uninhabited and difficult
of approach, even at the time of the battle of Marathon, when
Chalkis and Eretria had not greatly declined from the maximum of
their power: the inhabitants of Eretria looked to τὰ ἄρκα τῆς
Εὐβοίης as a refuge against the Persian force under Datis (Herod.
vi, 100).

The towns above enumerated in Eubœa, excepting Athenæ Diades, all
find a place in the Iliad. Of their history we know no particulars
until considerably after 776 B. C., and they are first introduced
to us as Ionic, though in Homer the population are called Abantes.
The Greek authors are never at a loss to give us the etymology of a
name. While Aristotle tells us that the Abantes were Thracians who
had passed over into the island from Abæ in Phokis, Hesiod deduces
the name of Eubœa from the cow Iô.[270] Hellopia, a district near
Histiæa, was said to have been founded by Hellops, son of Ion:
according to others, Æklus and Kothus, two Athenians,[271] were the
founders, the former of Eretria, the latter of Chalkis and Kêrinthus:
and we are told, that among the demes of Attica, there were two
named Histiæa and Eretria, from whence some contended that the
appellations of the two Eubœan towns were derived. Though Herodotus
represents the population of Styra as Dryopian, there were others
who contended that it had originally been peopled from Marathon and
the tetrapolis of Attica, partly from the deme called Steireïs. The
principal writers whom Strabo consulted seem to trace the population
of Eubœa, by one means or other, to an Attic origin, though there
were peculiarities in the Eretrian dialect which gave rise to the
supposition that they had been joined by settlers from Elis, or from
the Triphylian Makistus.

[270] Strabo, x, p. 445.

[271] Plutarch, Quæst. Græc. p. 296; Strab. x, p. 446 (whose
statements are very perplexed); Velleius Patercul. i, 4.

According to Skymnus the Chian (v. 572), Chalkis was founded by
Pandôrus son of Erechtheus, and Kêrinthus by Kothôn, from Athens.

Our earliest historical intimations represent Chalkis and Eretria as
the wealthiest, most powerful, and most enterprising Ionic cities
in European Greece,—apparently surpassing Athens, and not inferior
to Samos or Miletus. Besides the fertility of the plain Lelantum,
Chalkis possessed the advantage of copper and iron ore, obtained
in immediate proximity both to the city and to the sea,—which her
citizens smelted and converted into arms and other implements, with
a very profitable result: the Chalkidic sword acquired a distinctive
renown.[272] In this mineral source of wealth several of the other
islands shared: iron ore is found in Keôs, Kythnus, and Seriphus,
and traces are still evident in the latter island of extensive
smelting formerly practised.[273] Moreover, in Siphnus, there were
in early times veins of silver and gold, by which the inhabitants
were greatly enriched; though their large acquisitions, attested by
the magnitude of the tithe[274] which they offered at the Delphian
temple, were only of temporary duration, and belong particularly to
the seventh and sixth centuries before the Christian era. The island
of Naxos too, was at an early day wealthy and populous. Andros,
Tênos, Keôs, and several other islands, were at one time reduced
to dependence upon Eretria:[275] other islands seem to have been
in like manner dependent upon Naxos, which at the time immediately
preceding the Ionic revolt possessed a considerable maritime force,
and could muster eight thousand heavy-armed citizens,[276]—a very
large force for any single Grecian city. Nor was the military force
of Eretria much inferior; for in the temple of the Amarynthian
Artemis, nearly a mile from the city, to which the Eretrians were in
the habit of marching in solemn procession to celebrate the festival
of the goddess, there stood an ancient column setting forth that
the procession had been performed by no less than three thousand
hoplites, six hundred horsemen, and sixty chariots.[277] The date of
this inscription cannot be known, but it can hardly be earlier than
the 45th Olympiad, or 600 B. C.,—near about the time of the Solonian
legislation. Chalkis was still more powerful than Eretria; both were
in early times governed by an oligarchy, which among the Chalkidians
was called hippobotæ, or horse-feeders,—proprietors probably of
most part of the plain called Lelantum, and employing the adjoining
mountains as summer pasture for their herds. The extent of their
property is attested by the large number of four thousand kleruchs,
or out-freemen, whom Athens quartered upon their lands, after the
victory gained over them when they assisted the expelled Hippias in
his efforts to regain the Athenian sceptre.[278]

[272] Strabo, x, p. 446,—Πὰρ δὲ Χαλκιδικαὶ σπάθαι (Alkæus,
Fragm. 7, Schneidewin),—Χαλκιδικὸν ποτήριον (Aristophan. Equit.
237),—certainly belongs to the Euboic Chalkis, not to the
Thrakian Chalkidikê. Boeckh, Staatshaushalt. der Athener, vol.
ii, p. 284, App. xi, cites Χαλκιδικὰ ποτηρία in an inscription:
compare Steph. Byz. Χαλκὶς.—Ναυσικλείτης Εὐβοίης, Homer, Hymn.
Apoll. 219.

[273] See the mineralogical account of the islands in Fiedler
(Reisen, vol. ii, pp. 88, 118, 562).

The copper and iron ore near Chalkis had ceased to be worked even
in the time of Strabo: Fiedler indicates the probable site (vol.
i, p. 443).

[274] Herodot. iii. 57. The Siphnians, however, in an evil hour,
committed the wrong of withholding this tithe: the sea soon
rushed in and rendered the mines ever afterwards unworkable
(Pausan. x, 11, 2).

[275] Strabo, x, p. 448.

[276] Herodot. v, 31. Compare the accounts of these various
islands in the recent voyages of Professor Ross, Reisen auf den
Griechischen Inseln, vol. i, letter 2; vol. ii, letter 15.

The population of Naxos is now about eleven thousand souls; that
of Andros fifteen thousand (Ross, vol. i, p. 28; vol. ii, p. 22).

But the extent and fertility of the Naxian plain perfectly
suffice for that aggregate population of one hundred thousand
souls, which seems implied in the account of Herodotus.

[277] Strabo, _l. c._

[278] Herodot. v, 77; Aristoteles, Fragment. περὶ Πολιτειῶν, ed.
Neumann, pp. 111-112: compare Aristot. Polit. iv, 3, 2.

Confining our attention, as we now do, to the first two centuries
of Grecian history, or the interval between 776 B. C. and 560 B.
C., there are scarce any facts which we can produce to ascertain
the condition of these Ionic islands. Two or three circumstances,
however, may be named, which go to confirm our idea of their early
wealth and importance.

1. The Homeric Hymn to Apollo presents to us the island of Dêlos
as the centre of a great periodical festival in honor of Apollo,
celebrated by all the cities, insular and continental, of the Ionic
name. What the date of this hymn is, we have no means of determining:
Thucydidês quotes it, without hesitation, as the production of
Homer, and, doubtless, it was in his time universally accepted as
such,—though modern critics concur in regarding both that and the
other hymns as much later than the Iliad and Odyssey: it cannot
probably be later than 600 B. C. The description of the Ionic
visitors presented to us in this hymn is splendid and imposing:
the number of their ships, the display of their finery, the beauty
of their women, the athletic exhibitions as well as the matches of
song and dance,—all these are represented as making an ineffaceable
impression on the spectator:[279] “the assembled Ionians look as
if they were beyond the reach of old age or death.” Such was the
magnificence of which Dêlos was the periodical theatre, and which
called forth the voices and poetical genius not merely of itinerant
bards, but also of the Delian maidens in the temple of Apollo,
during the century preceding 560 B. C. At that time it was the great
central festival of the Ionians in Asia and Europe; frequented by the
twelve Ionic cities, in and near Asia Minor, as well as by Athens
and Chalkis in Europe: it had not yet been superseded by the Ephesia
as the exclusive festival of the former, nor had the Panathenæa of
Athens reached the importance which afterwards came to belong to them
during the plenitude of the Athenian power.

[279] Hom. Hymn. Apoll. Del. 146-176; Thucyd. iii, 104:—

Φαίη κ᾽ ἀθανάτους καὶ ἀγήρως ἔμμεναι αἰεὶ,
Ὃς τότ᾽ ἐπαντιάσει᾽, ὅτ᾽ Ἰάονες ἄθροοι εἶεν·
Πάντων γάρ κεν ἴδοιτο χάριν, τέρψαιτο δὲ θυμὸν,
Ἄνδρας τ᾽ εἰσορόων καλλιζώνους τε γυναῖκας,
Νῆάς τ᾽ ὠκείας ἠδ᾽ αὐτῶν κρήματα πολλά.

We find both Polykratês of Samos, and Peisistratus of Athens, taking
a warm interest in the sanctity of Dêlos and the celebrity of this
festival.[280] But it was partly the rise of these two great Ionian
despots, partly the conquests of the Persians in Asia Minor, which
broke up the independence of the numerous petty Ionian cities,
during the last half of the sixth century before the Christian era;
hence the great festival at Dêlos gradually declined in importance.
Though never wholly intermitted, it was shorn of much of its previous
ornaments, and especially of that which constituted the first of all
ornaments,—the crowds of joyous visitors. And Thucydidês, when he
notices the attempt made by the Athenians during the Peloponnesian
war, in the height of their naval supremacy, to revive the Delian
festival, quotes the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, as a certificate of
its foregone and long-forgotten splendor. We perceive that even
_he_ could find no better evidence than this hymn, for Grecian
transactions of a century anterior to Peisistratus,—and we may,
therefore, judge how imperfectly the history of this period was
known to the men who took part in the Peloponnesian war. The hymn is
exceedingly precious as an historical document, because it attests to
us a transitory glory and extensive association of the Ionic Greeks
on both sides of the Ægean sea, which the conquests of the Lydians
first, and of the Persians afterwards, overthrew,—a time when the
hair of the wealthy Athenian was decorated with golden ornaments,
and his tunic made of linen,[281] like that of the Milesians and
Ephesians, instead of the more sober costume and woollen clothing
which he subsequently copied from Sparta and Peloponnesus,—a time too
when the Ionic name had not yet contracted that stain of effeminacy
and cowardice, which stood imprinted upon it in the time of Herodotus
and Thucydidês, and which grew partly out of the subjugation of
the Asiatic Ionians by Persia, partly out of the antipathy of the
Peloponnesian Dorians to Athens. The author of the Homeric Hymn, in
describing the proud Ionians who thronged, in his day, to the Delian
festival, could hardly have anticipated a time to come, when the name
_Ionian_ would become a reproach, such as the European Greeks, to
whom it really belonged, were desirous of disclaiming.[282]

[280] Thucyd. iii, 104.

[281] Thucyd. i, 6. διὰ τὸ ἁβροδίαιτον, etc.

[282] Herodot. i, 143. Οἱ μέν νυν ἄλλοι Ἴωνες καὶ οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι
ἔφυγον τὸ οὔνομα, οὐ βουλόμενοι Ἴωνες κεκλῆσθαι,—an assertion
quite unquestionable with reference to the times immediately
preceding Herodotus, but not equally admissible in regard to the
earlier times. Compare Thucyd. i, 124 (with the Scholium), and
also v, 9; viii, 25.

2. Another illustrative fact, in reference both to the Ionians
generally, and to Chalkis and Eretria in particular, during the
century anterior to Peisistratus, is to be found in the war between
these two cities respecting the fertile plain Lelantum, which lay
between them. In general, it appears, these two important towns
maintained harmonious relations; but there were some occasions of
dispute, and one in particular, wherein a formidable war ensued
between them. Several allies joined with each, and it is remarkable
that this was the only war known to Thucydidês, anterior to the
Persian conquest, which had risen above the dignity of a mere quarrel
between neighbors; and in which so many different states manifested
a disposition to interfere, as to impart to it a semi-Hellenic
character.[283] Of the allies of each party on this occasion we know
only that the Milesians lent assistance to Eretria, and the Samians,
as well as the Thessalians and the Chalkidic colonies in Thrace,
to Chalkis. A column, still visible during the time of Strabo, in
the temple of the Amarynthian Artemis near Eretria, recorded the
covenant entered into mutually by the two belligerents, to abstain
from missiles, and to employ nothing but hand-weapons. The Eretrians
are said to have been superior in horse, but they were vanquished
in the battle; the tomb of Kleomachus of Pharsalus, a distinguished
warrior who had perished in the cause of the Chalkidians, was erected
in the agora of Chalkis. We know nothing of the date, the duration,
or the particulars of this war;[284] but it seems that the Eretrians
were worsted, though their city always maintained its dignity as the
second state in the island. Chalkis was decidedly the first, and
continued to be flourishing, populous, and commercial, long after
it had lost its political importance, throughout all the period of
Grecian independent history.[285]

[283] Thucyd. i, 15. The second Messenian war cannot have
appeared to Thucydidês as having enlisted so many allies on each
side as Pausanias represents.

[284] Strabo, viii, p. 448; Herodot. v, 99; Plutarch, Amator, p.
760,—valuable by the reference to Aristotle.

Hesiod passed over from Askra to Chalkis, on the occasion of the
funeral games celebrated by the sons of Amphidamas in honor of
their deceased father, and gained a tripod as prize by his song
or recital (Opp. Di. 656). According to the Scholia, Amphidamas
was king of Chalkis, who perished in the war against Eretria
respecting Lelantum. But it appears that Plutarch threw out
the lines as spurious, though he acknowledges Amphidamas as a
vigorous champion of Chalkis in this war. See Septem Sapient.
Conviv. c. 10, p. 153.

This visit of Hesiod to Chalkis was represented as the scene of
his poetical competition with and victory over Homer. (See the
Certamen Hom. et Hes. p. 315, ed. Göttl.)

[285] See the striking description of Chalkis given by Dikæarchus
in the Βίος Ἑλλάδος (Fragment. p. 146, ed. Fuhr).

3. Of the importance of Chalkis and Eretria, during the seventh
and part of the eighth century before the Christian era, we gather
other evidences,—partly in the numerous colonies founded by them,
which I shall advert to in a subsequent chapter,—partly in the
prevalence throughout a large portion of Greece, of the Euboic scale
of weight and money. What the quantities and proportions of this
scale were, has been first shown by M. Boeckh in his “Metrologie.”
It was of Eastern origin, and the gold collected by Dareius in
tribute throughout the vast Persian empire, was ordered to be
delivered in Euboic talents. Its divisions,—the talent equal to
sixty minæ, the mina equal to one hundred drachms, the drachm equal
to six obols,—were the same as those of the scale called Æginæan,
introduced by Pheidôn of Argos; but the six obols of the Euboic
drachm contained a weight of silver equal only to five Æginæan obols,
so that the Euboic denominations,—drachm, mina, and talent,—were
equal only to five-sixths of the same denominations in the Æginæan
scale. It was the Euboic scale which prevailed at Athens before
the debasement introduced by Solon; which debasement,—amounting to
about twenty-seven per cent., as has been mentioned in a previous
chapter,—created a third scale, called the Attic, distinct both
from the Æginæan and Euboic,—standing to the former in the ratio of
3 : 5, and to the latter, in the ratio of 18 : 25. It seems plain
that the Euboic scale was adopted by the Ionians through their
intercourse with the Lydians,[286] and other Asiatics, and that it
became naturalized among their cities under the name of the Euboic,
because Chalkis and Eretria were the most actively commercial states
in the Ægean,—just as the superior commerce of Ægina among the Dorian
states, had given to the scale introduced by Pheidôn of Argos, the
name of Æginæan. The fact of its being so called indicates a time
when these two Eubœan cities surpassed Athens in maritime power and
extended commercial relations, and when they stood among the foremost
of the Ionic cities throughout Greece. The Euboic scale, after having
been debased by Solon, in reference to coinage and money, still
continued in use at Athens for merchandise: the Attic mercantile mina
retained its primitive Euboic weight.[287]

[286] Herodot. i, 94.

[287] See Boeckh’s Metrologie, c. 8 and 9.

CHAPTER XIII.

ASIATIC IONIANS.

There existed at the commencement of historical Greece, in 776 B. C.,
besides the Ionians in Attica and the Cyclades, twelve Ionian cities
of note on or near the coast of Asia Minor, besides a few others less
important. Enumerated from south to north, they stand,—Milêtus, Myûs,
Priênê, Samos, Ephesus, Kolophôn, Lebedus, Teôs, Erythræ, Chios,
Klazomenæ, Phôkæa.

That these cities, the great ornament of the Ionic name, were
founded by emigrants from European Greece, there is no reason to
doubt. How, or when, they were founded, we have no history to tell
us; the legend, which has already been set forth in a preceding
chapter, gives us a great event called the Ionic migration, referred
by chronologists to one special year, one hundred and forty years
after the Trojan war. This massive grouping belongs to the character
of legend,—the Æolic and Ionic emigrations, as well as the Dorian
conquest of Peloponnesus, are each invested with unity, and imprinted
upon the imagination as the results of a single great impulse. But
such is not the character of the historical colonies: when we come
to relate the Italian and Sicilian emigrations, it will appear that
each colony has its own separate nativity and causes of existence.
In the case of the Ionic emigration, this large scale of legendary
conception is more than usually conspicuous, since to that event is
ascribed the foundation or repeopling both of the Cyclades and of the
Asiatic Ionian cities.

Euripidês treats Ion,[288] the son of Kreusa by Apollo, as the
planter of these latter cities: but the more current form of the
legend assigns that honor to the sons of Kodrus, two of whom are
especially named, corresponding to the two greatest of the ten
continental Ionic cities: Androklus, as founder of Ephesus, Neileus
of Milêtus. These two towns are both described as founded directly
from Athens. The others seem rather to be separate settlements,
neither consisting of Athenians, nor emanating from Athens, but
adopting the characteristic Ionic festival of the Apaturia, and,
in part at least, the Ionic tribes,—and receiving princes from the
Kodrid families at Ephesus or Milêtus, as a condition of being
admitted into the Pan-Ionic confederate festival. The poet Mimnermus
ascribed the foundation of his native city Kolophôn to emigrants from
Pylus, in Peloponnesus, under Andræmôn: Teôs was settled by Minyæ
of Orchomenus, under Athamas: Klazomenæ by settlers from Kleônæ and
Phlius, Phôkæa, by Phocians, Priênê in large portion by Kadmeians
from Thebes. And with regard to the powerful islands of Chios and
Samos, it does not appear that their native authors,—the Chian
poet Ion, or the Samaian poet Asius,—ascribed to them a population
emanating from Athens: Pausanias could not make out from the poems
of Ion how it happened that Chios came to form a part of the Ionic
federation.[289] Herodotus, especially, dwells upon the number of
Grecian tribes and races, who contributed to supply the population
of the twelve Ionic cities,—Minyæ, from Orchomenus, Kadmeians,
Dryopians, Phocians, Molossians, Arkadian Pelasgians, Dorians from
Epidaurus, and “several other sections” of Greeks. Moreover, he
particularly singles out the Milesians, as claiming for themselves
the truest Ionic blood, and as having started from the prytaneium, at
Athens; thus plainly implying his belief that the majority, at least,
of the remaining settlers did not take their departure from the same
hearth.[290]

[288] Euripid. Ion, 1546. κτίστορ᾽ Ἀσίαδος χθονός.

[289] Pausan. vii, 4, 6. Τοσαῦτα εἰρηκότα ἐς Χίους Ἴωνα εὑρίσκω·
οὐ μέντοι ἐκεῖνός γε εἴρηκε, καθ᾽ ἥντινα αἰτίαν Χῖοι τελοῦσιν ἐς
Ἰῶνας.

Respecting Samos, and its primitive Karian inhabitants, displaced
by Patroklês, and Tembriôn at the head of Grecian emigrants, see
Etymol. Mag. v. Ἀστυπάλαια.

[290] Herod. i, 146. ἐπεὶ, ὥς γε ἔτι μᾶλλον οὗτοι (_i. e._ the
inhabitants of the Pan-Ionic Dodekapolis) Ἴωνές εἰσι τῶν ἄλλων
Ἰώνων ἢ κάλλιόν τι γεγόνασι, μωρίη πολλὴ λέγειν· τῶν Ἄβαντες
ἐξ Εὐβοίες εἰσὶν οὐκ ἐλαχίστη μοῖρα, τοῖσι Ἰωνίης μέτα οὐδὲ
τοῦ οὐνόματος οὐδέν· Μίνυαι δὲ Ὀρχομένιοι ἀναμεμίχαται, καὶ
Καδμεῖοι, καὶ Δρύοπες, καὶ Φωκέες ἀποδάσμιοι, καὶ Μολοσσοὶ, καὶ
Ἀρκάδες Πελασγοὶ, καὶ Δωριέες Ἐπιδαύριοι, ἄλλα τε ἔθνεα πολλὰ
ἀναμεμίχαται. Οἱ δὲ αὐτέων ἀπὸ τοῦ Πρυτανηΐου τοῦ Ἀθηναίων
ὁρμηθέντες, καὶ νομίζοντες γενναιότατοι εἶναι Ἰώνων, οὗτοι δὲ
οὐ γυναῖκας ἤγαγον εἰς τὴν ἀποικίην, ἀλλὰ Καείρας ἔσχον, τῶν
ἐφόνευσαν τοὺς γονέας ... Ταῦτα δὲ ἦν γινόμενα ἐν Μιλήτῳ.

The polemical tone in which this remark of Herodotus is delivered
is explained by Dahlmann on the supposition that it was destined
to confute certain boastful pretensions of the Milesian Hekatæus
(see Bähr, _ad loc._, and Klausen ad Hekatæi Frag. 225).

The test of _Ionism_, according to the statement of Herodotus,
is, that a city should derive its origin from Athens, and that
it should celebrate the solemnity of the Apaturia (i. 147).
But we must construe both these tests with indulgence. Ephesus
and Kolophôn were Ionic, though neither of them celebrated the
Apaturia. And the colony might be formed under the auspices of
Athens, though the settlers were neither natives, nor even of
kindred race with the natives, of Attica.

But the most striking information which Herodotus conveys to us
is, the difference of language, or dialect, which marked these
twelve cities. Milêtus, Myûs, and Priênê, all situated on the soil
of the Karians, had one dialect: Ephesus, Kolophôn, Lebedus, Teôs,
Klazomenæ, and Phôkæa, had a dialect common to all, but distinct
from that of the three preceding: Chios and Erythræ exhibited
a third dialect, and Samos, by itself, a fourth. Nor does the
historian content himself with simply noting such quadruple variety
of speech; he employs very strong terms to express the degree of
dissimilarity.[291] The testimony of Herodotus as to these dialects
is, of course, indisputable.

[291] Herod. i, 142. Ephesus, Kolophôn, Lebedus, Teôs, Klazomenæ,
Phokæa—αὗται αἱ πόλιες τῇσι πρότερον λεχθείσῃσι ὁμολογέουσι κατὰ
γλῶσσαν οὐδὲν, σφὶ δὲ ὁμοφωνέουσι.

Instead of one great Ionic emigration, then, the statements above
cited conduct us rather to the supposition of many separate and
successive settlements, formed by the Greeks of different sections,
mingling with and modified by preëxisting Lydians and Karians, and
subsequently allying themselves with Milêtus and Ephesus into the
so-called Ionic amphiktyony. As a condition of this union, they
are induced to adopt among their chiefs princes of the Kodrid gens
or family; who are called sons of Kodrus, but who are not for that
reason to be supposed necessarily contemporary with Androklus or
Neileus.

The chiefs selected by some of the cities are said to have been
Lykians,[292] of the heroic family of Glaukus and Bellerophon: in
some causes, the Kodrids and the Glaukids were chiefs conjointly.
Respecting the dates of these separate settlements, we cannot give
any account, for they lie beyond the commencement of authentic
history: there is ground for believing that most of them existed for
some time previous to 776 B. C., but at what date the federative
solemnity uniting the twelve cities was commenced, we do not know.

[292] Herodot. i, 146.

The account of Herodotus shows us that these colonies were composed
of mixed sections of Greeks,—an important circumstance in estimating
their character. Such was usually the case more or less in respect to
all emigrations, and hence the establishments thus planted contracted
at once, generally speaking, both more activity and more instability
than was seen among those Greeks who remained at home, and among whom
the old habitual routine had not been counterworked by any marked
change of place or of social relations. For in a new colony it became
necessary to adopt fresh classifications of the citizens, to range
them together in fresh military and civil divisions, and to adopt new
characteristic sacrifices and religious ceremonies as bonds of union
among all the citizens conjointly. At the first outset of a colony,
moreover, there were inevitable difficulties to be surmounted,
which imposed upon its leading men the necessity of energy and
forethought,—more especially in regard to maritime affairs, on which
not only their connection with the countrymen whom they had left
behind, but also their means of establishing advantageous relations
with the population of the interior, depended. At the same time,
the new arrangements indispensable among the colonists were far from
working always harmoniously: dissension and partial secessions were
not unfrequent occurrences. And what has been called the mobility of
the Ionic race, as compared with the Doric, is to be ascribed in a
great measure to this mixture of races and external stimulus arising
out of expatriation: for there is no trace of it in Attica anterior
to Solon; and on the other hand, the Doric colonies of Korkyra and
Syracuse exhibit a population not less excitable than the Ionic
towns generally,[293] and much more so than the Ionic colony of
Massalia. The remarkable commercial enterprise, which will be seen
to characterize Milêtus, Samos, and Phokæa, belongs but little to
anything connected with the Ionic temperament.

[293] Thucyd. vi, 17, about the Sicilian Greeks—ὄχλοις τε γὰρ
ξυμμικτοῖς πολυανδροῦσιν αἱ πόλεις, καὶ ῥᾳδίας ἔχουσι τῶν
πολιτειῶν τὰς μεταβολὰς καὶ ἐπιδοχάς.

All the Ionic towns, except Klazomenæ and Phokæa, are represented
to have been founded on some preëxisting settlements of Karians,
Lelegians, Kretans, Lydians, or Pelasgians.[294] In some cases these
previous inhabitants were overcome, slain, or expelled; in others
they were accepted as fellow-residents, and the Grecian cities
thus established acquired a considerable tinge of Asiatic customs
and feelings. What is related by Herodotus respecting the first
establishment of Neileus and his emigrants at Milêtus is in this
point of view remarkable. They took out with them no women from
Athens (the historian says), but found wives in the Karian women of
the place, whose husbands and fathers they overcame and put to death;
and the women, thus violently seized, manifested their repugnance
by taking a solemn oath among themselves that they would never eat
with their new husbands, nor ever call them by their personal names.
This same pledge they imposed upon their daughters; but how long
the practice lasted, we are not informed: it rather seems from the
language of the historian that traces of it were visible even in his
day in the family customs of the Milesians. The population of this
greatest of the Ionic towns must thus have been half of Karian breed.
It is to be presumed that what is true of Neileus and his companions
would be found true, also, respecting most of the maritime colonies
of Greece, and that the vessels which took them out would be scantily
provided with women. But on this point, unfortunately, we are left
without information.

[294] See Raoul Rochette, Histoire des Colonies Grecques, b. iv,
c. 10, p. 93.

The worship of Apollo Didymæus, at Branchidæ, near Milêtus,—that
of Artemis, near Ephesus,—and that of the Apollo Klarius, near
Kolophôn,—seems to have existed among the native Asiatic population
before the establishment of either of these three cities. To
maintain these preëxisting local rites was not less congenial to
the feelings, than beneficial to the interests, of the Greeks: all
the three establishments acquired increased celebrity under Ionic
administration, and contributed in their turn to the prosperity of
the towns to which they were attached. Milêtus, Myûs, and Priênê
were situated on or near the productive plain of the river Mæander;
while Ephesus was, in like manner, planted near the mouth of the
Kaïster, thus immediately communicating with the productive breadth
of land separating Mount Tmôlus on the north from Mount Messôgis
on the south, through which that river runs: Kolophôn is only a
very few miles north of the same river. Possessing the best means
of communication with the interior, these three towns seem to have
thriven with greater rapidity than the rest; and they, together
with the neighboring island of Samos, constituted in early times
the strength of the Pan-Ionic amphiktyony. The situation of the
sacred precinct of Poseidôn (where this festival was celebrated),
on the north side of the promontory of Mykalê, near Priênê, and
between Ephesus and Milêtus, seems to show that these towns formed
the primitive centre to which the other Ionian settlements became
gradually aggregated. For it was by no means a centrical site with
reference to all the twelve; so that Thalês of Milêtus,—who at
a subsequent period recommended a more intimate political union
between the twelve Ionic towns, and the establishment of a common
government to manage their collective affairs,—indicated Teôs,[295]
and not Priênê, as the suitable place for it. Moreover, it seems that
the Pan-Ionic festival,[296] though still formally continued, had
lost its importance before the time of Thucydidês, and had become
practically superseded by the more splendid festival of the Ephesia,
near Ephesus, where the cities of Ionia found a more attractive place
of meeting.

[295] Herodot. i, 170.

[296] Both Diodorus (xv, 49) and Dionysius of Halikarnassus (A.
R. iv, 25) speak as if the convocation or festival had been
formally transferred to Ephesus, in consequence of the insecurity
of the meetings near Mykalê: Strabo on the contrary speaks of the
Pan-Ionia as if they still in his time celebrated in the original
spot (xiv, pp. 636-638), under the care of the Priêneans. The
formal transfer is not probable: Thucydidês (iii, 104) proves
that in his time the festival of Ephesia was practically the
Pan-Ionic rendezvous, though Herodotus does not seem to have
conceived it as such. See Guhl, Ephesiaca, part iii, p. 117; and
K. F. Hermann, Gottesdienstliche Alterthümer der Griechen, c. 66,
p. 343.

An island close adjoining to the coast, or an outlying tongue
of land connected with the continent by a narrow isthmus, and
presenting some hill sufficient for an acropolis, seems to have been
considered as the most favorable situation for Grecian colonial
settlement. To one or other of these descriptions most of the Ionic
cities, conform.[297] The city of Milêtus at the height of its
power had four separate harbors, formed probably by the aid of the
island of Ladê and one or two islets which lay close off against
it: the Karian or Kretan establishment, which the Ionic colonists
found on their arrival and conquered, was situated on an eminence
overhanging the sea, and became afterwards known by the name of
Old Milêtus, at a time when the new Ionic town had been extended
down to the water-side and rendered maritime.[298] The territory of
this important city seems to have comprehended both the southern
promontory called Poseidium and the greater part of the northern
promontory of Mykalê,[299] reaching on both sides of the river
Mæander: the inconsiderable town of Myûs[300] on the southern bank
of the Mæander, an offset seemingly formed by the secession of
some Milesian malcontents under a member of the Neleid gens named
Kydrêlus, maintained for along time its autonomy, but was at length
absorbed into the larger unity of Milêtus; its swampy territory
having been rendered uninhabitable by a plague of gnats. Priênê
acquired an importance greater than naturally belonged to it, by its
immediate vicinity to the holy Pan-Ionic temple and its function of
administering the sacred rites,[301]—a dignity which it probably
was only permitted to enjoy in consequence of the jealousies of its
greater neighbors Milêtus, Ephesus, and Samos.[302] The territories
of these Grecian cities seem to have been interspersed with Karian
villages, probably in the condition of subjects.

[297] The site of Milêtus is best indicated by Arrian, i, 19-20;
see that of Phôkæa, Erythræ, Myonnêsus, Klazomenæ, Kolophôn,
Teôs (Strabo, xiv, pp. 644-645; Pausan. vii, 3, 2; Livy, xxxvii,
27-31; Thucyd. viii, 31).

[298] Strabo. xiv, p. 635.

[299] Strabo, xiv, p. 633; Herod. ix, 97-99. Τὸ Ποσείδιον τῶν
Μιλησίων. Strabo, xiv, p. 651.

[300] Strabo, xiv, p. 636; Vitruvius, iv, 1; Polyæn. viii, 35.

[301] Strabo, xiv, pp. 636-638.

[302] Thucyd. i, 116.

It is rare to find a genuine Greek colony established at any
distance from the sea; but the two Asiatic towns called Magnêsia
form exceptions to this position,—one situated on the south side of
the Mæander, or rather on the river Lethæus, which runs into the
Mæander; the other more northerly, adjoining to the Æolic Greeks, on
the northern declivity of Mount Sipylus, and near to the plain of
the river Harmus. The settlement of both these towns dates before
the period of history: the tale[303] which we read affirms them to
be settlements from the Magnêtes in Thessaly, formed by emigrants
who had first passed into Krête, under the orders of the Delphian
oracle, and next into Asia, where they are said to have extricated
the Ionic and Æolic colonists, then recently arrived, from a position
of danger and calamity. By the side of this story, which can neither
be verified nor contradicted, it is proper to mention the opinion
of Niebuhr, that both these towns of Magnêsia are remnants of a
primitive Pelasgic population, akin to, but not emigrants from, the
Magnêtes of Thessaly,—Pelasgians whom he supposes to have occupied
both the valley of the Hermus and that of the Kaïster, anterior
to the Æolic and Ionic migrations. In support of this opinion, it
may be stated that there were towns bearing the Pelasgic name of
Larissa, both near the Hermus and near the Mæander: Menekratês of
Elæa considered the Pelasgians as having once occupied most part of
that coast; and O. Müller even conceives the Tyrrhenians to have
been Pelasgians from Tyrrha, a town in the interior of Lydia south of
Tmôlus. The point is one upon which we have not sufficient evidence
to advance beyond conjecture.[304]

[303] Conon, Narrat. 29; Strabo, xiv, pp. 636-647.

The story in Parthenius about Leukippus, leader τῶν δεκατευθέντων
ἐκ Φέρης υπ᾽ Ἀδμήτου, who came to the Ephesian territory and
acquired possession of the place called Kretinæon, by the
treachery of Leukophryê, daughter of Mandrolytos, whether truth
or romance, is one of the notices of Thessalian migration into
those parts (Parthen. Narrat. 6).

[304] Strabo, xiii, p. 621. See Niebuhr, Kleine Historische
Schriften, p. 371, O. Müller, Etrusker, Einleitung ii, 5, p.
80. The evidence on which Müller’s conjecture is built seems,
however, unusually slender, and the identity of Tyrrhênos and
Torrhêbos, or the supposed confusion of the one with the other,
is in no way made out. Pelasgians are spoken of in Trallês and
Aphrodisias as well as in Ninoê (Steph. Byz. v. Νινόη), but this
name seems destined to present nothing but problems and delusions.

Respecting Magnêsia on the Mæander, consult Aristot. ap. Athen.
iv, p. 173, who calls the town a colony from Delphi. But the
intermediate settlement of these colonists in Krête, or even
the reality of any town called Magnêsia in Krête, appears very
questionable: Plato’s statement (Legg. iv, 702; xi, 919) can
hardly be taken as any evidence. Compare O. Müller, History of
the Dorians, book ii, ch. 3; Hoeckh, Kreta, book iii, vol. ii,
p. 413. Müller gives these “_Sagen_” too much in the style of
real facts: the worship of Apollo at Magnêsia on the Mæander
(Paus. x, 32, 4) cannot be thought to prove much, considering how
extensively that god was worshipped along the Asiatic coast, from
Lykia to Troas.

The great antiquity of this Grecian establishment was recognized
in the time of the Roman emperors; see Inscript. No. 2910 in
Boeckh, Corp. Ins.

Of the Ionic towns, with which our real knowledge of Asia Minor
begins, Milêtus[305] was the most powerful; and its celebrity was
derived not merely from its own wealth and population, but also from
the extraordinary number of its colonies, established principally
in the Propontis and Euxine, and amounting, as we are told by some
authors, to not less than seventy-five or eighty. Respecting these
colonies I shall speak presently, in treating of the general colonial
expansion of Greece during the eighth and seventh centuries B. C.: at
present, it is sufficient to notice that the islands of Ikarus and
Lerus,[306] not far from Samos and the Ionic coast generally, were
among the places planted with Milesian settlers.

[305] Ἰωνίης πρόσχημα (Herodot. v, 28).

[306] Strabo, xiv, p. 635. Ikarus, or Ikaria, however, appears
in later times as belonging to Samos, and used only for pasture
(Strabo, p. 639; x, p. 488).

The colonization of Ephesus by Androklus appears to be connected
with the Ionic occupation of Samos, so far as the confused
statements which we find enable us to discern. Androklus is said
to have lingered upon that island for a long time, until the oracle
vouchsafed to indicate to him what particular spot to occupy on the
continent; at length the indication was given, and he planted his
colonists at the fountain of Hypelæon and on a portion of the hill
of Korêssus, within a short distance of the temple and sanctuary
of Artemis; whose immediate inhabitants he respected and received
as brethren, while he drove away for the most part the surrounding
Lelegians and Lydians. The population of the new town of Ephesus was
divided into three tribes,—the pre-existing inhabitants, or Ephesians
proper, the Bennians, and the Euônymeis, so named (we are told) from
the deme Euonymus in Attica.[307] So much did the power of Androklus
increase, that he was enabled to conquer Samos, and to expel from
it the prince Leôgorus: of the retiring Samians, a part are said
to have gone to Samothrace and there established themselves, while
another portion acquired possession of Marathêsium near Ephesus, on
the adjoining continent of Asia Minor, from whence, after a short
time, they recovered their island, compelling Androklus to return to
Ephesus. It seems, however, that in the compromise and treaty which
ensued, they yielded possession of Marathêsium to Androklus,[308]
and confined themselves to Anæa, a more southerly district farther
removed from the Ephesian settlement, and immediately opposite to
the island of Samos. Androklus is said to have perished in a battle
fought for the defence of Priênê, which town he had come to aid
against an attack of the Karians. His dead body was brought from
the field and buried near the gates of Ephesus, where the tomb was
yet shown during the days of Pausanias; but a sedition broke out
against his sons after him, and the malcontents strengthened their
party by inviting reinforcements from Teôs and Karina. The struggle
which ensued terminated in the discontinuance of the kingly race
and the establishment of a republican government,—the descendants
of Androklus being allowed to retain both considerable honorary
privileges and the hereditary priesthood of the Eleusinian Dêmêtêr.
The newly-received inhabitants were enrolled in two new tribes,
making in all five tribes, which appear to have existed throughout
the historical times at Ephesus.[309] It appears too that a certain
number of fugitive proprietors from Samos found admission among the
Ephesians and received the freedom of the city; and the part of the
city in which they resided acquired the name of Samorna, or Smyrna,
by which name it was still known in the time of the satirical poet
Hippônax, about 530 B. C.[310]

[307] Kreophylus ap. Athen. viii, p. 361; Ephor. Fragm. 32, ed
Marx; Stephan. Byz. v. Βέννα: see Guhl, Ephesiaca, p. 29.

[308] Pausan. vii, 4, 3.

[309] The account of Ephorus ap. Steph. Byz. v. Βέννα, attests at
least the existence of the five tribes at Ephesus, whether his
account of their origin and primitive history be well founded
or not. See also Strabo, xiv, p. 633; Steph. Byz. v. Εὐωνυμία.
Karênê or Karinê is in Æolis, near Pitana and Gryneium (Herod.
vii, 42; Steph. Byz. Καρήνη).

[310] Stephan. Byz. v. Σάμορνα; Heysch. Σαμονία; Athenæus, vi, p.
267; Hippônax, Fragm. 32, Schneid.; Strabo, xiv, p. 633. Some,
however, said that the _vicus_ of Ephesus, called Smyrna, derived
its name from an Amazon.

Such are the stories which we find respecting the infancy of the
Ionic Ephesus. The fact of its increase and of its considerable
acquisitions of territory, at the expense of the neighboring
Lydians,[311] is at least indisputable. It does not appear to have
been ever very powerful or enterprising at sea, and few maritime
colonies owed their origin to its citizens; but its situation near
the mouth and the fertile plain of the Kaïster was favorable both to
the multiplication of its inland dependencies and to its trade with
the interior. A despot named Pythagoras is said to have subverted
by stratagem the previous government of the town, at some period
before Cyrus, and to have exercised power for a certain time with
great cruelty.[312] It is worthy of remark, that we find no trace of
the existence of the four Ionic tribes at Ephesus; and this, when
coupled with the fact that neither Ephesus nor Kolophôn solemnized
the peculiar Ionic festival of the Apaturia, is one among other
indications that the Ephesian population had little community of
race with Athens, though the œkist may have been of heroic Athenian
family. Guhl attempts to show, on mistaken grounds, that the Greek
settlers at Ephesus were mostly of Arkadian origin.[313]

[311] Strabo, xiv, p. 620.

[312] Bato ap. Suidas, v. Πυθαγόρας. In this article of Suidas,
however, it is stated that “the Ephesian Pythagoras put down, by
means of a crafty plot, the government of those who were called
the _Basilidæ_.” Now Aristotle talks (Polit. v, 5, 4) of the
oligarchy of the Basilidæ at Erythræ. It is hardly likely that
there should have been an oligarchy called by that same name both
at Erythræ and Ephesus; there is here some confusion between
Erythræ and Ephesus which we are unable to clear up. Bato of
Sinôpê wrote a book περὶ τῶν ἐν Ἐφέσῳ τυράννων (Athenæus, vii, p.
289).

[313] Guhl, Ephesiaca, cap. ii, s. 2, p. 28. The passage which he
cites in Aristeidês (Or. xlii, p. 523) refers, not to Ephesus,
but to Pergamus, and to the mythe of Augê and Têlephus: compare
_ibid._ p. 251.

Kolophôn, about fifteen miles north of Ephesus, and divided from the
territory of the latter by the precipitous mountain range called
Gallêsium, though a member of the Pan-Ionic amphiktyony, seems to
have had no Ionic origin: it recognized neither an Athenian œkist
nor Athenian inhabitants. The Kolophonian poet Mimnermus tells us
that the œkist of the place was the Pylian Andræmôn, and that the
settlers were Pylians from Peloponnesus. “We quitted (he says) Pylus,
the city of Neleus, and passed in our vessels to the much-desired
Asia. There with the insolence of superior force, and employing from
the beginning cruel violence, we planted ourselves in the tempting
Kolophôn.”[314] This description of the primitive Kolophonian
settlers, given with Homeric simplicity, forcibly illustrates the
account given by Herodotus of the proceedings of Neileus at Milêtus.
The establishment of Andræmôn must have been effected by force, and
by the dispossession of previous inhabitants, leaving probably their
wives and daughters as a prey to the victors. The city of Kolophôn
seems to have been situated about two miles inland, but it had a
fortified port called Notium, not joined to it by long walls as the
Peiræeus was to Athens, but completely distinct. There were times in
which this port served the Kolophonians as a refuge, when their upper
town was assailed by Persians from the interior; but the inhabitants
of Notium occasionally manifested inclinations to act as a separate
community, and dissensions thus occurred between them and the people
in Kolophôn,[315]—so difficult was it in the Greek mind to keep up a
permanent feeling of political amalgamation beyond the circle of the
town walls.

[314] Mimnerm. Fragm. 9, Schneid. ap. Strab. xiv, p. 634:—

Ἡμεῖς δ᾽ αἰπὺ Πύλον Νηλήϊον ἄστυ λιπόντες
Ἱμερτὴν Ἀσίην νηυσὶν ἀφικόμεθα·
Ἐς δ᾽ ἐρατὴν Κολοφῶνα, βίην ὑπέροπλον ἔχοντες,
Ἑζόμεθ᾽ ἀργαλέης ὕβριος ἡγεμόνες.

Mimnermus, in his poem called Nanno, named Andræmôn as founder
(Strabo, p. 633). Compare this behavior with the narrative of
Odysseus in Homer (Odyss. ix. 40):—

Ἰλιόθεν με φέρων ἄνεμος Κικόνεσσι πέλασσεν
Ἰσμάρῳ· ἔνθα δ᾽ ἐγὼ πόλιν ἔπραθον, ὤλεσα δ᾽ αὐτούς·
Ἐκ πόλιος δ᾽ ἀλόχους καὶ κτήματα πολλὰ λαβόντες
Δάσσαμεθ᾽, etc.

Mimnermus comes in point of time a little before Solon, B. C.
620-600.

[315] Aristot. Polit. v, 2, 12; Thucyd. iii, 34.

It is much to be regretted that nothing beyond a few lines of
Mimnermus, and nothing at all of the long poem of Xenophanês
(composed seemingly near a century after Mimnermus) on the foundation
of Kolophôn, has reached us. The short statements of Pausanias omit
all notice of that violence which the native Kolophonian poet so
emphatically signalizes in his ancestors: they are derived more from
the temple legends of the adjoining Klarian Apollo and from morsels
of epic poetry referring to that holy place, which connected itself
with the worship of Apollo in Krête, at Delphi, and at Thebes. The
old Homeric poem, called Thebaïs, reported that Mantô, daughter of
the Theban prophet Teiresias, had been presented to Apollo at Delphi
as a votive offering by the victorious epigoni: the god directed her
to migrate to Asia, and she thus arrived at Klarus, where she married
the Kretan Rhakius. The offspring of this marriage was the celebrated
prophet Mopsus, whom the Hesiodic epic described as having gained
a victory in prophetic skill over Kalchas; the latter having come
to Klarus after the Trojan war in company with Amphilochus son of
Amphiaraus.[316] Such tales evince the early importance of the temple
and oracle of Apollo at Klarus, which appears to have been in some
sort an emanation from the great sanctuary of Branchidæ near Milêtus;
for we are told that the high priest of Klarus was named by the
Milesians.[317] Pausanias states that Mopsus expelled the indigenous
Karians, and established the city of Kolophôn; and that the Ionic
settlers under Promêthus and Damasichthôn, sons of Kodrus, were
admitted amicably as additional inhabitants:[318] a story probably
emanating from the temple, and very different from that of the
Kolophonian townsmen in the time of Mimnermus. It seems evident that
not only the Apollinic sanctuary at Klarus, but also the analogous
establishments on the south of Asia Minor at Phasêlis, Mallus, etc.,
had their own foundation legends (apart from those of the various
bands of emigrant settlers), in which they connected themselves by
the best thread which they could devise with the epic glories of
Greece.[319]

[316] Hesiod. ap. Strab. xiv, p. 643; Conon, Narrat. 6; Argument
of the poem called Νόστοι (apud Düntzer), Epicc. Græc. Frag. p.
23; Pausan. ix, 33, 1.

[317] Tacit. Annal. ii, 54.

[318] Pausan. vii, 3, 1.

[319] See Welcker, Epischer Kyklus, p. 285.

Passing along the Ionian coast in a north-westerly direction from
Kolophôn, we come first to the small but independent Ionic settlement
of Lebedus—next, to Teôs, which occupies the southern face of
a narrow isthmus, Klazomenæ being placed on the northern: this
isthmus, a low narrow valley of about six miles across, forms the
eastern boundary of a very considerable peninsula, containing the
mountainous and woody regions called Mimas and Kôrykus. Teôs is said
to have been first founded by Orchomenian Minyæ under Athamas, and
to have received afterwards by consent various swarms of settlers,
Orchomenians and others, under the Kodrid leaders Apœkus, Nauklus,
and Damasus.[320] The valuable Teian inscriptions published in the
large collection of Boeckh, while they mention certain names and
titles of honor which connect themselves with this Orchomenian
origin, reveal to us at the same time some particulars respecting the
internal distribution of the Teian citizens. The territory of the
town was distributed amongst a certain number of towers, to each of
which corresponded a symmory or section of the citizens, having its
common altar and sacred rites, and often its heroic eponymus. How
many in number the tribes of Teôs were, we do not know: the name of
the Geleontes, one of the four old Ionic tribes, is preserved in an
inscription; but the rest, both as to names and number, are unknown.
The symmories or tower-fellowships of Teôs seem to be analogous to
the phratries of ancient Athens,—forming each a factitious kindred,
recognizing a common mythical ancestor, and bound together by a
communion at once religious and political. The individual name
attached to each tower is in some cases Asiatic rather than Hellenic,
indicating in Teôs the mixture not merely of Ionic and Æolic, but
also of Karian or Lydian inhabitants, of which Pausanias speaks.[321]
Gerrhæidæ, or Cherræidæ, the port on the west side of the town of
Teôs, had for its eponymous hero Gerês the Bœotian, who was said to
have accompanied the Kodrids in their settlement.

[320] Steph Byz. v. Τέως; Pausan. vii, 3, 3; Strabo, xiv, p. 633.
Anakreon called the town Ἀθαμαντίδα Τέω. (Strab. _l. c._)

[321] Pausan. vii, 3, 3. See the Inscrip. No. 3064 in Boeckh’s
Corp. Ins., which enumerates twenty-eight separate πύργοι: it is
a list of archons, with the name and civil designation of each:
I do not observe that the name of the same πύργος ever occurs
twice.—Ἀρτέμων, τοῦ Φιλαίου πύργου, Φιλαΐδης, etc: there are
two πύργοι, the names of which are effaced on the inscription.
In two other inscriptions (Nos. 3065, 3066) there occur Ἐχίνου
συμμορία—Ἐχίναδαι—as the title of a civil division without
any specification of an Ἐχίνου πύργος; but it is reasonable
to presume that the πύργος and the συμμορία are coincident
divisions. The Φιλαίου πύργος occurs also in another Insc. No.
3081. Philæus is the Athenian hero, son of Ajax, and eponym of
the deme or gens Philaidæ in Attica, who existed, as we here see,
in Teôs also. In Inscription, No. 3082, a citizen is complimented
as νέον Ἀθάμαντα, after the name of the old Minyan hero. In No.
3078, the Ionic tribe of the Γελέοντες is named as existing at
Teôs.

Among the titles of the towers we find the following,—τοῦ Κίδυος
πύργου, τοῦ Κιναβάλου πύργου, τοῦ Ἱέρυος πύργου, τοῦ Δάδδου
πύργου, τοῦ Σίντυος πύργου: these names seem to be rather foreign
than Hellenic. Κίδυς, Ἱέρυς, Σίντυς, Δάδδος, are Asiatic,
perhaps Karian or Lydian: respecting the name Δάδδος, compare
Steph. Byz. v. Τρέμισσος where Δάδας appears as a Karian name:
Boeckh (p. 651) expresses his opinion that Δάδδος is Karian or
Lydian. Then Κινάβαλος seems plainly not Hellenic: it is rather
Phœnician (Anni_bal_, Asdru_bal_, etc.), though Boeckh (in his
Introductory Comment to the Sarmatian Inscriptions, part xi,
p. 109) tells us that βαλος is also Thracian or Getic,—“βαλος
haud dubie Thracica aut Getica est radix finalis, quam tenes
in Dacico nomine Decebalus, et in nomine populi Triballorum.”
The name τοῦ Κόθου πύργου, Κοθίδης, is Ionic: Æklus and Kothus
are represented as Ionic œkists in Eubœa. Another name—Πάρμις,
τοῦ Σθενέλου πύργου, Χαλκιδεῖος—affords an instance in which
the local or gentile epithet is not derived from the tower; for
Χαλκιδεῖς, or Χαλκιδεύς was the denomination of a village in the
Teian territory. In regard to some persons, the gentile epithet
is derived from the tower,—τοῦ Φιλαίου πύργου, Φιλαΐδης—τοῦ
Γαλαίσου πύργου, Γαλαισίδης—τοῦ Δάδδου πύργου, Δάδδεῖος—τοῦ
πύργου τοῦ Κιζῶνος, Κίζων: in other cases not—τοῦ Ἑκαδίου πύργου,
Σκηβηΐδης—τοῦ Μηράδους πύργου, Βρυσκίδης—τοῦ Ἰσθμίου πύργου,
Λεωνίδης, etc. In the Inscrip. 3065, 3066, there is a formal vote
of the Ἐχίνου συμμορία or Ἐχίναδαι (both names occur): mention is
also made of the βῶμος τῆς συμμορίας; also the annual solemnity
called Leukathea, seemingly a gentile solemnity of the Echinadæ,
which connects itself with the mythical family of Athamas. As
an analogy to these Teian towers, we may compare the πύργοι in
the Greek settlement of Olbia in the Euxine (Boeckh, Inscr.
2058), πύργος Πόσιος, πύργος Ἐπιδαύρου,—they were portions of the
fortifications. See also Dio Chrysostom, Orat. xxxvi, pp. 76-77.
A large tower, belonging to a private individual named Aglomachus
is mentioned in Kyrênê (Herod. iv, 164).

The worship of Athênê Polias at Erythræ may probably be traceable
to Athens, and that of the Tyrian Hêraklês (of which Pausanias
recounts a singular legend) would seem to indicate an intermixture
of Phœnician inhabitants. But the close neighborhood of Erythræ
to the island of Chios, and the marked analogy of dialect which
Herodotus[322] attests between them, show that the elements of
the population must have been much the same in both. The Chian
poet Iôn mentioned the establishment of Abantes from Eubœa in his
native island, under Amphiklus, intermixed with the preëxisting
Karians: Hektor, the fourth descendant from Amphiklus, was said
to have incorporated this island in the Pan-Ionic amphiktyony. It
is to Pherekydês that we owe the mention of the name of Egertius,
as having conducted a miscellaneous colony into Chios; and it is
through Egertius (though Iôn, the native poet, does not appear to
have noticed him) that this logographer made out the connection
between the Chians and the other group of Kodrid settlements.[323]
In Erythræ, Knôpus or Kleopus is noted as the Kodrid œkist, and as
having procured for himself, partly by force, partly by consent,
the sovereignty of the preëxisting settlement of mixed inhabitants.
The Erythræan historian Hippias recounted how Knôpus had been
treacherously put to death on ship-board, by Ortygês and some other
false adherents; who, obtaining some auxiliaries from the Chian
king Amphiklus, made themselves masters of Erythræ and established
in it an oppressive oligarchy. They maintained the government, with
a temper at once licentious and cruel, for some time, admitting
none but a chosen few of the population within the walls of the
town; until at length Hippotês the brother of Knôpus, arriving
from without at the head of some troops, found sufficient support
from the discontents of the Erythræans to enable him to overthrow
the tyranny. Overpowered in the midst of a public festival,
Ortygês and his companions were put to death with cruel tortures
and the same tortures were inflicted upon their innocent wives and
children,[324]—a degree of cruelty which would at no time have found
place amidst a community of European Greeks: even in the murderous
party dissensions of Korkyra during the Peloponnesian war, death was
not aggravated by preliminary tortures. Aristotle[325] mentions the
oligarchy of the Basilids as having existed in Erythræ, and as having
been overthrown by a democratical revolution, although prudently
managed: to what period this is to be referred we do not know.

[322] Herod. i, 142: compare Thucyd. viii, 5.

[323] Strabo, xiv, p. 633.

[324] Hippias ap. Athen. vi, p. 259; Polyæn. viii, 44, gives
another story about Knôpus. Erythræ, called Κνωπούπολις. (Steph.
Byz. v.)

The story told by Polyænus about the dictum of the oracle, and
the consequent stratagem, whereby Knôpus made himself master of
Erythræ, represents that town as powerful anterior to the Ionic
occupation (Polyæn. viii, 43).

[325] Aristot. Polit. v, 5, 4.

Klazomenæ is said to have been founded by a wandering party, either
of Ionians or of inhabitants from Kleonæ and Phlius, under Parphorus
or Paralus: and Phôkæa by a band of Phokians under Philogenês and
Damon. This last-mentioned town was built at the end of a peninsula
which formed part of the territory of the Æolic Kymê: the Kymæans
were induced to cede it amicably, and to permit the building of
the new town. The Phokians asked and obtained permission to enrol
themselves in the Pan-Ionic amphiktyony; but the permission is said
to have been granted only on condition that they should adopt members
of the Kodrid family as their œkists; and they accordingly invited
from Erythræ and Teôs three chiefs belonging to that family or
gens,—Deœtês, Periklus, and Abartus.[326]

[326] Pausan. vii, 3, 3. In Pausanias the name stands _Abartus_;
but it probably ought to be _Abarnus_, the eponymus of Cape
Abarnis in the Phôkæan territory: see Stephan. Byz. v. Ἀβαρνίς.
Raoul Rochette puts Abarnus without making any remark (Histoire
des Colonies Grecques, b. iv, c. 13, p. 95).

Smyrna, originally an Æolic colony, established from Kymê fell
subsequently into the hands of the Ionians of Kolophôn. A party of
exiles from the latter city, expelled during an intestine dispute,
were admitted by the Smyrnæans into their city,—a favor which they
repaid by shutting the gates and seizing the place for themselves,
at a moment when the Smyrnæans had gone forth in a body to celebrate
a religious festival. The other Æolic towns sent auxiliaries for the
purpose of reëstablishing their dispossessed brethren; but they were
compelled to submit to an accommodation, whereby the Ionians retained
possession of the town, restoring to the prior inhabitants all their
movables. These exiles were distributed as citizens among the other
Æolic cities.[327]

[327] Herod. i, 150; Mimnermus, Fragm.—

Θεῶν βουλῇ Σμύρνην εἵλομεν Αἰολίδα.

Smyrna after this became wholly Ionian; and the inhabitants in
later times, if we may judge by Aristeidês the rhetor, appear to
have forgotten the Æolic origin of their town, though the fact is
attested both by Herodotus and by Mimnermus.[328] At what time the
change took place, we do not know; but Smyrna appears to have become
Ionian before the celebration of the 23d Olympiad, when Onomastus
the Smyrnæan gained the prize.[329] Nor have we information as to
the period at which the city was received as a member into the
Pan-Ionic amphiktyony, for the assertion of Vitruvius is obviously
inadmissible, that it was admitted at the instance of Attalus, king
of Pergamus, in place of a previous town called Melitê, excluded by
the rest for misbehavior.[330] As little can we credit the statement
of Strabo, that the city of Smyrna was destroyed by the Lydian
kings, and that the inhabitants were compelled to live in dispersed
villages until its restoration by Antigonus. A fragment of Pindar,
which speaks of “the elegant city of the Smyrnæans,” indicates that
it must have existed in his time.[331] The town of Eræ, near Lebedus,
though seemingly autonomous,[332] was not among the contributors
to the Pan-Ionian: Myonnêsus seems to have been a dependency of
Teôs, as Pygela and Marathêsium were of Ephesus. Notium, after its
recolonization by the Athenians during the Peloponnesian war, seems
to have remained separate from and independent of Kolophôn: at least
the two are noticed by Skylax as distinct towns.[333]

[328] See Raoul Rochette, Histoire des Colonies Grecques, b. iv,
ch. 5, p. 43; Aristeidês, Orat. xx-xxi, pp. 260, 267.

[329] Pausan. v, 8, 3.

[330] Vitruvius, iv, 1.

[331] Strabo, xiv, p. 646; Pindar, Frag. 155, Dissen.

[332] Thucydid. viii, 19.

[333] Skylax, c. 97; Thucyd. iii. 34.

CHAPTER XIV.

ÆOLIC GREEKS IN ASIA.

On the coast of Asia Minor to the north of the twelve Ionic
confederated cities, were situated the twelve Æolic cities,
apparently united in a similar manner. Besides Smyrna, the fate of
which has already been described, the eleven others were,—Têmnos,
Larissa, Neon-Teichos, Kymê, Ægæ, Myrina, Gryneium, Killa, Notium,
Ægiroëssa, Pitanê. These twelve are especially noted by Herodotus as
the twelve ancient continental Æolic cities, and distinguished on
the one hand from the insular Æolic Greeks, in Lesbos, Tenedos, and
Hekatonnesoi,—and on the other hand from the Æolic establishments in
and about Mount Ida, which seem to have been subsequently formed and
derived from Lesbos and Kymê.[334]

[334] Herodot. i, 149. Herodotus does not name Elæa, at the
month of the Kaïkus: on the other hand, no other author mentions
Ægiroëssa (see Mannert, Geogr. der Gr. und Römer, b. viii, p.
396).

Of these twelve Æolic towns, eleven were situated very near together,
clustered round the Elæitic gulf: their territories, all of moderate
extent, seem also to have been conterminous with each other. Smyrna,
the twelfth, was situated to the south of Mount Sipylus, and at a
greater distance from the remainder,—one reason why it was so soon
lost to its primitive inhabitants. These towns occupied chiefly a
narrow but fertile strip of territory lying between the base of the
woody mountain-range called Sardênê and the sea.[335] Gryneium,
like Kolophôn and Milêtus, possessed a venerated sanctuary of
Apollo, of older date than the Æolic emigration. Larissa, Têmnos,
and Ægæ were at some little distance from the sea: the first at
a short distance north of the Hermus, by which its territory was
watered and occasionally inundated, so as to render embankments
necessary;[336] the last two upon rocky mountain-sites, so
inaccessible to attack that the inhabitants were enabled, even during
the height of the Persian power, to maintain constantly a substantial
independence.[337] Elæa, situated at the mouth of the river Kaïkus,
became in later times the port of the strong and flourishing city of
Pergamus; while Pitana, the northernmost of the twelve, was placed
between the mouth of the Kaïkus and the lofty promontory of Kanê,
which closes in the Elæitic gulf to the northward. A small town Kanæ,
close to that promontory is said to have once existed.[338]

[335] Herod. _ut sup._; Pseudo-Herodot. Vit. Homeri, c. 9.
Σαρδήνης πόδα νείατον ὑψικόμοιο.

[336] Strabo, xiii, p. 621.

[337] Xenoph. Hellen. iv, 8, 5. The rhetor Aristeidês (Orat.
Sacr. xxvii, p. 347, p. 535 D.) describes in detail his journey
from Smyrna to Pergamus, crossing the Hermus, and passing through
Larissa, Kymê, Myrina, Gryneium, Elæa. He seems not to have
passed through Têmnos, at least he does not name it: moreover, we
know from Pausanias (v, 13, 3) that Têmnos was on the north bank
of the Hermus. In the best maps of this district it is placed,
erroneously, both on the south bank, and as if it were on the
high road from Smyrna to Kymê. We may infer from another passage
of Aristeidês (Or. xlviii, p. 351, p. 468 D.) that Larissa was
nearer to the mouth of the Hermus than the maps appear to place
it. According to Strabo (xiii, p. 622), it would seem that
Larissa was on the south bank of the Hermus; but the better
testimony of Aristeidês proves the contrary; Skylax (c. 94) does
not name Têmnos, which seems to indicate that its territory was
at some distance from the sea.

The investigations of modern travellers have, as yet, thrown
little light upon the situation of Têmnos or of the other Æolic
towns: see Arundel, Discoveries in Asia Minor, vol. ii, pp.
292-298.

[338] Pliny, H. N. v, 30.

It has already been stated that the legend ascribes the origin
of these colonies to a certain special event called the Æolic
emigration, of which chronologers profess to know the precise
date, telling us how many years it happened after the Trojan war,
considerably before the Ionic emigration.[339] That the Æolic as
well as Ionic inhabitants of Asia were emigrants from Greece, we
may reasonably believe, but as to the time or circumstances of
their emigration we can pretend to no certain knowledge. The name
of the town Larissa, and perhaps that of Magnêsia on Mount Sipylus
(according to what has been observed in the preceding passage),
has given rise to the supposition that the anterior inhabitants
were Pelasgians, who, having once occupied the fertile banks of the
Hermus, as well as those of the Kaïster near Ephesus, employed their
industry in the work of embankment.[340] Kymê was the earliest as
well as the most powerful of the twelve Æolic towns, Neon-Teichos
having been originally established by the Kymæans as a fortress for
the purpose of capturing the Pelasgic Larissa. Both Kymê and Larissa
were designated by the epithet of Phrikônis: by some this was traced
to the mountain Phrikium in Lokris, from whence it was alleged that
the Æolic emigrants had started to cross the Ægean; by others it
seems to have been connected with an eponymous hero Phrikôn.[341]

[339] Strabo, xiii, pp. 582-621, compared with Pseudo-Herodotus,
Vit. Homer, c. 1-38, who says that Lesbos was occupied by the
Æolians one hundred and thirty years after the Trojan war: Kymê,
twenty years after Lesbos; Smyrna, eighteen years after Kymê.

The chronological statements of different writers are collected
in Mr. Clinton’s Fast. Hellen. c. 5, pp. 104, 105.

[340] Strabo, xiii, p. 621.

[341] Strabo, xiii, 621; Pseudo-Herodot. c. 14. Λαοὶ Φρίκωονος,
compared with c. 38.

Φρίκων appears, in later times, as an Ætolian proper name; Φρίκος
as a Lokrian. See Anecdota Delphica, by E. Curtius, Inscript. 40,
p. 75 (Berlin, 1843).

It was probably from Kymê and its sister cities on the Elæitic
gulf that Hellenic inhabitants penetrated into the smaller towns
in the inland plain of the Kaïkus,—Pergamus, Halisarna, Gambreion,
etc.[342] In the more southerly plain of the Hermus, on the northern
declivity of Mount Sipylus, was situated the city of Magnêsia, called
Magnêsia ad Sipylum, in order to distinguish it from Magnêsia on the
river Mæander. Both these towns called Magnêsia were inland,—the
one bordering upon the Ionic Greeks, the other upon the Æolic, but
seemingly not included in any amphiktyony either with the one or the
other. Each is referred to a separate and early emigration either
from the Magnêtes in Thessaly or from Krête. Like many other of the
early towns, Magnêsia ad Sipylum appears to have been originally
established higher up on the mountain,—in a situation nearer to
Smyrna, from which it was separated by the Sipylene range,—and to
have been subsequently brought down nearer to the plain on the
north side as well as to the river Hermus. The original site,
Palæ-Magnêsia,[343] was still occupied as a dependent township,
even during the times of the Attalid and Seleukid kings. A like
transfer of situation, from a height difficult of access to some
lower and more convenient position, took place with other towns in
and near this region; such as Gambreion and Skêpsis, which had their
Palæ-Gambreion and Palæ-Skêpsis not far distant.

[342] Xenoph. Hellen. iii, 1, 6; Anabas. vii, 8, 24.

[343] There is a valuable inscription in Boeckh’s collection,
No. 3137, containing the convention between the inhabitants of
Smyrna and Magnêsia. Palæ-Magnêsia seems to have been a strong
and important post.

“Magnêtes a Sipylo,” Tacit. Annal. ii, 47; Pliny, H. N. v, 29;
Pausan. iii, 24, 2. πρὸς βόῤῥαν τοῦ Σιπύλου.

Stephan. Byzantinus notices only Magnêsia ad Mæandrum, not
Magnêsia ad Sipylum.

Of these twelve Æolic towns, it appears that all except Kymê were
small and unimportant. Thucydidês, in recapitulating the dependent
allies of Athens at the commencement of the Peloponnesian war,
does not account them worthy of being enumerated.[344] Nor are
we authorized to conclude, because they bear the general name of
Æolians, that the inhabitants were all of kindred race, though a
large proportion of them are said to have been Bœotians, and the
feeling of fraternity between Bœotians and Lesbians was maintained
throughout the historical times; one etymology of the name is,
indeed, founded upon the supposition that they were of miscellaneous
origin.[345] We do not hear, moreover, of any considerable poets
produced by the Æolic continental towns; in this respect Lesbos
stood alone,—an island said to have been the earliest of all the
Æolic settlements, anterior even to Kymê. Six towns were originally
established in Lesbos,—Mitylêne, Mêthymna, Eresus, Pyrrha, Antissa,
and Arisbê: the last-mentioned town was subsequently enslaved
and destroyed by the Methymnæans, so that there remained only
five towns in all.[346] According to the political subdivision
usual in Greece, the island had thus, first six, afterwards five,
independent governments, of which, however, Mitylênê, situated in the
south-eastern quarter and facing the promontory of Kanê, was by far
the first, while Mêthymna, on the north of the island over against
Cape Lekton, was the second. Like so many other Grecian colonies,
the original city of Mitylênê was founded upon an islet divided from
Lesbos by a narrow strait; it was subsequently extended on to Lesbos
itself, so that the harbor presented two distinct entrances.[347]

[344] Thucyd. ii, 9.

[345] Strabo, ix, p. 402; Thucyd. viii, 100; Pseudo-Herodot. Vit.
Homer, i. Ἐπεὶ γὰρ ἡ πάλαι Αἰολιῶτις Κύμη ἐκτίζετο, συνῆλθοι ἐν
ταύτῳ παντοδαπὰ ἔθνεα Ἑλληνικὰ, καὶ δὴ καὶ ἐκ Μαγνησίας, etc.
Etymolog. Magn. v, Αἰολεῖς.

[346] Herodot. i, 151; Strabo, xiii, p. 590.

[347] Diodor. xiii, 79; Strabo, xiii, p. 617; Thucyd. iii, 6.

It appears that the native poets and fabulists who professed to
deliver the archæology of Lesbos, dwelt less upon the Æolic settlers
than upon the various heroes and tribes who were alleged to have
had possession of the island anterior to that settlement, from the
deluge of Deukalion downwards,—just as the Chian and Samian poets
seem to have dwelt principally upon the ante-Ionic antiquities of
their respective islands. After the Pelasgian Xanthus son of Triopas,
comes Makar son of Krinakus, the great native hero of the island,
supposed by Plehn to be the eponym of an occupying race called the
Makares: the Homeric Hymn to Apollo brings Makar into connection with
the Æolic inhabitants by calling him son of Æolus, and the native
historian Myrsilus also seems to have treated him as an Æolian.[348]
To dwell upon such narratives suited the disposition of the Greeks;
but when we come to inquire for the history of Lesbos, we find
ourselves destitute of any genuine materials, not only for the period
prior to the Æolic occupation, but also for a long time after it:
nor can we pretend to determine at what date that occupation took
place. We may reasonably believe it to have occurred before 776 B.
C., and it therefore becomes a part of the earliest manifestations of
real Grecian history: both Kymê, with its eleven sister towns on the
continent, and the islands Lesbos and Tenedos, were then Æolic; and
I have already remarked that the migration of the father of Hesiod
the poet, from the Æolic Kymê to Askra in Bœotia, is the earliest
authentic fact known to us on contemporary testimony,—seemingly
between 776 and 700 B. C.

[348] Hymn. ad Apollin. v, 37. Λέσβος τ᾽ ἠγαθέη, Μάκαρος ἕδος
Αἰολίωνος. Myrsilus ap. Clemen. Alexandr. Protreptic. p. 19;
Diodor. v, 57-82; Dionys. Halik. A. R. i, 18; Stephan. Byz. v.
Μυτιλήνη.

Plehn (Lesbiaca, c. 2, pp. 25-37) has collected all the principal
fables respecting this Lesbian archæology: compare also Raoul
Rochette (Histoire des Colonies Grecques, t. i, c. 5, p. 182
etc.)

But besides these islands, and the strip of the continent between
Kymê and Pitanê (which constituted the territory properly called
Æolis), there were many other Æolic establishments in the region
near Mount Ida, the Troad, and the Hellespont, and even in European
Thrace. All these establishments seem to have emanated from Lesbos,
Kymê, and Tenedos, but at what time they were formed we have no
information. Thirty different towns are said to have been established
by these cities,[349] and nearly all the region of Mount Ida
(meaning by that term the territory west of a line drawn from the
town of Adramyttion northward to Priapos on the Propontis) came to
be Æolized. A new Æolis[350] was thus formed, quite distinct from
the Æolis near the Elæitic gulf, and severed from it partly by the
territory of Atarneus, partly by the portion of Mysia and Lydia,
between Atarneus and Adramyttium, including the fertile plain of
Thêbê: a portion of the lands on this coast seem indeed to have been
occupied by Lesbos, but the far larger part of it was never Æolic.
Nor was Ephorus accurate when he talked of the whole territory
between Kymê and Abydos as known under the name of Æolis.[351]

[349] Strabo, xiii, pp. 621, 622. Μέγιστον δέ ἐστι τῶν Αἰολικῶν
καὶ ἀρίστη Κύμη, καὶ σχεδὸν μητρόπολις αὐτή τε καὶ ἡ Λέσβος τῶν
ἄλλων πόλεων τριάκοντά που τὸν ἀριθμὸν, etc.

[350] Xenophon, Hellen. iii, 1, 10. μέχρι τῆς Φαρναβάζου
Αἰολίδος—ἡ Αἰολὶς ~αὕτη~ ἦν μὲν Φαρναβάζου.

Xenophon includes the whole of the Troad under the denomination
of Æolis. Skylax distinguishes the Troad from Æolis: he
designates as the Troad the coast towns from Dardanus seemingly
down to Lekton: under Æolis he includes Kebrên, Skêpsis,
Neandreia, and Pityeia, though how these four towns are to be
called ἐπὶ θαλάσσῃ it is not easy to see (Skylax, 94-95). Nor
does Skylax notice either the Peræa of Tenedos, or Assos and
Gargara.

[351] Strabo, xiii, p. 583.

The inhabitants of Tenedos possessed themselves of the strip of the
Troad opposite to their island, northward of Cape Lekton,—those
of Lesbos founded Assus, Gargara, Lampônia, Antandrus,[352] etc.,
between Lekton and the north-eastern corner of the Adramyttian
gulf,—while the Kymæans seem to have established themselves at
Kebrên and other places in the inland Idæan district.[353] As far
as we can make out, this north-western corner (west of a line drawn
from Smyrna to the eastern corner of the Propontis) seems to have
been occupied, anterior to the Hellenic settlements, by Mysians and
Teukrians,—who are mentioned together, in such manner as to show that
there was no great ethnical difference between them.[354] The elegiac
poet Kallinus, in the middle of the seventh century B. C., was the
first who mentioned the Teukrians: he treated them as emigrants
from Krête, though other authors represented them as indigenous, or
as having come from Attica: however the fact may stand as to their
origin, we may gather that, in the time of Kallinus, they were still
the great occupants of the Troad.[355] Gradually, the south and west
coasts, as well as the interior of this region, became penetrated
by successive colonies of Æolic Greeks, to whom the iron and ship
timber of Mount Ida were valuable acquisitions; and thus the small
Teukrian townships (for there were no considerable cities) became
Æolized; while on the coast northward of Ida, along the Hellespont
and Propontis, Ionic establishments were formed from Milêtus and
Phôkæa, and Milesian colonists were received into the inland town
of Skêpsis.[356] In the time of Kallinus, the Teukrians seem to
have been in possession of Hamaxitus and Kolônæ, with the worship
of the Sminthian Apollo, in the south-western region of the Troad:
a century and a half afterwards, at the time of the Ionic revolt,
Herodotus notices the inhabitants of Gergis, occupying a portion
of the northern region of Ida in the line eastward from Dardanus
and Ophrynion, as “the remnant of the ancient Teukrians.”[357] We
also find the Mityleneans and Athenians contending by arms about
600-580 B. C., for the possession of Sigeium at the entrance of the
Hellespont:[358] probably the Lesbian settlements on the southern
coast of the Troad, lying as they do so much nearer to the island,
as well as the Tenedian settlements on the western coast opposite
Tenedos, had been formed at some time prior to this epoch. We farther
read of Æolic inhabitants as possessing Sestos on the European side
of the Hellespont.[359] The name Teukrians gradually vanished out
of present use, and came to belong only to the legends of the past;
preserved either in connection with the worship of the Sminthian
Apollo, or by writers such as Hellanikus and Kephalôn of Gergis,
from whence it passed to the later poets and to the Latin epic. It
appears that the native place of Kephalôn was a town called Gergis
or Gergithes near Kymê: there was also another place called Gergêtha
on the river Kaïkus, near its sources, and therefore higher up in
Mysia. It was from Gergithes near Kymê (according to Strabo), that
the place called Gergis in Mount Ida was settled:[360] probably the
non-Hellenic inhabitants, both near Kymê and in the region of Ida,
were of kindred race, but the settlers who went from Kymê to Gergis
in Ida were doubtless Greeks, and contributed in this manner to the
conversion of that place from a Teukrian to an Hellenic settlement.
In one of those violent dislocations of inhabitants, which were so
frequent afterwards among the successors of Alexander in Asia Minor,
the Teukro-Hellenic population of the Idæan Gergis is said to have
been carried away by Attalus of Pergamus, in order to people the
village of Gergêtha near the river Kaïkus.

[352] Thucyd. iv, 52; viii, 108; Strabo, xiii, p. 610; Stephan.
Byz. Ἄσσος; Pausan. vi, 4, 5.

[353] Pseudo-Herod. Vit. Hom. c. 20:—

Ἴδης ἐν κορυφῇσι πολυπτύχου ἠνεμόεσσης,
Ἔνθα σίδηρος Ἄρηος ἐπιχθονίοισι βρότοισι
Ἔσσεται, εὖτ᾽ ἄν μιν Κεβρήνιοι ἄνδρες ἔχωσι.

Τὰ δὲ Κεβρήνια τοῦτον τὸν χρόνον κτίζειν παρεσκευάζοντο οἱ
Κυμαῖοι πρὸς τῇ Ἴδῃ, καὶ γίνεται αὐτόθι σίδηρος.

[354] Herodot. vii, 20.

[355] Kallinus ap. Strabo, xiii, p. 604: compare p. 613, οὓς
~πρῶτος~ παρέδωκε Καλλῖνος, etc.

[356] Strabo, xiii, pp. 607-635.

[357] Herodot. v, 122, εἷλε μὲν Αἰολέας πάντας, ὅσοι τὴν Ἰλιάδα
νέμονται, εἷλε δὲ Γέργιθας, τοὺς ὑπολειφθέντας τῶν ἀρχαίων
Τευκρῶν, etc.

The Teukrians, in the conception of Herodotus, were the Trojans
described in the Iliad,—the Τευκρὶς γῆ seems the same as Ἰλιὰς γῆ
(ii, 118).

[358] Herodot. v, 94.

[359] Herodot. ix, 115.

[360] Strabo, xiii, 589-616.

We are to regard the Æolic Greeks as occupying not only their twelve
cities on the continent round the Elæitic gulf, and the neighboring
islands, of which the chief were Lesbos and Tenedos,—but also as
gradually penetrating and Hellenizing the Idæan region and the Troad.
This last process belongs probably to a period subsequent to 776 B.
C., but Kymê and Lesbos doubtless count as Æolic from an earlier
period.

Of Mitylênê, the chief city of Lesbos, we hear some facts between the
40th and 50th Olympiad (620-580 B. C.), which unfortunately reach
us only in a faint echo. That city then numbered as its own the
distinguished names of Pittakus, Sappho, and Alkæus: like many other
Grecian communities of that time, it suffered much from intestine
commotion, and experienced more than one violent revolution. The
old oligarchy called the Penthilids (seemingly a gens with heroic
origin), rendered themselves intolerably obnoxious by misrule of the
most reckless character; their brutal use of the bludgeon in the
public streets was avenged by Megaklês and his friends, who slew
them and put down their government.[361] About the 42d Olympiad
(612 B. C.) we hear of Melanchrus, as despot of Mitylênê, who was
slain by the conspiracy of Pittakus, Kikis, and Antimenidês,—the
last two being brothers of Alkæus the poet. Other despots, Myrsilus,
Megalagyrus, and the Kleanaktidæ, whom we know only by name, and who
appear to have been immortalized chiefly by the bitter stanzas of
Alkæus, acquired afterwards the sovereignty of Mitylênê. Among all
the citizens of the town, however, the most fortunate, and the most
deserving, was Pittakus the son of Hyrrhadus,—a champion trusted by
his countrymen alike in foreign war and in intestine broils.[362]

[361] Aristot. Polit. v, 8, 13.

[362] Diogen. Laërt. i, 74; Suidas, v. Κίκις, Πίττακος; Strabo,
xiii, p. 617. Two lines of Alkæus are preserved, exulting in
the death of Myrsilus (Alkæus, Fragm. 12, ed. Schneidewin).
Melanchrus also is named (Fragm. 13), and Pittakus, in a third
fragment (73, ed. Schneid.), is brought into connection with
Myrsilus.

The foreign war in which the Mityleneans were engaged, and in
which Pittakus commanded them, was against the Athenians on the
continental coast opposite to Lesbos, in the Troad, near Sigeium.
The Mityleneans had already established various settlements along
the Troad, the northernmost of which was Achilleium: they laid claim
to the possession of this line of coast, and when Athens (about the
43d Olympiad, as it is said[363]) attempted to plant a settlement
at Sigeium, they resisted the establishment by force. At the head of
the Mitylenean troops, Pittakus engaged in single combat with the
Athenian commander Phrynôn, and had the good fortune to kill him.
The general struggle was, however, carried on with no very decisive
result. On one memorable occasion the Mityleneans fled, and Alkæus
the poet, serving as an hoplite in their ranks, commemorated in one
of his odes both his flight and the humiliating loss of his shield,
which the victorious Athenians suspended as a trophy in the temple
of Athênê at Sigeium. His predecessor Archilochus, and his imitator
Horace, have both been frank enough to confess a similar misfortune,
which Tyrtæus perhaps would not have endured to survive.[364] It
was at length agreed by Mitylênê and Athens to refer the dispute to
Periander of Corinth. While the Mityleneans laid claim to the whole
line of coast, the Athenians alleged that inasmuch as a contingent
from Athens had served in the host of Agamemnôn against Troy, their
descendants had as good a right as any other Greeks to share in the
conquered ground. It appears that Periander felt unwilling to decide
this delicate question of legendary law. He directed that each party
should retain what they possessed, and his verdict[365] was still
remembered and appealed to even in the time of Aristotle, by the
inhabitants of Tenedos against those of Sigeium.

[363] In regard to the chronology of this war, see a note near
the end of my previous chapter on the Solonian legislation.
I have there noticed what I believe to be a chronological
mistake of Herodotus in regard to the period between 600-560
B. C. Herodotus considers this war between the Mityleneans and
Athenians, in which Pittakus and Alkæus were concerned, to have
been directed by Peisistratus, whose government did not commence
until 560 B. C. (Herod. v, 94, 95).

My suspicion is, that there were two Athenian expeditions to
these regions—one in the time of Alkæus and Pittakus; a second,
much afterwards, undertaken by order of Peisistratus, whose
illegitimate son Hegesistratus became, in consequence, despot of
Sigeium. Herodotus appears to me to have merged the two into one.

[364] See the difficult fragment of Alkæus (Fr. 24, ed.
Schneidewin), preserved in Strabo, xiii, p. 600; Herodot. v, 94,
95; Archilochus, Eleg. Fr. i, 5, ed. Schneidewin; Horat. Carm.
ii, 7, 9; perhaps also Anakreon, but not certainly (see Fr. 81,
ed. Schneidewin), is to be regarded as having thrown away his
shield.

[365] Aristot. Rhetoric. i, 16, 2, where ~ἔναγχος~ marks the date.

Though Pittakus and Alkæus were both found in the same line of
hoplites against the Athenians at Sigeium, yet in the domestic
politics of their native city, their bearing was that of bitter
enemies. Alkæus and Antimenidas his brother were worsted in this
party-feud, and banished: but even as exiles they were strong enough
seriously to alarm and afflict their fellow-citizens, while their
party at home, and the general dissension within the walls, reduced
Mitylênê to despair. In this calamitous condition, the Mityleneans
had recourse to Pittakus, who with his great rank in the state (his
wife belonged to the old gens of the Penthilids), courage in the
field, and reputation for wisdom, inspired greater confidence than
any other citizen of his time. He was by universal consent named
Æsymnete or dictator for ten years, with unlimited powers:[366] and
the appointment proved eminently successful. How effectually he
repelled the exiles, and maintained domestic tranquillity, is best
shown by the angry effusions of Alkæus, whose songs (unfortunately
lost) gave vent to the political hostility of the time, in the
same manner as the speeches of the Athenian orators two centuries
afterwards, and who in his vigorous invectives against Pittakus did
not spare even the coarsest nicknames, founded on alleged personal
deformities.[367] Respecting the proceedings of this eminent
dictator, the contemporary and reported friend of Solon, we know only
in a general way, that he succeeded in reëstablishing security and
peace, and that at the end of his term he voluntarily laid down his
authority,[368]—an evidence not only of probity superior to the lures
of ambition, but also of that conscious moderation during the period
of his dictatorship which left him without fear as a private citizen
afterwards. He enacted various laws for Mitylênê, one of which was
sufficiently curious to cause it to be preserved and commented
on,—for it prescribed double penalties against offences committed by
men in a state of intoxication.[369] But he did not (like Solon at
Athens) introduce any constitutional changes, nor provide any new
formal securities for public liberty and good government:[370] which
illustrates the remark previously made, that Solon in doing this was
beyond his age, and struck out new lights for his successors,—since
on the score of personal disinterestedness Pittakus and he are
equally unimpeachable. What was the condition of Mitylênê afterwards,
we have no authorities to tell us. Pittakus is said, if the
chronological computers of a later age can be trusted, to have died
in the 52d Olympiad (B. C. 572-568). Both he and Solon are numbered
among the Seven Wise Men of Greece, respecting whom something will be
said in a future chapter. The various anecdotes current about him are
little better than uncertified exemplifications of a spirit of equal
and generous civism: but his songs and his elegiac compositions were
familiar to literary Greeks in the age of Plato.

[366] Aristot. Polit. iii, 9, 5, 6; Dionys. Halik. Ant. Rom. v,
73: Plehn, Lesbiaca, pp. 46-50.

[367] Diogen. Laërt. i, 81.

[368] Strabo, xiii, p. 617; Diogen. Laërt. i, 75; Valer. Maxim.
vi, 5, 1.

[369] Aristot. Polit. ii, 9, 9; Rhetoric ii, 27, 2.

A ditty is said to have been sung by the female grinding-slaves
in Lesbos, when the mill went heavily: Ἄλει, μύλα, ἄλει· καὶ γὰρ
Πιττακὸς ἀλεῖ, Τᾶς μεγάλας Μιτυλάνας βασιλεύων,—“Grind, mill,
grind; for Pittakus also _grinds_, the master of great Mitylênê.”
This has the air of a genuine composition of the time, set forth
by the enemies of Pittakus, and imputing to him (through a very
intelligible metaphor) tyrannical conduct; though both Plutarch
(Sept. Sap. Conv. c. 14, p. 157) and Diogenes Laërt. (i, 81)
construe it literally, as if Pittakus had been accustomed to take
bodily exercise at the hand-mill.

[370] Aristot. Polit. ii, 9, 9. ἐγένετο δὲ καὶ Πιττακὸς νόμων
δημιουργὸς, ἀλλ᾽ οὐ πολιτείας.

CHAPTER XV.

ASIATIC DORIANS.

The islands of Rhodes, Kôs, Symê, Nisyros, Kasus, and Karpathus, are
represented in the Homeric Catalogue as furnishing troops to the
Grecian armament before Troy. Historical Rhodes, and historical Kôs,
are occupied by Dorians, the former with its three separate cities of
Lindus, Jalysus, and Kameirus. Two other Dorian cities, both on the
adjacent continent, are joined with these four so as to constitute
an amphiktyony on the Triopian promontory or south-western corner of
Asia Minor,—thus constituting an hexapolis, including Halikarnassus,
Knidus, Kôs, Lindus, Jalysus, and Kameirus. Knidus was situated on
the Triopian promontory itself; Halikarnassus more to the northward,
on the northern coast of the Keramic gulf: neither of the two are
named in Homer.

The legendary account of the origin of these Asiatic Dorians has
already been given, and we are compelled to accept their hexapolis
as a portion of the earliest Grecian history, of which no previous
account can be rendered. The circumstance of Rhodes and Kôs being
included in the Catalogue of the Iliad leads us to suppose that they
were Greek at an earlier period than the Ionic or Æolic settlements.
It may be remarked that both the brothers Antiphus and Pheidippus
from Kôs, and Tlêpolemus from Rhodes, are Herakleids,—the only
Herakleids who figure in the Iliad: and the deadly combat between
Tlêpolemus and Sarpêdôn may perhaps be an heroic copy drawn from real
contests, which doubtless often took place between the Rhodians and
their neighbors the Lykians. That Rhodes and Kôs were already Dorian
at the period of the Homeric Catalogue, I see no reason for doubting.
They are not called Dorian in that Catalogue, but we may well suppose
that the name Dorian had not at that early period come to be employed
as a great distinctive class-name, as it was afterwards used in
contrast with Ionian and Æolian. In relating the history of Pheidôn
of Argos, I have mentioned various reasons for suspecting that the
trade of the Dorians on the eastern coast of the Peloponnesus was
considerable at an early period, and there may well have been Doric
migrations by sea to Krête and Rhodes, anterior to the time of the
Iliad.

Herodotus tells us that the six Dorian towns, which had established
their amphiktyony on the Triopian promontory, were careful to
admit none of the neighboring Dorians to partake of it. Of these
neighboring Dorians, we make out the islands of Astypalæ, and
Kalymnæ,[371] Nisyrus, Karpathus, Symê, Têlus, Kasus, and Chalkia,—on
the continental coast, Myndus, situated on the same peninsula with
Halikarnassus,—Phasêlis, on the eastern coast of Lykia towards
Pamphylia. The strong coast-rock of Iasus, midway between Milêtus
and Halikarnassus, is said to have been originally founded by
Argeians, but was compelled in consequence of destructive wars
with the Karians to admit fresh settlers and a Neleid œkist from
Milêtus.[372] Bargylia and Karyanda seem to have been Karian
settlements more or less Hellenized. There probably were other Dorian
towns, not specially known to us, upon whom this exclusion from the
Triopian solemnities was brought to operate. The six amphiktyonized
cities were in course of time reduced to five, by the exclusion of
Halikarnassus: the reason for which (as we are told) was, that a
citizen of Halikarnassus, who had gained a tripod as prize, violated
the regulation which required that the tripod should always be
consecrated as an offering in the Triopian temple, in order that
he might carry it off to decorate his own house.[373] The Dorian
amphiktyony was thus contracted into a pentapolis: at what time this
incident took place, we do not know, nor is it perhaps unreasonable
to conjecture that the increasing predominance of the Karian element
at Halikarnassus had some effect in producing the exclusion, as well
as the individual misbehavior of the victor Agasiklês.

[371] See the Inscriptions in Boeckh’s collection, 2483-2671: the
latter is an Iasian Inscription, reciting a Doric decree by the
inhabitants of Kalymnæ; also Ahrens, De Dialecto Doricâ, pp. 15,
553; Diodor. v, 53-54.

[372] Polyb. xvi, 5.

[373] Herodot. i, 144.

CHAPTER XVI.

NATIVES OF ASIA MINOR WITH WHOM THE GREEKS BECAME CONNECTED.

From the Grecian settlements on the coast of Asia Minor, and on
the adjacent islands, our attention must now be turned to those
non-Hellenic kingdoms and people with whom they there came in contact.

Our information with respect to all of them is unhappily very scanty.
Nor shall we improve our narrative by taking the catalogue, presented
in the Iliad, of allies of Troy, and construing it as if it were a
chapter of geography: if any proof were wanting of the unpromising
results of such a proceeding, we may find it in the confusion which
darkens so much of the work of Strabo,—who perpetually turns aside
from the actual and ascertainable condition of the countries which he
is describing, to conjectures on Homeric antiquity, often announced
as if they were unquestionable facts. Where the Homeric geography
is confirmed by other evidence, we note the fact with satisfaction;
where it stands unsupported or difficult to reconcile with other
statements, we cannot venture to reason upon it as in itself a
substantial testimony. The author of the Iliad, as he has congregated
together a vast body of the different sections of Greeks for the
attack of the consecrated hill of Ilium, so he has also summoned all
the various inhabitants of Asia Minor to coöperate in its defence,
and he has planted portions of the Kilikians and Lykians, whose
historical existence is on the southern coast, in the immediate
vicinity of the Troad. Those only will complain of this who have
accustomed themselves to regard him as an historian or geographer:
if we are content to read him only as the first of poets, we shall
no more quarrel with him for a geographical misplacement, than with
his successor Arktinus for bringing on the battle-field of Ilium the
Amazons or the Æthiopians.

The geography of Asia Minor is even now very imperfectly known,[374]
and the matters ascertained respecting its ancient divisions and
boundaries relate almost entirely either to the later periods of the
Persian empire, or to times after the Macedonian and even after the
Roman conquest. To state them as they stood in the time of Crœsus
king of Lydia, before the arrival of the conquering Cyrus, is a task
in which we find little evidence to sustain us. The great mountain
chain of Taurus, which begins from the Chelidonian promontory on
the southern coast of Lykia, and strikes north-eastward as far
as Armenia, formed the most noted boundary-line during the Roman
times,—but Herodotus does not once mention it; the river Halys is
in his view the most important geographical limit. Northward of
Taurus, on the upper portions of the rivers Halys and Sangarius,
was situated the spacious and lofty central plain of Asia Minor.
To the north, west, and south of this central plain, the region is
chiefly mountainous, as it approaches all the three seas, the Euxine,
the Ægean, and the Pamphylian,—most mountainous in the case of the
latter, permitting no rivers of long course. The mountains Kadmus,
Messôgis, Tmôlus, stretch westward towards the Ægean sea, but leaving
extensive spaces of plain and long valleys, so that the course of
the Mæander, the Kaïster, and the Hermus is of considerable length.
The north-western part includes the mountainous regions of Ida,
Têmnus, and the Mysian Olympus, yet with much admixture of fertile
and productive ground. The elevated tracts near the Euxine appear
to have been the most wooded,—especially Kytôrus: the Parthenius,
the Sangarius, the Halys, and the Iris, are all considerable streams
flowing northward towards that sea. Nevertheless, the plain land
interspersed through these numerous elevations was often of the
greatest fertility; and as a whole, the peninsula of Asia Minor was
considered as highly productive by the ancients, in grain, wine,
fruit, cattle, and in many parts, oil; though the cold central plain
did not carry the olive.[375]

[374] For the general geography of Asia Minor, see Albert
Forbiger, Handbuch der Alt. Geogr. part ii, sect. 61, and an
instructive little treatise, Fünf Inschriften und fünf Städte
in Klein Asien, by Franz and Kiepert, Berlin, 1840, with a map
of Phrygia annexed. The latter is particularly valuable as
showing us how much yet remains to be made out: it is too often
the practice with the compilers of geographical manuals to make
a show of full knowledge, and to disguise the imperfection of
their data. Nor do they always keep in view the necessity of
distinguishing between the territorial names and divisions of one
age and those of another.

[375] Cicero, Pro Lege Maniliâ, c. 6; Strabo, xii, p. 572;
Herodot. v, 32. See the instructive account of the spread and
cultivation of the olive-tree, in Ritter, Erdkunde, West-Asien,
b. iii, Abtheilung iii; Abschn. i, s. 50, pp. 522-537.

Along the western shores of this peninsula, where the various bands
of Greek emigrants settled, we hear of Pelasgians, Teukrians,
Mysians, Bithynians, Phrygians, Lydians or Mæonians, Karians,
Lelegians. Farther eastward are Lykians, Pisidians, Kilikians,
Phrygians, Kapadokians, Paphlagonians, Mariandynians, etc. Speaking
generally, we may say that the Phrygians, Teukrians, and Mysians
appear in the north-western portion, between the river Hermus and the
Propontis,—the Karians and Lelegians south of the river Mæander,—and
the Lydians in the central region between the two. Pelasgians are
found here and there, seemingly both in the valley of the Hermus
and in that of the Kaïster: even in the time of Herodotus, there
were Pelasgian settlements at Plakia and Skylakê on the Propontis,
westward of Kyzikus: and O. Müller would even trace the Tyrrhenian
Pelasgians to Tyrrha, an inland town of Lydia, from whence he
imagines, though without much probability, the name Tyrrhenian to be
derived.

One important fact to remark, in respect to the native population
of Asia Minor at the first opening of this history, is, that they
were not aggregated into great kingdoms or confederations, nor
even into any large or populous cities,—but distributed into many
inconsiderable tribes, so as to present no overwhelming resistance,
and threaten no formidable danger, to the successive bodies of Greek
emigrants. The only exception to this is, the Lydian monarchy of
Sardis, the real strength of which begins with Gygês and the dynasty
of the Mermnadæ, about 700 B. C. Though the increasing force of this
kingdom ultimately extinguished the independence of the Greeks in
Asia, it seems to have noway impeded their development, as it stood
when they first arrived, and for a long time afterwards. Nor were
either Karians or Mysians united under any one king, so as to possess
facilities for aggression or conquest.

As far as can be made out from our scanty data, it appears that
all the nations of Asia Minor west of the river Halys, were, in a
large sense, of kindred race with each other, as well as with the
Thracians on the European side of the Bosphorus and Hellespont.
East of the Halys dwelt the people of Syro-Arabian or Semitic
race,—Assyrians, Syrians, and Kappadokians,—as well as Kilikians,
Pamphylians, and Solymi, along its upper course and farther southward
to the Pamphylian sea. Westward of the Halys, the languages were not
Semitic, but belonging to a totally different family,[376]—cognate,
yet distinct one from another, perhaps not mutually intelligible.
The Karians, Lydians, and Mysians recognized a certain degree of
brotherhood with each other, attested by common religious sacrifices
in the temple of Zeus Karios, at Mylasa.[377] But it is by no means
certain that each of these nations mutually comprehended each other’s
speech; and Herodotus, from whom we derive the knowledge of these
common sacrifices, acquaints us at the same time that the Kaunians
in the south-western corner of the peninsula had no share in them,
though speaking the same language as the Karians; he does not,
however, seem to consider identity or difference of language as a
test of national affinity.

[376] Herodot. i, 72; Heeren, Ideen über den Verkehr der Alten
Welt, part i, abth. i, pp. 142-145. It may be remarked, however,
that the Armenians, eastward of the Halys, are treated by
Herodotus as colonists from the Phrygians (vii, 73): Stephanus
Byz. says the same, v. Ἀρμενία, adding also, καὶ τῇ φωνῇ πολλὰ
φρυγίζουσι. The more careful researches of modern linguists after
much groundless assertion on the part of those who preceded them,
have shown that the Armenian language belongs in its structure to
the Indo-Germanic family, and is essentially distinct from the
Semitic: see Ritter, Erdkunde, West-Asien, b. iii, abth. iii;
Abschn. i, 5, 36, pp. 577-582. Herodotus rarely takes notice of
the language spoken, nor does he on this occasion, when speaking
of the river Halys as a boundary.

[377] Herodot. i, 170-171.

Along the coast of the Euxine, from the Thracian Bosphorus eastward
to the river Halys, dwelt Bithynians or Thynians, Mariandynians
and Paphlagonians,—all recognized branches of the widely-extended
Thracian race. The Bithynians especially, in the north-western
portion of this territory, and reaching from the Euxine to the
Propontis, are often spoken of as Asiatic Thracians,—while on
the other hand various tribes among the Thracians of Europe, are
denominated Thyni, or Thynians,[378]—so little difference was
there in the population on the two sides of the Bosphorus, alike
brave, predatory, and sanguinary. The Bithynians of Asia are also
sometimes called Bebrykians, under which denomination they extend as
far southward as the gulf of Kios in the Propontis.[379] They here
come in contact with Mygdonians, Mysians, and Phrygians. Along the
southern coast of the Propontis, between the rivers Rhyndakus and
Æsêpus, in immediate neighborhood with the powerful Greek colony
of Kyzikus, appear the Doliones; next, Pelasgians at Plakia and
Skylakê; then again, along the coast of the Hellespont near Abydus
and Lampsakus, and occupying a portion of the Troad, we find mention
made of other Bebrykians.[380] In the interior of the Troad, or the
region of Ida, are Teukrians and Mysians: the latter seem to extend
southward down to Pergamus and the region of Mount Sipylus, and
eastward to the mountainous region called the Mysian Olympus, south
of the lake Askanius, near which they join with the Phrygians.[381]

[378] Strabo, vii, pp. 295-303; xii, pp. 542, 564, 565, 572;
Herodot. i, 28; vii, 74-75; Xenophon. Hellenic. i, 3, 2;
Anabasis, vii, 2, 22-32. Mannert, Geographie der Gr. und Römer,
b. viii, ch. ii, p. 403.

[379] Dionys. Periegêt. 805: Apollodôrus, i, 9, 20. Theokritus
puts the Bebrykians on the coast of the Euxine—Id. xxii, 29;
Syncell. p. 340, Bonn. The story in Appian, Bell. Mithridat.
init. is a singular specimen of Grecian fancy, and anxiety to
connect the antiquities of a nation with the Trojan war: the
Greeks whom he followed assigned the origin of the Bithynians to
Thracian followers of Rhêsus, who fled from Troy after the latter
had been killed by Diomêdes: Dolonkus, eponym of the Thracians
in the Chersonesus, is called brother of Bithynus (Steph. Byz.
Δόλογκος—Βιθυνία).

The name Μαριαν-δυνοὶ, like Βι-θυνοὶ, may probably be an
extension or compound of the primitive Θυνοὶ; perhaps, also,
Βέβρυκες stands in the same relation to Βριγὲς, or Φρυγές.
Hellanikus wrote Θύμβριον, Δύμβριον (Steph. Byz. in v.).

Kios is Mysian in Herodotus, v, 122: according to Skylax, the
coast from the gulf of Astakus to that of Kios is Mysia (c. 93).

[380] Charon of Lampsakus, Fr. 7, ed. Didot. Χάρων δὲ φησὶ
καὶ τὴν Λαμψακηνῶν χώραν προτέραν Βεβρυκίαν καλεῖσθαι ἀπὸ τῶν
κατοικησάντων αὐτὴν Βεβρύκων· τὸ δὲ γένος αὐτῶν ἠφάνισται διὰ
τοὺς γενομένους πολέμους. Strabo, xiii, p. 556; Conon, Narr. 12;
Dionys. Hal. i, 54.

[381] Hekatæus, Frag. 204, ed. Didot; Apollodôr. i, 9, 18;
Strabo, xii, pp. 564-575.

As far as any positive opinion can be formed respecting nations
of whom we know so little, it would appear that the Mysians and
Phrygians are a sort of connecting link between Lydians and Karians
on one side, and Thracians (European as well as Asiatic) on the
other,—a remote ethnical affinity pervading the whole. Ancient
migrations are spoken of in both directions across the Hellespont and
the Thracian Bosphorus. It was the opinion of some that Phrygians,
Mysians, and Thracians had emigrated into Asia from Europe, and
the Lydian historian Xanthus referred the arrival of the Phrygians
to an epoch subsequent to the Trojan war.[382] On the other hand,
Herodotus speaks of a vast body of Teukrians and Mysians, who,
before the Trojan war, had crossed the strait from Asia into Europe,
expelled many of the European Thracians from their seats, crossed the
Strymôn and the Macedonian rivers, and penetrated as far southward
as the river Peneus in Thessaly,—as far westward as the Ionic
gulf. This Teukro-Mysian migration, he tells us, brought about two
consequences: first, the establishment near the river Strymôn of the
Pæonians, who called themselves Teukrian colonists;[383] next, the
crossing into Asia of many of the dispossessed Thracian tribes from
the neighborhood of the Strymôn, into the north-western region of
Asia Minor, by which the Bithynian or Asiatic Thracian people was
formed. The Phrygians also are supposed by some to have originally
occupied an European soil on the borders of Macedonia, near the
snow-clad Mount Bermion, at which time they were called Briges,—an
appellative name in the Lydian language equivalent to freemen,
or Franks:[384] while the Mysians are said to have come from the
north-eastern portions of European Thrace south of the Danube, known
under the Roman empire by the name of Mœsia.[385] But with respect
to the Mysians there was also another story, according to which they
were described as colonists emanating from the Lydians; put forth
according to that system of devoting by solemn vow a tenth of the
inhabitants, chosen by lot, to seek settlements elsewhere, which
recurs not unfrequently among the stories of early emigrations,
as the consequence of distress and famine. And this last opinion
was supported by the character of the Mysian language, half Lydian
and half Phrygian, of which both the Lydian historian Xanthus, and
Menekratês of Elæa,[386]—by whom the opinion was announced,—must have
been very competent judges.

[382] Xanth. Fragm. 5, ed. Didot.

[383] Herodot. vii, 20-75.

[384] Strabo, vii, p. 295; xii, p. 550; Herodot. vii, 73; Hesych.
v. Βρίγα.

[385] Strabo, vii, p. 295; xii, pp. 542, 564, 571, where he
cites the geographer Artemidôrus. In the passage of the Iliad
(xiii, 5), the Μυσοὶ ἀγχέμαχοι appear to be conceived by the
poet in European Thrace; but Apollodôrus does not seem to have
so construed the passage. Niebuhr (Kleine Schriften, p. 370)
expresses himself more confidently than the evidence warrants.

[386] Strabo, xii, p. 572; Herodot. vii, 74.

From such tales of early migration both ways across the Hellespont
and the Bosphorus, all that we can with any certainty infer is, a
certain measure of affinity among the population of Thrace and Asia
Minor,—especially visible in the case of the Phrygians and Mysians.
The name and legends of the Phrygian hero Midas are connected
with different towns throughout the extensive region of Asiatic
Phrygia,—Kelænæ, Pessinûs, Ankyra,[387] Gordium,—as well as with the
neighborhood of Mount Bermion in Macedonia: the adventure whereby
Midas got possession of Silenus, mixing wine with the spring of which
he drank, was localized at the latter place as well as at the town of
Thymbrion, nearly at the eastern extremity of Asiatic Phrygia.[388]
The name Mygdonia, and the eponymous hero Mygdôn, belong not less
to the European territory near the river Axius,—afterwards a part
of Macedonia,—than to the Asiatic coast of the eastern Propontis,
between Kios and the river Rhyndakus.[389] Otreus and Mygdôn are the
commanders of the Phrygians in the Iliad; and the river Odrysês,
which flowed through the territory of the Asiatic Mygdonians, into
the Rhyndakus, affords another example of homonymy with the Odrysian
Thracians[390] in Europe. And as these coincidences of names and
legends conduct us to the idea of analogy and affinity between
Thracians and Phrygians, so we find Archilochus, the earliest poet
remaining to us who mentions them as contemporaries, coupling the two
in the same simile.[391] To this early Parian Iambist, the population
on the two sides of the Hellespont appears to have presented
similarity of feature and customs.

[387] Diodor. iii, 59; Arrian, ii, 3, 1; Quint. Curt. iii, 1, 12;
Athenæ. x, p. 415. We may also notice the town of Κοτυάειον near
Μιδάειον in Phrygia, as connected with the name of the Thracian
goddess _Kotys_ (Strabo, x, p. 470; xii, p. 576).

[388] Herodot. viii, 138; Theopompus, Frag. 74, 75, 76, Didot (he
introduced a long dialogue between Midas and Silenus,—Dionys.
Halik. Vett. Script. Censur. p. 70: Theon. Progymnas. c. 2);
Strabo, xiv, p. 680; Xenophon, Anabas. i, 2, 13.

[389] Strabo, xii, pp. 575-576; Steph. Byz. Μυγδονíα; Thucyd. ii,
99. The territory Mygdonia and the Mygdonians, in the distant
region of Mesopotamia, eastward of the river Chaboras (Plutarch,
Lucullus, 32; Polyb. v, 51; Xenophon, Anab. iv, 3, 4), is
difficult to understand, since it is surprising to find a branch
of these more westerly Asiatics in the midst of the Syro-Arabian
population. Strabo (xv, p. 747) supposes it to date only from the
times of the Macedonian conquest of Asia, which is disproved by
the mention of the name in Xenophon; though this reading in the
text of Xenophon is by some called in question. See Forbiger,
Handbuch der Alten Geographie, part ii, sect. 98, p. 628.

[390] Iliad, iii, 188; Strabo, xii, p. 551. The town of Otrœa, of
which Otreus seems to be the eponymus, was situated in Phrygia,
just on the borders of Bithynia (Strabo, xii, p. 566).

[391] Archiloch. Fragm. 28 Schneid., 26 Gaisf.—

... ὥσπερ αὐλῷ βρῦτον ἢ Θρῆϊξ ἀνὴρ
Ἢ Φρὺξ ἔβρυζε, etc.

The passage is too corrupt to support any inference, except the
near approximation in the poet’s mind of Thracians and Phrygians.

To settle with any accuracy the extent and condition of these Asiatic
nations during the early days of Grecian settlement among them is
impracticable; the problem was not to be solved even by the ancient
geographers, with their superior means of knowledge. The early
indigenous distribution of the Phrygian population is unknown to us,
and the division into the Greater and Lesser Phrygia belongs to a
period at least subsequent to the Persian conquest, like most of the
recognized divisions of Asia Minor; it cannot, therefore, be applied
with reference to the period earlier than Crœsus. It appears that the
name Phrygians, like that of Thracians, was a generic designation,
and comprehended tribes or separate communities who had also specific
names of their own. We trace Phrygians at wide distances: on the
western bank of the river Halys,—at Kelænæ, in the interior of Asia
Minor, towards the rise of the river Mæander,—and on the coast of
the Propontis near Kios;—in both of these latter localities there is
a salt lake called Askanius, which is the name both of the leader
of the Phrygian allies of Troy, and of the country from whence they
are said to come, in the Iliad.[392] They thus occupy a territory
bounded on the south by the Pisidian mountains, on the west by
the Lydians (indicated by a terminal pillar set up by Crœsus at
Kydrara),[393]—on the east by the river Halys, on the other side of
which were Kappadokians or Syrians, on the north by Paphlagonians
and Mariandynians. But it seems, besides this, that they must have
extended farther to the west, so as to occupy a great portion of the
region of Mount Ida and the Troad. For Apollodôrus considered that
both the Doliones and the Bebrykians were included in the great
Phrygian name;[394] and even in the ancient poem called “Phorônis,”
which can hardly be placed later than 600 B. C., the Daktyls of
Mount Ida, the great discoverers of metallurgy, are expressly named
Phrygian.[395] The custom of the Attic tragic poets to call the
inhabitants of the Troad Phrygians, does not necessarily imply any
translation of inhabitants, but an employment of the general name, as
better known to the audience whom they addressed, in preference to
the less notorious specific name,—just as the inhabitants of Bithynia
might be described either as Bithynians or as Asiatic Thracians.

[392] Iliad, ii, 873; xiii, 792; Arrian, i, 29; Herodot. vii, 30.
The boundary of the Phrygians southward towards the Pisidians,
and westward as well as north-westward towards the Lydians and
Mysians, could never be distinctly traced (Strabo. xii, pp.
564, 576, 628): the volcanic region called Katakekaumenê is
referred in Xenophon’s time to Mysia (Anabas. i, 2, 10): compare
the remarks of Kiepert in the treatise above referred to, Fünf
Inschriften und fünf Städte, p. 27.

[393] Herodot. i, 72; vii, 30.

[394] Strabo, xiv, p. 678: compare xiii, p. 586. The legend makes
Doliôn son of Silênus, who is so much connected with the Phrygian
Midas (Alexand. Ætolus ap. Strabo, xiv, p. 681).

[395] Phorônis, Fragm. 5, ed. Düntzer, p. 57—

... ἔνθα γόητες
Ἰδαῖοι Φρυγὲς ἄνδρες, ὀρέστεροι, οἴκαδ᾽ ἔναιον, etc.

If, as the language of Herodotus and Ephorus[396] would seem to
imply, we suppose the Phrygians to be at a considerable distance from
the coast and dwelling only in the interior, it will be difficult
to explain to ourselves how or where the early Greek colonists
came to be so much influenced by them; whereas the supposition
that the tribes occupying the Troad and the region of Ida were
Phrygians elucidates this point. And the fact is incontestable,
that both Phrygians and Lydians did not only modify the religious
manifestations of the Asiatic Greeks, and through them of the Grecian
world generally,—but also rendered important aid towards the first
creation of the Grecian musical scale. Of this the denominations of
the scale afford a proof.

[396] Ephorus ap. Strabo, xiv, 678; Herodot. v, 49.

Three primitive musical modes were employed by the Greek poets, in
the earliest times of which later authors could find any account,—the
Lydian, which was the most acute,—the Dorian, which was the most
grave,—and the Phrygian, intermediate between the two; the highest
note of the Lydian being one tone higher, that of the Dorian one tone
lower, than the highest note of the Phrygian scale.[397] Such were
the three modes or scales, each including only a tetrachord, upon
which the earliest Greek masters worked: many other scales, both
higher and lower, were subsequently added. It thus appears that the
earliest Greek music was, in large proportion, borrowed from Phrygia
and Lydia: and when we consider that, in the eighth and seventh
centuries before the Christian era, music and poetry conjoined—often
also with dancing or rhythmical gesticulation—was the only
intellectual manifestation known among the Greeks,—and moreover that,
in the belief of all the ancient writers, every musical mode had its
own peculiar emotional influences, powerfully modified the temper of
hearers, and was intimately connected with the national worship,—we
shall see that this transmission of the musical modes implies much
both of communication and interchange between the Asiatic Greeks
and the indigenous population of the continent. Now the fact of
communication between the Ionic and Æolic Greeks, and their eastern
neighbors, the Lydians, is easy to comprehend generally, though we
have no details as to the way in which it took place; but we do not
distinctly see where it was that the Greeks came so much into contact
with the Phrygians except in the region of Ida, the Troad, and the
southern coast of the Propontis. To this region belonged those early
Phrygian musicians (under the heroic names of Olympus, Hyagnis,
Marsyas), from whom the Greeks borrowed.[398] And we may remark
that the analogy between Thracians and Phrygians seems partially to
hold in respect both to music and religion, since the old mythe in
the Iliad, wherein the Thracian bard Thamyris, rashly contending
in song with the Muses, is conquered, blinded, and stripped of his
art, seems to be the prototype of the very similar story respecting
the contention of Apollo with the Phrygian Marsyas,[399]—the cithara
against the flute; while the Phrygian Midas is farther characterized
as the religious disciple of Thracian Orpheus.

[397] See the learned and valuable Dissertation of Boeckh, De
Metris Pindari, iii, 8, pp. 235-239.

[398] Plutarch, De Musicâ, c. 5, 7, p. 1132; Aristoxenus ap.
Athenæ. xiv, p. 624; Alkman, Frag. 104, ed. Bergk.

Aristoxenus seems to have considered the Phrygian Olympus as
the great inventive genius who gave the start to Grecian music
(Plutarch, _ib._ pp. 1135-1141): his music was employed almost
entirely for hymns to the gods, religious worship, the Mêtrôa,
or ceremonies, in honor of the Great Mother (p. 1140). Compare
Clemen. Alexand. Strom. i, p. 306.

Μαρσύας may perhaps have its etymology in the Karian or Lydian
language. Σούας was in Karian equivalent to τάφος (see Steph.
Byz. v. Σουαγέλα): Μᾶ was one of the various names of Rhea
(Steph. Byz. v. Μάσταυρα). The word would have been written
Μαρσούας by an Æolic Greek.

Marsyas is represented by Telestês the dithyrambist as a satyr,
son of a nymph,—νυμφαγενεῖ χειροκτύπῳ φηρὶ Μαρσύᾳ κλέος (Telestês
ap. Athenæ xiv. p 617).

[399] Xenoph. Anab. i, 2, 8; Homer, Iliad, ii, 595; Strabo,
xii, p. 578: the latter connects Olympus with Kelænæ as well as
Marsyas. Justin, xi, 7: “Mida, qui ab Orpheo sacrorum solemnibus
initiatus, Phrygiam religionibus implevit.”

The coins of Midaeion, Kadi, and Prymnêssus, in the more
northerly portion of Phrygia, bear the impress of the Phrygian
hero Midas (Eckhel, Doctrina Nummorum Vet. iii, pp. 143-168).

In my previous chapter relating to the legend of Troy,[400] mention
has been already made of the early fusion of the Æolic Greeks with
the indigenous population of the Troad; and it is from hence probably
that the Phrygian music with the flute as its instrument,—employed
in the orgiastic rites and worship of the Great Mother in Mount Ida,
in the Mysian Olympus, and other mountain regions of the country,
and even in the Greek city of Lampsakus,[401]—passed to the Greek
composers. Its introduction is coeval with the earliest facts
respecting Grecian music, and must have taken place during the first
century of the recorded Olympiads. In the Homeric poems we find no
allusion to it, but it may probably have contributed to stimulate
that development of lyric and elegiac composition which grew up among
the post-Homeric Æolians and Ionians, to the gradual displacement
of the old epic. Another instance of the fusion of Phrygians with
Greeks is to be found in the religious ceremonies of Kyzikus, Kius,
and Prusa, on the southern and south-eastern coasts of the Propontis;
at the first of the three places, the worship of the Great Mother
of the gods was celebrated with much solemnity on the hill of
Dindymon, bearing the same name as that mountain in the interior,
near Pessinus, from whence Cybelê derived her principal surname
of Dindymênê.[402] The analogy between the Kretan and Phrygian
religious practices has been often noticed, and confusion occurs not
unfrequently between Mount Ida in Krête and the mountain of the same
name in the Troad; while the Teukrians of Gergis in the Troad,—who
were not yet Hellenized even at the time of the Persian invasion, and
who were affirmed by the elegiac poet Kallinus to have emigrated from
Krêtê,—if they were not really Phrygians,—differed so little from
them as to be called such by the poets.

[400] Part i, ch. xv, p. 453.

[401] The fragment of Hippônax mentioning an eunuch of Lampsakus,
rich and well-fed, reveals to us the Asiatic worship in that
place (Fragm. 26, ed. Bergk):—

Θύνναν τε καὶ μυττωτὸν ἡμέρας πάσας
Δαινύμενος, ὥσπερ Λαμψακηνὸς εὐνοῦχος, etc.

[402] Strabo, xii, pp. 564-575; Herodot. iv, 76.

The Phrygians are celebrated by Herodotus for the abundance both
of their flocks and their agricultural produce:[403] the excellent
wool for which Milêtus was always renowned came in part from
the upper valley of the river Mæander, which they inhabited.
He contrasts them in this respect with the Lydians, among whom
the attributes and capacities of persons dwelling in cities are
chiefly brought to our view: much gold and silver, retail trade,
indigenous games, unchastity of young women, yet combined with
thrift and industry.[404] Phrygian cheese and salt-provisions,
Lydian unguents,[405] carpets and colored shoes, acquired notoriety.
Both Phrygians and Lydians are noticed by Greek authors subsequent
to the establishment of the Persian empire as a people timid,
submissive, industrious, and useful as slaves,—an attribute not
ascribed to the Mysians,[406] who are usually described as brave
and hardy mountaineers, difficult to hold in subjection: nor even
true respecting the Lydians, during the earlier times anterior
to the complete overthrow of Crœsus by Cyrus; for they were then
esteemed for their warlike prowess. Nor was the different character
of these two Asiatic people yet effaced even in the second century
after the Christian era. For the same Mysians, who in the time of
Herodotus and Xenophon gave so much trouble to the Persian satraps,
are described by the rhetor Aristeidês as seizing and plundering his
property at Laneion near Hadriani,—while on the contrary he mentions
the Phrygians as habitually coming from the interior towards the
coast-regions to do the work of the olive-gathering.[407] During
the times of Grecian autonomy and ascendency, in the fifth century
B. C., the conception of a Phrygian or a Lydian was associated in
the Greek mind with ideas of contempt and servitude,[408] to which
unquestionably these Asiatics became fashioned, since it was habitual
with them under the Roman empire to sell their own children into
slavery,[409]—a practice certainly very rare among the Greeks, even
when they too had become confounded among the mass of subjects of
imperial Rome. But we may fairly assume that this association of
contempt with the name of a Phrygian or a Lydian did not prevail
during the early period of Grecian Asiatic settlement, or even in
the time of Alkman, Mimnermus, or Sappho, down to 600 B. C. We first
trace evidence of it in a fragment of Hippônax, and it began with the
subjection of Asia Minor generally, first under Crœsus[410] and then
under Cyrus, and with the sentiment of comparative pride which grew
up afterwards in the minds of European Greeks. The native Phrygian
tribes along the Propontis, with whom the Greek colonists came in
contact,—Bebrykians, Doliones, Mygdonians, etc,—seem to have been
agricultural, cattle-breeding and horse-breeding, yet more vehement
and warlike than the Phrygians of the interior, as far at least as
can be made out by their legends. The brutal but gigantic Amykus
son of Poseidôn, chief of the Bebrykians, with whom Pollux contends
in boxing, and his brother Mygdôn to whom Hêraklês is opposed, are
samples of a people whom the Greek poets considered ferocious,
and not submissive;[411] while the celebrity of the horses of
Erichthonius, Laomedôn, and Asius of Arisbê, in the Iliad, shows that
horse-breeding was a distinguishing attribute of the region of Ida,
not less in the mind of Homer than in that of Virgil.[412]

[403] Herodot. v, 49. πολυπροβατώτατοι καὶ πολυκαρπότατοι.

[404] Herodot. i, 93-94.

[405] ~Τάριχος~ Φρύγιον (Eupolis, Marik. Fr. 23, p. 506,
Meineke),—~τυρὸς~, Athenæ. xii, 516,—~ἰσχάδες~, Alexis ap.
Athenæ. iii, 75: _some_ Phrygians, however, had never seen a
fig-tree (Cicero pro Flacco, c. 17).

Carpets of Sardis (Athenæ. v, 197); φοινικίδες Σαρδιανικαὶ
(Plato, Comicus ap. Athenæ. ii, 48); Ἀεὶ φιλόμυρον πᾶν τὸ Σάρδεων
γένος (Alexis ap. Athenæ. xv, p. 691, and again _ib._ p. 690);
Πόδας δὲ Ποίκιλος μάσθλης ἐκάλυπτε Λύδιον καλὸν ἔργον (Sappho,
Fragm. 54, ed. Schneidewin; Schol. Aristoph. Pac. 1174).

[406] Xenophon, Anabas. i, 6, 7; iii, 2, 23; Memorab. iii, 5, 26.
ἀκοντισταὶ Μυσοὶ; Æschyl. Pers. 40. ἁβροδίαιτοι Λύδοι.

[407] Aristeid. Orat. xxvi, p. 346. The λόφος Ἄτυος was very near
to this place Laneion, which shows the identity of the religious
names throughout Lydia and Mysia (Or. xxv, p. 318). About the
Phrygians, Aristeidês, Orat. xlvi, p. 308, Τῶν δὲ πλουσίων ἕνεκα
εἰς τὴν ὑπερορίαν ἀπαίρουσιν, ὥσπερ οἱ Φρυγὲς τῶν ἐλαῶν ἕνεκα τῆς
συλλογῆς.

The declamatory prolixities of Aristeidês offer little reward
to the reader, except these occasional valuable evidences of
existing custom.

[408] Hermippus ap. Athenæ. i, p. 27. Ἀνδράποδ᾽ ἐκ Φρυγίας,
etc., the saying ascribed to Sokratês in Ælian, V. H. x, 14;
Euripid. Alcest. 691; Strabo, vii, p. 304; Polyb. iv. 38. The
Thracians sold their children into slavery,—(Herod. v, 6) as the
Circassians do at present (Clarke’s Travels, vol. i, p. 378).

Δειλότερος λάγω Φρυγὸς was a Greek proverb (Strabo, i, p. 36:
compare Cicero pro Flacco, c. 27).

[409] Philostrat. Vit. Apollon. viii, 7, 12, p. 346. The
slave-merchants seem to have visited Thessaly, and to have bought
slaves at Pagasæ; these were either Penests sold by their masters
out of the country, or perhaps non-Greeks procured from the
borderers in the interior (Aristoph. Plutus, 521; Hermippus ap.
Athenæ. i, p. 27. Αἱ Παγασαὶ δούλους καὶ στιγματίας παρέχουσι).

[410] Phrygian slaves seem to have been numerous at Milêtus in
the time of Hippônax, Frag. 36, ed. Bergk:—

Καὶ τοὺς σολοίκους, ἢν λάβωτι, περνᾶσιν,
Φρυγὰς μὲν ἐς Μίλητον ἀλφιτεύσοντας.

[411] Theocrit. Idyll. xxii, 47-133; Apollon. Rhod. i, 937-954;
ii, 5-140; Valer. Flacc. iv, 100; Apollodôr. ii, 5, 9.

[412] Iliad, ii, 138; xii, 97; xx, 219: Virgil, Georgic, iii,
270:—

“Illas ducit amor (equas) trans Gargara, transque sonantem
Ascanium,” etc.

Klausen (Æneas und die Penaten, vol. i, pp. 52-56, 102-107) has
put together with great erudition all the legendary indications
respecting these regions.

According to the legend of the Phrygian town of Gordium on the river
Sangarius, the primitive Phrygian king Gordius was originally a
poor husbandman, upon the yoke of whose team, as he one day tilled
his field, an eagle perched and posted himself. Astonished at this
portent, he consulted the Telmissean augurs to know what it meant,
and a maiden of the prophetic breed acquainted him that the kingdom
was destined to his family. He espoused her, and the offspring of
the marriage was Midas. Seditions afterwards breaking out among
the Phrygians, they were directed by an oracle, as the only means
of tranquillity, to choose for themselves as king the man whom
they should first see approaching in a wagon. Gordius and Midas
happened to be then coming into the town in their wagon, and the
crown was conferred upon them: their wagon was consecrated in the
citadel of Gordium to Zeus Basileus, and became celebrated from the
insoluble knot whereby the yoke was attached, and the severance of it
afterwards by the sword of Alexander the Great. Whosoever could untie
the knot, to him the kingdom of Asia was portended, and Alexander was
the first whose sword both fulfilled the condition and realized the
prophecy.[413]

[413] Arrian, ii, 3; Justin, xi, 7.

According to another tale, Midas was son of the Great Mother
herself (Plutarch, Cæsar, 9; Hygin. fab. 191).

Of these legendary Phrygian names and anecdotes we can make no use
for historical purposes. We know nothing of any Phrygian kings,
during the historical times,—but Herodotus tells us of a certain
Midas son of Gordius, king of Phrygia, who was the first foreign
sovereign that ever sent offerings to the Delphian temple, anterior
to Gygês of Lydia. This Midas dedicated to the Delphian god the
throne on which he was in the habit of sitting to administer justice.
Chronologers have referred the incident to a Phrygian king Midas
placed by Eusebius in the 10th Olympiad,—a supposition which there
are no means of verifying.[414] There may have been a real Midas
king of Gordium; but that there was ever any great united Phrygian
monarchy, we have not the least ground for supposing. The name
Gordius son of Midas again appears in the legend of Crœsus and Solon
told by Herodotus, as part of the genealogy of the ill-fated prince
Adrastus: here too it seems to represent a legendary rather than a
real person.[415]

[414] Herodot. i, 14, with Wesseling’s note.

[415] Herodot. i, 34.

Of the Lydians, I shall speak in the following chapter.

CHAPTER XVII.

LYDIANS. — MEDES. — CIMMERIANS. — SCYTHIANS.

The early relations between the Lydians and the Asiatic Greeks,
anterior to the reign of Gygês, are not better known to us than those
of the Phrygians. Their native music became partly incorporated with
the Greek, as the Phrygian music was; to which it was very analogous,
both in instruments and in character, though the Lydian mode was
considered by the ancients as more effeminate and enervating. The
flute was used alike by Phrygians and Lydians, passing from both of
them to the Greeks; but the magadis or pectis (a harp with sometimes
as many as twenty strings, sounded two together in octave) is said
to have been borrowed by the Lesbian Terpander from the Lydian
banquets.[416] The flute-players who acquired esteem among the early
Asiatic Greeks were often Phrygian or Lydian slaves; and even the
poet Alkman, who gained for himself permanent renown among the Greek
lyric poets, though not a slave born at Sardis, as is sometimes said,
was probably of Lydian extraction.

[416] Pindar. ap. Athenæ. xiv, p. 635: compare Telestês ap.
Athenæ. xiv, p. 626; Pausan. ix, 5, 4.

It has been already mentioned that Homer knows nothing of Lydia or
Lydians. He names Mæonians in juxtaposition with Karians, and we
are told by Herodotus that the people once called Mæonian received
the new appellation of Lydian from Lydus son of Atys. Sardis, whose
almost inexpugnable citadel was situated on a precipitous rock on the
northern side of the ridge of Tmôlus, overhanging the plain of the
river Hermus, was the capital of the Lydian kings: it is not named
by Homer, though he mentions both Tmôlus and the neighboring Gygæan
lake: the fortification of it was ascribed to an old Lydian king
named Mêlês, and strange legends were told concerning it.[417] Its
possessors were enriched by the neighborhood of the river Paktôlus,
which flowed down from Mount Tmôlus towards the Hermus, and brought
with it considerable quantities of gold in its sands. To this cause
historians often ascribe the abundant treasure belonging to Crœsus
and his predecessors; but Crœsus possessed, besides, other mines near
Pergamus;[418] and another cause of wealth is also to be found in
the general industry of the Lydian people, which the circumstances
mentioned respecting them seem to attest. They were the first people,
according to Herodotus, who ever carried on retail trade; and the
first to coin money of gold and silver.[419]

[417] Herodot. i, 84.

[418] Aristot. Mirabil. Auscultat. 52.

[419] Herodot. i, 94.

The archæologists of Sardis in the time of Herodotus, a century
after the Persian conquest, carried very far back the antiquity of
the Lydian monarchy, by means of a series of names which are in
great part, if not altogether, divine and heroic. Herodotus gives
us first, Manês, Atys, and Lydus,—next, a line of kings beginning
with Hêraklês, twenty-two in number, succeeding each other from
father to son and lasting for 505 years. The first of this line
of Herakleid kings was Agrôn, descended from Hêraklês in the
fourth generation,—Hêraklês, Alkæus, Ninus, Bêlus, and Agrôn. The
twenty-second prince of this Herakleid family, after an uninterrupted
succession of father and son during 505 years, was Kandaulês, called
by the Greeks Myrsilus the son of Myrsus: with him the dynasty ended,
and ended by one of those curious incidents which Herodotus has
narrated with his usual dramatic, yet unaffected, emphasis. It was
the divine will that Kandaulês should be destroyed, and he lost his
rational judgment: having a wife the most beautiful woman in Lydia,
his vanity could not be satisfied without exhibiting her naked person
to Gygês son of Daskylus, his principal confidant and the commander
of his guards. In spite of the vehement repugnance of Gygês, this
resolution was executed; but the wife became aware of the inexpiable
affront, and took her measures to avenge it. Surrounded by her most
faithful domestics, she sent for Gygês, and addressed him: “Two
ways are now open to thee, Gygês: take which thou wilt. Either kill
Kandaulês, wed me, and acquire the kingdom of Lydia,—or else thou
must at once perish. For thou hast seen forbidden things, and either
thou, or the man who contrived it for thee must die.” Gygês in vain
entreated to be spared so terrible an alternative: he was driven to
the option, and he chose that which promised safety to himself.[420]
The queen planted him in ambush behind the bed-chamber door, in the
very spot where Kandaulês had placed him as a spectator, and armed
him with a dagger, which he plunged into the heart of the sleeping
king.

[420] Herodot. i, 11. αἱρέεται αὐτὸς περιεῖναι,—a phrase to which
Gibbon has ascribed an intended irony, which it is difficult to
discover in Herodotus.

Thus ended the dynasty of the Herakleids; but there was a large
party in Lydia who indignantly resented the death of Kandaulês, and
took arms against Gygês. A civil war ensued, which both parties at
length consented to terminate by reference to the Delphian oracle.
The decision of that holy referee was given in favor of Gygês, and
the kingdom of Lydia thus passed to his dynasty, called the Mermnadæ.
But the oracle accompanied its verdict with an intimation, that in
the person of the fifth descendant of Gygês, the murder of Kandaulês
would be avenged,—a warning of which, Herodotus innocently remarks,
no one took any notice, until it was actually fulfilled in the person
of Crœsus.[421]

[421] Herodot. i, 13. τούτου τοῦ ἔπεος ... λόγον οὐδένα
ἐποιεῦντο, πρὶν δὴ ἐπετελέσθη.

In this curious legend, which marks the commencement of the dynasty
called Mermnadæ, the historical kings of Lydia,—we cannot determine
how much, or whether any part, is historical. Gygês was probably a
real man, contemporary with the youth of the poet Archilochus; but
the name Gygês is also an heroic name in Lydian archæology. He is
the eponymus of the Gygæan lake near Sardis; and of the many legends
told respecting him, Plato has preserved one, according to which
Gygês is a mere herdsman of the king of Lydia: after a terrible storm
and earthquake, he sees near him a chasm in the earth, into which he
descends and finds a vast horse of brass, hollow and partly open,
wherein there lies a gigantic corpse with a golden ring. This ring
he carries away, and discovers unexpectedly that it possesses the
miraculous property of rendering him invisible at pleasure. Being
sent on a message to the king, he makes the magic ring available to
his ambition: he first possesses himself of the person of the queen,
then with her aid assassinates the king, and finally seizes the
sceptre.[422]

[422] Plato, Republ. ii, p. 360; Cicero, Offic. iii, 9. Plato (x,
p. 612) compares very suitably the ring of Gygês to the helmet of
Hadês.

The legend thus recounted by Plato, different in almost all points
from the Herodotean, has this one circumstance in common, that the
adventurer Gygês, through the favor and help of the queen, destroys
the king and becomes his successor. Feminine preference and patronage
is the cause of his prosperity. Klausen has shown[423] that this
“aphrodisiac influence” runs in a peculiar manner through many of
the Asiatic legends, both divine and heroic. The Phrygian Midas, or
Gordius, as before recounted, acquires the throne by marriage with a
divinely privileged maiden: the favor shown by Aphroditê to Anchisês,
confers upon the Æneadæ sovereignty in the Troad: moreover, the great
Phrygian and Lydian goddess Rhea or Cybelê has always her favored and
self-devoting youth Atys, who is worshipped along with her, and who
serves as a sort of mediator between her and mankind. The feminine
element appears predominant in Asiatic mythes: Midas, Sardanapalus,
Sandôn, and even Hêraklês,[424] are described as clothed in women’s
attire and working at the loom; while on the other hand the Amazons
and Semiramis achieve great conquests.

[423] See Klausen, Æneas und die Penaten, pp. 34, 110, etc:
compare Menke, Lydiaca, ch. 8, 9.

[424] See the article of O. Müller in the Rheinisch. Museum für
Philologie Jahrgang, iii, pp. 22-38; also Movers, Die Phönizier,
ch. xii, pp. 452-470.

Admitting therefore the historical character of the Lydian kings
called Mermnadæ, beginning with Gygês about 715-690 B. C., and
ending with Crœsus, we find nothing but legend to explain to us the
circumstances which led to their accession. Still less can we make
out anything respecting the preceding kings, or determine whether
Lydia was ever in former times connected with or dependent upon the
kingdom of Assyria, as Ktêsias affirmed.[425] Nor can we certify
the reality or dates of the old Lydian kings named by the native
historian Xanthus,—Alkimus, Kamblês, Adramytês.[426] One piece
of valuable information, however, we acquire from Xanthus,—the
distribution of Lydia into two parts, Lydia proper and Torrhêbia,
which he traces to the two sons of Atys,—Lydus and Torrhêbus; he
states that the dialect of the Lydians and Torrhebians differed much
in the same degree as that of Doric and Ionic Greeks.[427] Torrhêbia
appears to have included the valley of the Kaïster, south of Tmôlus,
and near to the frontiers of Karia.

[425] Diodor. ii, 2. Niebuhr also conceives that Lydia was in
early days a portion of the Assyrian empire (Kleine Schriften, p.
371).

[426] Xanthi Fragment. 10, 12, 19, ed. Didot; Athenæ. x, p. 415;
Nikolaus Damasc. p. 36, Orelli.

[427] Xanthi Fragm. 1, 2; Dionys. Halik. A. R. i, 28; Stephan.
Byz. v. Τόῤῥηβος. The whole genealogy given by Dionysius is
probably borrowed from Xanthus,—Zeus, Manês, Kotys, Asiês and
Atys, Lydus and Torrhêbus.

With Gygês, the Mermnad king, commences the series of aggressions
from Sardis upon the Asiatic Greeks, which ultimately ended in their
subjection. Gygês invaded the territories of Milêtus and Smyrna, and
even took the city, probably not the citadel, of Kolophôn. Though he
thus, however, made war upon the Asiatic Greeks, he was munificent
in his donations to the Grecian god of Delphi, and his numerous
as well as costly offerings were seen in the temple by Herodotus.
Elegiac compositions of the poet Mimnermus celebrated the valor of
the Smyrnæans in their battle with Gygês.[428] We hear also, in a
story which bears the impress of Lydian more than of Grecian fancy,
of a beautiful youth of Smyrna named Magnês, to whom Gygês was
attached, and who incurred the displeasure of his countrymen for
having composed verses in celebration of the victories of the Lydians
over the Amazons. To avenge the ill-treatment received by this youth,
Gygês attacked the territory of Magnêsia (probably Magnêsia on
Sipylus) and after a considerable struggle took the city.[429]

[428] Herod, i, 14; Pausan. ix, 29, 2.

[429] Nikolaus Damasc. p. 52, ed. Orelli.

How far the Lydian kingdom of Sardis extended during the reign of
Gygês, we have no means of ascertaining. Strabo alleges that the
whole Troad[430] belonged to him, and that the Greek settlement
of Abydus on the Hellespont was established by the Milesians only
under his auspices. On what authority this statement is made, we are
not told, and it appears doubtful, especially as so many legendary
anecdotes are connected with the name of Gygês. This prince reigned
(according to Herodotus) thirty-eight years, and was succeeded by
his son Ardys, who reigned forty-nine years (about B. C. 678-629).
We learn that he attacked the Milesians, and took the Ionic city of
Priênê, but this possession cannot have been maintained, for the city
appears afterwards as autonomous.[431] His long reign, however, was
signalized by two events, both of considerable moment to the Asiatic
Greeks; the invasion of the Cimmerians,—and the first approach
to collision, at least the first of which we have any historical
knowledge, between the inhabitants of Lydia and those of Upper Asia
under the Median kings.

[430] Strabo, xiii, p. 590.

[431] Herodot. i, 15.

It is affirmed by all authors that the Medes were originally
numbered among the subjects of the great Assyrian empire, of which
Nineveh—or Ninos, as the Greeks call it—was the chief town, and
Babylon one of the principal portions. That the population and power
of these two great cities, as well as of several others which the
Ten Thousand Greeks in their march found ruined and deserted in
those same regions, is of high antiquity,[432] there is no room for
doubting; but it is noway incumbent upon a historian of Greece to
entangle himself in the mazes of Assyrian chronology, or to weigh the
degree of credit to which the conflicting statements of Herodotus,
Ktêsias, Berosus, Abydênus, etc. are entitled. With the Assyrian
empire,[433]—which lasted, according to Herodotus, five hundred
and twenty years, according to Ktêsias, thirteen hundred and sixty
years,—the Greeks have no ascertainable connection: the city of
Nineveh appears to have been taken by the Medes a little before the
year 600 B. C. (in so far as the chronology can be made out), and
exercised no influence upon Grecian affairs. Those inhabitants of
Upper Asia, with whom the early Greeks had relation, were the Medes,
and the Assyrians or Chaldæans of Babylon,—both originally subject to
the Assyrians of Nineveh,—both afterwards acquiring independence,—and
both ultimately embodied in the Persian empire. At what time
either of them became first independent, we do not know:[434] the
astronomical canon which gives a list of kings of Babylon, beginning
with what is called the era of Nabonassar, or 747 B. C., does not
prove at what epoch these Babylonian chiefs became independent of
Nineveh: and the catalogue of Median kings, which Herodotus begins
with Dêïokês, about 709-711 B. C., is commenced by Ktêsias more than
a century earlier,—moreover, the names in the two lists are different
almost from first to last.

[432] Xenophon, Anabas. iii, 4, 7; 10, 11.

[433] Herodot. i, 95; Ktêsias, Fragm. Assyr. xiii, p. 419,
ed. Bahr; Diodor. ii, 21. Ktêsias gives thirty generations
of Assyrian kings from Ninyas to Sardanapalus: Velleius, 33;
Eusebius, 35; Syncellus, 40; Castor, 27; Cephalion, 23. See
Bahr ad Ctesiam, p. 428. The Babylonian chronology of Berosus
(a priest of Belus, about 280 B. C.) gave 86 kings and 34,000
years from the Deluge to the Median occupation of Babylon; then
1,453 years down to the reign of Phul king of Assyria (Berosi
Fragmenta, p. 8, ed. Richter).

Mr. Clinton sets forth the chief statements and discrepancies
respecting Assyrian chronology in his Appendix, c. 4. But the
suppositions to which he resorts, in order to bring them into
harmony, appear to me uncertified and gratuitous.

Compare the different, but not more successful, track followed by
Larcher (Chronologie, c. 3, pp. 145-157).

[434] Here again both Larcher and Mr. Clinton represent the time,
at which the Medes made themselves independent of Assyria, as
perfectly ascertained, though Larcher places it in 748 B. C., and
Mr. Clinton in 711 B. C. “L’époque ne me paroit pas douteuse,”
(Chronologie, c. iv, p. 157,) says Larcher. Mr. Clinton treats
the epoch of 711 B. C. for the same event, as fixed upon “_the
authority of Scripture_” and reasons upon it in more than one
place as a fact altogether indisputable (Appendix, c. iii, p.
259): “We may collect from Scripture that the Medes did not
become independent till after the death of Sennacherib; and
accordingly Josephus (Ant. x, 2), having related the death of
this king, and the miraculous recovery of Hezekiah from sickness,
adds—ἐν τούτῳ τῷ χρόνῳ συνέβη τὴν τῶν Ἀσσυρίων ἀρχὴν ὑπὸ Μήδων
καταλυθῆναι. But the death of Sennacherib, as will be shown
hereafter, is determined to the beginning of 711 B. C. The Median
revolt, then, did not occur before B. C. 711; which refutes
Conringius, who raises it to B. C. 715, and Valckenaer, who
raises it to B. C. 741. Herodotus, indeed, implies an interval
of some space between the revolt of the Medes and the election
of Dêïokês to be king. But these anni ἀβασίλευτοι could not
have been prior to the fifty-three years of Dêïokês, since the
revolt is _limited by Scripture_ to B. C. 711.” Again, p. 261,
he says, respecting the four Median kings mentioned by Eusebius
before Dêïokês: “If they existed at all, they governed Media
during the empire of the Assyrians, as we _know from Scripture_.”
And again, p. 280: “The precise date of the termination (of the
Assyrian empire) in B. C. 711 is _given by Scripture_, with which
Herodotus agrees,” etc.

Mr. Clinton here treats, more than once, the revolt of the
Medes as fixed to the year 711 B. C. _by Scripture_; but he
produces no passage of Scripture to justify his allegation: and
the passage which he cites from Josephus alludes, not to the
Median revolt, but to the destruction of the Assyrian empire by
the Medes. Herodotus represents the Medes as revolting from the
Assyrian empire, and maintaining their independence for some time
(undefined in extent) before the election of Dêïokês as king;
but he gives us no means of determining the date of the _Median
revolt_; and when Mr. Clinton says (p. 280, Note O.): “I suppose
Herodotus to place the revolt of the Medes in Olymp. 17, 2, since
he places the accession of Dêïokês in Olymp. 17, 3,”—this is
a conjecture of his own: and the narrative of Herodotus seems
plainly to imply that he conceived an interval far greater than
one year between these two events. Diodorus gives the same
interval as lasting “for many generations.” (Diod. ii, 32.)

We know—both from Scripture and from the Phœnician annals, as
cited by Josephus—that the Assyrians of Nineveh were powerful
conquerors in Syria, Judæa, and Phœnicia, during the reigns of
Salmaneser and Sennacherib: the statement of Josephus farther
implies that Media was subject to Salmaneser, who took the
Israelites from their country into Media and Persis, and brought
the Cuthæans out of Media and Persis into the lands of the
Israelites (Joseph. ix, 14, 1; x, 9, 7). We know farther, that
after Sennacherib, the Assyrians of Nineveh are no more mentioned
as invaders or disturbers of Syria or Judæa; the Chaldæans or
Babylonians become then the enemies whom those countries have
to dread. Josephus tells us, that at this epoch the Assyrian
empire was destroyed by the Medes,—or, as he says in another
place, by the Medes and Babylonians (x, 2, 2; x, 5, 1). This is
good evidence for believing that the Assyrian empire of Nineveh
sustained at this time a great shock and diminution of power;
but as to the nature of this diminution, and the way in which it
was brought about, it appears to me that there is a discrepancy
of authorities which we have no means of reconciling,—Josephus
follows the same view as Ktêsias, of the destruction of the
empire of Nineveh by the Medes and Babylonians united, while
Herodotus conceives successive revolts of the territories
dependent upon Nineveh, beginning with that of the Medes, and
still leaving Nineveh flourishing and powerful in its own
territory: he farther conceives Nineveh as taken by Kyaxarês
the Mede, about the year 600 B. C., without any mention of
Babylonians,—on the contrary, in his representation, Nitokris the
queen of Babylon is afraid of the Medes (i, 185), partly from
the general increase of their power, but especially from their
having taken Nineveh (though Mr. Clinton tells us, p. 275, that
“Nineveh was destroyed B. C. 606, as we have seen from the united
testimonies of the Scripture and Herodotus, _by the Medes and
Babylonians_.”)

Construing fairly the text of Herodotus, it will appear that he
conceived the relations of these Oriental kingdoms between 800
and 560 B. C. differently on many material points from Ktêsias,
or Berosus, or Josephus: and he himself expressly tells us, that
he heard “four different tales” even respecting Cyrus (i, 95);
much more, respecting events anterior to Cyrus by more than a
century.

The chronology of the Medes, Babylonians, Lydians, and Greeks
in Asia, when we come to the seventh century B. C., acquires
some fixed points which give us assurance of correctness within
certain limits; but above the year 700 B. C. no such fixed points
can be detected. We cannot discriminate the historical from the
mythical in our authorities,—we cannot reconcile them with each
other, except by violent changes and conjectures,—nor can we
determine which of them ought to be set aside in favor of the
other. The names and dates of the Babylonian kings down from
Nabonassar, in the Canon of Ptolemy, are doubtless authentic,
but they are names and dates only: when we come to apply them
to illustrate real or supposed matters of fact, drawn from
other sources, they only create a new embarrassment, for even
the _names_ of the kings as reported by different authors do
not agree and Mr. Clinton informs us (p. 277): “In tracing the
identity of Eastern kings, the times and the transactions are
better guides than the names; for these, from many well-known
causes (as the changes which they undergo in passing through
the Greek language, and the substitution of a title or an
epithet for the name), are variously reported, so that _the same
king frequently appears under many different appellations_.”
Here, then, is a new problem: we are to employ “the times and
transactions” to identify the kings: but unfortunately the
_times_ are marked only by the succession of kings, and the
_transactions_ are known only by statements always scanty and
often irreconcilable with each other. So that our means of
identifying the kings are altogether insufficient, and whoever
will examine the process of identification as it appears in
Mr. Clinton’s chapters, will see that it is in a high degree
arbitrary; more arbitrary still are the processes which he
employs for bringing about a forced harmony between discrepant
authorities. Nor is Volney (Chronologie d’Hérodote, vol. i, pp.
383-429) more satisfactory in his chronological results.

For the historian of Greece, the Medes first begin to acquire
importance about 656 B. C., under a king whom Herodotus calls
Phraortês, son of Dêïokês. Respecting Dêïokês himself, Herodotus
recounts to us how he came to be first chosen king.[435] The seven
tribes of Medes dwelt dispersed in separate villages, without any
common authority, and the mischiefs of anarchy were painfully felt
among them: Dêïokês having acquired great reputation in his own
village as a just man, was invoked gradually by all the adjoining
villages to settle their disputes. As soon as his efficiency in this
vocation, and the improvement which he brought about, had become
felt throughout all the tribes, he artfully threw up his post and
retired again into privacy,—upon which the evils of anarchy revived
in a manner more intolerable than before. The Medes had now no
choice except to elect a king,—the friends of Dêïokês expatiated
warmly upon his virtues, and he was the person chosen.[436] The
first step of the new king was to exact from the people a body of
guards selected by himself; next, he commanded them to build the city
of Ekbatana, upon a hill surrounded with seven concentric circles
of walls, his own palace being at the top and in the innermost. He
farther organized the scheme of Median despotism; the king, though
his person was constantly secluded in his fortified palace, inviting
written communications from all aggrieved persons, and administering
to each the decision or the redress which it required,—informing
himself, moreover, of passing events by means of ubiquitous spies and
officials, who seized all wrong-doers and brought them to the palace
for condign punishment. Dêïokês farther constrained the Medes to
abandon their separate abodes and concentrate themselves in Ekbatana,
from whence all the powers of government branched out; and the seven
distinct fortified circles in the town, coinciding as they do with
the number of the Median tribes, were probably conceived by Herodotus
as intended each for one distinct tribe,—the tribe of Dêïokês
occupying the innermost along with himself.[437]

[435] Herodot. i, 96-100.

[436] Herodot. i, 97. ὡς δ᾽ ἐγὼ δοκέω, μάλιστα ἔλεγον οἱ τοῦ
Δηϊόκεω φίλοι, etc.

[437] Herodot. i, 98, 99, 100. Οἰκοδομηθέντων δὲ πάντων, κόσμον
τόνδε Δηϊόκης πρῶτός ἐστιν ὁ καταστησάμενος· μήτε ἐσιέναι παρὰ
βασιλέα μηδένα, δι᾽ ἀγγέλων δὲ πάντα χρέεσθαι, ὁρᾶσθαι δὲ βασιλέα
ὑπὸ μηδενός· πρὸς δὲ τούτοισι ἔτι γελᾷν τε καὶ πτύειν ἄντιον, καὶ
ἅπασι εἶναι τοῦτό γε αἰσχρόν, etc. and ... οἱ κατάσκοποί τε καὶ
κατήκοοι ἦσαν ἀνὰ πᾶσαν τὴν χώρην τῆς ἦρχε.

Except the successive steps of this well-laid political plan, we
hear of no other acts ascribed to Dêïokês: he is said to have
held the government for fifty-three years, and then dying, was
succeeded by his son Phraortês. Of the real history of Dêïokês, we
cannot be said to know anything. For the interesting narrative of
Herodotus, of which the above is an abridgment, presents to us in
all its points Grecian society and ideas, not Oriental: it is like
the discussion which the historian ascribes to the seven Persian
conspirators, previous to the accession of Darius,—whether they
shall adopt an oligarchical, a democratical, or a monarchical form
of government;[438] or it may be compared, perhaps more aptly still,
to the Cyropædia of Xenophon, who beautifully and elaborately works
out an ideal which Herodotus exhibits in brief outline. The story
of Dêïokês describes what may be called the despot’s progress, first
as candidate, and afterwards as fully established. Amidst the active
political discussion carried on by intelligent Greeks in the days
of Herodotus, there were doubtless many stories of the successful
arts of ambitious despots, and much remark as to the probable means
conducive to their success, of a nature similar to those in the
Politics of Aristotle: one of these tales Herodotus has employed to
decorate the birth and infancy of the Median monarchy. His Dêïokês
begins like a clever Greek among other Greeks, equal, free, and
disorderly. He is athirst for despotism from the beginning, and is
forward in manifesting his rectitude and justice, “as beseems a
candidate for command;”[439] he passes into a despot by the public
vote, and receives what to the Greeks was the great symbol and
instrument of such transition, a personal body-guard; he ends by
organizing both the machinery and the etiquette of a despotism in
the Oriental fashion, like the Cyrus of Xenophon,[440] only that
both these authors maintain the superiority of their Grecian ideal
over Oriental reality by ascribing both to Dêïokês and Cyrus a
just, systematic, and laborious administration, such as their own
experience did not present to them in Asia. Probably Herodotus
had visited Ekbatana (which he describes and measures like an
eye-witness, comparing its circuit to that of Athens), and there
heard that Dêïokês was the builder of the city, the earliest known
Median king, and the first author of those public customs which
struck him as peculiar, after the revolt from Assyria: the interval
might then be easily filled up, between Median autonomy and Median
despotism, by intermediate incidents, such as would have accompanied
that transition in the longitude of Greece. The features of these
inhabitants of Upper Asia, for a thousand years forward from the
time at which we are now arrived,—under the descendants of Dêïokês,
of Cyrus, of Arsakês, and of Ardshir,—are so unvarying,[441] that we
are much assisted in detecting those occasions in which Herodotus or
others infuse into their history indigenous Grecian ideas.

[438] Herodot. iii, 80-82. Herodotus, while he positively asserts
the genuineness of these deliberations, lets drop the intimation
that many of his contemporaries regarded them as of Grecian
coinage.

[439] Herodot. i, 96. Ἐόντων δὲ αὐτονόμων πάντων ἀνὰ τὴν ἤπειρον,
ὧδε αὖτις ἐς τυραννίδας περιῆλθον. Ἀνὴρ ἐν τοῖσι Μήδοισι ἐγένετο
σοφὸς, τῷ οὔνομα ἦν Δηϊόκης.... Οὗτος ὁ Δηϊόκης, ἐρασθεὶς
τυραννίδος, ἐποίεε τοιάδε, etc.... Ὁ δὲ δὴ, οἷα μνεώμενος ἀρχὴν,
ἰθύς τε καὶ δίκαιος ἦν.

[440] Compare the chapters above referred to in Herodotus with
the eighth book of the Cyropædia, wherein Xenophon describes
the manner in which the Median despotism was put in effective
order and turned to useful account by Cyrus, especially the
arrangements for imposing on the imagination of his subjects
(καταγοητεύειν, viii, 1, 40)—(it is a small thing, but marks
the cognate plan of Herodotus and Xenophon). Dêïokês forbids
his subjects to laugh or spit in his presence. Cyrus also
directs that no one shall spit, or wipe his nose, or turn
round to look at anything, when the king is present (Herodot.
i, 99; Xen. Cyrop. viii, 1, 42). Again, viii, 3, 1, about the
pompous procession of Cyrus when he rides out,—καὶ γὰρ αὐτῆς
τῆς ἐξελάσεως ἡ σεμνότης ἡμῖν δοκεῖ μία τῶν τεχνῶν εἶναι τῶν
μεμηχανημένων, τὴν ἀρχὴν μὴ εὐκαταφρόνητον εἶναι—analogous to
the Median Dêïokês in Herodotus—Ταῦτα δὲ περὶ ἑωυτὸν ἐσέμνυνε
τῶνδε εἵνεκεν, etc. _Cyrus_—ἐμφανίζων δὲ καὶ τοῦτο ὅτι περὶ
πολλοῦ ἐποιεῖτο, μηδένα μήτε φίλον ἀδικεῖν μήτε σύμμαχον, ἀλλὰ
τὸ δίκαιον ἰσχυρῶς ὁρῶν (Cyrop. viii, 1, 26). _Dêïokês_—ἦν τὸ
δίκαιον φυλάσσων χαλεπός (Herodot. i, 100). _Cyrus_ provides
numerous persons who serve to him as eyes and ears throughout the
country (Cyrop. viii, 2, 12), _Dêïokês_ has many κατάσκοποι and
κατήκοοι (Herodot. _ib._).

[441] When the Roman emperor Claudius sends the young Parthian
prince Meherdatês, who had been an hostage at Rome, to occupy
the kingdom which the Parthian envoys tendered to him, he gives
him some good advice, conceived in the school of Greek and Roman
politics: “Addidit præcepta, ut non dominationem ac servos, sed
rectorem et cives, cogitaret: clementiamque ac justitiam quanto
ignara barbaris, tanto toleratiora, capesseret.” (Tacit, Annal.
xii, 11.)

Phraortês (658-636 B. C.), having extended the dominion of the Medes
over a large portion of Upper Asia, and conquered both the Persians
and several other nations, was ultimately defeated and slain in a
war against the Assyrians of Nineveh: who, though deprived of their
external dependencies, were yet brave and powerful by themselves. His
son Kyaxarês (636-595 B. C.) followed up with still greater energy
the same plans of conquest, and is said to have been the first who
introduced any organization into the military force;—before his
time, archers, spearmen, and cavalry had been confounded together
indiscriminately, until this monarch established separate divisions
for each. He extended the Median dominion to the eastern bank of the
Halys, which river afterwards, by the conquests of the Lydian king
Crœsus, became the boundary between the Lydian and Median empires;
and he carried on war for six years with Alyattês king of Lydia,
in consequence of the refusal of the latter to give up a band of
Scythian nomads, who, having quitted the territory of Kyaxarês in
order to escape severities with which they were menaced, had sought
refuge as suppliants in Lydia.[442] The war, indecisive as respects
success, was brought to its close by a remarkable incident: in
the midst of a battle between the Median and Lydian armies, there
happened a total eclipse of the sun, which occasioned equal alarm to
both parties, and induced them immediately to cease hostilities.[443]
The Kilikian prince Syennesis, and the Babylonian prince Labynêtus,
interposed their mediation, and effected a reconciliation between
Kyaxarês and Alyattês, one of the conditions of which was, that
Alyattês gave his daughter Aryênis in marriage to Astyagês son of
Kyaxarês. In this manner began the connection between the Lydian and
Median kings which afterwards proved so ruinous to Crœsus. It is
affirmed that the Greek philosopher Thalês foretold this eclipse;
but we may reasonably consider the supposed prediction as not less
apocryphal than some others ascribed to him, and doubt whether at
that time any living Greek possessed either knowledge or scientific
capacity sufficient for such a calculation.[444] The eclipse itself,
and its terrific working upon the minds of the combatants, are facts
not to be called in question; though the diversity of opinion among
chronologists, respecting the date of it, is astonishing.[445]

[442] The passage of such nomadic hordes from one government in
the East to another, has been always, and is even down to the
present day, a frequent cause of dispute between the different
governments: they are valuable both as tributaries and as
soldiers. The Turcoman Ilats—so these nomadic tribes are now
called—in the north-east of Persia frequently pass backwards and
forwards, as their convenience suits, from the Persian territory
to the Usbeks of Khiva and Bokhara: wars between Persia and
Russia have been in like manner occasioned by the transit of the
Ilats across the frontier from Persia into Georgia: so also the
Kurd tribes near Mount Zagros have caused by their movements
quarrels between the Persians and the Turks.

See Morier, Account of the Iliyats, or Wandering Tribes of
Persia, in the Journal of the Geographical Society of London,
1837, vol. vii, p. 240, and Carl Ritter, Erdkunde von Asien,
West-Asien, Band ii, Abtheilung ii, Abschnitt ii, sect. 8, p. 387.

[443] Herodot. i, 74-103.

[444] Compare the analogous case of the prediction of the coming
olive crop ascribed to Thalês (Aristot. Polit. i, 4, 5; Cicero,
De Divinat. i, 3). Anaxagoras is asserted to have predicted the
fall of an aërolithe (Aristot. Meteorol. i, 7; Pliny, H. N. ii,
58; Plutarch, Lysand. c. 5).

Thalês is said by Herodotus to have predicted that the eclipse
would take place “in the year in which it actually did occur,”—a
statement so vague that it strengthens the grounds of doubt.

The fondness of the Ionians for exhibiting the wisdom of their
eminent philosopher Thalês, in conjunction with the history of
the Lydian kings, may be seen farther in the story of Thalês and
Crœsus at the river Halys (Herod. i, 75),—a story which Herodotus
himself disbelieves.

[445] Consult, for the chronological views of these events,
Larcher ad Herodot. i, 74; Volney, Recherches sur l’Histoire
Ancienne, vol. i, pp. 330-355; Mr. Fynes Clinton, Fasti
Hellenici, vol. i, p. 418 (Note ad B. C. 617, 2); Des Vignoles,
Chronologie de l’Histoire Sainte, vol. ii, p. 245; Ideler,
Handbuch der Chronologie, vol. i, p. 209.

No less than eight different dates have been assigned by
different chronologists for this eclipse,—the most ancient
625 B. C., the most recent 583 B. C. Volney is for 625 B. C.;
Larcher for 597 B. C.; Des Vignoles for 585 B. C.; Mr. Clinton
for 603 B. C. Volney observes, with justice, that the eclipse
on this occasion “n’est pas l’accessoire, la broderie du fait,
mais le _fait principal_ lui-même,” (p. 347:) the astronomical
calculations concerning the eclipse are, therefore, by far the
most important items in the chronological reckoning of this
event. Now in regard to the eclipse of 625 B. C., Volney is
obliged to admit that it does not suit the case; for it would
be visible only at half-past five in the morning on February 3,
and the sun would hardly be risen at that hour in the latitude
of Media and Lydia (p. 343). He seeks to escape from this
difficulty by saying that the data for the calculation, according
to the astronomer Pingré, are not quite accurate for these early
eclipses; but after all, if there be error, it may just as well
be in one direction as in another, _i. e._ the true hour at which
the eclipse would be visible for those latitudes is as likely
to have been _earlier_ than half-past five A. M. as to have
been later, which would put this eclipse still more out of the
question.

The chronology of that period presents difficulties which our
means of knowledge hardly enable us to clear up. Volney remarks,
and the language of Herodotus is with him, that not merely the
war between Kyaxarês and Alyattês (which lasted five years,
and was terminated by the eclipse), but also the conquest made
by Kyaxarês of the territory up to the river Halys, took place
anterior (Herodot. i, 103: compare i, 16) to the _first siege_
of Nineveh by Kyaxarês,—that siege which he was forced to raise
by the inroad of the Scythians. This constitutes a strong
presumption in favor of Volney’s date for the eclipse (625 B.
C.) if astronomical considerations would admit of it, which they
will not. Mr. Clinton, on the other hand, puts the first siege of
Nineveh in the very first year of the reign of Kyaxarês, which is
not to be reconciled with the language of Herodotus. In placing
the eclipse, therefore, in 603 B. C., we depart from the relative
arrangement of events which Herodotus conceived, in deference
to astronomical reasons: and Herodotus is our only authority in
regard to the general chronology.

According to Ideler, however (and his authority upon such a point
is conclusive, in my judgment), astronomical considerations
decisively fix this eclipse for the 30th September 610 B. C., and
exclude all those other eclipses which have been named. Recent
and more trustworthy calculations made by Oltmanns, from the
newest astronomical tables, have shown that the eclipse of 610 B.
C. fulfils the conditions required, and that the other eclipses
named do not. For a place situated in 40° N. lat. and 36° E.
long. this eclipse was nearly total, only one-eightieth of the
sun’s disc remaining luminous: the darkness thus occasioned would
be sufficient to cause great terror. (Ideler, Handbuch, _l. c._)

Since the publication of my first edition, I have been apprized
that the late Mr. Francis Baily had already settled the date of
this eclipse to the 30th of September 610 B. C., in his first
contribution to the Transactions of the Royal Society as long
ago as 1811,—much before the date of the publication of Ideler’s
Handbuch der Chronologie. Sir John Herschel (in his Memoir of
Mr. Francis Baily, in the Transactions of the Royal Astronomical
Society, vol. xv, p. 311), after completely approving Mr. Baily’s
calculations, and stating that he had been the first to solve the
disputed question, expresses his surprise that various French
and German astronomers, writing on the same subject afterwards,
have taken no notice of “that remarkable paper.” Though a
fellow-countryman of Mr. Baily, I am sorry that I have to plead
guilty to a similar ignorance, until the point was specially
brought to my notice by a friend. Had I been aware of the paper
and the Memoir, it would have been unnecessary to cite any other
authority than that of Mr. Baily and Sir John Herschel.

It was after this peace with Alyattês, as far as we can make out
the series of events in Herodotus, that Kyaxarês collected all his
forces and laid siege to Nineveh, but was obliged to desist by the
unexpected inroad of the Scythians. Nearly at the same time that
Upper Asia was desolated by these formidable nomads, Asia Minor too
was overrun by other nomads,—the Cimmerians,—Ardys being then king of
Lydia; and the two invasions, both spreading extreme disaster, are
presented to us as indirectly connected together in the way of cause
and effect.

The name Cimmerians appears in the Odyssey,—the fable describes
them as dwelling beyond the ocean-stream, immersed in darkness and
unblessed by the rays of Helios. Of this people as existent we can
render no account, for they had passed away, or lost their identity
and become subject, previous to the commencement of trustworthy
authorities: but they seem to have been the chief occupants of
the Tauric Chersonesus (Crimea) and of the territory between that
peninsula and the river Tyras (Dniester), at the time when the Greeks
first commenced their permanent settlements on those coasts in the
seventh century B. C. The numerous localities which bore their name,
even in the time of Herodotus,[446] after they had ceased to exist
as a nation,—as well as the tombs of the Cimmerian kings then shown
near the Tyras,—sufficiently attest this fact; and there is reason
to believe that they were—like their conquerors and successors the
Scythians—a nomadic people, mare-milkers, moving about with their
tents and herds, suitably to the nature of those unbroken steppes
which their territory presented, and which offered little except
herbage in profusion. Strabo tells us[447]—on what authority we do
not know—that they, as well as the Trêres and other Thracians, had
desolated Asia Minor more than once before the time of Ardys, and
even earlier than Homer.

[446] Herodot. iv, 11-12. Hekatæus also spoke of a town Κιμμερίς
(Strabo, vii, p. 294).

Respecting the Cimmerians, consult Ukert, Skythien, p. 360,
_seqq._

[447] Strabo, i, pp. 6, 59, 61.

The Cimmerians thus belong partly to legend partly to history; but
the Scythians formed for several centuries an important section of
the Grecian contemporary world. Their name, unnoticed by Homer,
occurs for the first time in the Hesiodic poems. When the Homeric
Zeus in the Iliad turns his eye away from Troy towards Thrace, he
sees, besides the Thracians and Mysians, other tribes, whose names
cannot be made out, but whom the poet knows as milk-eaters and
mare-milkers;[448] and the same characteristic attributes, coupled
with that of “having wagons for their dwelling-houses,” appear in
Hesiod connected with the name of the Scythians.[449] The navigation
of the Greeks into the Euxine, gradually became more and more
frequent, and during the last half of the seventh century B. C. their
first settlements on its coasts were established. The foundation of
Byzantium, as well as of the Pontic Herakleia, at a short distance
to the east of the Thracian Bosphorus, by the Megarians, is assigned
to the 30th Olympiad, or 658 B. C.;[450] and the succession of
colonies founded by the enterprise of Milesian citizens on the
western coast of the Euxine, seem to fall not very long after this
date,—at least within the following century. Istria, Tyras, and
Olbia, or Borysthenes, were planted respectively near the mouths of
the three great rivers Danube, Dniester, and Bog: Kruni, Odêssus,
Tomi, Kallatis, and Apollonia, were also planted on the south-western
or Thracian coast, northward of the dangerous land of Salmydessus, so
frequent in wrecks, but south of the Danube.[451] According to the
turn of Grecian religious faith, the colonists took out with them
the worship of the hero Achilles (from whom, perhaps, the œkist and
some of the expatriating chiefs professed to be descended), which
they established with great solemnity both in the various towns
and on the small adjoining islands: and the earliest proof which
we find of Scythia, as a territory familiar to Grecian ideas and
feeling, is found in a fragment of the poet Alkæus (about B. C. 600),
wherein he addresses Achilles[452] as “sovereign of Scythia.” There
were, besides, several other Milesian foundations on or near the
Tauric Chersonese (Crimea) which brought the Greeks into conjunction
with the Scythians,—Herakleia, Chersonêsus, and Theodosia, on the
southern coast and south-western corner of the peninsula,—Pantikapæum
and the Teian colony of Phanagoria (these two on the European and
Asiatic sides of the Cimmerian Bosphorus respectively), and Kêpi,
Hermônassa, etc. not far from Phanagoria, on the Asiatic coast of the
Euxine: last of all, there was, even at the extremity of the Palus
Mæotis (Sea of Azof), the Grecian settlement of Tanais.[453] All or
most of these seem to have been founded during the course of the
sixth century B. C., though the precise dates of most of them cannot
be named; probably several of them anterior to the time of the mystic
poet Aristeas of Prokonnêsus, about 540 B. C. His long voyage from
the Palus Mæotis (Sea of Azof) into the interior of Asia as far as
the country of the Issêdones (described in a poem, now lost, called
the Arimaspian verses), implies an habitual intercourse between
Scythians and Greeks which could not well have existed without
Grecian establishments on the Cimmerian Bosphorus.

[448] Homer, Iliad, xiii, 4.—

... Αὐτὸς δὲ πάλιν τρέπεν ὄσσε φαεινὼ,
Νόσφιν ἐφ᾽ ἱπποπόλων Θρῃκῶν καθορώμενος αἶαν
Μυσῶν τ᾽ ἀγχεμάχων, καὶ ἀγαυῶν Ἱππημολγῶν,
Γλακτοφάγων, Ἀβίων τε, δικαιοτάτων ἀνθρώπων.

Compare Strabo, xii, p. 553.

[449] Hesiod, Fragm. 63-64, Marktscheffel:—

Γλακτοφάγων εἰς αἶαν, ἀπήναις οἴκι᾽ ἐχόντων ...
Αἰθίοπας, Δίγυάς τε, ἰδὲ Σκύθας ἱππημολγούς.

Strabo, vii, pp. 300-302.

[450] Raoul Rochette, Histoire des Colonies Grecques, tom. iii,
ch. xiv, p. 297. The dates of these Grecian settlements near the
Danube are very vague and untrustworthy.

[451] Skymnus Chius, v, 730, Fragm. 2-25.

[452] Alkæus, Fragm. 49, Bergk; Eustath. ad Dionys. Perieg. 306.—

Ἀχιλλεῦ, ὃ τᾶς (γᾶς, Schneid.) Σκυθικᾶς μέδεις.

Alkman, somewhat earlier, made mention of the Issêdones (Alkm.
Frag. 129, Bergk; Steph. Byz. v. Ἰσσήδονες,—he called them
Assêdones) and of the Rhipæan mountains (Fr. 80).

In the old epic of Arktinus, the deceased Achilles is transported
to an elysium in the λευκὴ νῆσος (see the argument of the
Æthiopis in Düntzer’s Collection of Epicc. Poet. Græc. p. 15),
but it may well be doubted whether λευκὴ νῆσος in his poem was
anything but a fancy,—not yet localized upon the little island
off the mouth of the Danube.

For the early allusions to the Pontus Euxinus and its neighboring
inhabitants, found in the Greek poets, see Ukert, Skythien, pp.
15-18, 78; though he puts the Ionian colonies in the Pontus
nearly a century too early, in my judgment.

[453] Compare Dr. Clarke’s description of the present commerce
between Taganrock—not far from the ancient Greek settlement of
Tanais—and the Archipelago: besides exporting salt-fish, corn,
leather, etc. in exchange for wines, fruit, etc. it is the great
deposit of Siberian productions: from Orenburg it receives
tallow, furs, iron, etc; this is, doubtless, as old as Herodotus
(Clarke’s Travels in Russia, ch. xv, p. 330).

Hekatæus of Milêtus,[454] appears to have given much geographical
information respecting the Scythian tribes; but Herodotus, who
personally visited the town of Olbia, together with the inland
regions adjoining to it, and probably other Grecian settlements in
the Euxine (at a time which we may presume to have been about 450-440
B. C.),—and who conversed with both Scythians and Greeks competent
to give him information,—has left us far more valuable statements
respecting the Scythian people, dominion, and manners, as they stood
in his day. His conception of the Scythians, as well as that of
Hippokratês, is precise and well-defined,—very different from that
of the later authors, who use the word almost indiscriminately to
denote all barbarous nomads. His territory, called Scythia, is a
square area, twenty days’ journey or four thousand stadia (somewhat
less than five hundred English miles) in each direction,—bounded by
the Danube (the course of which river he conceives in a direction
from N. W. to S. E.), the Euxine, and the Palus Mæotis with the
river Tanais, on three sides respectively,—and on the fourth or
north side by the nations called Agathyrsi, Neuri, Androphagi, and
Melanchlæni.[455] However imperfect his idea of the figure of this
territory may be found, if we compare it with a good modern map,
the limits which he gives us are beyond dispute: from the lower
Danube and the mountains eastward of Transylvania to the lower
Tanais, the whole area was either occupied by or subject to the
Scythians. And this name comprised tribes differing materially in
habits and civilization. The great mass of the people who bore it,
strictly nomadic in their habits,—neither sowing nor planting, but
living only on food derived from animals, especially mare’s milk
and cheese,—moved from place to place, carrying their families
in wagons covered with wicker and leather, themselves always on
horseback with their flocks and herds, between the Borysthenês and
the Palus Mæotis; they hardly even reached so far westward as the
Borysthenês, since a river (not easily identified) which Herodotus
calls Pantikapês, flowing into the Borysthenês from the eastward,
formed their boundary. These nomads were the genuine Scythians,
possessing the marked attributes of the race, and including among
their number the regal Scythians,[456]—hordes so much more populous
and more effective in war than the rest, as to maintain undisputed
ascendency, and to account all other Scythians no better than their
slaves. It was to these that the Scythian kings belonged, by whom
the religious and political unity of the name was maintained,—each
horde having its separate chief, and to a certain extent separate
worship and customs. But besides these nomads, there were also
agricultural Scythians, with fixed abodes, living more or less upon
bread, and raising corn for exportation, along the banks of the
Borysthenês and the Hypanis.[457] And such had been the influence of
the Grecian settlement of Olbia at the mouth of the latter river in
creating new tastes and habits, that two tribes on its western banks,
the Kallippidæ and the Alazônes, had become completely accustomed
both to tillage and to vegetable food, and had in other respects
so much departed from their Scythian rudeness as to be called
Hellenic-Scythians, many Greeks being seemingly domiciled among
them. Northward of the Alazônes, lay those called the agricultural
Scythians, who sowed corn, not for food but for sale.[458]

[454] Hekatæi Fragment. Fr. 153, 168, ed. Klausen. Hekatæus
mentioned the Issêdones (Fr. 168; Steph. Byz. v. Ἰσσήδονες);
both he and Damastês seem to have been familiar with the poem of
Aristeas: see Klausen, _ad loc._; Steph. Byz. v. Ὑπερβόρειοι.
Compare also Æschyl. Prometh. 409, 710, 805.

Hellanikus, also, seems to have spoken about Scythia in a manner
generally conformable to Herodotus (Strabo, xii, p. 550). It
does little credit to the discernment of Strabo that he treats
with disdain the valuable Scythian chapter of Herodotus,—ἅπερ
Ἑλλάνικος καὶ Ἡρόδοτος καὶ Εὔδοξος ~κατεφλυάρησαν~ ἡμῶν (_ib._).

[455] Herodot. iv, 100-101. See, respecting the Scythia of
Herodotus, the excellent dissertation of Niebuhr, contained in
his Kleine Historische Schriften, “Ueber die Geschichte der
Skythen, Geten, und Sarmaten,” p. 360, alike instructive both
as to the geography and the history. Also the two chapters in
Völcker’s Mythische Geographie, ch. vii-viii, sects. 23-26,
respecting the geographical conceptions present to Herodotus in
his description of Scythia.

Herodotus has much in his Scythian geography, however, which
no comment can enable us to understand. Compared with his
predecessors, his geographical conceptions evince very great
improvement; but we shall have occasion, in the course of this
history, to notice memorable examples of extreme misapprehension
in regard to distance and bearings in these remote regions,
common to him not only with his contemporaries, but also with his
successors.

[456] Herodot. iv, 17-21, 46-56; Hippokratês, De Aëre, Locis et
Aquis, c. vi; Æschyl. Prometh. 709; Justin, ii, 2.

It is unnecessary to multiply citations respecting nomadic
life, the same under such wide differences both of time and
of latitude,—the same with the “armentarius Afer” of Virgil
(Georgic, iii, 343) and the “campestres Scythæ” of Horace (Ode
iii, 24, 12), and the Tartars of the present day; see Dr.
Clarke’s Travels in Russia, ch. xiv, p. 310.

The fourth book of Herodotus, the Tristia and Epistolæ ex Ponto
of Ovid, the Toxaris of Lucian (see c. 36, vol. i, p. 544
Hemst.), and the Inscription of Olbia (No. 2058 in Boeckh’s
Collection), convey a genuine picture of Scythian manners as
seen by the near observer and resident, very different from the
pleasing fancies of the distant poet respecting the innocence of
pastoral life. The poisoned arrows, which Ovid so much complains
of in the Sarmatians and Getæ (Trist. iii, 10, 60, among other
passages, and Lucan, iii, 270), are not noticed by Herodotus in
the Scythians.

The dominant Golden Horde among the Tartars, in the time of
Zinghis Khan, has been often spoken of; and among the different
Arab tribes now in Algeria, some are noble, others enslaved;
the latter habitually, and by inheritance, servants of the
former, following wherever ordered (Tableau de la Situation des
Établissemens Français en Algérie, p. 393, Paris, Mar. 1846).

[457] Ephorus placed the Karpidæ immediately north of the Danube
(Fragm. 78, Marx; Skymn. Chius, 102). I agree with Niebuhr that
this is probably an inaccurate reproduction of the Kallippidæ of
Herodotus, though Boeckh is of a different opinion (Introduct. ad
Inscriptt. Sarmatic. Corpus Inscript. part xi, p. 81). The vague
and dreamy statements of Ephorus, so far as we know them from the
fragments, contrast unfavorably with the comparative precision of
Herodotus. The latter expressly separates the Androphagi from the
Scythians,—ἔθνος ἐὸν ἴδιον καὶ οὐδαμῶς Σκυθικόν (iv, 18), whereas
when we compare Strabo vii. p. 302 and Skymn. Chi. 105-115,
we see that Ephorus talked of the Androphagi as a variety of
Scythians,—ἔθνος ἀνδροφάγων Σκυθῶν.

The valuable inscription from Olbia (No. 2058 Boeckh) recognizes
Μιξέλληνες near that town.

[458] Herod. iv, 17. We may illustrate this statement of
Herodotus by an extract from Heber’s journal as cited in Dr.
Clarke’s Travels, ch. xv, p. 337: “The Nagay Tartars begin to the
west of Marinopol: they cultivate a good deal of corn, yet they
dislike bread as an article of food.”

Such stationary cultivators were doubtless regarded by the
predominant mass of the Scythians as degenerate brethren; and some
historians maintain that they belonged to a foreign race, standing
to the Scythians merely in the relation of subjects,[459]—an
hypothesis contradicted implicitly, if not directly, by the words of
Herodotus, and no way necessary in the present case. It is not from
them, however, that Herodotus draws his vivid picture of the people,
with their inhuman rites and repulsive personal features. It is the
purely nomadic Scythians whom he depicts, the earliest specimens of
the Mongolian race (so it seems probable)[460] known to history,
and prototypes of the Huns and Bulgarians of later centuries. The
sword, in the literal sense of the word, was their chief god,[461]—an
iron scymetar solemnly elevated upon a wide and lofty platform,
which was supported on masses of fagots piled underneath,—to whom
sheep, horses, and a portion of their prisoners taken in war, were
offered up in sacrifice: Herodotus treats this sword as the image
of the god Arês, thus putting an Hellenic interpretation upon that
which he describes literally as a barbaric rite. The scalps and
the skins of slain enemies, and sometimes the skull formed into a
drinking-cup, constituted the decoration of a Scythian warrior:
whoever had not slain an enemy, was excluded from participation in
the annual festival and bowl of wine prepared by the chief of each
separate horde. The ceremonies which took place during the sickness
and funeral obsequies of the Scythian kings (who were buried at
Gerrhi, at the extreme point to which navigation extended up the
Borysthenês), partook of the same sanguinary disposition. It was
the Scythian practice to put out the eyes of all their slaves;
and the awkwardness of the Scythian frame, often overloaded with
fat, together with extreme dirt of body, and the absence of all
discriminating feature between one man and another, complete the
brutish portrait.[462] Mare’s milk (with cheese made from it) seems
to have been their chief luxury, and probably served the same purpose
of procuring the intoxicating drink called _kumiss_, as at present
among the Bashkirs and the Kalmucks.[463]

[459] Niebuhr (Dissertat. _ut sup._ p. 360), Boeckh (Introd.
Inscrip. _ut sup._ p. 110), and Ritter (Vorhalle der Geschichte,
p. 316) advance this opinion. But we ought not on this occasion
to depart from the authority of Herodotus, whose information
respecting the people of Scythia, collected by himself on the
spot, is one of the most instructive and precious portions of his
whole work. He is very careful to distinguish what is Scythian
from what is not: and these tribes, which Niebuhr (contrary
to the sentiment of Herodotus) imagines _not_ to be Scythian,
were the tribes nearest and best known to him; probably he had
personally visited them, since we know that he went up the river
Hypanis (Bog) as high as the Exampæus, four days’ journey from
the sea (iv, 52-81).

That some portions of the same ἔθνος should be ἀροτῆρες, and
other portions νόμαδες, is far from being without parallel; such
was the case with the Persians, for example (Herodot. i, 126),
and with the Iberians between the Euxine and the Caspian (Strabo,
xi, p. 500).

The Pontic Greeks confounded Agathyrsus, Gelônus, and Scythês in
the same genealogy, as being three brethren, sons of Hêraklês by
the μιξοπάρθενος Ἔχιδνα of the Hylæa (iv, 7-10). Herodotus is
more precise: he distinguishes both the Agathyrsi and Gelôni from
Scythians.

[460] Both Niebuhr and Boeckh account the ancient Scythians to be
of Mongolian race (Niebuhr in the Dissertation above mentioned,
Untersuchungen über die Geschichte der Skythen, Geten, und
Sarmaten, among the Kleine Historische Schriften, p. 362; Boeckh,
Corpus Inscriptt. Græcarum, Introductio ad Inscriptt. Sarmatic.
part xi, p. 81). Paul Joseph Schafarik, in his elaborate
examination of the ethnography of the ancient people described as
inhabiting northern Europe and Asia, arrives at the same result
(Slavische Alterthümer, Prag. 1843, vol. i, xiii, 6, p. 279).

A striking illustration of this analogy of race is noticed by
Alexander von Humboldt, in speaking of the burial-place and the
funeral obsequies of the Tartar Tchinghiz Khan:—

“Les cruautés lors de la pompe funèbre des grands-khans
ressemblent entièrement à celles que nous trouvons décrites par
Hérodote (iv, 71) environ 1700 ans avant la mort de Tchinghiz, et
65° de longitude plus à l’ouest, chez les Scythes du Gerrhus et
du Borysthène.” (Humboldt, Asie Centrale, vol. i, p. 244.)

Nevertheless, M. Humboldt dissents from the opinion of Niebuhr
and Boeckh, and considers the Scythians of Herodotus to be of
Indo-Germanic, not of Mongolian race: Klaproth seems to adopt
the same view (see Humboldt, Asie Centrale, vol. i, p. 401, and
his valuable work, Kosmos, p. 491, note 383). He assumes it as
a certain fact, upon what evidence I do not distinctly see,
that no tribe of Turk or Mongol race migrated westward out of
Central Asia until considerably later than the time of Herodotus.
To make out such a negative, seems to me impossible: and the
marks of ethnographical analogy, so far as they go, decidedly
favor the opinion of Niebuhr. Ukert also (Skythien, pp. 266-280)
controverts the opinion of Niebuhr.

At the same time it must be granted that these marks are not very
conclusive, and that many nomadic hordes, whom no one would refer
to the same race, may yet have exhibited an analogy of manners
and characteristics equal to that between the Scythians and
Mongols.

The principle upon which the Indo-European family of the human
race is defined and parted off, appears to me inapplicable to any
particular case wherein the _language_ of the people is unknown
to us. The nations constituting that family have no other point
of affinity except in the roots and structure of their language;
on every other point there is the widest difference. To enable
us to affirm that the Massagetæ, or the Scythians, or the Alani,
belonged to the Indo-European family, it would be requisite that
we should know something of their language. But the Scythian
language may be said to be wholly unknown; and the very few
words which are brought to our knowledge do not tend to aid the
Indo-European hypothesis.

[461] See the story of the accidental discovery of this Scythian
sword when lost, by Attila, the chief of the Huns (Priscus ap.
Jornandem de Rebus Geticis, c. 35, and in Eclog. Legation. p. 50).

Lucian in the Toxaris (c. 38, vol. ii, p. 546, Hemst.) notices
the worship of the akinakes, or scymetar, by the Scythians in
plain terms without interposing the idea of the god Arês: compare
Clemen. Alexand. Protrept. p. 25, Syl. Ammianus Marcellinus, in
speaking of the Alani (xxxi, 2), as well as Pomponius Mela (ii,
1) and Solinus (c. 20), copy Herodotus. Ammianus is more literal
in his description of the Sarmatian sword-worship (xvii, 12).
“Eductisque mucronibus, quos pro numinibus colunt,” etc.

[462] Herodot. iv, 3-62, 71-75; Sophoklês, Œnomaus,—ap. Athenæ.
ix, p. 410; Hippokratês, De Aëre, Locis et Aquis, ch. vi, s.
91-99, etc.

It is seldom that we obtain, in reference to the modes of life of
an ancient population, two such excellent witnesses as Herodotus
and Hippokratês about the Scythians.

Hippokratês was accustomed to see the naked figure in its highest
perfection at the Grecian games: hence, perhaps, he is led to
dwell more emphatically on the corporeal defects of the Scythians.

[463] See Pallas, Reise durch Russland, and Dr. Clarke, Travels
in Russia, ch. xii, p. 238.

If the habits of the Scythians were such as to create in the near
observer no other feeling than repugnance, their force at least
inspired terror. They appeared in the eyes of Thucydidês so numerous
and so formidable, that he pronounces them irresistible, if they
could but unite, by any other nation within his knowledge. Herodotus,
too, conceived the same idea of a race among whom every man was a
warrior and a practised horse-bowman, and who were placed by their
mode of life out of all reach of an enemy’s attack.[464] Moreover,
Herodotus does not speak meanly of their intelligence, contrasting
them in favorable terms with the general stupidity of the other
nations bordering on the Euxine. In this respect Thucydidês seems to
differ from him.

[464] Thucyd. ii, 95; Herodot. ii, 46-47: his idea of the
formidable power of the Scythians seems also to be implied in his
expression (c. 81), καὶ ὀλίγους, ὡς Σκύθας εἶναι.

Herodotus holds the same language about the Thracians, however,
as Thucydidês about the Scythians,—irresistible, if they could
but act with union (v, 3).

On the east, the Scythians of the time of Herodotus were separated
only by the river Tanais from the Sarmatians, who occupied the
territory for several days’ journey north-east of the Palus Mæôtis:
on the south, they were divided by the Danube from the section of
Thracians called Getæ. Both these nations were nomadic, analogous to
the Scythians in habits, military efficiency, and fierceness: indeed,
Herodotus and Hippokratês distinctly intimate that the Sarmatians
were nothing but a branch of Scythians,[465] speaking a Scythian
dialect, and distinguished from their neighbors on the other side
of the Tanais, chiefly by this peculiarity,—that the women among
them were warriors hardly less daring and expert than the men.
This attribute of Sarmatian women, as a matter of fact, is well
attested,—though Herodotus has thrown over it an air of suspicion
not properly belonging to it, by his explanatory genealogical mythe,
deducing the Sarmatians from a mixed breed between the Scythians and
the Amazons.

[465] The testimony of Herodotus to this effect (iv, 110-117)
seems clear and positive, especially as to the language.
Hippokratês also calls the Sauromatæ ἔθνος Σκυθικόν (De Aëre,
Locis et Aquis, c. vi, sect. 89, Petersen).

I cannot think that there is any sufficient ground for the
marked ethnical distinction which several authors draw (contrary
to Herodotus) between the Scythians and the Sarmatians. Boeckh
considers the latter to be of Median or Persian origin, but
to be, also, the progenitors of the modern Sclavonian family:
“Sarmatæ, Slavorum haud dubie parentes,” (Introduct. ad Inscr.
Sarmatic. Corp. Inscr. part xi, p. 83.) Many other authors have
shared this opinion, which identifies the Sarmatians with the
Slavi; but Paul Joseph Schafarik (Slavische Alterthümer, vol. i,
c. 16) has shown powerful reasons against it.

Nevertheless, Schafarik admits the Sarmatians to be of Median
origin, and radically distinct from the Scythians. But the
passages which are quoted to prove this point from Diodorus (ii,
43), from Mela (i, 19), and from Pliny (H. N. vi. 7), appear to
me of much less authority than the assertion of Herodotus. In
none of these authors is there any trace of inquiries made in or
near the actual spot from neighbors and competent informants,
such as we find in Herodotus. And the chapter in Diodorus, on
which both Boeckh and Schafarik lay especial stress, appears to
me one of the most untrustworthy in the whole book. To believe in
the existence of Scythian kings who reigned over all Asia from
the eastern ocean to the Caspian, and sent out large colonies
of Medians and Assyrians, is surely impossible; and Wesseling
speaks much within the truth when he says, “Verum hæc dubia
admodum atque incerta.” It is remarkable to see Boeckh treating
this passage as conclusive against Herodotus and Hippokratês.
M. Boeckh has also given a copious analysis of the names found
in the Greek inscriptions from Scythian, Sarmatian, and Mæotic
localities (_ut sup._ pp. 107-117), and he endeavors to establish
an analogy between the two latter classes and Median names. But
the analogy holds just as much with regard to the Scythian names.

The wide extent of steppe eastward and north-eastward of the
Tanais, between the Ural mountains and the Caspian, and beyond the
possessions of the Sarmatians, was traversed by Grecian traders, even
to a good distance in the direction of the Altai mountains,—the rich
produce of gold, both in Altai and Ural, being the great temptation.
First, according to Herodotus, came the indigenous nomadic nation
called Budini, who dwelt to the northward of the Sarmatians,[466] and
among whom were established a colony of Pontic Greeks, intermixed
with natives, and called Gelôni; these latter inhabited a spacious
town built entirely of wood. Beyond the Budini eastward dwelt the
Thyssagetæ and the Jurkæ, tribes of hunters, and even a body
of Scythians who had migrated from the territories of the regal
Scythians. The Issêdones were the easternmost people respecting whom
any definite information reached the Greeks; beyond them we find
nothing but fable,[467]—the one-eyed Arimaspians, the gold-guarding
Grypes, or Griffins, and the bald-headed Argippæi. It is impossible
to fix with precision the geography of these different tribes, or
to do more than comprehend approximatively their local bearings and
relations to each other.

[466] The locality which Herodotus assigns to the Budini creates
difficulty. According to his own statement, it would seem that
they ought to be near to the Neuri (iv, 105), and so in fact
Ptolemy places them (v, 9) near about Volhynia and the sources of
the Dniester.

Mannert (Geographie der Griech. und Römer, Der Norden der Erde,
v, iv, p. 138) conceives the Budini to be a Teutonic tribe; but
Paul Joseph Schafarik (Slavische Alterthümer, i, 10, pp. 185-195)
has shown more plausible grounds for believing both them and the
Neuri to be of Slavic family. It seems that the names Budini
and Neuri are traceable to Slavic roots; that the wooden town
described by Herodotus in the midst of the Budini is an exact
parallel of the primitive Slavic towns, down even to the twelfth
century; and that the description of the country around, with its
woods and marshes containing beavers, otters, etc. harmonizes
better with southern Poland and Russia than with the neighborhood
of the Ural mountains. From the color ascribed to the Budini,
no certain inference can be drawn: γλαυκόν τε πᾶν ἰσχυρῶς ἐστὶ
καὶ πυῤῥόν (iv, 108). Mannert construes it in favor of Teutonic
family, Schafarik in favor of Slavic; and it is to be remarked,
that Hippokratês talks of the Scythians generally as extremely
πυῤῥοί (De Aëre, Locis et Aquis, c. vi: compare Aristot. Prob.
xxxviii, 2).

These reasonings are plausible; yet we can hardly venture to
alter the position of the Budini as Herodotus describes it,
eastward of the Tanais. For he states in the most explicit manner
that the route as far as the Argippæi _is thoroughly known_,
traversed both by Scythian and by Grecian traders, and all
the nations in the way to it known (iv, 24): μέχρι μὲν τούτων
πολλὴ περιφάνεια τῆς χώρης ἐστὶ καὶ τῶν ἔμπροσθεν ἐθνέων· καὶ
γὰρ Σκυθέων τινες ἀπικνέονται ἐς αὐτοὺς, τῶν οὐ χαλεπόν ἐστὶ
πυθέσθαι, καὶ Ἑλλήνων τῶν ἐκ Βορυσθένεός τε ἐμπορίου καὶ τῶν
ἄλλων Ποντικῶν ἐμπορίων. These Greek and Scythian traders,
in their journey from the Pontic seaports into the interior,
employed seven different languages and as many interpreters.

Völcker thinks that Herodotus or his informants confounded the
Don with the Volga (Mythische Geographie, sect. 24, p. 190),
supposing that the higher parts of the latter belonged to the
former; a mistake not unnatural, since the two rivers approach
pretty near to each other at one particular point, and since the
lower parts of the Volga, together with the northern shore of the
Caspian, where its embouchure is situated, appear to have been
little visited and almost unknown in antiquity. There cannot be a
more striking evidence how unknown these regions were, than the
persuasion, so general in antiquity, that the Caspian sea was a
gulf of the ocean, to which Herodotus, Aristotle, and Ptolemy
are almost the only exceptions. Alexander von Humboldt has some
valuable remarks on the tract laid down by Herodotus from the
Tanais to the Argippæi (Asie Centrale, vol. i, pp. 390-400).

[467] Herodot. iv, 80.

But the best known of all is the situation of the Tauri (perhaps
a remnant of the expelled Cimmerians), who dwelt in the southern
portion of the Tauric Chersonesus (or Crimea), and who immolated
human sacrifices to their native virgin goddess,—identified by
the Greeks with Artemis, and serving as a basis for the affecting
legend of Iphigeneia. The Tauri are distinguished by Herodotus from
Scythians,[468] but their manners and state of civilization seem
to have been very analogous. It appears also that the powerful and
numerous Massagetæ, who dwelt in Asia on the plains eastward of the
Caspian and southward of the Issêdones, were so analogous to the
Scythians as to be reckoned as members of the same race by many of
the contemporaries of Herodotus.[469]

[468] Herodot. iv, 99-101. Dionysius Periêgêtês seems to
identify Cimmerians and Tauri (v, 168: compare v, 680, where
the Cimmerians are placed on the Asiatic side of the Cimmerian
Bosphorus, adjacent to the Sindi).

[469] Herodot. i, 202. Strabo compares the inroads of the Sakæ,
which was the name applied by the Persians to the Scythians, to
those of the Cimmerians and the Trêres (xi, pp. 511-512).

This short enumeration of the various tribes near the Euxine and
the Caspian, as well as we can make them out, from the seventh to
the fifth century B. C., is necessary for the comprehension of that
double invasion of Scythians and Cimmerians which laid waste Asia
between 630 and 610 B. C. We are not to expect from Herodotus, born
a century and a half afterwards, any very clear explanations of
this event, nor were all his informants unanimous respecting the
causes which brought it about. But it is a fact perfectly within
the range of historical analogy, that accidental aggregations of
number, development of aggressive spirit, or failure in the means
of subsistence, among the nomadic tribes of the Asiatic plains,
have brought on the civilized nations of southern Europe calamitous
invasions, of which the prime moving cause was remote and unknown.
Sometimes a weaker tribe, flying before a stronger, has been in this
manner precipitated upon the territory of a richer and less military
population, so that an impulse originating in the distant plains of
Central Tartary has been propagated until it reached the southern
extremity of Europe, through successive intermediate tribes, a
phenomenon especially exhibited during the fourth and fifth centuries
of the Christian era, in the declining years of the Roman empire.
A pressure so transmitted onward is said to have brought down the
Cimmerians and Scythians upon the more southerly regions of Asia.
The most ancient story in explanation of this incident seems to have
been contained in the epic poem (now lost) called _Arimaspia_, of
the mystic Aristeas of Prokonnêsus, composed apparently about 540
B. C. This poet, under the inspiration of Apollo,[470] undertook
a pilgrimage to visit the sacred Hyperboreans (especial votaries
of that god) in their elysium beyond the Rhipæan mountains; but
he did not reach farther than the Issêdones. According to him,
the movement, whereby the Cimmerians had been expelled from their
possessions on the Euxine sea, began with the Grypes or Griffins in
the extreme north,—the sacred character of the Hyperboreans beyond
was incompatible with aggression or bloodshed. The Grypes invaded
the Arimaspians, who on their part assailed their neighbors the
Issêdones;[471] these latter moved southward or westward and drove
the Scythians across the Tanais, while the Scythians, carried forward
by this onset, expelled the Cimmerians from their territories along
the Palus Mæotis and the Euxine.

[470] Herodot. iv, 13. φοιβολαμπτὸς γενομένος.

[471] Herodot. iv, 13.

We see thus that Aristeas referred the attack of the Scythians upon
the Cimmerians to a distant impulse proceeding in the first instance
from the Grypes or Griffins; but Herodotus had heard it explained in
another way, which he seems to think more correct,—the Scythians,
originally occupants of Asia, or the regions east of the Caspian, had
been driven across the Araxês, in consequence of an unsuccessful
war with the Massagetæ, and precipitated upon the Cimmerians in
Europe.[472]

[472] Herodot. iv, 11. Ἐστι δὲ καὶ ἄλλος λόγος, ἔχων ὧδε, τῷ
μάλιστα λεγομένῳ αὐτὸς προσκεῖμαι.

When the Scythian host approached, the Cimmerians were not agreed
among themselves whether to resist or retire: the majority of the
people were dismayed and wished to evacuate the territory, while
the kings of the different tribes resolved to fight and perish at
home. Those who were animated with this fierce despair, divided
themselves along with the kings into two equal bodies and perished
by each other’s hands near the river Tyras, where the sepulchres of
the kings were yet shown in the time of Herodotus.[473] The mass of
the Cimmerians fled and abandoned their country to the Scythians;
who, however, not content with possession of the country, followed
the fugitives across the Cimmerian Bosphorus from west to east, under
the command of their prince Madyês son of Protothyês. The Cimmerians,
coasting along the east of the Euxine sea and passing to the west
of Mount Caucasus, made their way first into Kolchis, and next into
Asia Minor, where they established themselves on the peninsula on
the northern coast, near the site of the subsequent Grecian city of
Sinôpê. But the Scythian pursuers, mistaking the course taken by the
fugitives, followed the more circuitous route east of Mount Caucasus
near to the Caspian sea;[474] which brought them, not into Asia
Minor, but into Media. Both Asia Minor and Media became thus exposed
nearly at the same time to the ravages of northern nomades.

[473] Herodot. iv, 11.

[474] Herodot. iv, 1-12.

These two stories, representing the belief of Herodotus and Aristeas,
involve the assumption that the Scythians were comparatively recent
emigrants into the territory between the Ister and the Palus Mæotis.
But the legends of the Scythians themselves, as well as those of the
Pontic Greeks, imply the contrary of this assumption; and describe
the Scythians as primitive and indigenous inhabitants of the country.
Both legends are so framed as to explain a triple division, which
probably may have prevailed, of the Scythian aggregate nationality,
traced up to three heroic brothers: both also agree in awarding the
predominance to the youngest brother of the three,[475] though in
other respects, the names and incidents of the two are altogether
different, The Scythians call themselves Skoloti.

[475] Herodot. iv, 5-9. At this day, the three great tribes of
the nomadic Turcomans, on the north-eastern border of Persia
near the Oxus,—the Yamud, the Gokla, and the Tuka,—assert for
themselves a legendary genealogy deduced from three brothers
(Frazer, Narrative of a Journey in Khorasan, p. 258).

Such material differences, in the various accounts given to Herodotus
of the Scythian and Cimmerian invasions of Asia, are by no means
wonderful, seeing that nearly two centuries had elapsed between that
event and his visit to the Pontus. That the Cimmerians—perhaps the
northernmost portion of the great Thracian name, and conterminous
with the Getæ on the Danube—were the previous tenants of much of
the territory between the Ister and the Palus Mæotis, and that they
were expelled in the seventh century B. C., by the Scythians, we may
follow Herodotus in believing; but Niebuhr has shown that there is
great intrinsic improbability in his narrative of the march of the
Cimmerians into Asia Minor, and in the pursuit of these fugitives by
the Scythians. That the latter would pursue at all, when an extensive
territory was abandoned to them without resistance, is hardly
supposable: that they should pursue and mistake their way, is still
more difficult to believe: nor can we overlook the great difficulties
of the road and the Caucasian passes, in the route ascribed to the
Cimmerians.[476] Niebuhr supposes the latter to have marched into
Asia Minor by the western side of the Euxine, and across the Thracian
Bosphorus, after having been defeated in a decisive battle by the
Scythians near the river Tyras, where their last kings fell and were
interred.[477] Though this is both an easier route, and more in
accordance with the analogy of other occupants expelled from the same
territory, we must, in the absence of positive evidence, treat the
point as unauthenticated.

[476] Read the description of the difficult escape of Mithridates
Eupator, with a mere handful of men, from Pontus to Bosphorus by
this route, between the western edge of Caucasus and the Euxine
(Strabo, xi, pp. 495-496),—ἡ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν καὶ Ζυγῶν καὶ Ἡνιόχων
παραλία,—all piratical and barbarous tribes,—τῇ παραλίᾳ χαλεπῶς
ᾔει, τὰ πολλὰ ἐμβαίνων ἐπὶ τὴν θάλασσαν: compare Plutarch,
Pompeius, c. 34. Pompey thought the route unfit for his march.

To suppose the Cimmerian tribes with their wagons passing along
such a track would require strong positive evidence. According
to Ptolemy, however, there were two passes over the range of
Caucasus,—the Caucasian or Albanian gates, near Derbend and
the Caspian, and the Sarmatian gates, considerably more to the
westward (Ptolemy, Geogr. v, 9; Forbiger, Handbuch der Alten
Geographie, vol. ii, sect. 56, p. 55). It is not impossible
that the Cimmerians may have followed the westernmost, and the
Scythians the easternmost, of these two passes; but the whole
story is certainly very improbable.

[477] See Niebuhr’s Dissertation above referred to, pp. 366-367.
A reason for supposing that the Cimmerians came into Asia Minor
from the west and not from the east, is, that we find them so
much confounded with the Thracian Trêres indicating seemingly a
joint invasion.

The inroad of the Cimmerians into Asia Minor was doubtless connected
with their expulsion from the northern coast of the Euxine by the
Scythians, but we may well doubt whether it was at all connected,
as Herodotus had been told that it was, with the invasion of Media
by the Scythians, except as happening near about the same time. The
same great evolution of Scythian power, or propulsion by other tribes
behind, may have occasioned both events,—brought about by different
bodies of Scythians, but nearly contemporaneous.

Herodotus tells us two facts respecting the Cimmerian emigrants
into Asia Minor. They committed destructive, though transient,
ravages in many parts of Paphlagonia, Phrygia, Lydia, and Ionia,—and
they occupied permanently the northern peninsula,[478] whereon the
Greek city of Sinôpê was afterwards planted. Had the elegies of
the contemporary Ephesian poet Kallinus been preserved, we should
have known better how to appreciate these trying times: he strove
to keep alive the energy of his countrymen against the formidable
invaders.[479] From later authors, who probably, had these poems
before them, we learn that the Cimmerian host, having occupied the
Lydian chief town Sardis (its inaccessible acropolis defied them),
poured with their wagons into the fertile valley of the Kaïster,
took and sacked Magnêsia on the Mæander, and even threatened the
temple of Artemis at Ephesus. But the goddess so well protected
her own town and sanctuary,[480] that Lygdamis the leader of the
Cimmerians, whose name marks him for a Greek, after a season of
prosperous depredation in Lydia and Ionia, conducting his host into
the mountainous regions of Kilikia, was there overwhelmed and slain.
But though these marauders perished, the Cimmerian settlers in the
territory near Sinôpê remained; and Ambrôn, the first Milesian
œkist who tried to colonize that spot, was slain by them, if we may
believe Skymnus. They are not mentioned afterwards, but it seems
not unreasonable to believe that they appear under the name of the
Chalybes, whom Herodotus mentions along that coast between the
Mariandynians and Paphlagonians, and whom Mela notices as adjacent to
Sinôpê and Amisus.[481] Other authors place the Chalybes on several
different points, more to the east, though along the same parallel
of latitude,—between the Mosynœki and Tibarêni,—near the river
Thermôdôn,—and on the northern boundary of Armenia, near the sources
of the Araxês; but it is only Herodotus and Mela who recognize
Chalybes westward of the river Halys and the Paphlagonians, near
to Sinôpê. These Chalybes were brave mountaineers, though savage
in manners; distinguished as producers and workers of the iron
which their mountains afforded. In the conceptions of the Greeks,
as manifested in a variety of fabulous notices, they are plainly
connected with Scythians or Cimmerians; whence it seems probable that
this connection was present to the mind of Herodotus in regard to the
inland population near Sinôpê.[482]

[478] Herodot. i, 6-15; iv, 12. φαίνονται δὲ οἱ Κιμμέριοι,
φεύγοντες ἐς τὴν Ἀσίην τοὺς Σκύθας, καὶ τὴν Χερσόνησον
~κτίσαντες~, ἐν τῇ νῦν Σινώπη πόλις Ἑλληνὶς οἴκισται.

[479] Kallinus, Fragment. 2, 3, ed. Bergk. ~Νῦν~ δ᾽ ἐπὶ Κιμμερίων
στρατὸς ἔρχεται ὀβριμοεργῶν (Strabo, xiii, p. 627; xiv, 633-647).
O. Müller (History of the Literature of Ancient Greece, ch.
x, s. 4) and Mr. Clinton (Fasti Hellenici, B. C. 716-635) may
be consulted about the obscure chronology of these events.
The Scythico-Cimmerian invasion of Asia, to which _Herodotus_
alludes, appears fixed for some date in the reign of Ardys the
Lydian, 640-629 B. C., and may stand for 635 B. C. as Mr. Clinton
puts it; and I agree with O. Müller that the fragment of the
poet Kallinus above cited alludes to _this_ invasion; for the
supposition of Mr. Clinton, that Kallinus here alludes to an
invasion past and not present, appears to be excluded by the
word νῦν. Mr. Clinton places both Kallinus and Archilochus (in
my judgment) half a century too high; for I agree with O. Müller
in disbelieving the story told by Pliny of the picture sold by
Bularchus to Kandaulês. O. Müller follows Strabo (i, p. 61) in
calling Madys a Cimmerian prince, who drove the Trêres out of
Asia Minor; whereas Herodotus mentions him as the _Scythian_
prince, who drove the Cimmerians _out_ of their own territory
_into_ Asia Minor (i, 103).

The chronology of Herodotus is intelligible and consistent
with itself: that of Strabo we cannot settle, when he speaks
of many different invasions. Nor does his language give us the
smallest reason to suppose that he was in possession of any
means of determining dates for these early times,—nothing at all
calculated to justify the positive chronology which Mr. Clinton
deduces from him: compare his Fasti Hellenici, B. C. 635, 629,
617. Strabo says, after affirming that Homer knew both the name
and the reality of the Cimmerians (i, p. 6; iii, p. 149),—καὶ
γὰρ καθ᾽ Ὅμηρον, ἢ ~πρὸ αὐτοῦ~ μικρὸν, λέγουσι τὴν τῶν Κιμμερίων
ἔφοδον γενέσθαι τὴν μέχρι τῆς Αἰολίδος καὶ τῆς Ἰωνίας,—“which
places the first appearance of the Cimmerians in Asia Minor a
century _at least_ before the Olympiad of Corœbus,” (says Mr.
Clinton.) But what means could Strabo have had to chronologize
events as happening _at or a little before_ the time of Homer? No
date in the Grecian world was so contested, or so indeterminable,
as the time of Homer: nor will it do to reason, as Mr. Clinton
does, _i. e._ to take the latest date fixed for Homer among many,
and then to say that the invasion of the Cimmerians _must_ be _at
least_ B. C. 876: thus assuming it as a certainty that, whether
the date of Homer be a century earlier or later, the invasion of
the Cimmerians must be made to fit it. When Strabo employs such
untrustworthy chronological standards, he only shows us—what
everything else confirms—that there existed no tests of any value
for events of that early date in the Grecian world.

Mr. Clinton announces this ante-Homeric calculation as a
chronological certainty: “The Cimmerians first appeared in
Asia Minor about a century before B. C. 776. An irruption is
_recorded_ in B. C. 782. Their last inroad was in B. C. 635. The
settlement of Ambrôn (the Milesian, at Sinôpê) may be placed at
about B. C. 782, twenty-six years before the era assigned to (the
Milesian or Sinôpic settlement of) Trapezus.”

On what authority does Mr. Clinton assert that a Cimmerian
irruption was _recorded_ in B. C. 782? Simply on the following
passage of Orosius, which he cites at B. C. 635: “Anno ante urbem
conditam tricesimo,—Tunc etiam _Amazonum gentis et Cimmeriorum_
in Asiam repentinus incursus plurimum diu lateque vastationem et
stragem intulit.” If this authority of Orosius is to be trusted,
we ought to say that the invasion of the Amazons was a _recorded_
fact. To treat a fact mentioned in Orosius, an author of the
fourth century after Christ, and referred to B. C. 782, as a
_recorded_ fact, confounds the most important boundary-lines in
regard to the appreciation of historical evidence.

In fixing the Cimmerian invasion of Asia at 782 B. C., Mr.
Clinton has the statement of Orosius, whatever it may be worth,
to rest upon; but in fixing the settlement of Ambrôn the Milesian
(at Sinôpê) at 782 B. C., I know not that he had any authority
at all. Eusebius does, indeed, place the foundation of Trapezus
in 756 B. C., and Trapezus is said to have been a colony from
Sinôpê; and Mr. Clinton, therefore, is anxious to find some date
for the foundation of Sinôpê anterior to 756 B. C.; but there is
nothing to warrant him in selecting 782 B. C., rather than any
other year.

In my judgment, the establishment of _any_ Milesian colony in
the Euxine at so early a date as 756 B. C. is highly improbable:
and when we find that the same Eusebius fixes the foundation of
Sinôpê (the metropolis of Trapezus) as low down as 629 B. C.,
this is an argument with me for believing that the date which he
assigns to Trapezus is by far too early. Mr. Clinton treats the
date which Eusebius assigns to Trapezus as certain, and infers
from it, that the date which the same author assigns to _Sinôpê_
is one hundred and thirty years _later_ than the reality: I
reverse the inference, considering the date which he assigns to
_Sinôpê_ as the more trustworthy of the two, and deducing the
conclusion, that the date which he gives for _Trapezus_ is one
hundred and thirty years at least _earlier_ than the reality.

On all grounds, the authority of the chronologists is greater
with regard to the later of the two periods than to the earlier,
and there is, besides, the additional probability arising out of
what is a suitable date for Milesian settlement. To which I will
add, that Herodotus places the settlement of the Cimmerians near
“that spot where Sinôpê is _now_ settled,” in the reign of Ardys,
soon after 635 B. C. Sinôpê was, therefore, _not_ founded at the
time when the Cimmerians went there, in the belief of Herodotus.

[480] Strabo i, p. 61; Kallimachus, Hymn. ad Dianam, 251-260—

... ἠλαίνων ἀλαπάζεμεν ἠπείλησε (Ἔφεσον)
Λύγδαμις ὑβριστὴς, ἐπὶ δὲ στρατὸν ἱππημόλγων
Ἤγαγε Κιμμερίων, ψαμάθῳ ἴσον, οἳ ῥα παρ᾽ αὐτὸν
Κεκλίμενοι ναίουσι βοὸς πόρον Ἰναχιώνης.
Ἆ δειλὸς βασιλέων ὅσον ἤλιτεν· οὐ γὰρ ἔμελλε
Οὔτ᾽ αὐτὸς Σκυθίηνδε παλίμπετες, οὔτε τις ἄλλος
Ὅσσων ἐν λειμῶνι Καϋστρίῳ ἦσαν ἅμαξαι,
Ἂψ ἀπονοστήσειν....

In the explanation of the proverb Σκυθῶν ἐρημία, allusion is
made to a sudden panic and flight of _Scythians_ from Ephesus
(Hesychius, v. Σκυθῶν ἐρημία),—probably this must refer to some
story of interference on the part of Artemis to protect the town
against these Cimmerians. The confusion between Cimmerians and
Scythians is very frequent.

[481] Herodot. i, 28; Mela, i, 19, 9; Skymn. Chi. Fragm. 207.

[482] The ten thousand Greeks in their homeward march passed
through a people called Chalybes between Armenia and the town of
Trapezus, and also again after eight days’ march westerly from
Trapezus, between the Tibarêni and Mosynœki: compare Xenophon,
Anabas. iv, 7, 15; v, 5, 1; probably different sections of the
same people. The last-mentioned Chalybes seem to have been the
best known, from their iron works, and their greater vicinity
to the Greek ports: Ephorus recognized them (see Ephori Fragm.
80-82, ed. Marx); whether he knew of the more easterly Chalybes,
north of Armenia, is less certain: so also Dionysius Periêgêtês,
v, 768: compare Eustathius, _ad loc._

The idea which prevailed among ancient writers, of a connection
between the Chalybes in these regions and the Scythians or
Cimmerians (Χάλυβος Σκυθῶν ἄποικος, Æschyl. Sept. ad Thebas, 729;
and Hesiod. ap. Clemen. Alex. Str. i, p. 132), and of which the
supposed residence of the Amazons on the river Thermôdôn seems to
be one of the manifestations, is discussed in Hoeckh, Kreta, book
i, pp. 294-305; and Mannert, Geographie der Griechen und Römer,
vi, 2, pp. 408-416: compare Stephan. Byz. v. Χάλυβες. Mannert
believes in an early Scythian emigration into these regions. The
ten thousand Greeks passed through the territory of a people
called Skythini, immediately bordering on the Chalybes to the
north; which region some identify with the Sakasênê of Strabo
(xi, 511) occupied, according to that geographer, by invaders
from Eastern Scythia.

It seems that Sinôpê was one of the most considerable places for
the export of the iron used in Greece: the Sinopic as well as the
Chalybdic (or Chalybic) iron had a special reputation (Stephan.
Byz. v. Λακεδαίμων).

About the Chalybes, compare Ukert, Skythien, pp. 521-523.

Herodotus seems to have conceived only one invasion of Asia by the
Cimmerians, during the reign of Ardys in Lydia. Ardys was succeeded
by his son Sadyattês, who reigned twelve years; and it was Alyattês,
son and successor of Sadyattês, according to Herodotus, who expelled
the Cimmerians from Asia.[483] But Strabo seems to speak of several
invasions, in which the Trêres, a Thracian tribe, were concerned,
and which are not clearly discriminated; while Kallisthenês affirmed
that Sardis had been taken by the Trêres and Lykians.[484] We see
only that a large and fair portion of Asia Minor was for much of this
seventh century B. C. in possession of these destroying nomads, who,
while on the one hand they afflicted the Ionic Greeks, on the other
hand indirectly befriended them by retarding the growth of the Lydian
monarchy.

[483] Herodot. i, 15-16.

[484] Strabo, xi, p. 511; xii, p. 552; xiii, p. 627.

The poet Kallinus mentioned both Cimmerians and Trêres (Fr. 2, 3,
ed. Bergk; Strabo. xiv, pp. 633-647).

The invasion of Upper Asia by the Scythians appears to have been
nearly simultaneous with that of Asia Minor by the Cimmerians, but
more ruinous and longer protracted. The Median king Kyaxarês,
called away from the siege of Nineveh to oppose them, was totally
defeated; and the Scythians became full masters of the country. They
spread themselves over the whole of Upper Asia, as far as Palestine
and the borders of Egypt, where Psammetichus the Egyptian king met
them, and only redeemed his kingdom from invasion by prayers and
costly presents. In their return, a detachment of them sacked the
temple of Aphroditê at Askalon; an act of sacrilege which the goddess
avenged both upon the plunderers and their descendants, to the third
and fourth generation. Twenty-eight years did their dominion in
Upper Asia continue,[485] with intolerable cruelty and oppression;
until, at length, Kyaxarês and the Medes found means to entrap the
chiefs into a banquet, and slew them in the hour of intoxication.
The Scythian host once expelled, the Medes resumed their empire.
Herodotus tells us that these Scythians returned to the Tauric
Chersonese, where they found that, during their long absence, their
wives had intermarried with the slaves, while the new offspring which
had grown up refused to readmit them. A deep trench had been drawn
across a line[486] over which their march lay, and the new-grown
youth defended it with bravery, until at length,—so the story
runs,—the returning masters took up their whips instead of arms, and
scourged the rebellious slaves into submission.

[485] Herodot. i, 105. The account given by Herodotus of the
punishment inflicted by the offended Aphroditê on the Scythian
plunderers, and on their children’s children down to his time,
becomes especially interesting when we combine it with the
statement of Hippokratês respecting the peculiar incapacities
which were so apt to affect the Scythians, and the religious
interpretation put upon them by the sufferers (De Aëre, Locis, et
Aquis, c. vi, s. 106-109).

[486] See, in reference to the direction of this ditch, Völcker,
in the work above referred to on the Scythia of Herodotus
(Mythische Geographie, ch. vii, p. 177).

That the ditch existed, there can be no reasonable doubt; though
the tale given by Herodotus is highly improbable.

Little as we know about the particulars of these Cimmerian and
Scythian inroads, they deserve notice as the first—at least the
first historically known—among the numerous invasions of cultivated
Asia and Europe by the nomads of Tartary. Huns, Avars, Bulgarians,
Magyars, Turks, Mongols, Tartars, etc., are found in subsequent
centuries repeating the same infliction, and establishing a dominion
both more durable, and not less destructive, than the transient
scourge of the Scythians during the reign of Kyaxarês.

After the expulsion of the Scythians from Asia, the full extent
and power of the Median empire was reëstablished; and Kyaxarês was
enabled again to besiege Nineveh. He took that great city, and
reduced under his dominion all the Assyrians except those who formed
the kingdom of Babylon. This conquest was achieved towards the close
of his reign, and he bequeathed the Median empire, at the maximum of
its grandeur, to his son Astyagês, in 595 B. C.[487]

[487] Herodot. i. 106. Mr. Clinton fixes the date of the capture
of Nineveh at 606 B. C. (F. H. vol. i. p. 269), upon grounds
which do not appear to me conclusive: the utmost which can be
made out is, that it was taken during the last ten years of the
reign of Kyaxarês.

As the dominion of the Scythians in Upper Asia lasted twenty eight
years before they were expelled by Kyaxarês, so also the inroads
of the Cimmerians through Asia Minor, which had begun during the
reign of the Lydian king Ardys, continued through the twelve years
of the reign of his son Sadyattês (629-617 B. C.), and were finally
terminated by Alyattês, son of the latter.[488] Notwithstanding the
Cimmerians, however, Sadyattês was in a condition to prosecute a
war against the Grecian city of Milêtus, which continued during the
last seven years of his reign, and which he bequeathed to his son
and successor. Alyattês continued the war for five years longer.
So feeble was the sentiment of union among the various Grecian
towns on the Asiatic coast, that none of them would lend any aid
to Milêtus except the Chians, who were under special obligations
to Milêtus for previous aid in a contest against Erythræ: and the
Milesians unassisted were no match for the Lydian army in the field,
though their great naval strength placed them out of all danger of
a blockade; and we must presume that the erection of those mounds
of earth against the walls, whereby the Persian Harpagus vanquished
the Ionian cities half a century afterwards, was then unknown to
the Lydians. For twelve successive years the Milesian territory was
annually overrun and ravaged, previous to the gathering in of the
crop. The inhabitants, after having been defeated in two ruinous
battles, gave up all hope of resisting the devastation, so that the
task of the invaders became easy, and the Lydian army pursued their
destructive march to the sound of flutes and harps. They ruined
the crops and the fruit-trees, but Alyattês would not allow the
farm-buildings or country-houses to be burnt, in order that the means
of production might still be preserved, to be again destroyed during
the following season. By such unremitting devastation the Milesians
were reduced to distress and famine, in spite of their command of
the sea; and the fate which afterwards overtook them during the
reign of Crœsus, of becoming tributary subjects to the throne of
Sardis, would have begun half a century earlier, had not Alyattês
unintentionally committed a profanation against the goddess Athênê.
Her temple at Assêssus accidentally took fire, and was consumed, when
his soldiers on a windy day were burning the Milesian standing corn.
Though no one took notice of this incident at the time, yet Alyattês
on his return to Sardis was smitten with prolonged sickness. Unable
to obtain relief, he despatched envoys to seek humble advice from
the god at Delphi; but the Pythian priestess refused to furnish any
healing suggestions until he should have rebuilt the burnt temple
of Athênê,—and Periander, at that time despot of Corinth, having
learned the tenor of this reply, transmitted private information of
it to Thrasybulus, despot of Milêtus, with whom he was intimately
allied. Presently there arrived at Milêtus a herald on the part of
Alyattês, proposing a truce for the special purpose of enabling him
to rebuild the destroyed temple,—the Lydian monarch believing the
Milesians to be so poorly furnished with subsistence that they would
gladly embrace this temporary relief. But the herald on his arrival
found abundance of corn heaped up in the agora, and the citizens
engaged in feasting and enjoyment: for Thrasybulus had caused all
the provision in the town, both public and private, to be brought
out, in order that the herald might see the Milesians in a condition
of apparent plenty, and carry the news of it to his master. The
stratagem succeeded. Alyattês, under the persuasion that his repeated
devastations inflicted upon the Milesians no sensible privations,
abandoned his hostile designs, and concluded with them a treaty of
amity and alliance. It was his first proceeding to build two temples
to Athênê, in place of the one which had been destroyed, and he
then, forthwith, recovered from his protracted malady. His gratitude
for the cure was testified by the transmission of a large silver
bowl, with an iron footstand welded together by the Chian artist
Glaukus,—the inventor of the art of thus joining together pieces of
iron.[489]

[488] From whom Polyænus borrowed his statement, that Alyattês
employed with effect savage dogs against the Cimmerians, I do not
know (Polyæn. vii, 2, 1).

[489] Herodot. i, 20-23.

Alyattês is said to have carried on other operations against some of
the Ionic Greeks: he took Smyrna, but was defeated in an inroad on
the territory of Klazomenæ.[490] But on the whole, his long reign of
fifty-seven years was one of tranquillity to the Grecian cities on
the coast, though we hear of an expedition which he undertook against
Karia.[491] He is reported to have been during youth of overweening
insolence, but to have acquired afterwards a just and improved
character. By an Ionian wife he became father of Crœsus, whom, even
during his lifetime, he appointed satrap of the town of Adramyttium,
and the neighboring plain of Thêbê. But he had also other wives and
other sons, and one of the latter, Adramytus, is reported as the
founder of Adramyttium.[492] How far his dominion in the interior
of Asia Minor extended, we do not know, but very probably his long
and comparatively inactive reign may have favored the accumulation
of those treasures which afterwards rendered the wealth of Crœsus so
proverbial. His monument, an enormous pyramidal mound upon a stone
base, erected near Sardis, by the joint efforts of the whole Sardian
population, was the most memorable curiosity in Lydia during the time
of Herodotus; it was inferior only to the gigantic edifices of Egypt
and Babylon.[493]

[490] Herodot. i, 18. Polyænus (vii, 2, 2) mentions a proceeding
of Alyattês against the Kolophonians.

[491] Nikolaus Damasken. p. 54, ed. Orelli; Xanthi Fragment. p.
243, Creuzer.

Mr Clinton states Alyattês to have _conquered_ Karia, and also
Æolis, for neither of which do I find sufficient authority (Fasti
Hellen. ch. xvii, p. 298).

[492] Aristoteles ap. Stephan. Byz. v. Ἀδραμυττεῖον.

[493] Herodot. i, 92-93.

Crœsus obtained the throne, at the death of his father, by
appointment from the latter. But there was a party among the Lydians
who had favored the pretensions of his brother Pantaleon; one of the
richest chiefs of which party was put to death afterwards by the
new king, under the cruel torture of a spiked carding-machine,—his
property confiscated.[494] The aggressive reign of Crœsus, lasting
fourteen years (559-545 B. C.), formed a marked contrast to the long
quiescence of his father during a reign of fifty-seven years.

[494] Herodot. i, 92.

Pretences being easily found for war against the Asiatic Greeks,
Crœsus attacked them one after the other. Unfortunately, we know
neither the particulars of these successive aggressions, nor the
previous history of the Ionic cities, so as to be able to explain
how it was that the fifth of the Mermnad kings of Sardis met with
such unqualified success, in an enterprise which his predecessors had
attempted in vain. Milêtus alone, with the aid of Chios, had resisted
Alyattês and Sadyattês for eleven years,—and Crœsus possessed no
naval force, any more than his father and grandfather. But on this
occasion, not one of the towns can have displayed the like individual
energy. In regard to the Milesians, we may perhaps suspect that the
period now under consideration was comprised in that long duration
of intestine conflict which Herodotus represents (though without
defining exactly when) to have crippled the forces of the city for
two generations, and which was at length appeased by a memorable
decision of some arbitrators invited from Paros. These latter, called
in by mutual consent of the exhausted antagonist parties at Milêtus,
found both the city and her territory in a state of general neglect
and ruin. But on surveying the lands, they discovered some which
still appeared to be tilled with undiminished diligence and skill; to
the proprietors of these lands they consigned the government of the
town, in the belief that they would manage the public affairs with as
much success as their own.[495] Such a state of intestine weakness
would partly explain the easy subjugation of the Milesians by Crœsus;
while there was little in the habits of the Ionic cities to present
the chance of united efforts against a common enemy. These cities,
far from keeping up any effective political confederation, were in
a state of habitual jealousy of each other, and not unfrequently
in actual war.[496] The common religious festivals,—the Deliac
festival as well as the Pan-Ionia, and afterwards the Ephesia in
place of the Delia,—seem to have been regularly frequented by all the
cities throughout the worst of times. But these assemblies had no
direct political function, nor were they permitted to control that
sentiment of separate city-autonomy which was paramount in the Greek
mind,—though their influence was extremely precious in calling forth
social sympathies. Apart from the periodical festival, meetings for
special emergencies were held at the Pan-Ionic temple; but from such
meetings any city, not directly implicated, kept aloof.[497] As in
this case, so in others not less critical throughout the historical
period, the incapacity of large political combination was the source
of constant danger, and ultimately proved the cause of ruin, to the
independence of all the Grecian states. Herodotus warmly commends the
advice given by Thalês to his Ionic countrymen,—and given, to use his
remarkable expression, “before the ruin of Ionia,”[498]—that a common
senate, invested with authority over all the twelve cities, should
be formed within the walls of Teôs, as the most central in position;
and that all the other cities should account themselves mere demes
of this aggregate commonwealth, or polis. Nor can we doubt that
such was the unavailing aspiration of many a patriot of Milêtus or
Ephesus, even before the final operations of Crœsus were opened
against them.

[495] Herodot. v, 28. κατύπερθε δὲ τουτέων, ἐπὶ δύο γενέας ἀνδρῶν
νοσήσασα τὰ μάλιστα στάσει.

Alyattês reigned fifty-seven years, and the vigorous resistance
which the Milesians offered to him took place in the first six
years of his reign. The “two generations of intestine dissension”
may well have succeeded after the reign of Thrasybulus. This,
indeed, is a mere conjecture, yet it may be observed that
Herodotus, speaking of the time of the Ionic revolt (500 B.
C.), and intimating that Milêtus, though then peaceable, had
been for two generations at an earlier period torn by intestine
dissension, could hardly have meant these “two generations” to
apply to a time earlier than 617 B. C.

[496] Herodot. i, 17; v, 99; Athenæ. vi, p. 267. Compare K. F.
Hermann, Lehrbuch der Griech. Staats Alterthümer, sect. 77, note
28.

[497] See the remarkable case of Milêtus sending no deputies to
a Pan-Ionic meeting, being safe herself from danger (Herodot. i,
141).

[498] Herodot. i, 141-170. χρηστὴ δὲ καὶ πρὶν ἢ διαφθαρῆναι
Ἰωνίην, Θάλεω ἀνδρὸς Μιλησίου γνώμη ἐγένετο, etc.

About the Pan-Ionia and the Ephesia, see Thucyd. iii, 104;
Dionys. Halik. iv, 25; Herodot. i, 143-148. Compare also Whitte,
De Rebus Chiorum Publicis, sect. vii, pp. 22-26.

That prince attacked the Greek cities successively, finding or
making different pretences for hostility against each. He began
with Ephesus, which is said to have been then governed by a despot
of harsh and oppressive character, named Pindarus, whose father
Melas had married a daughter of Alyattês, and who was, therefore,
himself nephew of Crœsus.[499] The latter, having in vain invited
Pindarus and the Ephesians to surrender the town, brought up his
forces and attacked the walls: one of the towers being overthrown,
the Ephesians abandoned all hope of defending their town, and sought
safety by placing it under the guardianship of Artemis, to whose
temple they carried a rope from the walls,—a distance not less than
seven furlongs. They at the same time sent a message of supplication
to Crœsus, who is said to have granted them the preservation of their
liberties, out of reverence to the protection of Artemis; exacting
at the same time that Pindarus should quit the place. Such is the
tale of which we find a confused mention in Ælian and Polyænus; but
Herodotus, while he notices the fact of the long rope whereby the
Ephesians sought to place themselves in contact with their divine
protectress, does not indicate that Crœsus was induced to treat them
more favorably. Ephesus, like all the other Grecian towns on the
coast, was brought under subjection and tribute to him.[500] How he
dealt with them, and what degree of coercive precaution he employed
either to insure subjection or collect tribute, the brevity of the
historian does not acquaint us. But they were required partially at
least, if not entirely, to raze their fortifications; for on occasion
of the danger which supervened a few years afterwards from Cyrus,
they are found practically unfortified.[501]

[499] If we may believe the narrative of Nikolaus Damaskenus,
Crœsus had been in relations with Ephesus and with the Ephesians
during the time when he was hereditary prince, and in the
lifetime of Alyattês. He had borrowed a large sum of money from
a rich Ephesian named Pamphaês, which was essential to enable
him to perform a military duty imposed upon him by his father.
The story is given in some detail by Nikolaus, Fragm. p. 54, ed.
Orell.,—I know not upon what authority.

[500] Herodot. i, 26; Ælian, V. H. iii, 26; Polyæn. vi, 50. The
story contained in Ælian and Polyænus seems to come from Batôn of
Sinôpê; see Guhl, Ephesiaca. ii, 3, p. 26, and iv, 5, p. 150.

The article in Suidas, v. Ἀρίσταρχος, is far too vague to be
interwoven as a positive fact into Ephesian history, as Guhl
interweaves it, immediately consequent on the retirement of
Pindarus.

In reference to the rope reaching from the city to the
Artemision, we may quote an analogous case of the Kylonian
suppliants at Athens, who sought to maintain their contact with
the altar by means of a continuous cord,—unfortunately, the cord
broke (Plutarch, Solon, c. 12).

[501] Herodot. i, 141. Ἴωνες δὲ, ὡς ἤκουσαν—τείχεά τε
περιεβάλλοντο ἕκαστοι, etc.: compare also the statement
respecting Phôkæa, c. 168.

Thus completely successful in his aggressions on the continental
Asiatic Greeks, Crœsus conceived the idea of assembling a fleet,
for the purpose of attacking the islanders of Chios and Samos, but
was convinced,—as some said, by the sarcastic remark of one of the
seven Greek sages, Bias or Pittakus—of the impracticability of the
project. He carried his arms, however, with full success, over other
parts of the continent of Asia Minor, until he had subdued the whole
territory within the river Halys, excepting only the Kilikians and
the Lykians. The Lydian empire thus reached the maximum of its power,
comprehending, besides the Æolic, Ionic, and Doric Greeks on the
coast of Asia Minor, the Phrygians, Mysians, Mariandynians, Chalybes,
Paphlagonians, Thynian and Bithynian Thracians, Karians, and
Pamphylians. And the treasures amassed by Crœsus at Sardis, derived
partly from this great number of tributaries, partly from mines in
various places as well as the auriferous sands of the Paktôlus,
exceeded anything which the Greeks had ever before known.

We learn, from the brief but valuable observations of Herodotus, to
appreciate the great importance of these conquests of Crœsus, with
reference not merely to the Grecian cities actually subjected, but
also indirectly to the whole Grecian world.

“Before the reign of Crœsus, observes the historian, all the Greeks
were free; it was by him first that Greeks were subdued into
tribute.” And he treats this event as the initial phenomenon of the
series, out of which grew the hostile relations between the Greeks
on one side, and Asia as represented by the Persians on the other,
which were uppermost in the minds of himself and his contemporaries.

It was in the case of Crœsus that the Greeks were first called upon
to deal with a tolerably large barbaric aggregate under a warlike
and enterprising prince, and the result was such as to manifest the
inherent weakness of their political system, from its incapacity
of large combination. The separated autonomous cities could only
maintain their independence either through similar disunion on the
part of barbaric adversaries, or by superiority on their own side
of military organization as well as of geographical position. The
situation of Greece proper and of the islands was favorable to the
maintenance of such a system,—not so the shores of Asia with a
wide interior country behind. The Ionic Greeks were at this time
different from what they became during the ensuing century, little
inferior in energy to Athens or to the general body of European
Greeks, and could doubtless have maintained their independence, had
they cordially combined. But it will be seen hereafter that the
Greek colonies,—planted as isolated settlements, and indisposed
to political union, even when neighbors,—all of them fell into
dependence so soon as attack from the interior came to be powerfully
organized; especially if that organization was conducted by leaders
partially improved through contact with the Greeks themselves. Small
autonomous cities maintain themselves so long as they have only
enemies of the like strength to deal with: but to resist larger
aggregates requires such a concurrence of favorable circumstances
as can hardly remain long without interruption. And the ultimate
subjection of entire Greece, under the kings of Macedon, was only an
exemplification on the widest scale of this same principle.

The Lydian monarchy under Crœsus, the largest with which the Greeks
had come into contact down to that moment, was very soon absorbed
into a still larger,—the Persian; of which the Ionic Greeks, after
unavailing resistance, became the subjects. The partial sympathy and
aid which they obtained from the independent or European Greeks,
their western neighbors, followed by the fruitless attempt on the
part of the Persian king to add these latter to his empire, gave
an entirely new turn to Grecian history and proceedings. First,
it necessitated a degree of central action against the Persians
which was foreign to Greek political instinct; next it opened to
the noblest and most enterprising section of the Hellenic name,—the
Athenians,—an opportunity of placing themselves at the head of this
centralizing tendency: while a concurrence of circumstances, foreign
and domestic, imparted to them at the same time that extraordinary
and many-sided impulse, combining action with organization, which
gave such brilliancy to the period of Herodotus and Thucydidês. It
is thus that most of the splendid phenomena of Grecian history grew,
directly or indirectly, out of the reluctant dependence in which the
Asiatic Greeks were held by the inland barbaric powers, beginning
with Crœsus.

These few observations will suffice to intimate that a new phase of
Grecian history is now on the point of opening. Down to the time of
Crœsus, almost everything which is done or suffered by the Grecian
cities bears only upon one or other of them separately: the instinct
of the Greeks repudiates even the modified forms of political
centralization, and there are no circumstances in operation to
force it upon them. Relation of power and subjection exist, between
a strong and a weak state, but no tendency to standing political
coördination. From this time forward, we shall see partial causes
at work, tending in this direction, and not without considerable
influence; though always at war with the indestructible instinct of
the nation, and frequently counteracted by selfishness and misconduct
on the part of the leading cities.

CHAPTER XVIII.

PHENICIANS.

Of the Phenicians, Assyrians, and Egyptians, it is necessary for me
to speak so far as they acted upon the condition, or occupied the
thoughts, of the early Greeks, without undertaking to investigate
thoroughly their previous history. Like the Lydians, all three
became absorbed into the vast mass of the Persian empire, retaining,
however, to a great degree, their social character and peculiarities
after having been robbed of their political independence.

The Persians and Medes,—portions of the Arian race, and members
of what has been classified, in respect of language, as the great
Indo-European family,—occupied a part of the vast space comprehended
between the Indus on the east, and the line of Mount Zagros (running
eastward of the Tigris and nearly parallel with that river) on
the west. The Phenicians as well as the Assyrians belonged to the
Semitic, Aramæan, or Syro-Arabian family; comprising, besides,
the Syrians, Jews, Arabians, and in part the Abyssinians. To what
established family of the human race the swarthy and curly-haired
Egyptians are to be assigned, has been much disputed; we cannot
reckon them as members of either of the two preceding, and the most
careful inquiries render it probable that their physical type was
something purely African, approximating in many points to that of the
negro.[502]

[502] See the discussion in Dr. Prichard, Natural History of Man,
sect. xvii, p. 152.

Μελαγχρόες καὶ οὐλότριχες (Herodot. ii, 104: compare Ammian.
Marcell. xxii, 16, “subfusculi, atrati,” etc.) are certain
attributes of the ancient Egyptians, depending upon the evidence
of an eye-witness.

“In their complexion, and in many of their physical peculiarities
(observes Dr. Prichard, p. 138), the Egyptians were an African
race. In the eastern, and even in the central parts of Africa,
we shall trace the existence of various tribes in physical
characters nearly resembling the Egyptians; and it would not
be difficult to observe among many nations of that continent a
gradual deviation from the physical type of the Egyptian to the
strongly-marked character of the negro, and that without any very
decided break or interruption. The Egyptian language, also, in
the great leading principles of its grammatical construction,
bears much greater analogy to the idioms of Africa than to those
prevalent among the people of other regions.”

It has already been remarked that the Phenician merchant and trading
vessel figures in the Homeric poems as a well-known visitor, and that
the variegated robes and golden ornaments fabricated at Sidon are
prized among the valuable ornaments belonging to the chiefs.[503]
We have reason to conclude generally, that in these early times,
the Phenicians traversed the Ægean sea habitually, and even formed
settlements for trading and mining purposes upon some of its islands:
on Thasos, especially, near the coast of Thrace, traces of their
abandoned gold-mines were visible even in the days of Herodotus,
indicating both persevering labor and considerable length of
occupation. But at the time when the historical era opens, they seem
to have been in course of gradual retirement from these regions,[504]
and their commerce had taken a different direction. Of this change
we can furnish no particulars; but we may easily understand that
the increase of the Grecian marine, both warlike and commercial,
would render it inconvenient for the Phenicians to encounter such
enterprising rivals,—piracy (or private war at sea) being then an
habitual proceeding, especially with regard to foreigners.

[503] Homer, Iliad, vi, 290: xxiii, 740; Odyss. xv, 116:—

... πέπλοι παμποίκιλοι, ἔργα γυναικῶν
Σιδονίων.

Tyre is not named either in the Iliad or Odyssey, though a
passage in Probus (ad Virg. Georg. ii, 115) seems to show that it
was mentioned in one of the epics which passed under the name of
Homer: “Tyrum Sarram appellatam esse, Homerus docet: quem etiam
Ennius sequitur cum dicit, Pœnos Sarrâ oriundos.”

The Hesiodic catalogue seems to have noticed both Byblus and
Sidon: see Hesiodi Fragment. xxx, ed. Marktscheffel, and
Etymolog. Magnum, v. Βύβλος.

[504] The name Adramyttion or Atramyttion—very like the
Africo-Phenician name _Adrumêtum_—is said to be of Phenician
origin (Olshausen, De Origine Alphabeti, p. 7, in Kieler
Philologische Studien, 1841). There were valuable mines
afterwards worked for the account of Crœsus near Pergamus, and
these mines may have tempted Phenician settlers to those regions
(Aristotel. Mirab. Auscult. c. 52).

The African Inscriptions, in the Monumenta Phœnic. of Gesenius,
recognize Makar as a cognomen of Baal: and Movers imagines that
the hero Makar, who figures conspicuously in the mythology of
Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Kôs, Rhodes, etc., is traceable to this
Phenician god and Phenician early settlements in those islands
(Movers, Die Religion der Phönizier, p. 420).

The Phenician towns occupied a narrow strip of the coast of Syria
and Palestine, about one hundred and twenty miles in length, never
more, and generally much less, than twenty miles in breadth,—between
Mount Libanus and the sea. Aradus—on an islet, with Antaradus and
Marathus over against it on the main land—was the northernmost, and
Tyre the southernmost (also upon a little island, with Palæ-Tyrus
and a fertile adjacent plain over against it). Between the two were
situated Sidon, Berytus, Tripolis, and Byblus, besides some smaller
towns[505] attached to one or other of these last mentioned, and
several islands close to the coast occupied in like manner; while
the colony of Myriandrus lay farther north, near the borders of
Kilikia. Whether Sidon or Tyre was the most ancient, seems not
determinable: if it be true as some authorities affirmed, that Tyre
was originally planted from Sidon, the colony must have grown so
rapidly as to surpass its metropolis in power and consideration, for
it became the chief of all the Phenician towns.[506] Aradus, the next
in importance after these two, was founded by exiles from Sidon,
and all the rest either by Tyrian or Sidonian settlers. Within this
confined territory was concentrated a greater degree of commercial
wealth and enterprise, and manufacturing ingenuity, than could be
found in any other portion of the contemporary world. Each town was
an independent community, having its own surrounding territory and
political constitution and its own hereditary prince,[507] though
the annals of Tyre display many instances of princes assassinated by
men who succeeded them on the throne. Tyre appears to have enjoyed
a certain presiding, perhaps a controlling authority, over all of
them, which was not always willingly submitted to; and examples occur
in which the inferior towns, when Tyre was pressed by a foreign
enemy,[508] took the opportunity of revolting, or at least stood
aloof. The same difficulty of managing satisfactorily the relations
between a presiding town and its confederates, which Grecian history
manifests, is found also to prevail in Phenicia, and will be
hereafter remarked in regard to Carthage; while the same effects are
also perceived, of the autonomous city polity, in keeping alive the
individual energies and regulated aspirations of the inhabitants.
The predominant sentiment of jealous town-isolation is forcibly
illustrated by the circumstances of Tripolis, established jointly by
Tyre, Sidon, and Aradus. It consisted of three distinct towns, each
one furlong apart from the other two, and each with its own separate
walls; though probably constituting to a certain extent one political
community, and serving as a place of common meeting and deliberation
for the entire Phenician name.[509] The outlying promontories of
Libanus and Anti-Libanus touched the sea along the Phenician coast,
and those mountainous ranges, while they rendered a large portion of
the very confined area unfit for cultivation of corn, furnished what
was perhaps yet more indispensable,—abundant supplies of timber for
ship-building: the entire want of all wood in Babylonia, except the
date-palm, restricted the Assyrians of that territory from maritime
traffic on the Persian gulf. It appears, however, that the mountains
of Lebanon also afforded shelter to tribes of predatory Arabs, who
continually infested both the Phenician territory and the rich
neighboring plain of Cœle-Syria.[510]

[505] Strabo, xiv, pp. 754-758; Skylax, Peripl. c. 104; Justin,
xviii, 3; Arrian, Exp. Al. ii, 16-19; Xenophon, Anab. i, 4, 6.

Unfortunately, the text of Skylax is here extremely defective,
and Strabo’s account is in many points perplexed, from his not
having travelled in person through Phenicia, Cœle-Syria, or
Judæa: see Groskurd’s note on p. 755 and the Einleitung to his
Translation of Strabo, sect. 6.

Respecting the original relation between Palæ-Tyrus and Tyre,
there is some difficulty in reconciling all the information,
little as it is, which we possess. The name Palæ-Tyrus (it has
been assumed as a matter of course: compare Justin, xi, 10) marks
that town as the original foundation from which the Tyrians
subsequently moved into the island: there was, also, on the
main land a place named Palæ-Byblos (Plin. H. N. v, 20; Ptolem.
v, 15) which was in like manner construed as the original seat
from whence the town properly called Byblus was derived. Yet the
account of Herodotus plainly represents the insular Tyrus, with
its temple of Hêraklês, as the original foundation (ii, 44), and
the Tyrians are described as living in an island even in the
time of their king Hiram, the contemporary of Solomon (Joseph.
Ant. Jud. viii, 2, 7). Arrian treats the temple of Hêraklês in
the island-Tyre as the most ancient temple within the memory of
man (Exp. Al. ii, 16). The Tyrians also lived on their island
during the invasion of Salmaneser king of Nineveh, and their
position enabled them to hold out against him, while Palæ-Tyrus
on the terra firma was obliged to yield itself (Joseph. _ib._
ix, 14, 2). The town taken (or reduced to capitulate), after
a long siege, by Nebuchadnezzar, was the insular Tyrus, not
the continental or Palæ-Tyrus, which had surrendered without
resistance to Salmaneser. It is not correct, therefore, to
say—with Volney (Recherches sur l’Hist. Anc. ch. xiv, p. 249),
Heeren (Ideen über den Verkehr der Alten Welt, part i, abth.
2, p. 11), and others—that the insular Tyre was called new
Tyre, and that the site of Tyre was changed from continental to
insular, in consequence of the taking of the continental Tyre
by Nebuchadnezzar: the site remained unaltered, and the insular
Tyrians became subject to him and his successors until the
destruction of the Chaldæan monarchy by Cyrus. Hengstenberg’s
Dissertation, De Rebus Tyriorum (Berlin, 1832), is instructive
on many of these points: he shows sufficiently that Tyre was,
from the earliest times traceable, an insular city; but he wishes
at the same time to show, that it was also, from the beginning,
joined on to the main land by an isthmus (pp. 10-25),—which is
both inconsistent with the former position and unsupported by any
solid proofs. It remained an island strictly so called, until the
siege by Alexander: the mole, by which that conqueror had stormed
it, continued after his day, perhaps enlarged, so as to form a
permanent connection from that time forward between the island
and the main land (Plin. H. N. v, 19; Strabo, xvi, p. 757), and
to render the insular Tyrus capable of being included by Pliny
in one computation of circumference jointly with Palæ-Tyrus, the
main-land town.

It may be doubted whether we know the true meaning of the word
which the Greeks called Παλαι-Τύρος. It is plain that the Tyrians
themselves did not call it by that name: perhaps the Phenician
name which this continental adjacent town bore, may have been
something resembling Palæ-Tyrus in sound, but not coincident in
meaning.

The strength of Tyre lay in its insular situation; for the
adjacent main-land, whereon Palæ-Tyrus was placed, was a fertile
plain, thus described by William of Tyre during the time of the
Crusaders:—

“Erat prædicta civitas non solum munitissima, sed etiam
fertilitate præcipuâ et amœnitate quasi singularis: nam licet in
medio mari sita est, et in modum insulæ tota fluctibus cincta;
habet tamen pro foribus latifundium per omnia commendabile, et
planitiem sibi continuam divitis glebæ et opimi soli, multas
civibus ministrans commoditates. Quæ licet modica videatur
respectu aliarum regionum, exiguitatem suam multâ redimit
ubertate, et infinita jugera multiplici fœcunditate compensat.
Nec tamen tantis arctatur angustiis. Protenditur enim in
Austrum versus Ptolemaidem usque ad eum locum, qui hodie vulgo
dicitur districtum Scandarionis, milliaribus quatuor aut
quinque: e regione in Septentrionem versus Sareptam et Sidonem
iterum porrigitur totidem milliaribus. In latitudinem vero ubi
minimum ad duo, ubi plurimum ad tria, habens milliaria.” (Apud
Hengstenberg, _ut sup._ p. 5.) Compare Maundrell, Journey from
Aleppo to Jerusalem, p. 50, ed. 1749; and Volney, Travels in
Egypt and Syria, vol. ii, pp. 210-226.

[506] Justin (xviii, 3) states that Sidon was the metropolis of
Tyre, but the series of events which he recounts is confused
and unintelligible. Strabo also, in one place, calls Sidon the
μητρόπολις τῶν Φοινίκων (i, p. 40); in another place he states it
as a point disputed between the two cities, which of them was the
μητρόπολις τῶν Φοινίκων (xvi, p. 756).

Quintus Curtius affirms both Tyre and Sidon to have been founded
by Agênôr (iv, 4, 15).

[507] See the interesting citations of Josephus from Dius and
Menander, who had access to the Tyrian ἀναγραφαὶ, or chronicles
(Josephus cont. Apion. i, c. 17, 18, 21; Antiq. J. x, 11, 1).

[508] Joseph. Antiq. J. ix, 14, 2.

[509] Diodor. xvi, 41; Skylax, c. 104.

[510] Strabo, xvi, p. 756.

The splendid temple of that great Phenician god (Melkarth) whom the
Greeks called Hêraklês,[511] was situated in Tyre, and the Tyrians
affirmed that its establishment had been coeval with the first
foundation of the city, two thousand three hundred years before the
time of Herodotus. This god is the companion and protector of their
colonial settlements, and the ancestor of the Phœnico-Libyan kings:
we find him especially at Carthage, Gadês, and Thasos.[512] Some
supposed that they had migrated to their site on the Mediterranean
coast, from previous abodes near the mouth of the Euphrates,[513]
or on islands (named Tylus and Aradus) of the Persian gulf, while
others treated the Mediterranean Phenicians as original, and the
others as colonists. Whether such be the fact or not, history knows
them in no other portion of Asia earlier than in Phenicia proper.

[511] A Maltese inscription identifies the Tyrian Melkarth with
Ἡρακλῆς (Gesenius, Monument. Phœnic. tab. vi).

[512] Herodot. ii, 44; Sallust, Bell. Jug. c. 18; Pausan. x, 12,
2; Arrian, Exp. Al. ii, 16; Justin, xliv, 5; Appian, vi, 2.

[513] Herodot. i, 2; Ephorus, Fragm. 40, ed. Marx; Strabo,
xvi, pp. 766-784; Justin, xviii, 3. In the animated discussion
carried on among the Homeric critics and the great geographers of
antiquity, to ascertain where it was that Menelaus actually went
during his eight years’ wandering (Odyss. iv, 85)—

... ἢ γὰρ πολλὰ παθὼν καὶ πόλλ᾽ ἐπαληθεὶς
Ἠγαγόμην ἐν νηυσὶ, καὶ ὀγδοάτῳ ἔτει ἦλθον,
Κύπρον, Φοινίκην τε, καὶ Αἰγυπτίους ἐπαληθεὶς,
Αἰθίοπάς θ᾽ ἱκόμην, καὶ Σιδονίους, καὶ Ἐρεμβοὺς,
καὶ Λιβύην, etc.

one idea started was, that he had visited these Sidonians in
the Persian gulf, or in the Erythræan sea (Strabo, i, p. 42).
The various opinions which Strabo quotes, including those of
Eratosthenês and Kratês, as well as his own comments, are very
curious. Kratês supposed that Menelaus had passed the straits
of Gibraltar and circumnavigated Libya to Æthiopia and India,
which voyage would suffice, he thought, to fill up the eight
years. Others supposed that Menelaus had sailed first up the
Nile, and then into the Red sea, by means of the canal (διωρὺξ)
which existed in the time of the Alexandrine critics between
the Nile and that sea; to which Strabo replies that this canal
was not made until after the Trojan war. Eratosthenês started a
still more remarkable idea: he thought that in the time of Homer
the strait of Gibraltar had not yet been burst open, so that
the Mediterranean was on that side a closed sea; but, on the
other hand, its level was then so much higher that it covered
the isthmus of Suez, and joined the Red sea. It was, he thought,
the disruption of the strait of Gibraltar which first lowered
the level of the water, and left the isthmus of Suez dry; though
Menelaus, in _his_ time, had sailed from the Mediterranean into
the Red sea without difficulty. This opinion Eratosthenês had
imbibed from Stratôn of Lampsakus, the successor of Theophrastus:
Hipparchus controverted it, together with many other of the
opinions of Eratosthenês (see Strabo, i, pp. 38, 49, 56; Seidel,
Fragmenta Eratosthenis, p. 39).

In reference to the view of Kratês,—that Menelaus had sailed
round Africa,—it is to be remarked that all the geographers of
that day formed to themselves a very insufficient idea of the
extent of that continent, believing that it did not even reach so
far southward as the equator.

Strabo himself adopts neither of these three opinions, but
construes the Homeric words describing the wanderings of Menelaus
as applying only to the coasts of Egypt, Libya, Phenicia, etc; he
suggests various reasons, more curious than convincing, to prove
that Menelaus may easily have spent eight years in these visits
of mixed friendship and piracy.

Though the invincible industry and enterprise of the Phenicians
maintained them as a people of importance down to the period of the
Roman empire, yet the period of their widest range and greatest
efficiency is to be sought much earlier,—anterior to 700 B. C. In
these remote times they and their colonists were the exclusive
navigators of the Mediterranean: the rise of the Greek maritime
settlements banished their commerce to a great degree from the Ægean
sea, and embarrassed it even in the more westerly waters. Their
colonial establishments were formed in Africa, Sicily, Sardinia, the
Balearic Isles, and Spain: the greatness as well as the antiquity
of Carthage, Utica, and Gadês, attest the long-sighted plans of
Phenician traders, even in days anterior to the 1st Olympiad. We
trace the wealth and industry of Tyre, and the distant navigation
of her vessels through the Red sea and along the coast of Arabia,
back to the days of David and Solomon. And as neither Egyptians,
Assyrians, Persians, nor Indians, addressed themselves to a seafaring
life, so it seems that both the importation and the distribution of
the products of India and Arabia into Western Asia and Europe, was
performed by the Idumæan Arabs, between Petra and the Red sea,—by the
Arabs of Gerrha on the Persian gulf, joined as they were in later
times by a body of Chaldæan exiles from Babylonia,—and by the more
enterprising Phenicians of Tyre and Sidon in these two seas as well
as in the Mediterranean.[514]

[514] See Ritter, Erdkunde von Asien, West-Asien, Buch iii,
Abtheilung iii, Abschnitt i, s. 29, p. 50.

The most ancient Phenician colonies were Utica, nearly on the
northernmost point of the coast of Africa, and in the same gulf, (now
known as the gulf of Tunis) as Carthage, over against cape Lilybæum
in Sicily,—and Gadês, or Gadeira, on the south-western coast of
Spain; a town which, founded perhaps near one thousand years before
the Christian era,[515] has maintained a continuous prosperity, and
a name (Cadiz) substantially unaltered, longer than any town in
Europe. How well the site of Utica was suited to the circumstances of
Phenician colonists may be inferred from the fact that Carthage was
afterwards established in the same gulf and near to the same spot,
and that both the two cities reached a high pitch of prosperity. The
distance of Gadês from Tyre seems surprising, and if we calculate
by time instead of by space, the Tyrians were separated from their
Tartêssian colonists by an interval greater than that which now
divides an Englishman from Bombay; for the ancient navigator always
coasted along the land, and Skylax reckons seventy-five days[516]
of voyage from the Kanôpic (westernmost) mouth of the Nile to
the Pillars of Hêraklês (strait of Gibraltar); to which some more
days must be added to represent the full distance between Tyre and
Gadês. But the enterprise of these early mariners surmounted all
difficulties consistent with the principle of never losing sight
of the coast. Proceeding along the northern coast of Libya, at a
time when the mouths of the Nile were still closed by Egyptian
jealousy against all foreign ships, they appear to have found little
temptation to colonize[517] on the dangerous coast near to the two
gulfs called the great and little Syrtis,—in a territory for the most
part destitute of water, and occupied by rude Libyan nomades, who
were thinly spread over the wide space between the western Nile[518]
and cape Hermæa, now called cape Bona. The subsequent Grecian towns
of Kyrênê and Barka, whose well-chosen site formed an exception to
the general character of the region, were not planted with any view
to commerce,[519] and the Phenician town of Leptis, near the gulf
called the great Syrtis, was founded by exiles from Sidon, and not
by deliberate colonization. The site of Utica and Carthage, in the
gulf immediately westward of cape Bona, was convenient for commerce
with Sicily, Italy, and Sardinia; and the other Phenician colonies,
Adrumêtum, Neapolis, Hippo (two towns so called), the lesser Leptis,
etc., were settled on the coast not far distant from the eastern or
western promontories which included the gulf of Tunis, common to
Carthage and Utica.

[515] Strabo speaks of the earliest settlements of the Phenicians
in Africa and Iberia as μικρὸν τῶν Τρωϊκῶν ὕστερον (i, p. 48).
Utica is affirmed to have been two hundred and eighty-seven years
earlier than Carthage (Aristot. Mirab. Auscult. c. 134): compare
Velleius Paterc. i, 2.

Archaleus, son of Phœnix, was stated as the founder of Gadês in
the Phenician history of Claudius Julius, now lost (Etymolog.
Magn. v. Γαδεῖρα). Archaleus is a version of the name Hercules,
in the opinion of Movers.

[516] Skylax, Periplus, c. 110. “Carteia, ut quidam putant,
aliquando Tartessus; et quam transvecti ex Africâ Phœnices
habitant, atque unde nos sumus, Tingentera.” (Mela, ii, 6, 75.)
The expression, _transvecti ex Africâ_ applies as much to the
Phenicians as to the Carthaginians: “_uterque Pœnus_” (Horat. Od.
ii, 11) means the Carthaginians, and the Phenicians of Gadês.

[517] Strabo, xvii, p. 836.

[518] Cape Soloeis, considered by Herodotus as the westernmost
headland of Libya, coincides in name with the Phenician town
Soloeis in western Sicily, also, seemingly, with the Phenician
settlement _Suel_ (Mela, ii, 6, 65) in southern Iberia or
Tartêssus. Cape Hermæa was the name of the north-eastern headland
of the gulf of Tunis, and also the name of a cape in Libya, two
days’ sail westward of the Pillars of Hêraklês (Skylax, c. 111).

Probably, all the remarkable headlands in these seas received
their names from the Phenicians. Both Mannert (Geogr. d. Gr. und
Röm. x, 2, p. 495) and Forbiger (Alte Geogr. sect. 111, p. 867)
identify cape Soloeis with what is now called cape Cantin; Heeren
considers it to be the same as cape Blanco; Bougainville as cape
Boyador.

[519] Sallust, Bell. Jug. c. 78. It was termed Leptis Magna, to
distinguish it from another Leptis, more to the westward and
nearer to Carthage, called Leptis Parva; but this latter seems
to have been generally known by the name Leptis (Forbiger, Alte
Geogr. sect. 109, p. 844). In Leptis Magna, the proportion of
Phenician colonists was so inconsiderable that the Phenician
language had been lost, and that of the natives, whom Sallust
calls Numidians, spoken: but these people had embraced Sidonian
institutions and civilization. (Sall. _ib._)

These early Phenician settlements were planted thus in the territory
now known as the kingdom of Tunis and the western portion of the
French province of Constantine. From thence to the Pillars of
Hêraklês (strait of Gibraltar), we do not hear of any others; but
the colony of Gadês, outside of the strait, formed the centre of a
flourishing and extensive commerce, which reached on one side far to
the south, not less than thirty days’ sail along the western coast of
Africa,[520]—and on the other side to Britain and the Scilly Islands.
There were numerous Phenician factories and small trading-towns along
the western coast of what is now the empire of Morocco; and the
island of Kernê, twelve days’ sail along the coast from the strait
of Gibraltar, formed an established dépôt for Phenician merchandise
in trading with the interior. There were, moreover, towns not far
distant from the coast, of Libyans or Ethiopians, to which the
inhabitants of the central regions resorted, and where they brought
their leopard skins and elephants’ teeth, to be exchanged against the
unguents of Tyre and the pottery of Athens.[521] So distant a trade,
with the limited navigation of that day, could not be made to embrace
very bulky goods.

[520] Strabo, xvii, pp. 825-826. He found it stated by some
authors that there had once been three hundred trading
establishments along this coast, reaching thirty days’ voyage
southward from Tingis or Lixus (Tangier); but that they had been
chiefly ruined by the tribes of the interior,—the Pharusians
and Nigritæ. He suspects the statement of being exaggerated,
but there seems nothing at all incredible in it. From Strabo’s
language we gather that Eratosthenês set forth the statement as
in his judgment a true one.

[521] Compare Skylax, c. 111, and the Periplus of Hanno, ap.
Hudson, Geogr. Græc. Min. vol. i, pp. 1-6. I have already
observed that the τάριχος (salt provisions) from Gadeira was
currently sold in the markets of Athens, from the Peloponnesian
war downward.—Eupolis, Fragm. 23; Μαρικᾶς, p. 506, ed. Meineke,
Comic. Græc.

Πότερ᾽ ἦν τὸ τάριχος; Φρύγιον ἢ Γαδειρικόν;

Compare the citations from the other comic writers, Antiphanês
and Nikostratus ap. Athenæ. iii, p. 118. The Phenician merchants
bought in exchange Attic pottery for their African trade.

But this trade, though seemingly a valuable one, constituted only a
small part of the sources of wealth open to the Phenicians of Gadês.
The Turditanians and Turduli, who occupied the south-western portion
of Spain, between the Anas river (Guadiana) and the Mediterranean,
seem to have been the most civilized and improvable section of
the Iberian tribes, well suited for commercial relations with the
settlers who occupied the isle of Leon, and who established the
temple, afterwards so rich and frequented, of the Tyrian Hêraklês.
And the extreme productiveness of the southern region of Spain, in
corn, fish, cattle, and wine, as well as in silver and iron, is a
topic upon which we find but one language among ancient writers. The
territory round Gadês, Carteia, and the other Phenician settlements
in this district, was known to the Greeks in the sixth century B. C.
by the name of Tartêssus, and regarded by them somewhat in the same
light as Mexico and Peru appeared to the Spaniards of the sixteenth
century. For three or four centuries the Phenicians had possessed
the entire monopoly of this Tartêssian trade, without any rivalry
on the part of the Greeks; probably, the metals there procured were
in those days their most precious acquisition, and the tribes who
occupied the mining regions of the interior found a new market and
valuable demand, for produce then obtained with a degree of facility
exaggerated into fable.[522] It was from Gadês as a centre that these
enterprising traders, pushing their coasting voyage yet farther,
established relations with the tin-mines of Cornwall, perhaps also
with amber-gatherers from the coasts of the Baltic. It requires
some effort to carry back our imaginations to the time when, along
all this vast length of country, from Tyre and Sidon to the coast
of Cornwall, there was no merchant-ship to buy or sell goods except
these Phenicians. The rudest tribes find advantage in such visitors;
and we cannot doubt, that the men, whose resolute love of gain braved
so many hazards and difficulties, must have been rewarded with
profits on the largest scale of monopoly.

[522] About the productiveness of the Spanish mines, Polybius
(xxxiv, 9, 8) ap. Strabo, iii, p. 147; Aristot. Mirab. Ausc. c.
135.

The Phenician settlers on the coast of Spain became gradually more
and more numerous, and appear to have been distributed, either in
separate townships or intermingled with the native population,
between the mouth of the Anas (Guadiana) and the town of Malaka
(Malaga) on the Mediterranean. Unfortunately, we are very little
informed about their precise localities and details, but we find no
information of Phenician settlements on the Mediterranean coast of
Spain northward of Malaka; for Carthagena, or New Carthage, was a
Carthaginian settlement, founded only in the third century B. C.,
after the first Punic war.[523] The Greek word Phenicians being used
to signify as well the inhabitants of Carthage as those of Tyre and
Sidon, it is not easy to distinguish what belongs to each of them;
nevertheless, we can discern a great and important difference in
the character of their establishments, especially in Iberia. The
Carthaginians combined with their commercial projects large schemes
of conquest and empire: it is thus that the independent Phenician
establishments in and near the gulf of Tunis, in Africa, were reduced
to dependence upon them,—while many new small townships, direct
from Carthage itself, were planted on the Mediterranean coast of
Africa, and the whole of that coast from the great Syrtis westward
to the Pillars of Hêraklês (strait of Gibraltar) is described as
their territory in the Periplus of Skylax (B. C. 360). In Iberia,
during the third century B. C., they maintained large armies,[524]
constrained the inland tribes to subjection, and acquired a dominion
which nothing but the superior force of Rome prevented from being
durable: in Sicily, also, the resistance of the Greeks prevented a
similar consummation. But the foreign settlements of Tyre and Sidon
were formed with views purely commercial. In the region of Tartêssus
as well as in the western coast of Africa outside of the strait
of Gibraltar, we hear only of pacific interchange and metallurgy;
and the number of Phenicians who acquired gradually settlements in
the interior was so great, that Strabo describes these towns—not
less than two hundred in number—as altogether Phenicized.[525] In
his time, the circumstances favorable to new Phenician emigrations
had been long past and gone, and there can be little hesitation in
ascribing the preponderance, which this foreign element had then
acquired, to a period several centuries earlier, beginning at a time
when Tyre and Sidon enjoyed both undisputed autonomy at home, and the
entire monopoly of Iberian commerce, without interference from the
Greeks.

[523] Strabo, iii, pp. 156, 158, 161; Polybius, iii, 10, 3-10.

[524] Polyb. i, 10; ii, 1.

[525] Strabo, iii, pp. 141-150. Οὗτοι γὰρ Φοίνιξιν οὕτως ἐγένοντο
ὑποχείριοι, ὥστε τὰς πλείους τῶν ἐν τῇ Τουρδιτανίᾳ πολέων καὶ τῶν
πλήσιον τόπων ὑπ᾽ ἐκείνων ~νῦν~ οἰκεῖσθαι.

The earliest Grecian colony founded in Sicily was that of Naxos,
planted by the Chalkidians in 735 B. C.: Syracuse followed in the
next year, and during the succeeding century many flourishing Greek
cities took root on the island. These Greeks found the Phenicians
already in possession of many outlying islets and promontories
all around the island, which served them in their trade with
the Sikels and Sikans who occupied the interior. The safety and
facilities of this established trade were to so great a degree
broken up by the new-comers, that the Phenicians, relinquishing
their numerous petty settlements round the island, concentrated
themselves in three considerable towns at the south-western angle
near Lilybæum,[526]—Motyê, Soloeis, and Panormus,—and in the island
of Malta, where they were least widely separated from Utica and
Carthage. The Tyrians of that day were hard-pressed by the Assyrians
under Salmaneser, and the power of Carthage had not yet reached its
height; otherwise probably this retreat of the Sicilian Phenicians
before the Greeks would not have taken place without a struggle.
But the early Phenicians, superior to the Greeks in mercantile
activity, and not disposed to contend, except under circumstances
of very superior force, with warlike adventurers bent on permanent
settlement, took the prudent course of circumscribing their sphere
of operations. A similar change appears to have taken place in
Cyprus, the other island in which Greeks and Phenicians came into
close contact. If we may trust the Tyrian annals consulted by the
historian Menander, Cyprus was subject to the Tyrians even in the
time of Solomon.[527] We do not know the dates of the establishment
of Paphos, Salamis, Kitium, and the other Grecian cities there
planted,—but there can be no doubt that they were posterior to this
period, and that a considerable portion of the soil and trade of
Cyprus thus passed from Phenicians to Greeks; who on their part
partially embraced and diffused the rites, sometimes cruel, sometimes
voluptuous, embodied in the Phenician religion.[528] In Cilicia, too,
especially at Tarsus, the intrusion of Greek settlers appears to
have gradually Hellenized a town originally Phenician and Assyrian;
contributing, along with the other Grecian settlements—Phasêlis,
Aspendus, and Sidê—on the southern coast of Asia Minor, to narrow the
Phenician range of adventure in that direction.[529]

[526] Thucyd. vi, 3; Diodor. v, 12.

[527] See the reference in Joseph. Antiq. Jud. viii, 5, 3, and
Joseph. cont. Apion. i, 18; an allusion is to be found in Virgil,
Æneid, i, 642, in the mouth of Dido.—

“Genitor tum Belus opimam
Vastabat Cyprum, et late ditione tenebat.” (t. v.)

[528] Respecting the worship at Salamis (in Cyprus) and Paphos,
see Lactant. i, 21; Strabo, xiv, p. 683.

[529] Tarsus is mentioned by Dio Chrysostom as a colony from the
Phenician Aradus (Orat. Tarsens. ii, p. 20, ed. Reisk.), and
Herodotus makes Kilix brother of Phœnix and son of Agênôr (vii,
92).

Phenician coins of the city of Tarsus are found, of a date
towards the end of the Persian empire: see Movers, Die Phönizier,
i, p. 13.

Such was the manner in which the Phenicians found themselves affected
by the spread of Greek settlements; and if the Ionians of Asia Minor,
when first conquered by Harpagus and the Persians, had followed
the advice of the Prienean Bias to emigrate in a body, and found
one great Pan-Ionic colony in the island of Sardinia, these early
merchants would have experienced the like hindrance[530] carried
still farther westward,—perhaps, indeed, the whole subsequent history
of Carthage might have been sensibly modified. But Iberia, and the
golden region of Tartêssus, remained comparatively little visited,
and still less colonized, by the Greeks; nor did it even become known
to them until more than a century after their first settlements had
been formed in Sicily. Easy as the voyage from Corinth to Cadiz may
now appear to us, to a Greek of the seventh or sixth centuries B.
C. it was a formidable undertaking. He was under the necessity of
first coasting along Akarnania and Epirus, then crossing, first to
the island of Korkyra, and next to the gulf of Tarentum; he then
doubled the southernmost cape of Italy and followed the sinuosities
of the Mediterranean coast, by Tyrrhenia, Liguria, southern Gaul, and
eastern Iberia, to the Pillars of Hêraklês or strait of Gibraltar: or
if he did not do this, he had the alternative of crossing the open
sea from Krête or Peloponnesus to Libya, and then coasting westward
along the perilous coast of the Syrtes until he arrived at the same
point. Both voyages presented difficulties hard to be encountered;
but the most serious hazard of all, was the direct transit across
the open sea from Krête to Libya. It was about the year 630 B. C.
that the inhabitants of the island of Thêra, starved out by a seven
years’ drought, were enjoined by the Delphian god to found a colony
in Libya. Nothing short of the divine command would have induced them
to obey so terrific a sentence of banishment; for not only was the
region named quite unknown to them, but they could not discover, by
the most careful inquiries among practised Greek navigators, a single
man who had ever intentionally made the voyage to Libya.[531] One
Kretan only could they find,—a fisherman named Korôbius,—who had been
driven thither accidentally by violent gales, and he served them as
guide.

[530] Herodot. i, 170.

[531] Herodot. iv, 151.

At this juncture, Egypt had only been recently opened to Greek
commerce,—Psammetichus having been the first king who partially
relaxed the jealous exclusion of ships from the entrance of the Nile,
enforced by all his predecessors; and the incitement of so profitable
a traffic emboldened some Ionian traders to make the direct voyage
from Krête to the mouth of that river. It was in the prosecution of
one of these voyages, and in connection with the foundation of Kyrênê
(to be recounted in a future chapter), that we are made acquainted
with the memorable adventure of the Samian merchant Kôlæus. While
bound for Egypt, he had been driven out of his course by contrary
winds, and had found shelter on an uninhabited islet called Platea,
off the coast of Libya,—the spot where the emigrants intended for
Kyrênê first established themselves, not long afterwards. From hence
he again started to proceed to Egypt, but again without success;
violent and continuous east winds drove him continually to the
westward, until he at length passed the Pillars of Hêraklês, and
found himself, under the providential guidance of the gods,[532] an
unexpected visitor among the Phenicians and Iberians of Tartêssus.
What the cargo was which he was transporting to Egypt, we are not
told; but it sold in this yet virgin market for the most exorbitant
prices: he and his crew (says Herodotus)[533] “realized a profit
larger than ever fell to the lot of any known Greek except Sostratus
the Æginetan, with whom no one else can compete.” The magnitude of
their profits may be gathered from the votive offering which they
erected on their return, in the sacred precinct of Hêrê at Samos, in
gratitude for the protection of that goddess during their voyage,—a
large bronze vase, ornamented with projecting griffins’ heads, and
supported by three bronze kneeling figures of colossal stature: it
cost six talents, and represented the tithe of their gains. The
aggregate of sixty talents[534] (about sixteen thousand pounds,
speaking roughly), corresponding to this tithe, was a sum which not
many even of the rich men of Athens in her richest time, could boast
of possessing.

[532] Herodot. iv, 152. Θείῃ πομπῇ χρεώμενος.

[533] Herodot. iv, 152. Τὸ δὲ ἐμπόριον τοῦτο (Tartêssus) ἦν
ἀκήρατον τοῦτον τὸν χρόνον· ὥστε ἀπονοστήσαντες οὗτοι ὀπίσω
μέγιστα δὴ Ἑλλήνων πάντων, τῶν ἡμεῖς ἀτρεκέως ἴδμεν, ἐκ φορτίων
ἐκέρδησαν, μετά γε Σώστρατον τὸν Λαοδάμαντος, Αἰγινήτην· τούτῳ
γὰρ οὐκ οἷά τε ἐρίσαι ἄλλον.

Allusions to the prodigious wealth of Tartêssus in Anakreon,
Fragm. 8, ed. Bergk; Stephan. Byz. Ταρτησσός; Eustath. ad Dionys.
Periêgêt. 332, Ταρτησσὸς, ἣν καὶ ὁ Ἀνακρέων φησὶ πανευδαίμονα;
Himerius ap. Photium, Cod. 243, p. 599,—Ταρτεσσοῦ βίον, Ἀμαλθείας
κέρας, πᾶν ὅσον εὐδαιμονίας κεφαλαῖον.

[534] These talents cannot have been Attic talents; for the
Attic talent first arose from the debasement of the Athenian
money-standard by Solon, which did not occur until a generation
after the voyage of Kôlæus. They may have been either Euboic
or Æginæan talents; probably the former, seeing that the case
belongs to the island of Samos. Sixty Euboic talents would
be about equivalent to the sum stated in the text. For the
proportion of the various Greek monetary scales, see above, vol.
ii, part 2, ch. iv, p. 425 and ch. xii, p. 171 in the present
volume.

To the lucky accident of this enormous vase and the inscription
doubtless attached to it, which Herodotus saw in the Hêræon at Samos,
and to the impression which such miraculous enrichment made upon his
imagination,—we are indebted for our knowledge of the precise period
at which the secret of Phenician commerce at Tartêssus first became
known to the Greeks. The voyage of Kôlæus opened to the Greeks of
that day a new world hardly less important—regard being had to their
previous aggregate of knowledge—than the discovery of America to
the Europeans of the last half of the fifteenth century. But Kôlæus
did little more than make known the existence of this distant and
lucrative region: he cannot be said to have shown the way to it: nor
do we find, in spite of the foundation of Kyrênê and Barka, which
made the Greeks so much more familiar with the coast of Libya than
they had been before, that the route by which he had been carried
against his own will was ever deliberately pursued by Greek traders.

Probably the Carthaginians, altogether unscrupulous in proceedings
against commercial rivals,[535] would have aggravated its natural
maritime difficulties by false information and hostile proceedings.
The simple report of such gains, however, was well calculated to act
as a stimulus to other enterprising navigators; and the Phôkæans,
during the course of the next half-century, pushing their exploring
voyages both along the Adriatic and along the Tyrrhenian coast,
and founding Massalia in the year 600 B. C., at length reached the
Pillars of Hêraklês and Tartêssus along the eastern coast of Spain.
These men were the most adventurous mariners[536] that Greece had
yet produced, creating a jealous uneasiness even among their Ionian
neighbors:[537] their voyages were made, not with round and bulky
merchant-ships, calculated only for the maximum of cargo, but with
armed pentekonters,—and they were thus enabled to defy the privateers
of the Tyrrhenian cities on the Mediterranean, which had long
deterred the Greek trader from any habitual traffic near the strait
of Messina.[538] There can be little doubt that the progress of the
Phôkæans was very slow, and the foundation of Massalia (Marseilles),
one of the most remote of all Greek colonies, may for a time have
absorbed their attention: moreover, they had to pick up information
as they went on, and the voyage was one of discovery in the strict
sense of the word. The time at which they reached Tartêssus may
seemingly be placed between 570-560 B. C. They made themselves so
acceptable to Arganthônius,—king of Tartêssus, or at least king of
part of that region,—that he urged them to relinquish their city
of Phôkæa and establish themselves in his territory, offering to
them any site which they chose to occupy. Though they declined this
tempting offer, yet he still continued anxious to aid them against
dangers at home, and gave them a large donation of money,—whereby
they were enabled at a critical moment to complete their
fortifications. Arganthônius died shortly afterwards, having lived,
we are told, to the extraordinary age of one hundred and twenty
years, of which he had reigned eighty. The Phôkæans had probably
reason to repent of their refusal, since in no very long time their
town was taken by the Persians, half their citizens became exiles,
and were obliged to seek a precarious abode in Corsica, in place of
the advantageous settlement which old Arganthônius had offered to
them in Tartêssus.[539]

[535] Strabo, xvii, p. 802; Aristot. Mirab. Ausc. c. 84-132.

[536] Herodot. i, 163. Οἱ δὲ Φωκαιέες οὗτοι ναυτιλίῃσι μακρῇσι
πρῶτοι Ἑλλήνων ἐχρήσαντο, καὶ τὸν Ἀδρίην καὶ τὴν Τυρσηνίην καὶ
τὴν Ἰβηρίην καὶ τὸν Ταρτησσὸν οὗτοί εἰσιν οἱ καταδείξαντες·
ἐναυτίλλοντο δὲ οὐ στρογγύλῃσι νηυσὶν, ἀλλὰ πεντηκοντέροισιν,—the
expressions are remarkable.

[537] Herodot. i, 164-165, gives an example of the jealousy of
the Chians in respect to the islands called Œnussæ.

[538] Ephorus, Fragm. 52, ed. Marx; Strabo, vi, p. 267.

[539] Herodot. i, 165.

By such steps did the Greeks gradually track out the lines of
Phenician commerce in the Mediterranean, and accomplish that vast
improvement in their geographical knowledge,—the circumnavigation
of what Eratosthenes and Strabo termed “our sea,” as distinguished
from the external ocean.[540] Little practical advantage, however,
was derived from the discovery, which was only made during the last
years of Ionian independence. The Ionian cities became subjects of
Persia, and Phôkæa especially, was crippled and half-depopulated in
the struggle. Had the period of Ionian enterprise been prolonged,
we should probably have heard of other Greek settlements in Iberia
and Tartêssus, over and above Emporia and Rhodus, formed by the
Massaliots between the Pyrenees and the Ebro,—as well as of
increasing Grecian traffic with those regions. The misfortunes of
Phôkæa and the other Ionic towns saved the Phenicians of Tartêssus
from Grecian interference and competition, such as that which their
fellow-countrymen in Sicily had been experiencing for a century and a
half.

[540] Ἡ καθ᾽ ἡμᾶς θάλασσα (Strabo); τῆσδε τῆς θαλάττης (Herod.
iv, 41).

But though the Ephesian Artemis, the divine protectress of Phôkæan
emigration, was thus prevented from becoming consecrated in Tartêssus
along with the Tyrian Hêraklês, an impulse not the less powerful was
given to the imaginations of philosophers like Thalês and poets like
Stesichorus,—whose lives cover the interval between the supernatural
transport of Kôlæus on the wings of the wind, and the persevering,
well-planned exploration which emanated from Phôkæa. While, on the
one hand, the Tyrian Hêraklês with his venerated temple at Gadês
furnished a new locality and details for mythes respecting the
Grecian Hêraklês,—on the other hand, intelligent Greeks learned
for the first time that the waters surrounding their islands and
the Peloponnesus formed part of a sea circumscribed by assignable
boundaries; continuous navigation of the Phôkæans round the coasts,
first of the Adriatic, next of the gulf of Lyons to the Pillars of
Hêraklês and Tartêssus, first brought to light this important fact.
The hearers of Archilochus, Simonidês of Amorgus, and Kallinus,
living before or contemporary with the voyage of Kôlæus, had known
no sea-limit either north of Korkyra or west of Sicily: those of
Anakreon and Hippônax, a century afterwards, found the Euxine, the
Palus Mæotis, the Adriatic, the western Mediterranean, and the Libyan
Syrtes, all so far surveyed as to present to the mind a definite
conception, and to admit of being visibly represented by Anaximander
on a map. However familiar such knowledge has now become to us,
at the time now under discussion it was a prodigious advance. The
Pillars of Hêraklês, especially, remained deeply fixed in the Greek
mind, as a terminus of human adventure and aspiration: of the ocean
beyond, men were for the most part content to remain ignorant.

It has already been stated, that the Phenicians, as coast explorers,
were even more enterprising than the Phôkæans; but their jealous
commercial spirit induced them to conceal their track,—to
give information designedly false,[541] respecting dangers and
difficulties,—and even to drown any commercial rivals when they
could do so with safety.[542] One remarkable Phenician achievement,
however, contemporary with the period of Phôkæan exploration, must
not be passed over. It was somewhere about 600 B. C. that they
circumnavigated Africa; starting from the Red sea, by direction of
the Egyptian king Nekôs, son of Psammetichus,—going round the cape of
Good Hope to Gadês,—and from thence returning to the Nile.

[541] The geographer Ptolemy, with genuine scientific zeal,
complains bitterly of the reserve and frauds common with the old
traders, respecting the countries which they visited (Ptolem.
Geogr. i, 11).

[542] Strabo, iii, pp. 175-176; xvii, p. 802.

It appears that Nekôs, anxious to procure a water communication
between the Red sea and the Mediterranean, began digging a canal
from the former to the Nile, but desisted from the undertaking after
having made considerable progress. In prosecution of the same object,
he despatched these Phenicians on an experimental voyage round Libya,
which was successfully accomplished, though in a time not less than
three years; for during each autumn, the mariners landed and remained
on shore a sufficient time to sow their seed and raise a crop of
corn. They reached Egypt again, through the strait of Gibraltar,
in the course of the third year, and recounted a tale,—“which
(says Herodotus) others may believe if they choose, but I cannot
believe,”—that, in sailing round Libya, they had the sun on their
right hand, _i. e._ to the north.[543]

[543] Herodot. iv, 42. Καὶ ἔλεγον, ἐμοὶ μὲν οὐ πιστὰ, ἄλλῳ δὲ δή
τεῳ, ὡς περιπλώοντες τὴν Λιβύην, τὸν ἡέλιον ἔσχον ἐς τὰ δεξιά.

The reality of this circumnavigation was confirmed to Herodotus by
various Carthaginian informants,[544] and he himself fully believes
it. There seems good reason for sharing in his belief, though
several able critics reject the tale as incredible. The Phenicians
were expert and daring masters of coast navigation, and in going
round Africa they had no occasion ever to lose sight of land: we may
presume that their vessels were amply stored, so that they could
take their own time, and lie by in bad weather; we may also take for
granted that the reward consequent upon success was considerable.
For any other mariners then existing, indeed, the undertaking might
have been too hard, but it was not so for them, and that was the
reason why Nekôs chose them. To such reasons, which show the story
to present no intrinsic incredibility (that, indeed, is hardly
alleged even by Mannert and others who disbelieve it), we may add
one other, which goes far to prove it positively true. They stated
that, in the course of their circuit, they had the sun on their right
hand (_i. e._ to the northward); and this phenomenon, observable
according to the season even when they were within the tropics,
could not fail to force itself on their attention as constant, after
they had reached the southern temperate zone. But Herodotus at once
pronounces this part of the story to be incredible, and so it would
probably appear to every Greek[545], Phenician, or Egyptian, not
only of the age of Nekôs, but even of the time of Herodotus, who
heard it; since none of them possessed either actual experience of
the phenomenon of a southern latitude, or a sufficiently correct
theory of the relation between sun and earth, to understand the
varying direction of the shadows; and few men would consent to set
aside the received ideas with reference to the solar motions, from
pure confidence in the veracity of these Phenician narrators. Now
that under such circumstances the latter should invent the tale, is
highly improbable; and if they were not inventors, they must have
experienced the phenomenon during the southern portion of their
transit.

[544] Herodot. Οὕτω μὲν αὐτὴ ἐγνώσθη τοπρῶτον· (_i. e._ ἡ
Λιβύη ἐγνώσθη ἐοῦσα περίῤῥυτος·) μετὰ δὲ, Καρχηδόνιοί εἰσιν οἱ
λέγοντες. These Carthaginians, to whom Herodotus here alludes,
told him that Libya was circumnavigable; but it does not seem
that they knew of any other actual circumnavigation except that
of the Phenicians sent by Nekôs; otherwise, Herodotus would have
made some allusion to it, instead of proceeding, as he does
immediately, to tell the story of the Persian Sataspês, who tried
and failed.

The testimony of the Carthaginians is so far valuable, as it
declares their persuasion of the truth of the statement made by
those Phenicians.

Some critics have construed the words, in which Herodotus alludes
to the Carthaginians as his informants, as if what they told him
was the story of the fruitless attempt made by Sataspês. But this
is evidently not the meaning of the historian: he brings forward
the opinion of the Carthaginians as confirmatory of the statement
made by the Phenicians employed by Nekôs.

[545] Diodorus (iii, 40) talks correct language about the
direction of the shadows southward of the tropic of Cancer
(compare Pliny, H. N. vi, 29),—one mark of the extension of
geographical and astronomical observations during the four
intervening centuries between him and Herodotus.

Some critics disbelieve this circumnavigation, from supposing that
if so remarkable an achievement had really taken place once, it must
have been repeated, and practical application must have been made
of it. But though such a suspicion is not unnatural, with those who
recollect how great a revolution was operated when the passage was
rediscovered during the fifteenth century,—yet the reasoning will not
be found applicable to the sixth century before the Christian era.

Pure scientific curiosity, in that age, counted for nothing: the
motive of Nekôs for directing this enterprise was the same as that
which had prompted him to dig his canal,—in order that he might
procure the best communication between the Mediterranean and the Red
sea. But, as it has been with the north-west passage in our time, so
it was with the circumnavigation of Africa in his,—the proof of its
practicability at the same time showed that it was not available for
purposes of traffic or communication, looking to the resources then
at the command of navigators,—a fact, however, which could not be
known until the experiment was made. To pass from the Mediterranean
to the Red sea by means of the Nile still continued to be the easiest
way; either by aid of the land-journey, which in the times of the
Ptolemies was usually made from Koptos on the Nile to Berenikê on the
Red sea,—or by means of the canal of Nekôs, which Darius afterwards
finished, though it seems to have been neglected during the Persian
rule in Egypt, and was subsequently repaired and put to service under
the Ptolemies. Without any doubt the successful Phenician mariners
underwent both severe hardship and great real perils, besides
those still greater supposed perils, the apprehension of which so
constantly unnerved the minds even of experienced and resolute
men in the unknown ocean. Such was the force of these terrors and
difficulties, to which there was no known termination, upon the mind
of the Achæmenid Sataspês (upon whom the circumnavigation of Africa
was imposed as a penalty “worse than death” by Xerxes, in commutation
of a capital sentence), that he returned without having finished the
circuit, though by so doing he forfeited his life. He affirmed that
he had sailed “until his vessel stuck fast, and could move on no
farther,”—a persuasion not uncommon in ancient times, and even down
to Columbus, that there was a point, beyond which the ocean,—either
from mud, sands, shallows, fogs, or accumulations of sea-weed,—was no
longer navigable.[546]

[546] Skylax, after following the line of coast from the
Mediterranean outside of the strait of Gibraltar, and then
south-westward along Africa as far as the island of Kernê, goes
on to say, that “beyond Kernê the sea is no longer navigable
from shallows, and mud, and sea-weed:” Τῆς δὲ Κέρνης νήσου τὰ
ἐπέκεινα οὐκέτι ἐστὶ πλωτὰ διὰ βραχύτητα θαλάττης καὶ πηλὸν καὶ
φῦκος. Ἐστὶ δὲ τὸ φῦκος τῆς δοχμῆς τὸ πλάτος καὶ ἄνωθεν ὀξὺ, ὥστε
κεντεῖν (Skylax, c. 109). Nearchus, on undertaking his voyage
down the Indus, and from thence into the Persian gulf, is not
certain whether the external sea will be found navigable—εἰ δὴ
πλωτός γέ ἐστιν ὁ ταύτῃ πόντος (Nearchi Periplus, p. 2: compare
p. 40, ap. Geogr. Minor. vol. i, ed. Hudson). Pytheas described
the neighborhood of Thulê as a sort of chaos—a medley of earth,
sea, and air, in which you could neither walk nor sail: οὔτε γῆ
καθ᾽ αὑτὴν ὕπηρχεν ἔτι οὔτε θάλασσα οὔτε ἀὴρ, ἀλλὰ σύγκριμά τι
ἐκ τούτων πλεύμονι θαλασσίῳ ἐοικὸς, ἐν ᾧ φησὶ τὴν γῆν καὶ τὴν
θάλασσαν αἰωρεῖσθαι καὶ τὰ σύμπαντα, καὶ τοῦτον ὡς ἂν δεσμὸν
εἶναι τῶν ὅλων, μήτε πορευτὸν μήτε πλωτὸν ὑπάρχοντα· τὸ μὲν οὖν
τῷ πλεύμονι ἐοικὸς αὐτὸς (Pytheas) ἑωρακέναι, τἄλλα δὲ λέγειν ἐξ
ἀκοῆς. (Strabo, ii, p. 104). Again, the priests of Memphis told
Herodotus that their conquering hero Sesostris had equipped a
fleet in the Arabian gulf, and made a voyage into the Erythræan
sea, subjugating people everywhere, “until he came to a sea
no longer navigable from shallows,”—οὐκέτι πλωτὴν ὑπὸ βραχέων
(Herod. ii, 109). Plato represents the sea without the Pillars of
Hêraklês as impenetrable and unfit for navigation, in consequence
of the large admixture of earth, mud, or vegetable covering,
which had arisen in it from the disruption of the great island or
continent Atlantis (Timæus, p. 25; and Kritias, p. 108); which
passages are well illustrated by the Scholiast, who seems to have
read geographical descriptions of the character of this outer
sea: τοῦτο καὶ οἱ τοὺς ἐκείνῃ τόπους ἱστοροῦντες λέγουσιν, ὡς
πάντα τεναγώδη τὸν ἐκεῖ εἶναι χῶρον· τέναγος δὲ ἐστὶν ἰλύς τις,
ἐπιπολάζοντος ὕδατος οὐ πολλοῦ, καὶ βοτάνης ἐπιφαινομένης τούτῳ.
See also Plutarch’s fancy of the dense, earthy, and viscous
Kronian sea (some days to the westward of Britain), in which a
ship could with difficulty advance, and only by means of severe
pulling with the oars (Plutarch, De Facie in Orbe Lunæ, c. 26, p.
941). So again in the two geographical productions in verse by
Rufus Festus Avienus (Hudson, Geogr. Minor. vol. iv, Descriptio
Orbis Terræ, v, 57, and Ora Maritima, v, 406-415): in the first
of these two, the density of the water of the western ocean is
ascribed to its being saturated with salt,—in the second, we have
shallows, large quantities of sea-weed, and wild beasts swimming
about, which the Carthaginian Himilco affirmed himself to have
seen:—

“Plerumque porro tenue tenditur salum,
Ut vix arenas subjacentes occulat;
Exsuperat autem gurgitem fucus frequens
Atque impeditur æstus ex uligine:
Vis vel ferarum pelagus omne internatat,
Mutusque terror ex feris habitat freta.
Hæc olim Himilco Pœnus Oceano super
_Spectasse_ semet et probasse rettulit:
Hæc nos, ab imis Punicorum annalibus
Prolata longo tempore, edidimus tibi.”

Compare also v, 115-130 of the same poem, where the author again
quotes from a voyage of Himilco, who had been four months in the
ocean outside of the Pillars of Hercules:—

“Sic nulla late flabra propellunt ratem,
Sic segnis humor æquoris pigri stupet.
Adjicit et illud, plurimum inter gurgites
Extare fucum, et sæpe virgulti vice
Retinere puppim,” etc.

The dead calm, mud, and shallows of the external ocean are
touched upon by Aristot. Meteorolog. ii, 1, 14, and seem to have
been a favorite subject of declamation with the rhetors of the
Augustan age. See Seneca, Suasoriar. i, 1.

Even the companions and contemporaries of Columbus, when
navigation had made such comparative progress, still retained
much of these fears respecting the dangers and difficulties
of the unknown ocean: “Le tableau exagéré (observes A. von
Humboldt, Examen Critique de l’Histoire de la Géographie, t. iii,
p. 95) que la ruse des Phéniciens avait tracé des difficultés
qu’opposaient à la navigation au delà des Colonnes d’Hercule, de
Cerné, et de l’Ile Sacrée (Ierné), le fucus, le limon, le manque
de fond, et le calme perpétuel de la mer, ressemble d’une manière
frappante aux récits animés des premiers compagnons de Colomb.”

Columbus was the first man who traversed the sea of Sargasso,
or area of the Atlantic ocean south of the Azores, where it
is covered by an immense mass of sea-weed for a space six or
seven times as large as France: the alarm of his crew at this
unexpected spectacle was considerable. The sea-weed is sometimes
so thickly accumulated, that it requires a considerable wind to
impel the vessel through it. The remarks and comparisons of M.
von Humboldt, in reference to ancient and modern navigation, are
highly interesting. (Examen, _ut sup._ pp. 69, 88, 91, etc.)

J. M. Gesner (Dissertat. de Navigationibus extra Columnas
Herculis, sects. 6 and 7) has a good defence of the story told
by Herodotus. Major Rennell also adopts the same view, and shows
by many arguments how much easier the circumnavigation was from
the East than from the West (Geograph. System of Herodotus, p.
680); compare Ukert, Geograph. der Griechen und Römer. vol. i, p.
61; Mannert, Geog. d. G. und Römer, vol. i, pp. 19-26. Gossellin
(Recherches sur la Géogr. des Anc. i, p. 149) and Mannert both
reject the story as not worthy of belief: Heeren defends it
(Ideen über den Verkehr der Alten Welt, i, 2, pp. 86-95).

Agatharchides, in the second century B. C., pronounces the
eastern coast of Africa, southward of the Red sea, to be as yet
unexamined: he treats it as a matter of certainty, however, that
the sea to the south-westward is continuous with the Western
ocean (De Rubro Mari, Geog. Minores, ed. Huds. v, i, p. 11).

Now we learn from hence that the enterprise, even by those who
believed the narrative of Nekôs’s captains, was regarded as at once
desperate and unprofitable; but doubtless many persons treated it as
a mere “Phenician lie,”[547] (to use an expression proverbial in
ancient times). The circumnavigation of Libya is said to have been
one of the projects conceived by Alexander the Great,[548] and we
may readily believe that if he had lived longer, it would have been
confided to Nearchus, or some other officer of the like competence:
nor can there be any reason why it should not have succeeded,
especially since it would have been undertaken from the eastward,
to the great profit of geographical knowledge among the ancients,
but with little advantage to their commerce. There is then adequate
reason for admitting that these Phenicians rounded the cape of Good
Hope from the East about 600 B. C., more than two thousand years
earlier than Vasco de Gama did the same thing from the West: though
the discovery was in the first instance of no avail, either for
commerce or for geographical science.

[547] Strabo, iii, p. 170. Sataspês (the unsuccessful Persian
circumnavigator of Libya, mentioned just above) had violated the
daughter of another Persian nobleman, Zopyrus son of Megabyzus,
and Xerxês had given orders that he should be crucified for this
act; his mother begged him off by suggesting that he should be
condemned to something “_worse than death_”—the circumnavigation
of Libya (Herod. iv, 43). Two things are to be remarked in
respect to his voyage: 1. He took with him a ship and seamen
from Egypt; we are not told that they were Phenician: probably
no other mariners than Phenicians were competent to such a
voyage,—and even if the crew of Sataspês had been Phenicians,
he could not offer rewards for success equal to those at the
disposal of Nekôs. 2. He began his enterprise from the strait
of Gibraltar instead of from the Red sea; now it seems that
the current between Madagascar and the eastern coast of Africa
sets very strongly towards the cape of Good Hope, so that while
it greatly assists the southerly voyage, on the other hand, it
makes return by the same way very difficult. (See Humboldt,
Examen Critique de l’Histoire de la Géographie, t. i, p. 343.)
Strabo, however, affirms that all those who had tried to
circumnavigate Africa, both from the Red sea and from the strait
of Gibraltar, had been forced to return without success (i, p.
32), so that most people believed that there was a continuous
isthmus which rendered it impracticable to go by sea from the one
point to the other: he is himself, however, persuaded that the
Atlantic is σύῤῥους on both sides of Africa, and therefore that
circumnavigation is possible. He as well as Poseidonius (ii, pp.
98-100) disbelieved the tale of the Phenicians sent by Nekôs.
He must have derived his complete conviction, that Libya might
be circumnavigated, from geographical theory, which led him to
contract the dimensions of that continent southward,—inasmuch
as the thing in his belief never had been done, though often
attempted. Mannert (Geog. d. G. und Röm. i, p. 24) erroneously
says that Strabo and others founded their belief on the narrative
of Herodotus.

It is worth while remarking that Strabo cannot have read the
story in Herodotus with much attention, since he mentions
Darius as the king who sent the Phenicians round Africa, not
Nekôs; nor does he take notice of the remarkable statement of
these navigators respecting the position of the sun. There
were doubtless many apocryphal narratives current in his
time respecting attempts, successful and unsuccessful, to
circumnavigate Africa, as we may see by the tale of Eudoxus
(Strabo, ii, 98; Cornel. Nep. ap. Plin. H. N. ii, 67, who gives
the story very differently; and Pomp. Mela, iii, 9).

[548] Arrian, Exp. Al. vii, 1, 2.

Besides the maritime range of Tyre and Sidon, their trade by land in
the interior of Asia was of great value and importance. They were
the speculative merchants who directed the march of the caravans
laden with Assyrian and Egyptian products across the deserts which
separated them from inner Asia,[549]—an operation which presented
hardly less difficulties, considering the Arabian depredators whom
they were obliged to conciliate and even to employ as carriers, than
the longest coast-voyage. They seem to have stood alone in antiquity
in their willingness to brave, and their ability to surmount, the
perils of a distant land-traffic;[550] and their descendants at
Carthage and Utica were not less active in pushing caravans far into
the interior of Africa.

[549] Herodot. i, 1. Φοίνικας—ἀπαγινέοντας φορτία Ἀσσύριά τε καὶ
Αἰγύπτια.

[550] See the valuable chapter in Heeren (Ueber den Verkehr der
Alten Welt i, 2, Abschn. 4, p. 96) about the land trade of the
Phenicians.

The twenty-seventh chapter of the prophet Ezekiel presents a
striking picture of the general commerce of Tyre.

CHAPTER XIX.

ASSYRIANS. — BABYLON.

The name of the Assyrians, who formed one wing of this early system
of intercourse and commerce, rests chiefly upon the great cities of
Nineveh and Babylon. To the Assyrians of Nineveh (as has been already
mentioned) is ascribed in early times a very extensive empire,
covering much of Upper Asia, as well as Mesopotamia or the country
between the Euphrates and the Tigris. Respecting this empire,—its
commencement, its extent, or even the mode in which it was put
down,—nothing certain can be affirmed; but it seems unquestionable
that many great and flourishing cities,—and a population inferior in
enterprise, but not in industry, to the Phenicians,—were to be found
on the Euphrates and Tigris, in times anterior to the first Olympiad.
Of these cities, Nineveh on the Tigris and Babylon on the Euphrates
were the chief;[551] the latter being in some sort of dependence,
probably, on the sovereigns of Nineveh, yet governed by kings or
chiefs of its own, and comprehending an hereditary order of priests
named Chaldæans, masters of all the science and literature as well as
of the religious ceremonies current among the people, and devoted,
from very early times, to that habit of astronomical observation
which their brilliant sky so much favored.

[551] Herodot. i, 178. Τῆς δὲ Ἀσσυρίης ἐστὶ μέν κου καὶ ἄλλα
πολίσματα μεγάλα πολλά· τὸ δὲ ὀνομαστότατον καὶ ἰσχυρότατον, καὶ
ἔνθα σφι, τῆς Νίνου ἀναστάτου γενομένης, τὰ βασιλήϊα κατεστήκεε,
ἦν Βαβυλών.

The existence of these and several other great cities is an
important item to be taken in, in our conception of the old
Assyria: Opis on the Tigris, and Sittakê on one of the canals
very near the Tigris, can be identified (Xenoph. Anab. ii, 4,
13-25): compare Diodor. ii, 11.

The people called Assyrians or Syrians—for among the Greek authors
no constant distinction is maintained between the two[552]— were
distributed over the wide territory bounded on the east by Mount
Zagros and its north-westerly continuation toward Mount Ararat, by
which they were separated from the Medes,—and extending from thence
westward and southward to the Euxine sea, the river Halys, the
Mediterranean sea, and the Persian gulf,—thus covering the whole
course of the Tigris and Euphrates south of Armenia, as well as Syria
and Syria-Palæstine, and the territory eastward of the Halys called
Kappadokia. But the Chaldæan order of priests appear to have been
peculiar to Babylon and other towns in its territory, especially
between that city and the Persian gulf. The vast, rich, and lofty
temple of Bêlus in that city, served them at once as a place of
worship and an astronomical observatory; and it was the paramount
ascendency of this order which seems to have caused the Babylonian
people generally to be spoken of as Chaldæans,—though some writers
have supposed, without any good proof, a conquest of Assyrian
Babylon by barbarians called Chaldæans from the mountains near the
Euxine.[553]

[552] Herodot. i, 72; iii, 90-91; vii, 63; Strabo, xvi, p. 736,
also ii, p. 84, in which he takes exception to the distribution
of the οἰκουμένη (inhabited portion of the globe) made by
Eratosthenês, because it did not include in the same compartment
(σφραγὶς) Syria proper and Mesopotamia: he calls Ninus and
Semiramis, Syrians. Herodotus considers the Armenians as
colonists from the Phrygians (vii, 73).

The Homeric names Ἀρίμοι, Ἐρεμβοὶ (the first in the Iliad,
ii, 783, the second in the Odyssey, iv, 84) coincide with the
Oriental name of this race _Aram_; it seems more ancient, in the
Greek habits of speech, than _Syrians_ (see Strabo, xvi, p. 785).

The Hesiodic Catalogue too, as well as Stêsichorus, recognized
_Arabus_ as the son of Hermês, by Throniê, daughter of Bêlus
(Hesiod, Fragm. 29, ed. Marktscheffel; Strabo, i, p. 42).

[553] Heeren, in his account of the Babylonians (Ideen über den
Verkehr der Alten Welt, part i, Abtheilung 2, p. 168), speaks of
this conquest of Babylon by Chaldæan barbarians from the northern
mountains as a certain fact, explaining the great development of
the Babylonian empire under Nabopolasar and Nebuchadnezzar from
630-580 B. C.; it was, he thinks, the new Chaldæan conquerors who
thus extended their dominion over Judæa and Phenicia.

I agree with Volney (Chronologie des Babyloniens, ch. x, p. 215)
in thinking this statement both unsupported and improbable.
Mannert seems to suppose the Chaldæans of Arabian origin (Geogr.
der Gr. und Röm., part v, s. 2, ch. xii, p. 419). The passages
of Strabo (xvi, p. 739) are more favorable to this opinion than
to that of Heeren; but we make out nothing distinct respecting
the Chaldæans except that they were the priestly order among
the Assyrians of Babylon, as they are expressly termed by
Herodotus—ὡς λέγουσι οἱ Χαλδαῖοι, ἐόντες ἱρέες τούτου τοῦ θεοῦ
(of Zeus Bêlus) (Herodot. i, 181).

The Chalybes and Chaldæi of the northern mountains seem to be
known only through Xenophon (Anab. iv, 3, 4; v, 5, 17; Cyrop.
iii, 2, 1); they are rude barbarians, and of their exploits or
history no particulars reach us.

There were exaggerated statements respecting the antiquity of their
astronomical observations, which cannot be traced as of definite and
recorded date higher than the era of Nabonassar[554] (747 B. C.),
as well as respecting the extent of their acquired knowledge, so
largely blended with astrological fancies and occult influences of
the heavenly bodies on human affairs. But however incomplete their
knowledge may appear when judged by the standard of after-times,
there can be no doubt, that compared with any of their contemporaries
of the sixth century B. C.—either Egyptians, Greeks, or Asiatics—they
stood preëminent, and had much to teach, not only to Thalês and
Pythagoras, but even to later inquirers, such as Eudoxus and
Aristotle. The conception of the revolving celestial sphere, the
gnomon, and the division of the day into twelve parts, are affirmed
by Herodotus[555] to have been first taught to the Greeks by the
Babylonians; and the continuous observation of the heavens both by
the Egyptian and Chaldæan priests, had determined with considerable
exactness both the duration of the solar year and other longer
periods of astronomical recurrence; thus impressing upon intelligent
Greeks the imperfection of their own calendars, and furnishing them
with a basis not only for enlarged observations of their own, but
also for the discovery and application of those mathematical theories
whereby astronomy first became a science.

[554] The earliest Chaldæan astronomical observation, known to
the astronomer Ptolemy, both precise and of ascertained date to
a degree sufficient for scientific use, was a lunar eclipse of
the 19th March 721 B. C.—the 27th year of the era of Nabonassar
(Ideler, Ueber die Astronomischen Beobachtungen der Alten, p.
19, Berlin, 1806). Had Ptolemy known any older observations
conforming to these conditions, he would not have omitted to
notice them: his own words in the Almagest testify how much he
valued the knowledge and comparison of observations taken at
distant intervals (Almagest, b. 3, p. 62, ap. Ideler, _l. c._ p.
1), and at the same time imply that he had none more ancient than
the era of Nabonassar (Alm. iii, p. 77, ap. Idel. p. 169).

That the Chaldæans had been, long before this period, in the
habit of observing the heavens, there is no reason to doubt; and
the exactness of those observations cited by Ptolemy implies
(according to the judgment of Ideler _ib._ p. 167) long previous
practice. The period of two hundred and twenty-three lunations,
after which the moon reverts nearly to the same positions in
reference to the apsides and nodes, and after which eclipses
return nearly in the same order and magnitude, appears to have
been discovered by the Chaldæans (“Defectus ducentis viginti
tribus mensibus redire in suos orbes certum est,” Pliny, H. N.
ii, 13), and they deduced from hence the mean daily motions of
the moon with a degree of accuracy which differs only by four
seconds from modern lunar tables (Geminus, Isagoge in Arati
Phænomena, c. 15; Ideler, _l. c._ pp. 153, 154, and in his
Handbuch der Chronologie, vol. i, Absch. ii, p. 207).

There seem to have been Chaldæan observations, both made and
recorded, of much greater antiquity than the era of Nabonassar;
though we cannot lay much stress on the date of 1903 years
anterior to Alexander the Great, which is mentioned by Simplicius
(ad Aristot. de Cœlo, p. 123) as being the earliest period of
the Chaldæan observations sent from Babylon by Kallisthenês to
Aristotle. Ideler thinks that the Chaldæan observations anterior
to the era of Nabonassar were useless to astronomers from the
want of some fixed era, or definite cycle, to identify the date
of each of them. The common civil year of the Chaldæans had been
from the beginning (like that of the Greeks) a lunar year, kept
in a certain degree of harmony with the sun by cycles of lunar
years and intercalation. Down to the era of Nabonassar, the
calender was in confusion, and there was nothing to verify either
the time of accession of the kings, or that of astronomical
phenomena observed, except the days and months of this lunar
year. In the reign of Nabonassar, the astronomers at Babylon
introduced (not into civil use, but for their own purposes and
records) the Egyptian solar year,—of three hundred and sixty-five
days, or twelve months of thirty days each, with five added days,
beginning with the first of the month Thoth, the commencement of
the Egyptian year,—and they thus first obtained a continuous and
accurate mode of marking the date of events. It is not meant that
the Chaldæans then for the first time obtained from the Egyptians
the _knowledge_ of the solar year of three hundred and sixty-five
days, but that they then for the first time adopted it in their
notation of time for astronomical purposes, fixing the precise
moment at which they began. Nor is there the least reason to
suppose that the era of Nabonassar coincided with any political
revolution or change of dynasty. Ideler discusses this point
(pp. 146-173, and Handbuch der Chronol. pp. 215-220). Syncellus
might correctly say—Ἀπὸ Ναβονασάρου τοὺς χρόνους τῆς τῶν ἄστρων
παρατηρησέως Χαλδαῖοι ἠκρίβωσαν (Chronogr. p. 207).

We need not dwell upon the back reckonings of the Chaldæans for
periods of 720,000, 490,000, 470,000 years, mentioned by Cicero,
Diodorus, and Pliny (Cicero, De Divin. ii, 46; Diod. ii, 31;
Pliny, H. N. vii, 57), and seemingly presented by Berosus and
others as the preface of Babylonian history.

It is to be noted that Ptolemy always cited the Chaldæan
observations as made by “_the Chaldæans_,” never naming any
individual; though in all the other observations to which he
alludes, he is very scrupulous in particularizing the name of
the observer. Doubtless he found the Chaldæan observations
registered just in this manner; a point which illustrates what
is said in the text respecting the collective character of their
civilization, and the want of individual development or prominent
genius.

The superiority of the Chaldæan priests to the Egyptian, as
astronomical observers, is shown by the fact that Ptolemy, though
living at Alexandria, never mentions the latter as astronomers,
and cites no Egyptian observations while he cites thirteen
Chaldæan observations in the years B. C. 721, 720, 523, 502, 491,
383, 382, 245, 237, 229: the first ten being observations of
lunar eclipses; the last three, of conjunctions of planets and
fixed stars (Ideler, Handbuch der Chronologie, vol. i, Ab. ii,
pp. 195-199).

[555] Herodot. ii, 109.

Nor was it only the astronomical acquisitions of the priestly caste
which distinguished the early Babylonians. The social condition, the
fertility of the country, the dense population, and the persevering
industry of the inhabitants, were not less remarkable. Respecting
Nineveh,[556] once the greatest of the Assyrian cities, we have
no good information, nor can we safely reason from the analogy of
Babylon, inasmuch as the peculiarities of the latter were altogether
determined by the Euphrates, while Nineveh was seated considerably
farther north, and on the east bank of the Tigris: but Herodotus
gives us valuable particulars respecting Babylon as an eye-witness,
and we may judge by his account respecting its condition after much
suffering from the Persian conquest, what it had been a century
earlier in the days of its full splendor.

[556] The ancient Ninus or Nineveh was situated on the eastern
bank of the Tigris, nearly opposite the modern town of Mousul or
Mosul. Herodotus (i, 193) and Strabo (xvi, p. 737) both speak of
it as being destroyed; but Tacitus (Ann. xii, 13) and Ammian.
Marcell. (xviii, 7) mention it as subsisting. Its ruins had been
long remarked (see Thevenot, Voyages, lib. i, ch. xi, p. 176, and
Niebuhr, Reisen, vol. ii, p. 360), but have never been examined
carefully until recently by Rich, Ainsworth, and others: see
Ritter, West-Asien, b. iii, Abtheil. iii, Abschn. i, s. 45, pp.
171-221.

Ktêsias, according to Diodorus (ii, 3), placed Ninus or
Nineveh on the Euphrates, which we must presume to be an
inadvertence,—probably of Diodorus himself, for Ktêsias would be
less likely than he to confound the Euphrates and the Tigris.
Compare Wesseling ad Diodor. ii, 3, and Bähr ad Ktesiæ Fragm. ii,
Assyr. p. 392.

Mannert (Geographie der Gr. und Röm. part v, c. 14, pp. 439-448)
disputes the identity of these ruins with the ancient city of
Ninus or Nineveh, because, if this had been the fact, Xenophon
and the Ten Thousand Greeks must have passed directly over them
in the retreat along the eastern bank of the Tigris upward:
and Xenophon, who particularly notices the deserted cities of
Larissa and Mespila, says nothing of the great ruin of this
once flourishing Assyrian capital. This argument once appeared
to me so forcible, that I came to the same negative conclusion
as Mannert, though his conjectures, as to the real site of the
city, never appeared to me satisfactory. But Ritter has removed
the difficulty, by showing that the ruins opposite Mosul exactly
correspond to the situation of that deserted city which Xenophon
calls Mespila: the difference of name in this case is not of
very great importance (Ritter, _ut sup._ p. 175). Consult also
Forbiger, Handbuch der alten Geographie, sect. 96, p. 612.

The situation of Nineveh here pointed out is exactly what we
should expect in reference to the conquests of the Median kings:
it lies in that part of Assyria bordering on Media, and in the
course of the conquests which the king Kyaxarês afterwards
extended farther on to the Halys. (See Appendix at the end of
this chapter.)

The neighboring territory receiving but little rain,[557] owed its
fertility altogether to the annual overflowing of the Euphrates, on
which the labor bestowed, for the purpose of limiting, regularizing,
and diffusing its supply of water, was stupendous. Embankments along
the river,—artificial reservoirs in connection with it, to receive
an excessive increase,—new curvilinear channels, dug for the water
in places where the stream was too straight and rapid,—broad and
deep canals crossing the whole space between the Euphrates and the
Tigris, and feeding numerous rivulets[558] or ditches which enabled
the whole breadth of land to be irrigated,—all these toilsome
applications were requisite to insure due moisture for the Babylonian
soil; but they were rewarded with an exuberance of produce, in the
various descriptions of grain, such as Herodotus hardly dares to
particularize. The country produced no trees except the date-palm,
which was turned to account in many different ways, and from the
fruit of which, both copious and of extraordinary size, wine as
well as bread were made.[559] Moreover, Babylonia was still more
barren of stone than of wood, so that buildings as well as walls
were constructed almost entirely of brick, for which the earth
was well adapted; while a flow of mineral bitumen, found near the
town and river of Is, higher up the Euphrates, served for cement.
Such persevering and systematic labor, applied for the purpose of
irrigation, excites our astonishment; yet the description of what was
done for defence is still more imposing. Babylon, traversed in the
middle by the Euphrates, was surrounded by walls three hundred feet
in height, seventy-five feet in thickness, and composing a square of
which each side was one hundred and twenty stadia (or nearly fifteen
English miles) in length: around the outside of the walls was a broad
and deep moat from whence the material for the bricks composing them
had been excavated; while one hundred brazen gates served for ingress
and egress. Besides, there was an interior wall less thick, but still
very strong; and as a still farther obstruction to invaders from the
north and north-east, another high and thick wall was built at some
miles from the city, across much of the space between the Euphrates
and the Tigris,—called the wall of Media, seemingly a little to the
north of that point where the two rivers most nearly approach to each
other, and joining the Tigris on its west bank. Of the houses many
were three or four stories high, and the broad and straight streets,
unknown in a Greek town until the distribution of the peiræeus
by Hippodamus, near the time of the Peloponnesian war, were well
calculated to heighten the astonishment raised by the whole spectacle
in a visitor like Herodotus. The royal palace, with its memorable
terraces or hanging gardens, formed the central and commanding
edifice in one half of the city,—the temple of Bêlus in the other
half.

[557] Herodot. i, 193. Ἡ γῆ τῶν Ἀσσυρίων ὕεται μὲν ὀλίγῳ—while
he speaks of rain falling at Thebes in Egypt as a prodigy,
which never happened except just at the moment when the country
was conquered by Cambysês,—οὐ γὰρ δὴ ὕεται τὰ ἄνω τῆς Αἰγύπτου
τὸ παράπαν (iii, 10). It is not unimportant to notice this
distinction between the _little_ rain of Babylonia, and the _no_
rain of Upper Egypt,—as a mark of measured assertion in the
historian from whom so much of our knowledge of Grecian history
is derived.

It chanced to rain hard during the four days which the traveller
Niebuhr spent in going from the ruins of Babylon to Bagdad, at
the end of November 1763 (Reisen, vol. ii, p. 292).

[558] Herodot. i, 193; Xenophon, Anab. i, 7, 15; ii, 4, 13-22.

[559] About the date-palms (φοίνικες) in the ancient Babylonia,
see Theophrastus, Hist. Plant. ii, 6, 2-6; Xenoph. Cyrop. vii, 5,
12; Anab. ii, 3, 15; Diodor. ii, 53: there were some which bore
no fruit, but which afforded good wood for house-purposes and
furniture.

Theophrastus gives the same general idea of the fertility and
produce of the soil in Babylonia as Herodotus, though the two
hundred-fold, and sometimes three hundred-fold, which was stated
to the latter as the produce of the land in grain, appears in
his statement cut down to fifty-fold, or one hundred-fold (Hist.
Plant. viii, 7, 4).

Respecting the numerous useful purposes for which the date-palm
was made to serve (a Persian song enumerated three hundred and
sixty), see Strabo, xiv, p. 742; Ammian. Marcell. xxiv, 3.

That celebrated temple, standing upon a basis of one square stadium,
and inclosed in a precinct of two square stadia in dimension, was
composed of eight solid towers, built one above the other, and is
alleged by Strabo to have been as much as a stadium or furlong
high (the height is not specified by Herodotus):[560] it was full
of costly decorations, and possessed an extensive landed property.
Along the banks of the river, in its passage through the city, were
built spacious quays, and a bridge on stone piles, for the placing of
which—as Herodotus was told—Semiramis had caused the river Euphrates
to be drained off into the large side reservoir and lake constructed
higher up its course.[561]

[560] Herodot. i, 178, Strabo, xiv, p. 738; Arrian, E. A.
vii, 17, 7. Strabo does not say that it was a stadium in
_perpendicular_ height: we may suppose that the stadium
represents the entire distance in upward march from the bottom to
the top. He as well as Arrian say that Xerxês destroyed both the
temple of Bêlus and all the other temples at Babylon (καθεῖλεν,
κατέσκαψεν, iii, 16, 6; vii, 17, 4); he talks of the intention
of Alexander to rebuild it, and of his directions given to level
new foundations, carrying away the loose earth and ruins. This
cannot be reconciled with the narrative of Herodotus, nor with
the statement of Pliny (vi, 30), nor do I believe it to be true.
Xerxês plundered the temple of much of its wealth and ornaments,
but that he knocked down the vast building and the other
Babylonian temples, is incredible. Babylon always continued one
of the chief cities of the Persian empire.

[561] What is stated in the text respecting Babylon, is taken
almost entirely from Herodotus: I have given briefly the most
prominent points in his interesting narrative (i, 178-193), which
well deserves to be read at length.

Herodotus is in fact our only original witness, speaking from his
own observation and going into details, respecting the marvels
of Babylon. Ktêsias, if his work had remained, would have been
another original witness; but we have only a few extracts from
him by Diodorus. Strabo seems not to have visited Babylon,
nor can it be affirmed that Kleitarchus did so. Arrian had
Aristobulus to copy, and is valuable as far as he goes; but he
does not enter into many particulars respecting the magnitude
of the city or its appurtenances. Berosus also, if we possessed
his book, would have been an eye-witness of the state of Babylon
more than a century and a half later than Herodotus, but the few
fragments remaining are hardly at all descriptive (see Berosi
Fragm. pp. 64-67, ed. Richter).

The magnitude of the works described by Herodotus naturally
provokes suspicions of exaggeration; but there are good grounds
for trusting him, in my judgment, on all points which fell under
his own vision and means of verification, as distinguished
from past facts, on which he could do no more than give what
he heard. He had bestowed much attention on Assyria and its
phenomena, as is evident from the fact that he had written (or
prepared to write, if the suspicion be admissible that the work
was never completed,—Fabricius, Biblioth. Græc. ii, 20, 5) a
special Assyrian history, which has not reached us (Ἀσσυρίοισι
λόγοισι, i, 106-184). He is very precise in the measures of which
he speaks; thus having described the dimensions of the walls in
“royal cubits,” he goes on immediately to tell us how much that
measure differs from an ordinary cubit. He designedly suppresses
a part of what he had heard respecting the produce of the
Babylonian soil, from the mere apprehension of not being believed.

To these reasons for placing faith in Herodotus we may add
another, not less deserving of attention. That which seems
incredible in the constructions which he describes, arises simply
from their enormous bulk, and the frightful quantity of human
labor which must have been employed to execute them. He does
not tell us, like Berosus (Fragm. p. 66), that these wonderful
fortifications were completed in fifteen days,—nor like Quintus
Curtius, that the length of one stadium was completed on each
successive day of the year (v, 1, 26). To bring to pass all that
Herodotus has described, is a mere question of time, patience,
number of laborers, and cost of maintaining them,—for the
materials were both close at hand and inexhaustible.

Now what would be the limit imposed upon the power and will of
the old kings of Babylonia on these points? We can hardly assign
that limit with so much confidence as to venture to pronounce a
statement of Herodotus incredible, when he tells us something
which he has seen, or verified from eye-witnesses. The Pyramids
and other works in Egypt are quite sufficient to make us
mistrustful of our own means of appreciation; and the great wall
of China (extending for twelve hundred English miles along what
was once the whole northern frontier of the Chinese empire,—from
twenty to twenty-five feet high,—wide enough for six horses to
run abreast, and furnished with a suitable number of gates and
bastions) _contains more material than all the buildings of the
British empire put together_, according to Barrow’s estimate
(Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. i, p. 7, _t.
v._; and Ideler, Ueber die Zeitrechnung der Chinesen, in the
Abhandlungen of the Berlin Academy for 1837, ch. 3, p. 291).

Ktêsias gave the circuit of the walls of Babylon as three hundred
and sixty stadia; Kleitarchus, three hundred and sixty-five
stadia; Quintus Curtius, three hundred and sixty-eight stadia;
and Strabo, three hundred and eighty-five stadia; all different
from Herodotus, who gives four hundred and eighty stadia, a
square of one hundred and twenty stadia each side. Grosskurd (ad
Strabon. xvi, p. 738), Letronne, and Heeren, all presume that the
smaller number must be the truth, and that Herodotus must have
been misinformed; and Grosskurd further urges, that Herodotus
cannot have _seen_ the walls, inasmuch as he himself tells us
that Darius caused them to be razed after the second siege and
reconquest (Herodot. iii, 159). But upon this we may observe:
First, the expression (τὸ τεῖχος περιεῖλε) does not imply that
the wall was so thoroughly and entirely razed by Darius as to
leave no part standing,—still less, that the great and broad
moat was in all its circuit filled up and levelled. This would
have been a most laborious operation in reference to such high
and bulky masses, and withal not necessary for the purpose of
rendering the town defenceless; for which purpose the destruction
of certain portions of the wall is sufficient. Next, Herodotus
speaks distinctly of the walls and ditch as existing in his time,
when he saw the place, which does not exclude the possibility
that numerous breaches may have been designedly made in them,
or mere openings left in the walls without any actual gates,
for the purpose of obviating all idea of revolt. But, however
this latter fact may be, certain it is that the great walls were
either continuous, or discontinuous only to the extent of these
designed breaches, when Herodotus saw them. He describes the town
and its phenomena in the present tense: ~κέεται~ ἐν πεδίῳ μεγάλῳ,
μέγαθος ἐοῦσα μέτωπον ἕκαστον 120 σταδίων, ἐούσης τετραγώνου·
οὗτοι στάδιοι τῆς περιόδου τῆς πόλιος ~γίνονται~ συνάπαντες 480.
Τὸ μὲν νῦν μέγαθος τοσοῦτόν ~ἐστι~ τοῦ ἄστεος τοῦ Βαβυλωνίου.
Ἐκεκόσμητο δὲ ὡς οὐδὲν ἄλλο πόλισμα τῶν ἡμεῖς ἴδμεν· ταφρὸς μὲν
πρῶτά μιν βαθέα τε καὶ εὔρεα καὶ πλέη ὕδατος ~περιθέει~· μετὰ δὲ,
τεῖχος πεντήκοντα μὲν πηχέων βασιληΐων ~ἐὸν~ τὸ εὖρος, ὕψος δὲ,
διηκοσίων πηχέων. Ὁ δὲ βασιλήϊος πηχὺς τοῦ μετρίου ἐστὶ πήχεος
μέζων τρισὶ δακτυλίοισι (c. 178). Again (c. 181),—Τοῦτο μὲν δὴ τὸ
τεῖχος θώρηξ ~ἐστί~· ἕτερον δὲ ἔσωθεν τεῖχος ~περιθεῖ~, οὐ πολλῷ
τέῳ ἀσθενέστερον τοῦ ἑτέρου τείχους, στεινότερον δέ. Then he
describes the temple of Zeus Bêlus, with its vast dimensions,—καὶ
ἐς ἐμὲ τοῦτο ἔτι ἐὸν, δύο σταδίων πάντη, ἐὸν τετράγωνον,—in the
language of one who had himself gone up to the top of it. After
having mentioned the striking present phenomena of the temple,
he specifies a statue of solid gold, twelve cubits high, which
the Chaldæans told him had once been there, but which he did not
see, and he carefully marks the distinction in his language,—ἦν
δὲ ἐν τῷ τεμένεϊ τούτῳ ἔτι τὸν χρόνον ἐκεῖνον καὶ ἀνδριὰς δυώδεκα
πήχεων, χρύσεος στέρεος. Ἐγὼ μέν μιν οὐκ εἶδον· τὰ δὲ λέγεται ὑπὸ
Χαλδαίων, ταῦτα λέγω (c. 183).

The argument, therefore, by which Grosskurd justifies the
rejection of the statement of Herodotus is not to be reconciled
with the language of the historian: Herodotus certainly saw both
the walls and the ditch. Ktêsias saw them too, and his statement
of the circuit, as three hundred and sixty stadia, stands opposed
to that of four hundred and eighty stadia, which appears in
Herodotus. But the authority of Herodotus is, in my judgment,
so much superior to that of Ktêsias, that I accept the larger
figure as more worthy of credit than the smaller. Sixty English
miles of circuit is, doubtless, a wonder, but forty-five miles in
circuit is a wonder also: granting means and will to execute the
lesser of these two, the Babylonian kings can hardly be supposed
inadequate to the greater.

To me the height of these artificial mountains, called _walls_,
appears even more astonishing than their length or breadth.
Yet it is curious that on this point the two eye-witnesses,
Herodotus and Ktêsias, both agree, with only the difference
between royal cubits and common cubits. Herodotus states the
height at two hundred royal cubits: Ktêsias, at fifty fathoms,
which are equal to two hundred common cubits (Diod. ii, 7),—τὸ δὲ
ὕψος, ὡς μὲν Κτησίας φησὶ, πεντήκοντα ὀργυιῶν, ὡς δὲ ἔνιοι τῶν
νεωτώρων ἔγραψαν, πηχῶν πεντήκοντα. Olearius (ad Philostratum
Vit. Apollon. Tyan. i, 25) shows plausible reason for believing
that the more recent writers (νεώτεροι) cut down the dimensions
stated by Ktêsias simply because they thought such a vast height
incredible. The difference between the royal cubit and the common
cubit, as Herodotus on this occasion informs us, was three
digits in favor of the former; his two hundred royal cubits are
thus equal to three hundred and thirty-seven feet eight inches:
Ktêsias has not attended to the difference between royal cubits
and common cubits, and his estimate, therefore, is lower than
that of Herodotus by thirty-seven feet eight inches.

On the whole, I cannot think that we are justified, either by the
authority of such counter-testimony as can be produced, or by the
intrinsic wonder of the case, in rejecting the dimensions of the
walls of Babylon as given by Herodotus.

Quintus Curtius states that a large proportion of the inclosed
space was not occupied by dwellings, but sown and planted (v, 1,
26: compare Diodor. ii, 9).

Besides this great town of Babylon itself, there were throughout
the neighborhood, between the canals which united the Euphrates
and the Tigris, many rich and populous villages, while Borsippa and
other considerable towns were situated lower down on the Euphrates
itself. And the industry, agricultural as well as manufacturing, of
the collective population, was not less persevering than productive:
their linen, cotton, and woollen fabrics, and their richly ornamented
carpets, were celebrated throughout all the Eastern regions. Their
cotton was brought in part from islands in the Persian gulf, while
the flocks of sheep tended by the Arabian nomads supplied them
with wool finer even than that of Milêtus or Tarentum. Besides the
Chaldæan order of priests, there seem to have been among them certain
other tribes with peculiar hereditary customs: thus there were
three tribes, probably near the mouth of the river, who restricted
themselves to the eating of fish alone; but we have no evidences
of a military caste (like that in Egypt) nor any other hereditary
profession.

In order to present any conception of what Assyria was, in the early
days of Grecian history, and during the two centuries preceding
the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus in 536 B. C., we unfortunately
have no witness earlier than Herodotus, who did not see Babylon
until near a century after that event,—about seventy years after
its still more disastrous revolt and second subjugation by Darius,
Babylonia had become one of the twenty satrapies of the Persian
empire, and besides paying a larger regular tribute than any of the
other nineteen, supplied from its exuberant soil provision for the
Great King and his countless host of attendants during one-third
part of the year.[562] Yet it was then in a state of comparative
degradation, having had its immense walls breached by Darius, and
having afterwards undergone the ill usage of Xerxês, who, since he
stripped its temples, and especially the venerated temple of Bêlus,
of some of their richest ornaments, would probably be still more
reckless in his mode of dealing with the civil edifices.[563] If in
spite of such inflictions, and in spite of that manifest evidence
of poverty and suffering in the people which Herodotus expressly
notices, it continued to be what he describes, still counted as
almost the chief city of the Persian empire, both in the time of
the younger Cyrus and in that of Alexander,[564]—we may judge what
it must once have been, without either foreign satrap or foreign
tribute,[565] under its Assyrian kings and Chaldæan priests, during
the last of the two centuries which intervened between the era of
Nabonassar and the capture of the city by Cyrus the Great. Though
several of the kings, during the first of these two centuries, had
contributed much to the great works of Babylon, yet it was during the
second century of the two, after the capture of Nineveh by the Medes,
and under Nebuchadnezzar and Nitôkris, that the kings attained the
maximum of their power, and the city its greatest enlargement. It was
Nebuchadnezzar who constructed the seaport Terêdon, at the mouth of
the Euphrates, and who probably excavated the long ship canal of near
four hundred miles, which joined it,—which was perhaps formed partly
from a natural western branch of the Euphrates.[566] The brother of
the poet Alkæus,—Antimenidas, who served in the Babylonian army, and
distinguished himself by his personal valor (600-580 B. C.),—would
have seen it in its full glory:[567] he is the earliest Greek of
whom we hear individually in connection with the Babylonians. It
marks[568] strikingly the contrast between the Persian kings and the
Babylonian kings, on whose ruin they rose, that while the latter
incurred immense expense to facilitate the communication between
Babylon and the sea, the former artificially impeded the lower course
of the Tigris, in order that their residence at Susa might be out of
the reach of assailants.

[562] Herodot. i, 196.

[563] Arrian, Exp. Al. iii, 16, 6; vii, 17, 3; Quint. Curtius,
iii, 3, 16.

[564] Xenoph. Anab. i, 4, 11; Arrian. Exp. Al. iii. 16, 3. καὶ
ἅμα τοῦ πολέμου τὸ ἆθλον ἡ Βαβυλῶν καὶ τὰ Σοῦσα ἐφαίνετο.

[565] See the statement of the large receipts of the satrap
Tritantæchmes and his immense establishment of horses and Indian
dogs (Herodot. i 192).

[566] There is a valuable examination of the lower course of the
Euphrates, with the changes which it has undergone, in Ritter,
West-Asien, b. iii. Abtheil. iii, Abschnitt i, sect. 29, pp.
45-49, and the passage from Abydenus in the latter page.

For the distance between Terêdon or Diridôtis, at the mouth of
the Euphrates (which remained separate from that of the Tigris
until the first century of the Christian era), to Babylon, see
Strabo, ii, p. 80; xvi, p. 739.

It is important to keep in mind the warning given by Ritter, that
none of the maps of the course of the river Euphrates, prepared
previously to the publication of Colonel Chesney’s expedition in
1836, are to be trusted. That expedition gave the first complete
and accurate survey of the course of the river, and led to the
detection of many mistakes previously committed by Mannert,
Reichard, and other able geographers and chartographers. To the
immense mass of information contained in Ritter’s comprehensive
and laborious work, is to be added the farther merit, that he is
always careful in pointing out where the geographical data are
insufficient and fall short of certainty. See West-Asien, B. iii,
Abtheilung iii, Abschnitt i, sect. 41, p 959.

[567] Strabo, xiii, p. 617, with the mutilated fragment of
Alkæus, which O Müller has so ingeniously corrected (Rhenisch.
Museum, i, 4, p. 287).

[568] Strabo, xvi, p. 740.

That which strikes us most, and which must have struck the first
Grecian visitors much more, both in Assyria and Egypt, is the
unbounded command of naked human strength possessed by these early
kings, and the effect of mere mass and indefatigable perseverance,
unaided either by theory or by artifice, in the accomplishment of
gigantic results.[569] In Assyria, the results were in great part
exaggerations of enterprises in themselves useful to the people for
irrigation and defence: religious worship was ministered to in the
like manner, as well as the personal fancies and pomp of their kings:
while in Egypt the latter class predominates more over the former.
We scarcely trace in either of them the higher sentiment of art,
which owes its first marked development to Grecian susceptibility and
genius. But the human mind is in every stage of its progress, and
most of all in its rude and unreflecting period, strongly impressed
by visible and tangible magnitude, and awe-struck by the evidences
of great power. To this feeling, for what exceeded the demands of
practical convenience and security, the wonders both in Egypt and
Assyria chiefly appealed; while the execution of such colossal works
demonstrates habits of regular industry, a concentrated population
under one government, and above all, an implicit submission to
the regal and priestly sway,—contrasting forcibly with the small
autonomous communities of Greece and western Europe, wherein the
will of the individual citizen was so much more energetic and
uncontrolled. The acquisition of habits of regular industry, so
foreign to the natural temper of man, was brought about in Egypt and
Assyria, in China and Hindostan, before it had acquired any footing
in Europe; but it was purchased either by prostrate obedience to a
despotic rule, or by imprisonment within the chain of a consecrated
institution of caste. Even during the Homeric period of Greece, these
countries had attained a certain civilization in mass, without the
acquisition of any high mental qualities or the development of any
individual genius: the religious and political sanction, sometimes
combined and sometimes separate, determined for every one his mode
of life, his creed, his duties, and his place in society, without
leaving any scope for the will or reason of the agent himself. Now
the Phenicians and Carthaginians manifest a degree of individual
impulse and energy which puts them greatly above this type of
civilization, though in their tastes, social feelings, and religion,
they are still Asiatic. And even the Babylonian community, though
their Chaldæan priests are the parallel of the Egyptian priests,
with a less measure of ascendency, combine with their industrial
aptitude and constancy of purpose something of that strenuous
ferocity of character which marks so many people of the Semitic
race,—Jews, Phenicians, and Carthaginians. These Semitic people stand
distinguished as well from the Egyptian life,—enslaved by childish
caprices and antipathies, and by endless frivolities of ceremonial
detail,—as from the flexible, many-sided, and self-organizing Greek;
not only capable of opening both for himself and for the human race
the highest walks of intellect, and the full creative agency of art,
but also gentler by far in his private sympathies and dealings than
his contemporaries on the Euphrates, the Jordan, or the Nile,—for
we are not of course to compare him with the exigencies of western
Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

[569] Diodor. (i. 31) states this point justly with regard to
the ancient kings of Egypt—ἔργα μεγάλα καὶ θαυμαστὰ διὰ ~τὰς
πολυχειρίας~ κατασκευάσαντας, ἀθάνατα τῆς ἑαυτῶν δόξες καταλιπεῖν
ὑπομνήματα.

Both in Babylonia and in Egypt, the vast monuments, embankments, and
canals, executed by collective industry, appeared the more remarkable
to an ancient traveller by contrast with the desert regions and
predatory tribes immediately surrounding them. West of the Euphrates,
the sands of Arabia extended northward, with little interruption,
to the latitude of the gulf of Issus; they even covered the greater
part of Mesopotamia,[570] or the country between the Euphrates and
the Tigris, beginning a few days’ journey northward of the wall
called the wall of Media above mentioned, which—extending westward
from the Tigris to one of the canals joining the Euphrates—had been
erected to protect Babylon, against the incursion of the Medes.[571]
Eastward of the Tigris again, along the range of Mount Zagros, but
at no great distance from the river, were found the Elymæi, Kossæi,
Uxii, Parætakêni, etc.,—tribes which, to use the expression of
Strabo,[572] “as inhabiting a poor country, were under the necessity
of living by the plunder of their neighbors.” Such rude bands of
depredators on the one side, and such wide tracts of sand on the two
others, without vegetation or water, contrasted powerfully with the
industry and productiveness of Babylonia. Babylon itself is to be
considered, not as one continuous city, but as a city together with
its surrounding district inclosed within immense walls, the height
and thickness of which were in themselves a sufficient defence, so
that the place was assailable only at its gates. In case of need, it
would serve as shelter for the persons and property of the village
inhabitants in Babylonia; and we shall see hereafter how useful under
trying circumstances such a resource was, when we come to review
the invasions of Attica by the Peloponnesians, and the mischiefs
occasioned by a temporary crowd pouring in from the country, so as
to overcharge the intra-mural accommodations of Athens. Spacious as
Babylon was, however, it is affirmed by Strabo that Ninus or Nineveh
was considerably larger.

[570] See the description of this desert in Xenoph. Anab. i, 5,
1-8.

[571] The Ten Thousand Greeks passed from the outside to the
inside of the wall of Media: it was one hundred feet high, twenty
feet wide, and was reported to them as extending twenty parasangs
or six hundred stadia (= seventy miles) in length (Xenoph. Anab.
ii, 4, 12). Eratosthenês called it τὸ Σεμιράμιδος διατείχισμα
(Strabo, ii, p. 80): it was seemingly about twenty-five miles
north of Bagdad.

There is some confusion about the wall of Media: Mannert (Geogr.
der G. und R. v. 2, p. 280) and Forbiger also (Alte Geogr. sect.
97, p. 616, note 94) appear to have confounded the ditch dug by
special order of Artaxerxês to oppose the march of the younger
Cyrus, with the Nahar-Malcha or Royal canal between the Tigris
and the Euphrates: see Xenoph. Anab. i, 7, 15.

It is singular that Herodotus makes no mention of the wall of
Media, though his subject (i, 185) naturally conducts him to
it: he seems to have sailed down the Euphrates to Babylon, and
must, therefore, have seen it, if it had really extended to the
Euphrates, as some authors have imagined. Probably, however, it
was not kept up with any care, even in his time, seeing that its
original usefulness was at an end, after the whole of Asia, from
the Euxine to the Persian gulf, became subject to the Persians.

[572] Strabo, xvi, p. 744.

APPENDIX.

Since the first edition of these volumes, the interesting work of Mr.
Layard,—“Nineveh and its Remains,” together with his illustrative
Drawings,—“The Monuments of Nineveh,”—have been published. And
through his unremitting valuable exertions in surmounting all the
difficulties connected with excavations on the spot, the British
Museum has been enriched with a valuable collection of real Assyrian
sculptures and other monuments. A number of similar relics of
Assyrian antiquity, obtained by M. Botta and others, have also been
deposited in the museum of the Louvre at Paris.

In respect to Assyrian art, indeed to the history of art in general,
a new world has thus been opened, which promises to be fruitful
of instruction especially when we consider that the ground out of
which the recent acquisitions have been obtained, has been yet most
imperfectly examined, and may be expected to yield a much ampler
harvest hereafter, assuming circumstances tolerably favorable to
investigation. The sculptures to which we are now introduced,
with all their remarkable peculiarities of style and idea, must
undoubtedly date from the eighth or seventh century B. C., at the
latest,—and may be much earlier. The style which they display
forms a parallel and subject of comparison, though in many points
extremely different, to that of early Egypt,—at a time when the ideal
combinations of the Greeks were, as far as we know, embodied only in
epic and lyric poetry.

But in respect to early Assyrian history, we have yet to find out
whether much new information can be safely deduced from these
interesting monuments. The cuneiform inscriptions now brought to
light are indeed very numerous: and if they can be deciphered, on
rational and trustworthy principles, we can hardly fail to acquire
more or less of positive knowledge respecting a period now plunged
in total darkness. But from the monuments of art alone, it would
be unsafe to draw historical inferences. For example, when we
find sculptures representing a king taking a city by assault, or
receiving captives brought to him, etc., we are not to conclude that
this commemorates any real and positive conquest recently made by
the Assyrians. Our knowledge of the subjects of Greek sculpture on
temples is quite sufficient to make us disallow any such inference,
unless there be some corroborative proof. Some means must first be
discovered, of discriminating historical from mythical subjects: a
distinction which I here notice, the rather, because Mr. Layard shows
occasional tendency to overlook it in his interesting remarks and
explanations: see, especially, vol. ii, ch. vi, p. 409.

From the rich and abundant discoveries made at Nimroud, combined
with those at Kouyunjik and Khorsabad, Mr. Layard is inclined to
comprehend all these three within the circuit of ancient Nineveh;
admitting for that circuit the prodigious space alleged by Diodorus
out of Ktêsias, four hundred and eighty stadia or near sixty
English miles. (See Nineveh and its Remains, vol. ii, ch. ii, pp.
242-253.) Mr. Layard considers that the north-west portion of Nimroud
exhibits monuments more ancient, and at the same time better in
style and execution, than the south-west portion,—or than Kouyunjik
and Khorsabad (vol. ii, ch. i, p. 204; ch. iii, p. 305). If this
hypothesis, as to the ground covered by Nineveh, be correct, probably
future excavations will confirm it—or, if incorrect, refute it.
But I do not at all reject the supposition on the simple ground of
excessive magnitude: on the contrary, I should at once believe the
statement, if it were reported by Herodotus after a visit to the
spot, like the magnitude of Babylon. The testimony of Ktêsias is,
indeed, very inferior in value to that of Herodotus: yet it ought
hardly to be outweighed by the supposed improbability of so great
a walled space, when we consider how little we know where to set
bounds to the power of the Assyrian kings in respect to command
of human labor for any process merely simple and toilsome, with
materials both near and inexhaustible. Not to mention the great wall
of China, we have only to look at the Picts Wall, and other walls
built by the Romans in Britain, to satisfy ourselves that a great
length of fortification, under circumstances much less favorable than
the position of the ancient Assyrian kings, is noway incredible in
itself. Though the walls of Nineveh and Babylon were much _larger_
than those of Paris as it now stands, yet when we compare the two
not merely in size, but in respect of costliness, elaboration, and
contrivance, the latter will be found to represent an infinitely
greater _amount of work_.

Larissa and Mespila, those deserted towns and walls which Xenophon
saw in the retreat of the Ten Thousand (Anabas. iii, 4, 6-10),
coincide in point of distance and situation with Nimroud and
Kouyunjik, according to Mr. Layard’s remark. Nor is his supposition
improbable, that both of them were formed by the Medes out of the
ruins of the conquered city of Nineveh. Neither of them singly seems
at all adequate to the reputation of that ancient city, or rather
walled circuit. According to the account of Herodotus, Phraortes
the second Median king had attacked Nineveh, but had been himself
slain in the attempt, and lost nearly all his army. It was partly
to revenge this disgrace that Kyaxarês, son of Phraortes assailed
Nineveh (Herod. i, 102-103): we may thus see a special reason, in
addition to his own violence of temper (i, 73), why he destroyed the
city after having taken it (Νίνου ἀναστάτου γενομένης, i, 178). It
is easy to conceive that this vast walled space may have been broken
up and converted into two Median towns, both on the Tigris. In the
subsequent change from Median to Persian dominion, these towns also
became depopulated, as far as the strange tales which Xenophon heard
in his retreat can be trusted. The interposition of these two Median
towns doubtless contributed, for the time, to put out of sight the
traditions respecting the old Ninus which had before stood upon their
site. But these traditions were never extinct, and a new town bearing
the old name of Ninus must have subsequently arisen on the spot. This
second Ninus is recognized by Tacitus, Ptolemy, and Ammianus, not
only as existing, but as pretending to uninterrupted continuity of
succession from the ancient “caput Assyriæ.”

Mr. Layard remarks on the facility with which edifices, such as those
in Assyria, built of sunburnt bricks, perish when neglected, and
crumble away into earth, leaving little or no trace.

CHAPTER XX.

EGYPTIANS.

If, on one side, the Phenicians were separated from the productive
Babylonia by the Arabian desert; on the other side, the western
portion of the same desert divided them from the no less productive
valley of the Nile. In those early times which preceded the rise of
Greek civilization, their land trade embraced both regions, and they
served as the sole agents of international traffic between the two.
Conveniently as their towns were situated for maritime commerce with
the Nile, Egyptian jealousy had excluded Phenician vessels not less
than those of the Greeks from the mouths of that river, until the
reign of Psammetichus (672-618 B. C.); and thus even the merchants of
Tyre could then reach Memphis only by means of caravans, employing
as their instruments, as I have already observed, the Arabian
tribes,[573] alternately plunderers and carriers. Respecting Egypt,
as respecting Assyria, since the works of Hekatæus are unfortunately
lost, our earliest information is derived from Herodotus, who visited
Egypt about two centuries after the reign of Psammetichus, when it
formed part of one of the twenty Persian satrapies. The Egyptian
marvels and peculiarities which he recounts, are more numerous, as
well as more diversified, than the Assyrian, and had the vestiges
been effaced as completely in the former as in the latter, his
narrative would probably have met with an equal degree of suspicion.
But the hard stone, combined with the dry climate of Upper Egypt
(where a shower of rain counted as a prodigy), have given such
permanence to the monuments in the valley of the Nile, that enough
has remained to bear out the father of Grecian history, and to show
that, in describing what he professes to have seen, he is a guide
perfectly trustworthy. For that which he heard, he appears only in
the character of a reporter, and often an incredulous reporter; but
though this distinction between his hearsay and his ocular evidence
is not only obvious, but of the most capital moment,[574]—it has been
too often neglected by those who depreciate him as a witness.

[573] Strabo, xvi, pp. 766, 776, 778; Pliny, H. N. vi,
32. “Arabes, mirum dictu, ex innumeris populis pars æqua
in commerciis aut latrociniis degunt: in universum gentes
ditissimæ, ut apud quas maximæ opes Romanorum Parthorumque
subsistant,—vendentibus quæ a mari aut sylvis capiunt, nihil
invicem redimentibus.”

The latter part of this passage of Pliny presents an enunciation
sufficiently distinct, though by implication only, of what has
been called the _mercantile theory_ in political economy.

[574] To give one example: Herodotus mentions an opinion given to
him by the γραμματιστὴς (comptroller) of the property of Athênê
at Sais, to the effect that the sources of the Nile were at an
immeasurable depth in the interior of the earth, between Syênê
and Elephantinê, and that Psammetichus had vainly tried to sound
them with a rope many thousand fathoms in length (ii, 28). In
mentioning this tale (perfectly deserving of being _recounted_
at least, because it came from a person of considerable station
in the country), Herodotus expressly says: “This comptroller
seemed to me to be only bantering, though he professed to know
accurately,”—οὗτος δ᾽ ἐμοίγε παίζειν ἐδόκεε, φάμενος εἰδέναι
ἀτρεκέως. Now Strabo (xvii, p. 819), in alluding to this story,
introduces it just as if Herodotus had told it for a fact,—Πολλὰ
δ᾽ Ἡρόδοτός τε καὶ ἄλλοι φλυαροῦσιν, οἷον, etc.

Many other instances might be cited, both from ancient and modern
writers, of similar carelessness or injustice towards this
admirable author.

The mysterious river Nile, a god[575] in the eyes of ancient
Egyptians, and still preserving both its volume and its usefulness
undiminished amidst the general degradation of the country, reached
the sea in the time of Herodotus by five natural mouths, besides
two others artificially dug;—the Pelusiac branch formed the eastern
boundary of Egypt, the Kanôpic branch—one hundred and seventy miles
distant—the western; while the Sebennytic branch was a continuation
of the straight line of the upper river: from this latter branched
off the Saitic and the Mendesian arms.[576] Its overflowings are far
more fertilizing than those of the Euphrates in Assyria,—partly
from their more uniform recurrence both in time and quantity, partly
from the rich silt which it brings down and deposits, whereas the
Euphrates served only as a moisture. The patience of the Egyptians
had excavated, in middle Egypt, the vast reservoir—partly, it seems,
natural and preëxisting—called the lake of Mœris: and in the Delta,
a network of numerous canals; yet on the whole the hand of man
had been less tasked than in Babylonia; whilst the soil annually
enriched, yielded its abundant produce without either plough or spade
to assist the seed cast in by the husbandman.[577] That under these
circumstances a dense and regularly organized population should have
been concentrated in fixed abodes along the valley occupied by this
remarkable river, is no matter of wonder; the marked peculiarities
of the locality seem to have brought about such a result, in the
earliest periods to which human society can be traced. Along the
five hundred and fifty miles of its undivided course from Syênê
to Memphis, where for the most part the mountains leave only a
comparatively narrow strip on each bank, as well as in the broad
expanse between Memphis and the Mediterranean, there prevailed a
peculiar form of theocratic civilization, from a date which even in
the time of Herodotus was immemorially ancient. But when we seek for
some measure of this antiquity (earlier than the time when Greeks
were first admitted into Egypt in the reign of Psammetichus), we
find only the computations of the priests, reaching back for many
thousand years, first, of government by immediate and present gods,
next, of human kings. Such computations have been transmitted to
us by Herodotus, Manetho, and Diodorus,[578]—agreeing in their
essential conception of the foretime, with gods in the first part
of the series, and men in the second, but differing materially in
events, names, and epochs: probably, if we possessed lists from other
Egyptian temples, besides those which Manetho drew up at Heliopolis,
or which Herodotus learned at Memphis, we should find discrepancies
from both these two. To compare these lists, and to reconcile them as
far as they admit of being reconciled, is interesting, as enabling
us to understand the Egyptian mind, but conducts to no trustworthy
chronological results, and forms no part of the task of an historian
of Greece.

[575] Οἱ ἱρέες τοῦ Νείλου, Herod. ii, 90.

[576] The seven mouths of the Nile, so notorious in antiquity,
are not conformable to the modern geography of the country: see
Mannert, Geogr. der Gr. und Röm. x, 1, p. 539.

The breadth of the base of the Delta, between Pelusium and
Kanôpus, is overstated by Herodotus (ii, 6-9) at three thousand
six hundred stadia; Diodorus (i, 34) and Strabo, at thirteen
hundred stadia, which is near the truth, though the text of
Strabo in various passages is not uniform on this matter, and
requires correction. See Grosskurd’s note on Strabo, ii, p. 64
(note 3, p. 101), and xvii, p. 186 (note 9, p. 332). Pliny gives
the distance at one hundred and seventy miles (H. N. v, 9).

[577] Herod, i, 193. Παραγίνεται ὁ σῖτος (in Babylonia) οὐ,
κατάπερ ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ, αὐτοῦ τοῦ ποταμοῦ ἀναβαίνοντος ἐς τὰς
ἀρούρας, ἀλλὰ χερσί τε καὶ κηλωνηΐοισι ἀρδόμενος· ἡ γὰρ Βαβυλωνίη
χώρη πᾶσα, κατάπερ ἡ Αἰγυπτίη, κατατέτμηται ἐς διώρυχας, etc.

Herodotus was informed that the canals in Egypt had been dug by
the labor of that host of prisoners whom the victorious Sesostris
brought home from his conquests (ii, 108). The canals in Egypt
served the purpose partly of communication between the different
cities, partly of a constant supply of water to those towns which
were not immediately on the Nile: “that vast river, so constantly
at work,” (to use the language of Herodotus—ὑπὸ τοσούτου τε
ποτάμου καὶ οὕτως ἐργατικοῦ, ii, 11), spared the Egyptians all
the toil of irrigation which the Assyrian cultivator underwent
(ii, 14).

Lower Egypt, as Herodotus saw it, though a continued flat, was
unfit either for horse or car, from the number of intersecting
canals,—ἄνιππος καὶ ἀναμάξευτος (ii, 108). But lower Egypt,
as Volney saw it, was among the countries in the world best
suited to the action of cavalry, so that he pronounces the
native population of the country to have no chance of contending
against the Mamelukes (Volney, Travels in Egypt and Syria, vol.
i, ch. 12, sect. 2, p. 199). The country has reverted to the
state in which it was (ἱππασίμη καὶ ἁμαξευομένη πᾶσα) before the
canals were made,—one of the many striking illustrations of the
difference between the Egypt which a modern traveller visits, and
that which Herodotus and even Strabo saw,—ὅλην πλωτὴν διωρύγων
ἐπὶ διώρυξι τμηθεισῶν (Strabo, xvii, p. 788).

Considering the early age of Herodotus, his remarks on the
geological character of Egypt as a deposit of the accumulated
mud by the Nile, appear to me most remarkable (ii, 8-14). Having
no fixed number of years included in his religious belief as
measuring the past existence of the earth, he carries his mind
back without difficulty to what may have been effected by this
river in ten or twenty thousand years, or “in the whole space of
time elapsed before I was born,” (ii, 11).

About the lake of Mœris, see a note a little farther on.

[578] See note in Appendix to this chapter.

To the Greeks, Egypt was a closed world before the reign of
Psammetichus, though after that time it gradually became an important
part of their field both of observation and action. The astonishment
which the country created in the mind of the earliest Grecian
visitors may be learned even from the narrative of Herodotus, who
doubtless knew it by report long before he went there. Both the
physical and moral features of Egypt stood in strong contrast with
Grecian experience: “not only (says Herodotus) does the climate
differ from all other climates, and the river from all other rivers,
but Egyptian laws and customs are opposed on almost all points to
those of other men.”[579] The delta was at that time full of large
and populous cities,[580] built on artificial elevations of ground,
and seemingly not much inferior to Memphis itself, which was situated
on the left bank of the Nile (opposite to the site of the modern
Cairo), a little higher up than the spot where the delta begins.
From the time when the Greeks first became cognizant of Egypt, to
the building of Alexandria and the reign of the Ptolemies, Memphis
was the first city in Egypt, but it seems not to have been always
so,—there had been an earlier period when Thebes was the seat of
Egyptian power, and upper Egypt of far more consequence than middle
Egypt. Vicinity to the delta, which must always have contained
the largest number of cities and the widest surface of productive
territory, probably enabled Memphis to usurp this honor from Thebes,
and the predominance of lower Egypt was still farther confirmed when
Psammetichus introduced Ionian and Karian troops as his auxiliaries
in the government of the country. But the stupendous magnitude of
the temples and palaces, the profusion of ornamental sculpture and
painting, the immeasurable range of sculptures hewn in the rocks
still remaining as attestations of the grandeur of Thebes,—not to
mention Ombi, Edfu, and Elephantinê,—show that upper Egypt was once
the place to which the land-tax from the productive delta was paid,
and where the kings and priests who employed it resided. It has been
even contended that Thebes itself was originally settled by emigrants
from still higher regions of the river, and the remains yet found
along the Nile in Nubia are analogous, both in style and in grandeur,
to those in Thebais.[581] What is remarkable is, that both the one
and the other are strikingly distinguished from the Pyramids, which
alone remain to illustrate the site of the ancient Memphis. There are
no pyramids either in upper Egypt or in Nubia; but on the Nile, above
Nubia, near the Ethiopian Meroê, pyramids in great number, though of
inferior dimensions, are again found. From whence, or in what manner,
Egyptian institutions first took their rise, we have no means of
determining: but there seems little to bear out the supposition of
Heeren,[582] and other eminent authors, that they were transmitted
down the Nile by Ethiopian colonists from Meroê. Herodotus certainly
conceived Egyptians and Ethiopians (who in his time jointly occupied
the border island of Elephantinê, which he had himself visited) as
completely distinct from each other, in race and customs not less
than in language,—the latter being generally of the rudest habits, of
great stature, and still greater physical strength,—the chief part of
them subsisting on meat and milk, and blest with unusual longevity.
He knew of Meroê, as the Ethiopian metropolis and a considerable
city, fifty-two days’ journey higher up the river than Elephantinê,
but his informants had given him no idea of analogy between its
institutions and those of Egypt;[583] it was the migration of a
large number of the Egyptian military caste, during the reign of
Psammetichus, into Ethiopia, which first communicated civilized
customs, in his judgment, to these southern barbarians. If there be
really any connection between the social phenomena of Egypt and those
of Meroê, it seems more reasonable to treat the latter as derivative
from the former.[584]

[579] Herodot. ii, 35. Αἰγύπτιοι ἅμα τῷ οὐρανῷ τῷ κατὰ σφέας
ἐόντι ἑτεροίῳ, καὶ τῷ ποτάμῳ φύσιν ἀλλοίην παρεχομένῳ ἢ οἱ
ἄλλοι πόταμοι, τὰ πολλὰ πάντα ἔμπαλιν τοῖσι ἄλλοισι ἀνθρώποισι
ἐστήσαντο ἤθεα καὶ νόμους.

[580] Theokritus (Idyll, xvii, 83) celebrates Ptolemy
Philadelphus king of Egypt as ruling over thirty-three thousand
three hundred and thirty-three cities: the manner in which he
strings these figures into three hexameter verses is somewhat
ingenious. The priests, in describing to Herodotus the unrivalled
prosperity which they affirmed Egypt to have enjoyed under
Amasis, the last king before the Persian conquest, said that
there were then twenty thousand cities in the country (ii, 177).
Diodorus tells us that eighteen thousand different cities and
considerable villages were registered in the Egyptian ἀναγραφαὶ
(i, 31) for the ancient times, but that thirty thousand were
numbered under the Ptolemies.

[581] Respecting the monuments of ancient Egyptian art, see the
summary of O. Müller, Archäologie der Kunst, sects. 215-233, and
a still better account and appreciation of them in Carl Schnaase,
Geschichte der bildenden Künste bei den Alten, Düsseldorf, 1843,
vol. i, book ii, chs. 1 and 2.

In regard to the credibility and value of Egyptian history
anterior to Psammetichus, there are many excellent remarks by Mr.
Kenrick, in the preface to his work, “The Egypt of Herodotus,”
(the second book of Herodotus, with notes.) About the recent
discoveries derived from the hieroglyphics, he says: “We know
that it was the custom of the Egyptian kings to inscribe the
temples and obelisks which they raised with their own names or
with distinguishing hieroglyphics; but in no one instance do
these names, as read by the modern decipherers of hieroglyphics
on monuments said to have been raised by kings before
Psammetichus, correspond with the names given by Herodotus.”
(Preface, p. xliv.) He farther adds in a note, “A name which has
been read phonetically _Mena_, has been found at Thebes, and Mr.
Wilkinson supposes it to be Menes. It is remarkable, however,
that the names which follow are not phonetically written, so that
it is probable that this is not to be read _Mena_. Besides, the
cartouche, which immediately follows, is that of a king of the
eighteenth dynasty; so that, at all events, it cannot have been
engraved till many centuries after the supposed age of Menes;
and the occurrence of the name no more decides the question
of historical existence than that of Cecrops in the Parian
Chronicle.”

[582] Heeren, Ideen über den Verkehr der Alten Welt, part ii, 1,
p. 403. The opinion given by Parthey, however (De Philis Insulâ,
p. 100, Berlin, 1830), may perhaps be just: “Antiquissimâ ætate
eundem populum, dicamus Ægyptiacum, Nili ripas inde a Meroë
insulâ usque ad Ægyptum inferiorem occupâsse, e monumentorum
congruentiâ apparet: posteriore tempore, tabulis et annalibus
nostris longe superiore, alia stirps Æthiopica interiora terræ
usque ad cataractam Syenensem obtinuit. Ex quâ ætate certa rerum
notitia ad nos pervenit, Ægyptiorum et Æthiopum segregatio jam
facta est. Herodotus cæterique scriptores Græci populos acute
discernunt.”

At this moment, Syênê and its cataract mark the boundary of
two people and two languages,—Egyptians and Arabic language to
the north, Nubians and Berber language to the south. (Parthey,
_ibid._)

[583] Compare Herodot. ii, 30-32; iii, 19-25; Strabo, xvi,
p. 818. Herodotus gives the description of their armor and
appearance as part of the army of Xerxês (vii, 69); they painted
their bodies: compare Plin. H. N. xxxiii, 36. How little Ethiopia
was visited in his time, may be gathered from the tenor of his
statements: according to Diodorus (i, 37), no Greeks visited
it earlier than the expedition of Ptolemy Philadelphus,—οὕτως
ἄξενα ἦν τὰ περὶ τοὺς τόπους τούτους, καὶ παντελῶς ἐπικίνδυνα.
Diodorus, however, is incorrect in saying that no Greek had
ever gone as far southward as the frontier of Egypt: Herodotus
certainly visited Elephantinê, probably other Greeks also.

The statements respecting the theocratical state of Meroê and its
superior civilization come from Diodorus (iii, 2, 5, 7), Strabo
(xvii, p. 822), and Pliny (H. N. vi, 29-33), much later than
Herodotus. Diodorus seems to have had no older informants before
him, about Ethiopia, than Agatharchidês and Artemidôrus, both in
the second century B. C. (Diod. iii, 10.)

[584] Wesseling ad Diodor. iii, 3.

The population of Egypt was classified into certain castes or
hereditary professions, of which the number was not exactly defined,
and is represented differently by different authors. The priests
stand clearly marked out, as the order richest, most powerful, and
most venerated,—distributed all over the country, and possessing
exclusively the means of reading and writing,[585] besides a vast
amount of narrative matter treasured up in the memory, the whole
stock of medical and physical knowledge then attainable, and those
rudiments of geometry, or rather land-measuring, which were so often
called into use in a country annually inundated. To each god, and to
each temple, throughout Egypt, lands and other properties belonged,
whereby the numerous band of priests attached to him were maintained:
it seems, too, that a farther portion of the lands of the kingdom was
set apart for them in individual property, though on this point no
certainty is attainable. Their ascendency, both direct and indirect,
over the minds of the people, was immense; they prescribed that
minute ritual under which the life of every Egyptian, not excepting
the king himself,[586] was passed, and which was for themselves more
full of harassing particularities than for any one else.[587] Every
day in the year belonged to some particular god, and the priests
alone knew to which. There were different gods in every nome, though
Isis and Osiris were common to all,—and the priests of each god
constituted a society apart, more or less important, according to the
comparative celebrity of the temple: the high priests of Hephæstos,
whose dignity was said to have been transmitted from father to son
through a series of three hundred and forty-one generations[588]
(commemorated by the like number of colossal statues, which Herodotus
himself saw), were second in importance only to the king. The
property of each temple included troops of dependents and slaves, who
were stamped with “holy marks,”[589] and who must have been numerous
in order to suffice for the large buildings and their constant
visitors.

[585] Herodot. ii, 37. Θεοσεβέες δὲ περισσῶς ἐόντες μάλιστα
πάντων ἀνθρώπων, etc. He is astonished at the retentiveness of
their memory; some of them had more stories to tell than any one
whom he had ever seen (ii, 77-109; Diodor. i, 73).

The word _priest_ conveys to a modern reader an idea very
different from that of the Egyptian ἱερεῖς, who were not a
profession, but an order comprising many occupations and
professions,—Josephus the Jew was in like manner an ἱερεὺς κατὰ
γένος (cont. Apion. c. 3).

[586] Diodorus (i, 70-73) gives an elaborate description of the
monastic strictness with which the daily duties of the Egyptian
king were measured out by the priests: compare Plutarch, De Isid.
et Osirid. p. 353, who refers to Hekatæus (probably Hekatæus of
Abdêra) and Eudoxus. The priests represented that Psammetichus
was the first Egyptian king who broke through the priestly canon
limiting the royal allowance of wine: compare Strabo, xvii, p,
790.

The Ethiopian kings at Meroê are said to have been kept in
the like pupillage by the priestly order, until a king named
Ergamenês, during the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus in Egypt,
emancipated himself and put the chief priests to death (Diodor.
iii, 6).

[587] Herodot. ii, 82-83.

[588] Herodot. ii, 143.

[589] Herodot. ii, 113; στίγματα ἱρά.

Next in importance to the sacerdotal caste were the military caste
or order, whose native name[590] indicated that they stood on the
left hand of the king, while the priests occupied the right. They
were classified into Kalasiries and Hermotybii, who occupied lands
in eighteen particular nomes or provinces, principally in lower
Egypt. The kalasiries had once amounted to one hundred and sixty
thousand men, the hermotybii to two hundred and fifty thousand, when
at the maximum of their population; but the highest point had long
been past in the time of Herodotus. To each man of this soldier
caste was assigned a portion of land equal to about six and a half
English acres, free from any tax; what measures were taken to keep
the lots of land in suitable harmony with a fluctuating number of
holders, we know not. The statement of Herodotus relates to a time
long past and gone, and describes what was believed, by the priests
with whom he talked, to have been the primitive constitution of
their country anterior to the Persian conquest: the like is still
more true respecting the statement of Diodorus.[591] The latter says
that the territory of Egypt was divided into three parts,—one part
belonging to the king, another to the priests, and the remainder
to the soldiers;[592] his language seems to intimate that every
nome was so divided, and even that the three portions were equal,
though he does not expressly say so. The result of these statements,
combined with the history of Joseph in the book of Genesis, seems to
be, that the lands of the priests and the soldiers were regarded as
privileged property and exempt from all burdens, while the remaining
soil was considered as the property of the king, who, however,
received from it a fixed proportion, one-fifth of the total produce,
leaving the rest in the hands of the cultivators.[593] We are told
that Sethos, priest of the god Phtha (or Hephæstos) at Memphis, and
afterwards named king, oppressed the military caste and deprived
them of their lands, in revenge for which they withheld from him
their aid when Egypt was invaded by Sennacherib,—and also that, in
the reign of Psammetichus, a large number (two hundred and forty
thousand) of these soldiers migrated into Ethiopia from a feeling of
discontent, leaving their wives and children behind them.[594] It
was Psammetichus who first introduced Ionian and Karian mercenaries
into the country, and began innovations on the ancient Egyptian
constitution; so that the disaffection towards him, on the part
of the native soldiers, no longer permitted to serve as exclusive
guards to the king, is not difficult to explain. The kalasiries and
hermotybii were interdicted from every description of art or trade.
There can be little doubt that under the Persians their lands were
made subject to the tribute, and this may partly explain the frequent
revolts which they maintained, with very considerable bravery,
against the Persian kings.

[590] Herodot. ii, 30.

[591] Herodot. i, 165-166; Diodor. i, 73.

[592] Diodor. i, 73.

[593] Besides this general rent or land-tax received by
the Egyptian kings, there seem, also, to have been special
crown-lands. Strabo mentions an island in the Nile (in the
Thebaid) celebrated for the extraordinary excellence of its
date-palms; the whole of this island belonged to the kings,
without any other proprietor: it yielded a large revenue, and
passed into the hands of the Roman government in Strabo’s time
(xvii, p. 818).

[594] Herodot. ii, 30-141.

Herodotus enumerates five other _races_ (so he calls them), or
castes, besides priests and soldiers,[595]—herdsmen, swineherds,
tradesmen, interpreters, and pilots; an enumeration which perplexes
us, inasmuch as it takes no account of the husbandmen, who must
always have constituted the majority of the population. It is,
perhaps, for this very reason that they are not comprised in the
list,—not standing out specially marked or congregated together,
like the five above named, and therefore not seeming to constitute
a race apart. The distribution of Diodorus, who specifies (over and
above priests and soldiers) husbandmen, herdsmen, and artificers,
embraces much more completely the whole population.[596] It seems
more the statement of a reflecting man, pushing out the principle of
hereditary occupations to its consequences; (and the comments which
the historian so abundantly interweaves with his narrative show that
such was the character of the authorities which he followed);—while
the list given by Herodotus comprises that which struck his
observation. It seems that a certain proportion of the soil of the
delta consisted of marsh land, including pieces of habitable ground,
but impenetrable to an invading enemy, and favorable only to the
growth of papyrus and other aquatic plants: other portions of the
delta, as well as the upper valley, in parts where it widened to the
eastward, were too wet for the culture of grain, though producing
the richest herbage, and eminently suitable to the race of Egyptian
herdsmen, who thus divided the soil with the husbandmen.[597]
Herdsmen generally were held reputable, but the race of swineherds
were hated and despised, from the extreme antipathy of all other
Egyptians to the pig,—which animal yet could not be altogether
proscribed, because there were certain peculiar occasions on which
it was imperative to offer him in sacrifice to Selênê or Dionysus.
Herodotus acquaints us that the swineherds were interdicted from all
the temples, and that they always intermarried among themselves,
other Egyptians disdaining such an alliance,—a statement which
indirectly intimates that there was no standing objection against
intermarriage of the remaining castes with each other. The caste or
race of interpreters began only with the reign of Psammetichus, from
the admission of Greek settlers, then for the first time tolerated
in the country. Though they were half Greeks, the historian does not
note them as of inferior account, except as compared with the two
ascendant castes of soldiers and priests; moreover, the creation of a
new caste shows that there was no consecrated or unchangeable total
number.

[595] Herodot. ii, 164.

[596] Diodor. i, 74. About the Egyptian castes generally, see
Heeren, Ideen über den Verkehr der Alten Welt, part ii, 2, pp.
572-595.

[597] See the citation from Maillet’s Travels in Egypt, in
Heeren, Ideen, p. 590; also Volney’s Travels, vol. i, ch. 6, p.
77.

The expression of Herodotus—οἱ περὶ τὴν ~σπειρομένην~ Αἴγυπτον
οἰκέουσι—indicates that the portion of the soil used as pasture
was not inconsiderable.

The inhabitants of the marsh land were the most warlike part of
the population (Thucyd. i, 110).

Those whom Herodotus denominates tradesmen (καπήλοι) are doubtless
identical with the artisans (τεχνῖται) specified by Diodorus,—the
town population generally as distinguished from that of the country.
During the three months of the year when Egypt was covered with
water, festival days were numerous,—the people thronging by hundreds
of thousands, in vast barges, to one or other of the many holy
places, combining worship and enjoyment.[598] In Egypt, weaving was a
trade, whereas in Greece it was the domestic occupation of females;
and Herodotus treats it as one of those reversals of the order of
nature which were seen only in Egypt,[599] that the weaver stayed at
home plying his web while his wife went to market. The process of
embalming bodies was elaborate and universal, giving employment to
a large special class of men: the profusion of edifices, obelisks,
sculpture and painting, all executed by native workmen, required a
large body of trained sculptors,[600] who in the mechanical branch
of their business attained a high excellence. Most of the animals
in Egypt were objects of religious reverence, and many of them were
identified in the closest manner with particular gods. The order of
priests included a large number of hereditary feeders and tenders of
these sacred animals.[601] Among the sacerdotal order were also found
the computers of genealogies, the infinitely subdivided practitioners
in the art of healing, etc.,[602] who enjoyed good reputation, and
were sent for as surgeons to Cyrus and Darius. The Egyptian city
population was thus exceedingly numerous, so that king Sethon, when
called upon to resist an invasion without the aid of the military
caste, might well be supposed to have formed an army out of “the
tradesmen, the artisans, and the market-people:”[603] and Alexandria,
at the commencement of the dynasty of the Ptolemies, acquired its
numerous and active inhabitants at the expense of Memphis and the
ancient towns of lower Egypt.

[598] Herodot. ii, 59-60.

[599] Herodot. ii, 35; Sophokl. Œdip. Colon. 332: where the
passage cited by the Scholiast out of Nymphodôrus is a remarkable
example of the habit of ingenious Greeks to represent all customs
which they thought worthy of notice, as having emanated from
the design of some great sovereign: here Nymphodôrus introduces
Sesostris as the author of the custom in question, in order that
the Egyptians might be rendered effeminate.

[600] The process of embalming is minutely described (Herod. ii,
85-90); the word which he uses for it is the same as that for
salting meat and fish,—ταρίχευσις: compare Strabo, xvi, p. 764.

Perfect exactness of execution, mastery of the hardest stone,
and undeviating obedience to certain rules of proportion, are
general characteristics of Egyptian sculpture. There are yet seen
in their quarries obelisks not severed from the rock, but having
three of their sides already adorned with hieroglyphics; so
certain were they of cutting off the fourth side with precision
(Schnaase, Gesch. der Bild. Künste, i, p. 428).

All the nomes of Egypt, however, were not harmonious in their
feelings respecting animals: particular animals were worshipped
in some nomes which in other nomes were objects even of
antipathy, especially the crocodile (Herod. ii, 69; Strabo, xvii,
p. 817: see particularly the fifteenth Satire of Juvenal).

[601] Herodot. ii, 65-72; Diodor. i, 83-90; Plutarch, Isid. et
Osir. p. 380.

Hasselquist identified all the birds carved on the obelisk near
Matarea (Heliopolis), (Travels in Egypt, p. 99.)

[602] Herodot. ii, 82-83; iii, 1, 129. It is one of the points
of distinction between Egyptians and Babylonians, that the
latter had no surgeons or ἰατροί: they brought out the sick into
the market-place, to profit by the sympathy and advice of the
passers-by (Herodot. i, 197).

[603] Herodot. ii, 141.

The mechanical obedience and fixed habits of the mass of the Egyptian
population (not priests or soldiers) was a point which made much
impression upon Grecian observers; so that Solon is said to have
introduced at Athens a custom prevalent in Egypt, whereby the nomarch
or chief of each nome was required to investigate every man’s means
of living, and to punish with death those who did not furnish
evidence of some recognized occupation.[604] It does not seem that
the institution of caste in Egypt, though insuring unapproachable
ascendency to the priests and much consideration to the soldiers,
was attended with any such profound debasement to the rest as that
which falls upon the lowest caste or sudras in India,—no such gulf
between them as that between the twice-born and the once-born in
the religion of Brahma. Yet those stupendous works, which form the
permanent memorials of the country, remain at the same time as
proofs of the oppressive exactions of the kings, and of the reckless
caprice with which the lives as well as the contributions of the
people were lavished. One hundred and twenty thousand Egyptians
were said to have perished in the digging of the canal, which king
Nekôs began but did not finish, between the Pelusian arm of the
Nile and the Red sea;[605] while the construction of the two great
pyramids, attributed to the kings Cheops and Chephrên, was described
to Herodotus by the priests as a period of exhausting labor and
extreme suffering to the whole Egyptian people,—and yet the great
Labyrinth,[606] said to have been built by the dodekarchs, appeared
to him a more stupendous work than the Pyramids, so that the toil
employed upon it cannot have been less destructive. The moving of
such vast masses of stone as were seen in the ancient edifices both
of upper and lower Egypt, with the imperfect mechanical resources
then existing, must have tasked the efforts of the people yet more
severely than the excavation of the half-finished canal of Nekôs.
Indeed, the associations with which the Pyramids were connected, in
the minds of those with whom Herodotus conversed, were of the most
odious character. Such vast works, Aristotle observes, are suitable
to princes who desire to consume the strength and break the spirit
of their people. With Greek despots, perhaps, such an intention
may have been sometimes deliberately conceived; but the Egyptian
kings may be presumed to have followed chiefly caprice, or love of
pomp,—sometimes views of a permanent benefit to be achieved,—as
in the canal of Nekôs and the vast reservoir of Mœris,[607] with
its channel joining the river,—when they thus expended the physical
strength and even the lives of their subjects.

[604] Herodot. iii, 177.

[605] Herodot. ii, 158. Read the account of the foundation of
Petersburg by Peter the Great: “Au milieu de ces réformes,
grandes et petites, qui faisaient les amusemens du czar, et de
la guerre terrible qui l’occupoit contre Charles XII, il jeta
les fondemens de l’importante ville et du port de Pétersbourg,
en 1714, dans un marais où il n’y avait pas une cabane. Pierre
travailla de ses mains à la première maison: rien ne le rebuta:
des ouvriers furent forcés de venir sur ce bord de la mer
Baltique, des frontières d’Astrachan, des bords de la Mer Noire
et de la Mer Caspienne. Il périt plus de cent mille hommes dans
les travaux qu’il fallut faire, et dans les fatigues et la
disette qu’on essuya: mais enfin la ville existe.” (Voltaire,
Anecdotes sur Pierre le Grand, en Œuvres Complètes, ed. Paris,
1825, tom. xxxi, p. 491.)

[606] Herodot. ii, 124-129. τὸν λέων τετρυμένον ἐς τὸ ἔσχατον
κακοῦ. (Diodor. i, 63-64.)

Περὶ τῶν Πυραμίδων (Diodorus observes) οὐδὲν ὅλως οὐδὲ παρὰ τοῖς
ἐγχωρίοις, οὐδὲ παρὰ τοῖς συγγραφεῦσιν, συμφωνεῖται. He then
alludes to some of the discrepant stories about the date of the
Pyramids, and the names of their constructors. This confession,
of the complete want of trustworthy information respecting
the most remarkable edifices of lower Egypt, forms a striking
contrast with the statement which Diodorus had given (c. 44),
that the priests possessed records, “continually handed down
from reign to reign respecting four hundred and seventy Egyptian
kings.”

[607] It appears that the lake of Mœris is, at least in great
part, a natural reservoir, though improved by art for the
purposes wanted, and connected with the river by an artificial
canal, sluices, etc. (Kenrick ad Herodot. ii, 149.)

“The lake still exists, of diminished magnitude, being about
sixty miles in circumference, but the communication with the Nile
has ceased.” Herodotus gives the circumference as three thousand
six hundred stadia, = between four hundred and four hundred and
fifty miles.

I incline to believe that there was more of the hand of man in it
than Mr. Kenrick supposes, though doubtless the receptacle was
natural.

Sanctity of animal life generally, veneration for particular
animals in particular nomes, and abstinence on religious grounds
from certain vegetables, were among the marked features of Egyptian
life, and served preëminently to impress upon the country that air
of singularity which foreigners like Herodotus remarked in it. The
two specially marked bulls, called apis at Memphis, and mnevis at
Heliopolis, seem to have enjoyed a sort of national worship:[608]
the ibis, the cat, and the dog were throughout most of the nomes
venerated during life, embalmed like men after death, and if killed,
avenged by the severest punishment of the offending party: but the
veneration of the crocodile was confined to the neighborhood of
Thebes and the lake of Mœris. Such veins of religious sentiment,
which distinguished Egypt from Phenicia and Assyria, not less than
from Greece, were explained by the native priests after their manner
to Herodotus, though he declines from pious scruples to communicate
what was told to him.[609] They seem remnants continued from a very
early stage of Fetichism,—and the attempts of different persons,
noticed in Diodorus and Plutarch, to account for their origin, partly
by legends, partly by theory, will give little satisfaction to any
one.[610]

[608] Herodot. ii, 38-46, 65-72; iii, 27-30: Diodor. i, 83-90.

It is surprising to find Pindar introducing into one of his odes
a plain mention of the monstrous circumstances connected with
the worship of the goat in the Mendesian nome (Pindar, Fragm.
Inc. 179, ed. Bergk). Pindar had also dwelt, in one of his
Prosodia, upon the mythe of the gods having disguised themselves
as animals, when seeking to escape Typhon; which was one of the
tales told as an explanation of the consecration of animals in
Egypt: see Pindar, Fragm. Inc. p. 61, ed. Bergk; Porphyr. de
Abstinent. iii, p. 251, ed. Rhoer.

[609] Herodot. ii, 65. Diodorus does not feel the same reluctance
to mention these ἀπόῤῥητα (i, 86).

[610] Diodor. i, 86-87; Plutarch, De Isid. et Osirid. p. 377,
_seq._

Though Thebes first, and Memphis afterwards, were undoubtedly the
principal cities of Egypt, yet if the dynasties of Manetho are at
all trustworthy, even in their general outline, the Egyptian kings
were not taken uniformly either from one or the other. Manetho
enumerates on the whole twenty-six different dynasties or families
of kings, anterior to the conquest of the country by Kambysês,—the
Persian kings between Kambysês and the revolt of the Egyptian
Amyrtæus, in 405 B. C. constituting his twenty-seventh dynasty. Of
these twenty-six dynasties, beginning with the year 5702 B. C.,
the first two are Thinites,—the third and fourth, Memphites,—the
fifth, from the island of Elephantinê,—the sixth, seventh, and
eighth, again Memphites,—the ninth and tenth, Herakleopolites,—the
eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth, Diospolites or Thebans,—the
fourteenth, Choïtes,—the fifteenth and sixteenth, Hyksos, or
shepherd kings,—the seventeenth, shepherd kings, overthrown and
succeeded by Diospolites,—the eighteenth (B. C. 1655-1327, in which
is included Rameses, the great Egyptian conqueror, identified
by many authors with Sesostris, 1411 B. C.), nineteenth, and
twentieth, Diospolites,—the twenty-first, Tanites,—the twenty-second,
Bubastites,—the twenty-third, again Tanites,—the twenty-fourth,
Saïtes,—the twenty-fifth, Ethiopians, beginning with Sabakôn,
whom Herodotus also mentions,—the twenty-sixth, Saïtes, including
Psammetichus, Nekôs, Apries or Uaphris, and Amasis or Amosis. We
see by these lists, that, according to the manner in which Manetho
construed the antiquities of his country, several other cities of
Egypt, besides Thebes and Memphis, furnished kings to the whole
territory; but we cannot trace any correspondence between the nomes
which furnished kings, and those which Herodotus mentions to have
been exclusively occupied by the military caste. Many of the separate
nomes were of considerable substantive importance, and had a marked
local character each to itself, religious as well as political;
though the whole of Egypt, from Elephantinê to Pelasium and Kanôpus,
is said to have always constituted one kingdom, from the earliest
times which the native priests could conceive.

We are to consider this kingdom as engaged, long before the time when
Greeks were admitted into it,[611] in a standing caravan-commerce
with Phenicia, Palestine, Arabia, and Assyria. Ancient Egypt having
neither vines nor olives, imported both wine and oil,[612] while
it also needed especially the frankincense and aromatic products
peculiar to Arabia, for its elaborate religious ceremonies. Towards
the last quarter of the eighth century B. C. (a little before the
time when the dynasty of the Mermnadæ in Lydia was commencing
in the person of Gygês), we trace events tending to alter the
relation which previously subsisted between these countries, by
continued aggressions on the part of the Assyrian monarchs of
Nineveh,—Salmaneser and Sennacherib. The former having conquered
and led into captivity the ten tribes of Israel, also attacked the
Phenician towns on the adjoining coast: Sidon, Palæ-Tyrus, and Akê
yielded to him, but Tyre itself resisted, and having endured for five
years the hardships of a blockade with partial obstruction of its
continental aqueducts, was enabled by means of its insular position
to maintain independence. It was just at this period that the Grecian
establishments in Sicily were forming, and I have already remarked
that the pressure of the Assyrians upon Phenicia, probably had some
effect in determining that contraction of the Phenician occupations
in Sicily, which really took place (B. C. 730-720). Respecting
Sennacherib, we are informed by the Old Testament, that he invaded
Judæa, and by Herodotus (who calls him king of the Assyrians and
Arabians), that he assailed the pious king Sethos in Egypt: in both
cases his army experienced a miraculous repulse and destruction.
After this, the Assyrians of Nineveh, either torn by intestine
dissension, or shaken by the attacks of the Medes, appear no longer
active; but about the year 630 B. C. the Assyrians or Chaldæans of
Babylon manifest a formidable and increasing power. It is, moreover,
during this century that the old routine of the Egyptian kings was
broken through, and a new policy displayed towards foreigners by
Psammetichus,—which, while it rendered Egypt more formidable to Judæa
and Phenicia, opened to Grecian ships and settlers the hitherto
inaccessible Nile.

[611] On this early trade between Egypt, Phenicia, and Palestine,
anterior to any acquaintance with the Greeks, see Josephus cont.
Apion. i, 12.

[612] Herodotus notices the large importation of wine into Egypt
in his day, from all Greece as well as from Phenicia, as well as
the employment of the earthen vessels in which it was brought for
the transport of water, in the journeys across the desert (iii,
6).

In later times, Alexandria was supplied with wine chiefly from
Laodikeia, in Syria, near the mouth of the Orontes (Strabo, xvi,
p. 751).

Herodotus draws a marked distinction between the history of Egypt
before Psammetichus and the following period: the former he gives as
the narration of the priests, without professing to guarantee it,—the
latter he evidently believes to be well ascertained.[613] And we
find that, from Psammetichus downward, Herodotus and Manetho are in
tolerable harmony, whereas even for the sovereigns occupying the last
fifty years before Psammetichus, there are many and irreconcilable
discrepancies between them;[614] but they both agree in stating that
Psammetichus reigned fifty-four years. So important an event as the
first admission of the Greeks into Egypt, was made, by the informants
of Herodotus, to turn upon two prophecies. After the death of Sethos,
king and priest of Hephæstos, who left no son, Egypt became divided
among twelve kings, of whom Psammetichus was one: it was under this
dodekarchy, according to Herodotus, that the marvellous labyrinth
near the lake of Mœris was constructed. The twelve lived and reigned
for some time in perfect harmony, but a prophecy had been made known
to them, that the one who should make libations in the temple of
Hephæstos out of a brazen goblet would reign over all Egypt. Now it
happened that one day, when they all appeared armed in that temple to
offer sacrifice, the high priest brought out by mistake only eleven
golden goblets instead of twelve, and Psammetichus, left without a
goblet, made use of his brass helmet as a substitute. Being thus
considered, though unintentionally, to have fulfilled the condition
of the prophecy, by making libations in a brazen goblet, he became an
object of terror to his eleven colleagues, who united to despoil him
of his dignity, and drove him into the inaccessible marshes. In this
extremity, he sent to seek counsel from the oracle of Lêtô at Butô,
and received for answer an assurance, that “vengeance would come to
him by the hands of brazen men showing themselves from the seaward.”
His faith was for the moment shaken by so startling a conception as
that of brazen men for his allies: but the prophetic veracity of
the priest at Butô was speedily shown, when an astonished attendant
came to acquaint him, in his lurking-place, that brazen men were
ravaging the sea-coast of the delta. It was a body of Ionian and
Karian soldiers, who had landed for pillage, and the messenger who
came to inform Psammetichus had never before seen men in an entire
suit of brazen armor. That prince, satisfied that these were the
allies whom the oracle had marked out for him, immediately entered
into negotiation with the Ionians and Karians, enlisted them in his
service, and by their aid in conjunction with his other partisans
overpowered the other eleven kings,—thus making himself the one ruler
of Egypt.[615]

[613] Herodot. ii, 147-154. ἀπὸ Ψαμμητίχου,—πάντα καὶ τὰ ὕστερον
ἐπιστάμεθα ἀτρεκέως.

[614] See these differences stated and considered in Boeckh,
Manetho und die Hundssternperiode. pp. 326—336, of which some
account is given in the Appendix to this chapter.

[615] Herodot. ii, 149-152. This narrative of Herodotus, however
little satisfactory in an historical point of view, bears evident
marks of being the genuine tale which he heard from the priests
of Hephæstos. Diodorus gives an account more historically
plausible, but he could not well have had any positive
authorities for that period, and he gives us seemingly the ideas
of Greek authors of the days of the Ptolemies. Psammetichus (he
tells us), as one of the twelve kings, ruled at Saïs and in the
neighboring part of the delta: he opened a trade, previously
unknown in Egypt, with Greeks and Phenicians, so profitable that
his eleven colleagues became jealous of his riches and combined
to attack him. He raised an army of foreign mercenaries and
defeated them (Diodor. i, 66-67). Polyænus gives a different
story about Psammetichus and the Karian mercenaries (vii 3).

Such was the tale by which the original alliance of an Egyptian
king with Grecian mercenaries, and the first introduction of Greeks
into Egypt, was accounted for and dignified. What followed is more
authentic and more important. Psammetichus provided a settlement
and lands for his new allies, on the Pelusiac or eastern branch of
the Nile, a little below Bubastis. The Ionians were planted on one
side of the river, the Karians on the other; and the place was
made to serve as a military position, not only for the defence of
the eastern border, but also for the support of the king himself
against malcontents at home: it was called the Stratopěda, or the
Camps.[616] He took pains, moreover, to facilitate the intercourse
between them and the neighboring inhabitants, by causing a number of
Egyptian children to be domiciled with them, in order to learn the
Greek language; and hence sprung the interpreters; who, in the time
of Herodotus, constituted a permanent hereditary caste or breed.

[616] Herodot. ii, 154.

Though the chief purpose of this first foreign settlement in Egypt,
between Pelusium and Bubastis, was to create an independent military
force, and with it a fleet for the king, yet it was of course an
opening both for communication and traffic to all Greeks and to all
Phenicians, such as had never before been available. And it was
speedily followed by the throwing open of the Kanôpic or westernmost
branch of the river for the purposes of trade specially. According to
a statement of Strabo, it was in the reign of Psammetichus that the
Milesians with a fleet of thirty ships made a descent on that part of
the coast, first built a fort in the immediate neighborhood, and then
presently founded the town of Naukratis, on the right bank of the
Kanôpic Nile. There is much that is perplexing in this affirmation
of Strabo; but on the whole I am inclined to think that the
establishment of the Greek factories and merchants at Naukratis may
be considered as dating in the reign of Psammetichus,[617]—Naukratis
being a city of Egyptian origin, in which these foreigners were
permitted to take up their abode,—not a Greek colony, as Strabo would
have us believe. The language of Herodotus seems rather to imply that
it was king Amasis—between whom and the death of Psammetichus there
intervened nearly half a century—who first allowed Greeks to settle
at Naukratis; but on comparing what the historian tells us respecting
the courtezan Rhodôpis and the brother of Sapphô the Poetess, it
is evident that there must have been both Greek trade and Greek
establishments in that town long before Amasis came to the throne.
We may consider, then, that both the eastern and western mouths of
the Nile became open to the Greeks in the days of Psammetichus; the
former as leading to the head-quarters of the mercenary Greek troops
in Egyptian pay,—the latter for purposes of trade.

[617] Strabo, xvii, p. 801. καὶ τὸ Μιλησίων τεῖχος· πλεύσαντες
γὰρ ἐπὶ Ψαμμητίχου τριάκοντα ναυσὶν Μιλήσιοι ~κατὰ Κυαξάρη~
(~οὗτος δὲ τῶν Μήδων~) κάτεσχον εἰς τὸ στόμα τὸ Βολβίτινον· εἶτ᾽
ἐκβάντες ἐτείχισαν τὸ λεχθὲν κτίσμα· χρόνῳ δ᾽ ἀναπλεύσαντες εἰς
τὸν Σαϊτικὸν νομὸν, καταναυμαχήσαντες Ἴναρον, πόλιν ἔκτισαν
Ναύκρατιν οὐ πολὺ τῆς Σχεδίας ὕπερθεν.

What is meant by the allusion to Kyaxarês, or to Inarus, in this
passage, I do not understand. We know nothing of any relations
either between Kyaxarês and Psammetichus, or between Kyaxarês
and the Milesians. moreover, if by κατὰ Κυαξάρη be meant _in
the time of Kyaxarês_, as the translators render it, we have in
immediate succession ~ἐπὶ~ Ψαμμητίχου—~κατὰ~ Κυαξάρη, with the
same meaning, which is, to say the least of it, a very awkward
sentence. The words ~οὗτος δὲ τῶν Μήδων~ look not unlike a
comment added by some early reader of Strabo, who could not
understand why Kyaxarês should be here mentioned, and who noted
his difficulty in words which have subsequently found their way
into the text. Then again, _Inarus_ belongs to the period between
the Persian and Peloponnesian wars: at least we know no other
person of that name than the chief of the Egyptian revolt against
Persia (Thucyd. i, 114) who is spoken of as a “Libyan, the son of
Psammetichus.” The mention of Kyaxarês, therefore, here appears
unmeaning, while that of Inarus is an anachronism: possibly, the
story that the Milesians founded Naukratis “after having worsted
Inarus in a sea-flight,” may have grown out of the etymology
of the name Naukratis, in the mind of one who found Inarus the
son of Psammetichus mentioned two centuries afterwards, and
identified the two Psammetichuses with each other.

The statement of Strabo has been copied by Steph. Byz. v.
Ναύκρατις. Eusebius also announces (Chron. i, p. 168) the
Milesians as the founders of Naukratis, but puts the event at 753
B. C., during what he calls the Milesian thalassokraty: see Mr.
Fynes Clinton ad ann. 732 B. C. in the Fasti Hellenici.

While this event afforded to the Greeks a valuable enlargement
both of their traffic and of their field of observation, it seems
to have occasioned an internal revolution in Egypt. The nome of
Bubastis, in which the new military settlement of foreigners was
planted, is numbered among those occupied by the Egyptian military
caste:[618] whether their lands were in part taken away from them,
we do not know; but the mere introduction of such foreigners must
have appeared an abomination, to the strong conservative feeling of
ancient Egypt. And Psammetichus treated the native soldiers in a
manner which showed of how much less account they had become since
the “brazen helmets” had got footing in the land. It had hitherto
been the practice to distribute such portions of the military as were
on actual service in three different posts: at Daphnê, near Pelusium,
on the north-eastern frontier,—at Marea, on the north-western
frontier, near the spot where Alexandria was afterwards built,—and
at Elephantinê, on the southern or Ethiopian boundary. Psammetichus,
having no longer occasion for their services on the eastern frontier,
since the formation of the mercenary camp, accumulated them in
greater number and detained them for an unusual time at the two other
stations, especially at Elephantinê. Here, as Herodotus tells us,
they remained for three years unrelieved, and Diodorus adds that
Psammetichus assigned to those native troops who fought conjointly
with the mercenaries, the least honorable post in the line; until
at length discontent impelled them to emigrate in a body of two
hundred and forty thousand men into Ethiopia, leaving their wives and
children behind in Egypt,—nor could they be induced by any instances
on the part of Psammetichus to return. This memorable incident,[619]
which is said to have given rise to a settlement in the southernmost
regions of Ethiopia, called by the Greeks the Automoli (though the
emigrant soldiers still called themselves by their old Egyptian
name), attests the effect produced by the introduction of the foreign
mercenaries in lowering the position of the native military. The
number of the emigrants, however, is a point noway to be relied upon:
we shall presently see that there were enough of them left behind to
renew effectively the struggle for their lost dignity.

[618] Herodot. ii, 166

[619] Herodot. ii, 30: Diodor. i, 67.

It was probably with his Ionian and Karian troops that Psammetichus
carried on those warlike operations in Syria which filled so large a
proportion of his long and prosperous reign of fifty-four years.[620]
He besieged the city of Azôtus in Syria for twenty-nine years, until
he took it,—the longest blockade which the historian had ever heard
of: moreover, he was in that country when the destroying Scythian
nomads, who had defeated the Median king Kyaxarês and possessed
themselves of Upper Asia, advanced to invade Egypt,—an undertaking
which Psammetichus, by large presents, induced them to abandon.[621]

[620] Ἀπρίης—ὃς μετὰ Ψαμμήτιχον τὸν ἑωϋτοῦ προπάτορα ἐγένετο
εὐδαιμονέστατος τῶν πρότερον βασιλέων (Herodot. ii, 161).

[621] Herodot. i, 105; ii, 157.

There were, however, more powerful enemies than the Scythians,
against whom he and his son Nekôs—who succeeded him, seemingly about
604 B. C.[622]—had to contend in Syria and the lands adjoining. It
is just at this period, during the reigns of Nabopolassar and his
son Nebuchadnezzar (B. C. 625-561) that the Chaldæans or Assyrians
of Babylon appear at the maximum of their power and aggressive
disposition, while the Assyrians of Ninus or Nineveh lose their
substantive position through the taking of that town by Kyaxarês
(about B. C. 600),—the greatest height which the Median power ever
reached. Between the Egyptian Nekôs and his grandson Apriês—Pharaoh
Necho and Pharaoh Hophra of the Old Testament—on the one side, and
the Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar on the other, Judæa and Phenicia form
the intermediate subject of quarrel: and the political independence
of the Phenician towns is extinguished never again to be recovered.
At the commencement of his reign, it appears, Nekôs was chiefly
anxious to extend the Egyptian commerce, for which purpose he
undertook two measures, both of astonishing boldness for that age,—a
canal between the lower part of the eastern or Pelusiac Nile, and the
inmost corner of the Red sea,—and the circumnavigation of Africa;
his great object being to procure a water-communication between
the Mediterranean and the Red sea. He began the canal—much about
the same time as Nebuchadnezzar executed his canal from Babylon
to Terêdon—with such reckless determination, that one hundred and
twenty thousand Egyptians are said to have perished in the work;
but either from this disastrous proof of the difficulty, or, as
Herodotus represents, from the terrors of a menacing prophecy which
reached him, he was compelled to desist. Next, he accomplished the
circumnavigation of Africa, already above alluded to; but in this way
too he found it impracticable to procure any available communication
such as he wished.[623] It is plain that in both these enterprises he
was acting under Phenician and Greek instigation; and we may remark
that the point of the Nile from whence the canal took its departure,
was close upon the mercenary camps or stratopeda. Being unable to
connect the two seas together, he built and equipped an armed naval
force both upon the one and the other, and entered upon aggressive
enterprises, naval as well as military. His army, on marching into
Syria, was met at Megiddo—Herodotus says Magdolum—by Josiah king
of Judah, who was himself slain and so completely worsted, that
Jerusalem fell into the power of the conqueror, and became tributary
to Egypt. It deserves to be noted that Nekôs sent the raiment which
he had worn on the day of his victory, as an offering to the holy
temple of Apollo at Branchidæ near Milêtus,[624]—the first recorded
instance of a donation from an Egyptian king to a Grecian temple, and
a proof that Hellenic affinities were beginning to take effect upon
him: probably we may conclude that a large proportion of his troops
were Milesians.

[622] The chronology of the Egyptian kings from Psammetichus to
Amasis is given in some points differently by Herodotus and by
Manetho:—

Diodorus gives 22 years for Apriês and 55 years for Amasis (i,
68).

Now the end of the reign of Amasis stands fixed for 526 B. C.,
and, therefore, the beginning of his reign (according to both
Herodotus and Manetho) to 570 B. C. or 569 B. C. According to
the chronology of the Old Testament, the battles of Megiddo and
Carchemisch, fought by Nekôs, fall from 609-605 B. C., and this
coincides with the reign of Nekôs as dated by Herodotus, but
not as dated by Manetho. On the other hand, it appears from the
evidence of certain Egyptian inscriptions recently discovered,
that the real interval from the beginning of Nechao to the end
of Uaphris is only forty years, and not forty-seven years, as
the dates of Herodotus would make it (Boeckh, Manetho und die
Hundsternperiode, pp. 341-348), which would place the accession
of Nekôs in 610 or 609 B. C. Boeckh discusses at some length
this discrepancy of dates, and inclines to the supposition that
Nekôs reigned nine or ten years jointly with his father, and
that Herodotus has counted these nine or ten years twice, once
in the reign of Psammetichus, once in that of Nekôs. Certainly,
Psammetichus can hardly have been very young when his reign
began, and if he reigned fifty-four years, he must have reached
an extreme old age, and may have been prominently aided by his
son. Adopting the suppositions, therefore, that the last ten
years of the reign of Psammetichus may be reckoned both for him
and for Nekôs,—that for Nekôs separately only six years are to
be reckoned,—and that the number of years from the beginning of
Nekôs’s separate reign to the end of Uaphris is forty,—Boeckh
places the beginning of Psammetichus in 654 B. C., and not in 670
B. C., as the data of Herodotus would make it (_ib._ pp. 342-350).

Mr. Clinton, Fast. Hellen. B. C. 616, follows Herodotus.

[623] Herodot. ii, 158. Respecting the canal of Nekôs, see the
explanation of Mr. Kenrick on this chapter of Herodotus. From
Bubastis to Suez the length would be about ninety miles.

[624] Herodot. ii, 159. Diodorus makes no mention of Nekôs.

The account of Herodotus coincides in the main with the history
of the Old Testament about Pharaoh Necho and Josiah. The great
city of Syria which he calls Κάδυτις seems to be Jerusalem,
though Wesseling (ad Herodot. iii, 5) and other able critics
dispute the identity. See Volney, Recherches sur l’Hist. Anc.
vol. ii, ch. 13, p. 239: “Les Arabes ont conservé l’habitude
d’appeler Jerusalem la Sainte par excellence, _el Qods_. Sans
doute les Chaldéens et les Syriens lui donnèrent le même nom,
qui dans leur dialecte est _Qadouta_, dont Hérodote rend bien
l’orthographie quand il écrit Κάδυτις.”

But the victorious career of Nekôs was completely checked by the
defeat which he experienced at Carchemisch, or Circesium, on the
Euphrates, from Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians, who not only
drove him out of Judæa and Syria, but also took Jerusalem, and
carried away the king and the principal Jews into captivity.[625]
Nebuchadnezzar farther attacked the Phenician cities, and the siege
of Tyre alone cost him severe toil for thirteen years. After this
long and gallant resistance, the Tyrians were forced to submit, and
underwent the same fate as the Jews: their princes and chiefs were
dragged captive into the Babylonian territory, and the Phenician
cities became numbered among the tributaries of Nebuchadnezzar. So
they seemed to have remained, until the overthrow of Babylon by
Cyrus: for we find among those extracts, unhappily, very brief, which
Josephus has preserved out of the Tyrian annals, that during this
interval there were disputes and irregularities in the government
of Tyre,[626]—judges being for a time substituted in the place of
kings; while Merbal and Hirom, two princes of the regal Tyrian line,
detained captive in Babylonia, were successively sent down on the
special petition of the Tyrians, and reigned at Tyre; the former
four years, the latter twenty years, until the conquest of Babylon
by Cyrus. The Egyptian king Apriês, indeed, the son of Psammis, and
grandson of Nekôs, attacked Sidon and Tyre both by land and sea, but
seemingly without any result.[627] To the Persian empire, as soon
as Cyrus had conquered Babylon, they cheerfully and spontaneously
submitted,[628] whereby the restoration of the captive Tyrians to
their home was probably conceded to them, like that of the captive
Jews.

[625] Jeremiah, xlvi, 2; 2d book of Kings, xxiii and xxiv;
Josephus, Ant. J. x, 5, 1; x, 6, 1.

About Nebuchadnezzar, see the Fragment of Berosus ap. Joseph.
cont. Apion. i, 19-20, and Antiqq. J. x, 11, 1, and Berosi
Fragment. ed. Ritcher pp. 65-67.

[626] Menander ap. Joseph. Antiq. J. ix, 14, 2. Ἐπὶ Εἰθωβάλου τοῦ
βασιλέως ἐπολιόρκησε Ναβουχοδονόσορος τὴν Τύρον ἐπ᾽ ἔτε δεκάτρια.
That this siege of thirteen years ended in the storming,
capitulation, or submission (we know not which, and Volney goes
beyond the evidence when he says, “Les Tyriens furent emportés
_d’assaut_ par le roi de Babylone,” Recherches sur l’Histoire
Ancienne, vol. ii, ch. 14, p. 250) of Tyre to the Chaldæan king,
is quite certain from the mention which afterwards follows of the
Tyrian princes being detained captive in Babylonia. Hengstenberg
(De Rebus Tyriorum, pp. 34-77) heaps up a mass of arguments, most
of them very inconclusive, to prove this point, about which the
passage cited by Josephus from Menander leaves no doubt. What
is _not_ true, is, that Tyre was destroyed and laid desolate by
Nebuchadnezzar: still less can it be believed that that king
conquered Egypt and Libya, as Megasthenes, and even Berosus, so
far as Egypt is concerned, would have us believe,—the argument of
Larcher ad Herodot. ii, 168, is anything but satisfactory. The
defeat of the Egyptian king at Carchemisch, and the stripping
him of his foreign possessions in Judæa and Syria, have been
exaggerated into a conquest of Egypt itself.

[627] Herodot. ii, 161. He simply mentions what I have stated in
the text; while Diodorus tells us (i, 68) that the Egyptian king
took Sidon by assault, terrified the other Phenician towns into
submission, and defeated the Phenicians and Cyprians in a great
naval battle, acquiring a vast spoil.

What authority Diodorus here followed, I do not know; but the
measured statement of Herodotus is far the most worthy of credit.

[628] Herodot. iii, 19.

Nekôs in Egypt was succeeded by his son Psammis, and he again,
after a reign of six years, by his son Apriês; of whose power and
prosperity Herodotus speaks in very high general terms, though the
few particulars which he recounts are of a contrary tenor. It was
not till after a reign of twenty-five years, that Apriês undertook
that expedition against the Greek colonies in Libya,—Kyrênê and
Barka,—which proved his ruin. The native Libyan tribes near those
cities, having sent to surrender themselves to him, and entreat
his aid against the Greek settlers, Apriês despatched to them a
large force composed of native Egyptians; who, as has been before
mentioned, were stationed on the north-western frontier of Egypt, and
were, therefore, most available for the march against Kyrênê. The
Kyrenean citizens advanced to oppose them, and a battle ensued in
which the Egyptians were completely routed with severe loss. It is
affirmed that they were thrown into disorder from want of practical
knowledge of Grecian warfare,[629]—a remarkable proof of the entire
isolation of the Grecian mercenaries (who had now been long in the
service of Psammetichus and his successors) from the native Egyptians.

[629] Herodot. ii, 161; iv, 159.

This disastrous reverse provoked a mutiny in Egypt against Apriês,
the soldiers contending that he had despatched them on the enterprise
with a deliberate view to their destruction, in order to assure
his rule over the remaining Egyptians. The malcontents found so
much sympathy among the general population, that Amasis, a Saïtic
Egyptian of low birth, but of considerable intelligence, whom Apriês
had sent to conciliate them, was either persuaded or constrained
to become their leader, and prepared to march immediately against
the king at Saïs. Unbounded and reverential submission to the royal
authority was a habit so deeply rooted in the Egyptian mind, that
Apriês could not believe the resistance to be serious. He sent an
officer of consideration named Patarbêmis to bring Amasis before him,
and when the former returned, bringing back from the rebel nothing
better than a contemptuous refusal to appear except at the head of
an army, the exasperated king ordered his nose and ears to be cut
off. This act of atrocity caused such indignation among the Egyptians
round him, that most of them deserted and joined the revolters, who
thus became irresistibly formidable in point of numbers. There yet
remained to Apriês the foreign mercenaries,—thirty thousand Ionians
and Karians,—whom he summoned from their stratopeda on the Pelusiac
Nile to his residence at Saïs; and this force, the creation of his
ancestor Psammetichus, and the main reliance of his family, still
inspired him with such unabated confidence, that he marched to attack
the far superior numbers under Amasis at Momemphis. Though his troops
behaved with bravery, the disparity of numbers, combined with the
excited feeling of the insurgents, overpowered him: he was defeated
and carried prisoner to Saïs, where at first Amasis not only spared
his life, but treated him with generosity.[630] Such, however, was
the antipathy of the Egyptians, that they forced Amasis to surrender
his prisoner into their hands, and immediately strangled him.

[630] Herodot. ii, 162-169; Diodor. i, 68.

It is not difficult to trace in these proceedings the outbreak of
a long-suppressed hatred on the part of the Egyptian soldier-caste
towards the dynasty of Psammetichus, to whom they owed their
comparative degradation, and by whom that stream of Hellenism had
been let in upon Egypt, which doubtless was not witnessed without
great repugnance. It might seem, also, that this dynasty had too
little of pure Egyptianism in them to find favor with the priests.
At least Herodotus does not mention any religious edifices erected
either by Nekôs or Psammis or Apriês, though he describes much of
such outlay on the part of Psammetichus,—who built magnificent
propylæa to the temple of Hephæstos at Memphis,[631] and a splendid
new chamber or stable for the sacred bull Apis,—and more still on the
part of Amasis.

[631] Herodot. ii, 153.

Nevertheless, Amasis, though he had acquired the crown by this
explosion of native antipathy, found the foreign adjuncts
both already existing and eminently advantageous. He not only
countenanced, but extended them; and Egypt enjoyed under him a degree
of power and consideration such as it neither before possessed,
nor afterwards retained,—for his long reign of forty-four years
(570-526 B. C.) closed just six months before the Persian conquest
of the country. He was eminently phil-Hellenic, and the Greek
merchants at Naukratis,—the permanent settlers, as well as the
occasional visitors,—obtained from him valuable enlargement of
their privileges. Besides granting permission to various Grecian
towns, to erect religious establishments for such of their citizens
as visited the place, he also sanctioned the constitution of a
formal and organized emporium or factory, invested with commercial
privileges, and armed with authority exercised by presiding officers
regularly chosen. This factory was connected with, and probably
grew out of, a large religious edifice and precinct, built at the
joint cost of nine Grecian cities: four of them Ionic,—Chios, Teôs,
Phôkæa, and Klazomenæ; four Doric,—Rhodes, Knidus, Halikarnassus,
and Phasêlis; and one Æolic,—Mitylênê. By these nine cities the
joint temple and factory was kept up and its presiding magistrates
chosen; but its destination, for the convenience of Grecian commerce
generally, seems revealed by the imposing title of _The Hellênion_.
Samos, Milêtus, and Ægina had each founded a separate temple at
Naukratis, for the worship of such of their citizens as went
there; probably connected—as the Hellênion was—with protection and
facilities for commercial purposes. But though these three powerful
cities had thus constituted each a factory for itself, as guarantee
to the merchandise, and as responsible for the conduct, of its own
citizens separately,—the corporation of the Hellênion served both as
protection and control to all other Greek merchants. And such was
the usefulness, the celebrity, and probably the pecuniary profit, of
the corporation, that other Grecian cities set up claims to a share
in it, and falsely pretended to have contributed to the original
foundation.[632]

[632] Herodot. ii, 178. The few words of the historian about
these Greek establishments at Naukratis are highly valuable,
and we can only wish that he had told us more: he speaks of
them in the present tense, from personal knowledge—τὸ μὲν νῦν
μέγιστον αὐτέων τέμενος καὶ οὐνομαστότατον ἐὸν καὶ χρησιμώτατον,
καλεύμενον δὲ Ἑλλήνιον, αἵδε πόλις ~εἰσὶν~ αἱ ἱδρυμέναι—Τουτέων
μέν ἐστι τοῦτο τὸ τέμενος, καὶ προστάτας τοῦ ἐμπορίου αὗται αἱ
πόλις εἰσὶν αἱ παρέχουσαι. Ὅσαι δὲ ἄλλαι πόλις ~μεταποιεῦνται~,
οὐδέν σφι μετεὸν μεταποιεῦνται.

We are here let into a vein of commercial jealousy between the
Greek cities about which we should have been glad to be farther
informed.

Naukratis was for a long time the privileged port for Grecian
commerce with Egypt. No Greek merchant was permitted to deliver
goods in any other part, or to enter any other of the mouths of
the Nile except the Kanôpic. If forced into any of them by stress
of weather, he was compelled to make oath that his arrival was a
matter of necessity, and to convey his goods round by sea into the
Kanôpic branch to Naukratis; and if the weather still forbade such a
proceeding, the merchandise was put into barges and conveyed round to
Naukratis by the internal canals of the delta. Such a monopoly, which
made Naukratis in Egypt, something like Canton in China, or Nangasaki
in Japan, no longer subsisted in the time of Herodotus.[633] But the
factory of the Hellênion was in full operation and dignity, and very
probably he himself, as a native of one of the contributing cities,
Halikarnassus, may have profited by its advantages. At what precise
time Naukratis first became licensed for Grecian trade, we cannot
directly make out; but there seems reason to believe that it was the
port to which the Greek merchants first went, so soon as the general
liberty of trading with the country was conceded to them; and this
would put it at least as far back as the foundation of Kyrênê, and
the voyage of the fortunate Kôlæus, who was on his way with a cargo
to Egypt, when the storms overtook him,—about 630 B. C., during the
reign of Psammetichus. And in the time of the poetess Sapphô, and her
brother Charaxus, it seems evident that Greeks had been some time
established at Naukratis.[634] But Amasis, though his predecessors
had permitted such establishment, may doubtless be regarded as having
given organization to the factories, and as having placed the Greeks
on a more comfortable footing of security than they had ever enjoyed
before.

[633] Herodot. ii, 179. ~Ἦν δὲ τοπαλαιὸν~ μούνη ἡ Ναύκρατις
ἐμπόριον, καὶ ἄλλο οὐδὲν Αἰγύπτου.... Οὕτω δὴ Ναύκρατις
~ἐτετίμητο~.

[634] The beautiful Thracian courtezan, Rhodôpis, was purchased
by a Samian merchant named Xanthês, and conveyed to Naukratis,
in order that he might make money by her (κατ᾽ ἐργασίην). The
speculation proved a successful one, for Charaxus, brother of
Sappho, going to Naukratis with a cargo of wine, became so
captivated with Rhodôpis, that he purchased her for a very large
sum of money, and gave her her freedom. She then carried on her
profession at Naukratis on her own account, realized a handsome
fortune, the tithe of which she employed in a votive offering
at Delphi, and acquired so much renown, that the Egyptian
Greeks ascribed to her the building of one of the pyramids,—a
supposition, on the absurdity of which Herodotus makes proper
comments, but which proves the great celebrity of the name of
Rhodôpis (Herodot. ii, 134). Athenæus calls her Dôrichê, and
distinguishes her from Rhodôpis (xiii. p. 596, compare Suidas,
v. Ῥοδωπίδος ἀνάθημα). When Charaxus returned to Mitylênê, his
sister Sappho composed a song, in which she greatly derided him
for this proceeding,—a song which doubtless Herodotus knew, and
which gives to the whole anecdote a complete authenticity.

Now we can hardly put the age of Sappho lower than 600-580 B. C.
(see Mr. Clinton, Fasti Hellen ad ann. 595 B. C., and Ulrici,
Geschichte der Griech. Lyrik, ch. xxiii, p. 360): Alkæus, too,
her contemporary, had himself visited Egypt. (Alcæi Fragm. 103,
ed. Bergk; Strabo, i, p. 63). The Greek settlement at Naukratis,
therefore, must be decidedly older than Amasis, who began to
reign in 570 B. C., and the residence of Rhodôpis in that town
must have begun earlier than Amasis, though Herodotus calls her
κατ᾽ Ἄμασιν ἀκμάζουσα (ii, 134). Nor can we construe the language
of Herodotus strictly, when he says that it was Amasis who
_permitted_ the residence of Greeks at Naukratis (ii, 173).

This Egyptian king manifested several other evidences of his
phil-Hellenic disposition, by donations to Delphi and other Grecian
temples, and he even married a Grecian wife from the city of
Kyrênê.[635] Moreover, he was in intimate alliance and relations
of hospitality both with Polykratês despot of Samos, and with
Crœsus king of Lydia.[636] He conquered the island of Cyprus, and
rendered it tributary to the Egyptian throne: his fleet and army
were maintained in good condition, and the foreign mercenaries,
the great strength of the dynasty which he had supplanted, were
not only preserved, but even removed from their camp near Pelusium
to the chief town Memphis, where they served as the special guards
of Amasis.[637] Egypt enjoyed under him a degree of power abroad,
and prosperity at home—the river having been abundant in its
overflowing—which was the more tenaciously remembered on account of
the period of disaster and subjugation immediately following his
death. And his contributions, in architecture and sculpture, to
the temples of Saïs[638] and Memphis, were on a scale of vastness
surpassing everything before known in lower Egypt.

[635] Herodot. ii, 181.

[636] Herodot. i, 77; iii, 39.

[637] Herodot. ii, 182, 154. κατοίκισε ἐς Μέμφιν, φυλακὴν ἑωϋτοῦ
ποιεύμενος πρὸς Αἰγυπτίων.

[638] Herodot. ii, 175-177.

APPENDIX.

The archæology of Egypt, as given in the first book of Diodorus,
is so much blended with Grecian mythes, and so much colored over
with Grecian motive, philosophy, and sentiment, as to serve little
purpose in illustrating the native Egyptian turn of thought. Even in
Herodotus, though his stories are in the main genuine Egyptian, we
find a certain infusion of Hellenism which the priests themselves
had in his day acquired, and which probably would not have been
found in their communications with Solon, or with the poet Alkæus,
a century and a half earlier. Still, his stories (for the tenor of
which Diodorus unduly censures him, i, 69) are really illustrative of
the national mind; but the narratives coined by Grecian fancy out of
Egyptian materials, and idealizing Egyptian kings and priests so as
to form a pleasing picture for the Grecian reader, are mere romance,
which has rarely even the merit of amusing. Most of the intellectual
Greeks had some tendency thus to dress up Egyptian history, and Plato
manifests it considerably; but the Greeks who crowded into Egypt
under the Ptolemies carried it still further. Hekatæus of Abdêra,
from whom Diodorus greatly copied (i, 46), is to be numbered among
them, and from him, perhaps, come the eponymous kings Ægyptus (i,
51) and Neileus (i, 63), the latter of whom was said to have given
to the river its name of _Nile_, whereas it had before been called
_Ægyptus_ (this to save the credit of Homer, who calls it Αἴγυπτος
ποταμὸς, Odyss. xiv, 258): also Macedon, Prometheus, Triptolemus,
etc., largely blended with Egyptian antiquities, in Diodorus, (i, 18,
19, etc.). It appears that the name of king Neilos occurred in the
list of Egyptian kings in Dikæarchus (ap. Schol. Apoll. Rhod. iv,
272; Dikæarch. Fragment, p. 100, ed. Fuhr).

That the ἀναγραφαὶ in the temples of Egypt reached to a vast
antiquity and contained a list of names, human, semi-divine, and
divine, very long indeed,—there is no reason to doubt. Herodotus,
in giving the number of years between Dionysus and Amasis as 1500,
expressly says that “the priests told him they knew this accurately,
since they always kept an account, and always wrote down the number
of years,”—καὶ ταῦτα Αἰγύπτιοι ἀτρεκέως φασὶν ἐπίστασθαι, αἰεί τε
λογιζόμενοι καὶ αἰεὶ ἀπογραφόμενοι τὰ ἔτεα (ii. 145): compare Diodor.
i, 44. He tells us that the priests read to him out of a manuscript
of papyrus (ἔκ βύβλου, ii, 100) the names of the 330 successive
kings from father to son, between Mên or Menês and Mœris; and the
341 colossal statues of chief priests, each succeeding his father,
down to Sethos priest of Hephæstos and king (ii, 142), which were
shown to him in the temple of Hephæstos at Memphis, afford a sort of
monumental evidence analogous in its nature to a written list. So
also the long period of 23,000 years given by Diodorus, from the rule
of Hêlios down to the expedition of Alexander against Asia, 18,000 of
which were occupied by the government of gods and demigods (i, 26,
24, 44,—his numbers do not all agree with one another), may probably
be drawn from an ἀναγραφή. Many temples in Egypt probably had such
tablets or inscriptions, some differing from others. But this only
shows us that such ἀναγραφαὶ or other temple monuments do not of
themselves carry any authority, unless in cases where there is fair
reason to presume them nearly contemporary with the facts or persons
which they are produced to avouch. It is plain that the temple
inscriptions represent the ideas of Egyptian priests (of some unknown
date anterior to Herodotus) respecting the entire range of Egyptian
past history and chronology.

What the proportion of historical items may be, included in this
aggregate, we have no means of testing, nor are the monuments in
Egyptian temples in themselves a proof of the reality of the persons
or events which they are placed to commemorate, any more than the
Centauromachia or Amazonomachia on the frieze of a Grecian temple
proves that there really existed Centaurs or Amazons. But it is
interesting to penetrate, so far as we are enabled, into the scheme
upon which the Egyptians themselves conceived and constructed their
own past history, of which the gods form quite as essential an
element as the human kings; for we depart from the Egyptian point of
view when we treat the gods as belonging to Egyptian religion and the
human kings to Egyptian history,—both are parts of the same series.

It is difficult to trace the information which Herodotus received
from the Egyptian priests to any intelligible scheme of chronology;
but this may be done in regard to Manetho with much plausibility, as
the recent valuable and elaborate analysis of Boeckh (Manetho und
die Hundssternperiode, Berlin, 1845) has shown. He gives good reason
for believing that the dynasties of Manetho have been so arranged
as to fill up an exact number of Sothiac cycles (or periods of the
star Sirius, each comprehending 1460 Julian years = 1461 Egyptian
years). The Egyptian calender recognized a year of 365 days exactly,
taking no note of the six hours additional which go to make up
the solar year: they had twelve months of thirty days, with five
epagomens or additional days, and their year always began with the
first of the month Thoth (Soth, Sothis). Their year being thus six
hours shorter (or one day for every four years) than the Julian year
with its recurrent leap-year, the first of the Egyptian month Thoth
fell back every four years one day in the Julian calender, and in
the course of 1460 years it fell successively on every day of the
Julian year, coming back again to the same day from which it had
started. This period of 1460 years was called a Sothiac period, and
was reckoned from the year in which the first of the Egyptian month
Thoth coincided with the heliacal rising of Sirius in Egypt; that
is, (for an interval from 2700 B. C. down to the Christian era) on
the 20th July of the Julian year. We know from Censorinus that the
particular revolution of the Sothiac period, in which both Herodotus
and Manetho were included, ended in the year 139 after the Christian
era, in which year the first of the Egyptian month Thoth fell on the
20th July, or coincided with the heliacal rising of Sirius in Egypt:
knowing in what year this period ended, we also know that it must
have begun in 1322 B. C., and that the period immediately preceding
it must have begun in 2782 B. C. (Censorinus, De Die Natali, c. 21;
Ideler, Handbuch der Chronologie, vol. i, Abschn. 1, pp. 125-138.)
The name Sothis, or Thoth, was the Egyptian name for Sirius or the
Dog-star, the heliacal rising of which was an important phenomenon
in that country, as coinciding nearly with the commencement of the
overflowing of the Nile.

Boeckh has analyzed, with great care and ability, the fragmentary,
partial, and in many particulars conflicting, versions of the
dynasties of Manetho which have come down to us: after all, we know
them very imperfectly, and it is clear that they have been much
falsified and interpolated. He prefers, for the most part, the
version reported as that of Africanus. The number of years included
in the Egyptian chronology has been always a difficulty with critics,
some of whom have eluded it by the supposition that the dynasties
mentioned as successive were really simultaneous,—while others have
supposed that the years enumerated were not full years, but years of
one month or three months; nor have there been wanting other efforts
of ingenuity to reconcile Manetho with the biblical chronology.

Manetho constructs his history of the past upon views purely
Egyptian, applying to past time the measure of the Sothiac period
or 1460 Julian years (= 1461 Egyptian years), and beginning both
the divine history of Egypt, and the human history which succeeds
it, each at the beginning of one of these Sothiac periods. Knowing
as we do from Censorinus that a Sothiac period ended in 139 A. D.,
and, of course, began in 1322 B. C.—we also know that the third
preceding Sothiac period must have begun in 5702 B. C. (1322 + 1460 +
1460 + 1460 = 5702). Now the year 5702 B. C. coincides with that in
which Manetho places Menês, the first human king of Egypt; for his
thirty-one dynasties end with the first year of Alexander the Great,
332 B. C., and include 5366 years in the aggregate, giving for the
beginning of the series of dynasties, or accession of Menês, the date
5702 B. C. Prior to Menês he gives a long series of years as the time
of the government of gods and demigods; this long time comprehends
24,837 years, or seventeen Sothiac periods of 1461 Egyptian years
each. We see, therefore, that Manetho (or perhaps the sacerdotal
ἀναγραφαὶ which he followed) constructed a system of Egyptian history
and chronology out of twenty full Sothiac periods, in addition to
that fraction of the twenty-first which had elapsed down to the time
of Alexander,—about three-quarters of a century anterior to Manetho
himself, if we suppose him to have lived during the time of Ptolemy
Philadelphus, which, though not certain, is yet probable (Boeckh, p.
11). These results have not been brought out without some corrections
of Manetho’s figures,—corrections which are, for the most part,
justified on reasonable grounds, and, where not so justified, are
unimportant in amount; so that the approximation is quite sufficient
to give a high degree of plausibility to Boeckh’s hypothesis: see pp.
142-145.

Though there is no doubt that in the time of Manetho the Sothiac
period was familiar to the Egyptian priests, yet as to the time
at which it first became known we have no certain information: we
do not know the time at which they first began to take notice of
the fact that their year of 365 days was six hours too short.
According to the statement of Herodotus (ii, 4), the priests of
Heliopolis represented the year of 365 days (which they said that the
Egyptians had first discovered) as if it were an exact recurrence
of the seasons, without any reference to the remaining six hours.
This passage of Herodotus, our oldest informant, is perplexing.
Geminus (Isagogê in Arati Phænomena, c. 6) says that the Egyptians
intentionally refrained from putting in the six hours by any
intercalation, because they preferred that their months, and the
religious ceremonies connected with them, should from time to time
come round at different seasons,—which has much more the air of an
ingenious after-thought, than of a determining reason.

Respecting the principle on which the Egyptian chronology of
Herodotus is put together, see the remarks of M. Bunsen, Ægyptens
Stellung in der Welt-geschichte, vol. i, p. 145.

CHAPTER XXI.

DECLINE OF THE PHENICIANS. — GROWTH OF CARTHAGE.

The preceding sketch of that important system of foreign
nations,—Phenicians, Assyrians, and Egyptians,—who occupied the
south-eastern portion of the (οἰκουμένη) inhabited world of an early
Greek, brings them down nearly to the time at which they were all
absorbed into the mighty Persian empire. In tracing the series of
events which intervened between 700 B. C., and 530 B. C., we observe
a material increase of power both in the Chaldæans and Egyptians, and
an immense extension of Grecian maritime activity and commerce,—but
we at the same time notice the decline of Tyre and Sidon, both in
power and traffic. The arms of Nebuchadnezzar reduced the Phenician
cities to the same state of dependence as that which the Ionian
cities underwent half a century later from Crœsus and Cyrus, while
the ships of Milêtus, Phôkæa, and Samos gradually spread over all
those waters of the Levant which had once been exclusively Phenician.
In the year 704 B. C., the Samians did not yet possess a single
trireme,[639] down to the year 630 B. C. not a single Greek vessel
had yet visited Libya; but when we reach 550 B. C., we find the Ionic
ships predominant in the Ægean, and those of Corinth and Korkyra in
force to the west of Peloponnesus,—we see the flourishing cities of
Kyrênê and Barka already rooted in Libya, and the port of Naukratis
a busy emporium of Grecian commerce with Egypt. The trade by land,
which is all that Egypt had enjoyed prior to Psammetichus, and which
was exclusively conducted by Phenicians, is exchanged for a trade
by sea, of which the Phenicians have only a share, and seemingly a
smaller share than the Greeks; and the conquest by Amasis of the
island of Cyprus, half-filled with Phenician settlements and once the
tributary dependence of Tyre, affords one mark of the comparative
decline of that great city. In her commerce with the Red sea and the
Persian gulf she still remained without a competitor, the schemes
of the Egyptian king Nekôs having proved abortive; and even in the
time of Herodotus, the spices and frankincense of Arabia were still
brought and distributed only by the Phenician merchant.[640] But
on the whole, both her political and industrial development are
now cramped by impediments, and kept down by rivals, not before
in operation; and the part which she will be found to play in the
Mediterranean, throughout the whole course of this history, is one
subordinate and of reduced importance.

[639] Thucyd. i, 13.

[640] Herodot. iii, 107.

The course of Grecian history is not directly affected by
these countries, yet their effect upon the Greek mind was very
considerable, and the opening of the Nile by Psammetichus constitutes
an epoch in Hellenic thought. It supplied their observation with a
large and diversified field of present reality, while it was at the
same time one great source of those mysticizing tendencies which
corrupted so many of their speculative minds. But to Phenicia and
Assyria, the Greeks owe two acquisitions well deserving special
mention,—the alphabet, and the first standard and scale of weight,
as well as coined money. Of neither of these acquisitions can we
trace the precise date. That the Greek alphabet is derived from the
Phenician, the analogy of the two proves beyond dispute, though we
know not how or where the inestimable present was handed over, of
which no traces are to be found in the Homeric poems.[641] The
Latin alphabet, which is nearly identical with the most ancient
Doric variety of the Greek, was derived from the same source,—also
the Etruscan alphabet, though—if O. Müller is correct in his
conjecture—only at second-hand, through the intervention of the
Greek.[642] If we cannot make out at what time the Phenicians
made this valuable communication to the Greeks, much less can we
determine when or how they acquired it themselves,—whether it be of
Semitic invention, or derived from improvement upon the phonetic
hieroglyphics of the Egyptians.[643]

[641] The various statements or conjectures to be found in Greek
authors (all comparatively recent) respecting the origin of the
Greek alphabet, are collected by Franz, Epigraphicê Græca, s.
iii, pp. 12-20: “Omnino Græci alphabeti ut certa primordia sunt
in origine Phœniciâ, ita certus terminus in litteraturâ Ionicâ
seu Simonideâ. Quæ inter utrumque a veteribus ponuntur, incerta
omnia et fabulosa.... Non commoramur in iis quæ de litterarum
origine et propagatione ex fabulosâ Pelasgorum historiâ (cf.
Knight, pp. 119-123; Raoul Rochette, pp. 67-87) neque in iis
quæ de Cadmo narrantur quem unquam fuisse hodie jam nemo
crediderit.... Alphabeti Phœnicii omnes 22 literas cum antiquis
Græcis congruere, hodie nemo est qui ignoret.” (pp. 14-15.) Franz
gives valuable information respecting the changes gradually
introduced into the Greek alphabet, and the erroneous statements
of the Grammatici as to what letters were original, and what were
subsequently added.

Kruse also, in his “Hellas,” (vol. i, p. 13, and in the first
Beylage, annexed to that volume,) presents an instructive
comparison of the Greek, Latin, and Phenician alphabets.

The Greek authors, as might be expected, were generally much
more fond of referring the origin of letters to native heroes
or gods, such as Palamêdês, Promêtheus, Musæus, Orpheus, Linus,
etc., than to the Phenicians. The oldest known statement (that
of Stêsichorus, Schol. ap. Bekker. Anecdot. ii, p. 786) ascribes
them to Palamêdês.

Both Franz and Kruse contend strenuously for the existence and
habit of writing among the Greeks in times long anterior to
Homer: in which I dissent from them.

[642] See O. Müller, Die Etrusker (iv, 6), where there is much
instruction on the Tuscan alphabet.

[643] This question is raised and discussed by Justus Olshausen,
Ueber den Ursprung des Alphabetes (pp. 1-10), in the Kieler
Philologische Studien, 1841.

Besides the letters of the alphabet, the scale of weight and that
of coined money passed from Phenicia and Assyria into Greece. It
has been shown by Boeckh, in his “Metrologie,” that the Æginæan
scale,[644]—with its divisions, talent, mna, and obolus,—is identical
with the Babylonian and Phenician: and that the word _mna_, which
forms the central point of the scale, is of Chaldæan origin. On
this I have already touched in a former chapter, while relating the
history of Pheidôn of Argos, by whom what is called the Æginæan scale
was first promulgated.

[644] See Boeckh, Metrologie, chs. iv, v, vi; also the preceding
volume of this History.

In tracing, therefore, the effect upon the Greek mind of early
intercourse with the various Asiatic nations, we find that, as
the Greeks made up their musical scale, so important an element
of their early mental culture, in part by borrowing from Lydians
and Phrygians,—so also their monetary and statical system, their
alphabetical writing, and their duodecimal division of the day,
measured by the gnomon and the shadow, were all derived from
Assyrians and Phenicians. The early industry and commerce of these
countries was thus in many ways available to Grecian advance, and
would probably have become more so, if the great and rapid rise of
the more barbarous Persians had not reduced them all to servitude.
The Phenicians, though unkind rivals, were at the same time examples
and stimulants to Greek maritime aspiration; and the Phenician
worship of that goddess whom the Greeks knew under the name of
Aphroditê, became communicated to the latter in Cyprus, in Kythêra,
in Sicily,—perhaps also in Corinth.

The sixth century B. C., though a period of decline for Tyre and
Sidon, was a period of growth for their African colony Carthage,
which appears during this century in considerable traffic with the
Tyrrhenian towns on the southern coast of Italy, and as thrusting
out the Phôkæan settlers from Alalia in Corsica. The wars of the
Carthaginians with the Grecian colonies in Sicily, so far as they
are known to us, commence shortly after 500 B. C., and continue at
intervals, with fluctuating success, for two centuries and a half.

The foundation of Carthage by the Tyrians is placed at different
dates, the lowest of which, however, is 819 B. C.: other authorities
place it in 878 B. C., and we have no means of deciding between
them. I have already remarked that it is by no means the oldest of
the Tyrian colonies; but though Utica and Gadês may have been more
ancient than Carthage,[645] the latter greatly outstripped them in
wealth and power, and acquired a sort of federal preëminence over
all the Phenician colonies on the coast of Africa. In those later
times when the dominion of the Carthaginians had reached its maximum,
it comprised the towns of Utica, Hippo, Adrumêtum, and Leptis,—all
original Phenician foundations, and enjoying probably, even as
dependents of Carthage, a certain qualified autonomy,—besides a great
number of smaller towns planted by themselves, and inhabited by a
mixed population called Liby-Phenicians. Three hundred such towns,—a
dependent territory covering half the space between the lesser and
the greater Syrtis, and in many parts remarkably fertile,—a city said
to contain seven hundred thousand inhabitants, active, wealthy, and
seemingly homogeneous,—and foreign dependencies in Sicily, Sardinia,
the Balearic isles, and Spain,—all this aggregate of power, under
one political management, was sufficient to render the contest of
Carthage even with Rome for some time doubtful.

[645] Utica is said to have been founded 287 years earlier than
Carthage; the author who states this, professing to draw his
information from Phenician histories (Aristot. Mirab. Auscult. c.
134). Velleius Paterculus states Gadês to be older than Utica,
and places the foundation of Carthage B. C. 819 (i, 2, 6). He
seems to follow in the main the same authority as the composer of
the Aristotelic compilation above cited. Other statements place
the foundation of Carthage in 878 B. C. (Heeren, Ideen über den
Verkehr, etc., part ii, b. i, p. 29). Appian states the date of
the foundation as fifty years before the Trojan war (De Reb.
Punic. c. 1); Philistus, as twenty-one years before the same
event (Philist. Fragm. 50, ed. Göller); Timæus, as thirty-eight
years earlier than the 1st Olympiad (Timæi Fragm. 21, ed. Didot);
Justin, seventy-two years earlier than the foundation of Rome
(xviii, 6).

The citation which Josephus gives from Menander’s work, extracted
from Tyrian ἀναγραφαὶ, placed the foundation of Carthage 143
years after the building of the temple of Jerusalem (Joseph.
cont. Apion. i, c. 17-18). Apion said that Carthage was founded
in the first year of Olympiad 7 (B. C. 748), (Joseph. c. Apion.
ii, 2.)

But by what steps the Carthaginians raised themselves to such a
pitch of greatness we have no information, and we are even left
to guess how much of it had already been acquired in the sixth
century B. C. As in the case of so many other cities, we have a
foundation-legend, decorating the moment of birth, and then nothing
farther. The Tyrian princess Dido or Elisa, daughter of Belus,
sister of Pygmalion king of Tyre, and wife of the wealthy Sichæus
priest of Hêraklês in that city,—is said to have been left a widow
in consequence of the murder of Sichæus by Pygmalion, who seized the
treasures belonging to his victim. But Dido found means to disappoint
him of his booty, possessed herself of the gold which had tempted
Pygmalion, and secretly emigrated, carrying with her the sacred
insignia of Hêraklês: a considerable body of Tyrians followed her.
She settled at Carthage on a small hilly peninsula joined by a narrow
tongue of land to the continent, purchasing from the natives as much
land as could be surrounded by an ox’s hide, which she caused to be
cut into the thinnest strip, and thus made it sufficient for the
site of her first citadel, Byrsa, which afterwards grew up into the
great city of Carthage. As soon as her new settlement had acquired
footing, she was solicited in marriage by several princes of the
native tribes, especially by the Gætulian Jarbas, who threatened war
if he were refused. Thus pressed by the clamors of her own people,
who desired to come into alliance with the natives, yet irrevocably
determined to maintain exclusive fidelity to her first husband, she
escaped the conflict by putting an end to her life. She pretended to
acquiesce in the proposition of a second marriage, requiring only
delay sufficient to offer an expiatory sacrifice to the manes of
Sichæus: a vast funeral pile was erected, and many victims slain upon
it, in the midst of which Dido pierced her own bosom with a sword,
and perished in the flames. Such is the legend to which Virgil has
given a new color by interweaving the adventures of Æneas, and thus
connecting the foundation legends of Carthage and Rome, careless
of his deviation from the received mythical chronology. Dido was
worshipped as a goddess at Carthage until the destruction of the
city:[646] and it has been imagined with some probability that she
is identical with Astartê, the divine patroness under whose auspices
the colony was originally established, as Gadês and Tarsus were
founded under those of Hêraklês,—the tale of the funeral pile and
self-burning appearing in the religious ceremonies of other Cilician
and Syrian towns.[647] Phenician religion and worship was diffused
along with the Phenician colonies throughout the larger portion of
the Mediterranean.

[646] “Quamdiu Carthago invicta fuit, pro Deâ culta est.”
(Justin. xviii, 6; Virgil, Æneid, i, 340-370.) We trace this
legend about Dido up to Timæus (Timæi Frag. 23, ed. Didot):
Philistus seems to have followed a different story;—he said that
Carthage had been founded by Azor and Karchêdôn (Philist. Fr.
50). Appian notices both stories (De Reb. Pun. 1): that of Dido
was current both among the Romans and Carthaginians: of Zôrus (or
Ezôrus) and Karchêdôn, the second is evidently of Greek coinage,
the first seems genuine Phenician: see Josephus cont. Apion. i,
c. 18-21.

[647] See Movers, Die Phönizier, pp. 609-616.

The Phôkæans of Ionia, who amidst their adventurous voyages
westward established the colony of Massalia, (as early as 600 B.
C.) were only enabled to accomplish this by a naval victory over
the Carthaginians,—the earliest example of Greek and Carthaginian
collision which has been preserved to us. The Carthaginians were
jealous of commercial rivalry, and their traffic with the Tuscans and
Latins in Italy, as well as their lucrative mine-working in Spain,
dates from a period when Greek commerce in those regions was hardly
known. In Greek authors, the denomination Phenicians is often used
to designate the Carthaginians, as well as the inhabitants of Tyre
and Sidon, so that we cannot always distinguish which of the two is
meant; but it is remarkable that the distant establishment of Gadês,
and the numerous settlements planted for commercial purposes along
the western coast of Africa, and without the strait of Gibraltar,
are expressly ascribed to the Tyrians.[648] Many of the other
Phenician establishments on the southern coast of Spain seemed to
have owed their origin to Carthage rather than to Tyre. But the
relations between the two, so far as we know them, were constantly
amicable, and Carthage, even at the period of her highest glory,
sent Theôri with a tribute of religious recognition to the Tyrian
Hêraklês: the visit of these envoys coincided with the siege of the
town by Alexander the Great. On that critical occasion, the wives
and children of the Tyrians were sent to find shelter at Carthage:
two centuries before, when the Persian empire was in its age of
growth and expansion, the Tyrians had refused to aid Kambysês with
their fleet in his plans for conquering Carthage, and thus probably
preserved their colony from subjugation.[649]

[648] Strabo, xvii, p. 826.

[649] Herodot. iii, 19.

CHAPTER XXII.

WESTERN COLONIES OF GREECE — IN EPIRUS, ITALY, SICILY, AND GAUL.

The stream of Grecian colonization to the westward, as far as we can
be said to know it authentically, with names and dates, begins from
the 11th Olympiad. But it is reasonable to believe that there were
other attempts earlier than this, though we must content ourselves
with recognizing them as generally probable. There were doubtless
detached bands of volunteer emigrants or marauders, who, fixing
themselves in some situation favorable to commerce or piracy, either
became mingled with the native tribes, or grew up by successive
reinforcements into an acknowledged town. Not being able to boast
of any filiation from the prytaneium of a known Grecian city, these
adventurers were often disposed to fasten upon the inexhaustible
legend of the Trojan war, and ascribe their origin to one of the
victorious heroes in the host of Agamemnôn, alike distinguished for
their valor and for their ubiquitous dispersion after the siege. Of
such alleged settlements by fugitive Grecian or Trojan heroes, there
were a great number, on various points throughout the shores of the
Mediterranean; and the same honorable origin was claimed even by many
non-Hellenic towns.

In the eighth century B. C., when this westerly stream of Grecian
colonization begins to assume an authentic shape (735 B. C.), the
population of Sicily—as far as our scanty information permits us
to determine it—consisted of two races completely distinct from
each other—Sikels and Sikans—besides the Elymi, a mixed race
apparently distinct from both, and occupying Eryx and Egesta, near
the westernmost corner of the island,—and the Phenician colonies and
coast establishments formed for purposes of trade. According to the
belief both of Thucydidês and Philistus, these Sikans, though they
gave themselves out as indigenous, were yet of Iberian origin[650]
and emigrants of earlier date than the Sikels,—by whom they had
been invaded and restricted to the smaller western half of the
island, and who were said to have crossed over originally from the
south-western corner of the Calabrian peninsula, where a portion
of the nation still dwelt in the time of Thucydidês. The territory
known to Greek writers of the fifth century B. C. by the names of
Œnotria on the coast of the Mediterranean, and Italia on that of
the gulfs of Tarentum and Squillace, included all that lies south
of a line drawn across the breadth of the country, from the gulf
of Poseidônia (Pæstum) and the river Silarus on the Mediterranean
sea, to the north-west corner of the gulf of Tarentum; it was also
bounded northwards by the Iapygians and Messapians, who occupied
the Salentine peninsula, and the country immediately adjoining to
Tarentum, and by the Peuketians on the Ionic gulf. According to the
logographers Pherekydês and Hellanikus,[651] Œnotrus and Peuketius
were sons of Lykaôn, grandsons of Pelasgus, and emigrants in very
early times from Arcadia to this territory. An important statement
in Stephanus Byzantinus[652] acquaints us that the serf-population,
whom the great Hellenic cities in this portion of Italy employed in
the cultivation of their lands, were called Pelasgi, seemingly even
in the historical times: it is upon this name, probably, that the
mythical genealogy of Pherekydês is constructed. This Œnotrian or
Pelasgian race were the population whom the Greek colonists found
there on their arrival. They were known apparently under other names,
such as the Sikels,—mentioned even in the Odyssey, though their exact
locality in that poem cannot be ascertained—the Italians, or Itali,
properly so called,—the Morgêtes,—and the Chaones,— all of them
names of tribes either cognate or subdivisional.[653] The Chaones or
Chaonians are also found, not only in Italy, but in Epirus, as one
of the most considerable of the Epirotic tribes,—while Pandosia, the
ancient residence of the Œnotrian kings in the southern corner of
Italy,[654] was also the name of a township or locality in Epirus,
with a neighboring river Acheron in both: from hence, and from some
other similarities of name, it has been imagined that Epirots,
Œnotrians, Sikels, etc., were all names of cognate people, and all
entitled to be comprehended under the generic appellation of Pelasgi.
That they belonged to the same ethnical kindred, there seems fair
reason to presume, and also that in point of language, manners,
and character, they were not very widely separated from the ruder
branches of the Hellenic race.

[650] Thucyd. vi, 2; Philistus, Fragm. 3, ed. Göller, ap. Diodor.
v, 6. Timæus adopted the opposite opinion (Diodor. _l. c._), also
Ephorus, if we may judge by an indistinct passage of Strabo (vi,
p. 270). Dionysius of Halikarnassus follows Thucydidês (A. R. i,
22).

The opinion of Philistus is of much value on this point, since
he was, or might have been, personally cognizant of Iberian
mercenaries in the service of the elder Dionysius.

[651] Pherekyd. Fragm. 85, ed. Didot; Hellanik. Fr. 53, ed.
Didot; Dionys. Halik. A. R. i, 11, 13, 22; Skymnus Chius, v. 362;
Pausan. viii, 3, 5.

[652] Stephan. Byz. v. Χῖοι.

[653] Aristot. Polit. vii, 9, 3. Ὤκουν δὲ τὸ πρὸς τὴν Ἰαπυγίαν
καὶ τὸν Ἰόνιον Χῶνες (or Χάονες) τὴν καλουμένην Σίριν· ἦσαν δὲ
καὶ οἱ Χῶνες Οἰνωτροὶ τὸ γένος.

Antiochus Fr. 3, 4, 6, 7, ed. Didot; Strabo, vi, p. 254; Hesych.
v. Χώνην, Dionys. Hal. A. R. i, 12.

[654] Livy, viii, 24.

It would appear too, as far as any judgment can be formed on a point
essentially obscure, that the Œnotrians were ethnically akin to the
primitive population of Rome and Latium on one side,[655] as they
were to the Epirots on the other; and that tribes of this race,
comprising Sikels, and Itali properly so called, as sections, had at
one time occupied most of the territory from the left bank of the
river Tiber southward between the Apennines and the Mediterranean.
Both Herodotus and his junior contemporary, the Syracusan Antiochus,
extend Œnotria as far northward as the river Silarus,[656] and
Sophoklês includes the whole coast of the Mediterranean, from the
strait of Messina to the gulf of Genoa, under the three successive
names of Œnotria, the Tyrrhenian gulf, and Liguria.[657] Before or
during the fifth century B. C., however, a different population,
called Opicians, Oscans, or Ausonians, had descended from their
original seats on or north of the Apennines,[658] and had
conquered the territory between Latium and the Silarus, expelling
or subjugating the Œnotrian inhabitants, and planting outlying
settlements even down to the strait of Messina and the Liparæan
isles. Hence the more precise Thucydidês designates the Campanian
territory, in which Cumæ stood, as the country of the Opici; a
denomination which Aristotle extends to the river Tiber, so as to
comprehend within it Rome and Latium.[659] Not merely Campania,
but in earlier times even Latium, originally occupied by a Sikel
or Œnotrian population, appears to have been partially overrun and
subdued by fiercer tribes from the Apennines, and had thus received
a certain intermixture of Oscan race. But in the regions south of
Latium, these Oscan conquests were still more overwhelming; and to
this cause (in the belief of inquiring Greeks of the fifth century B.
C.)[660] were owing the first migrations of the Œnotrian race out of
southern Italy, which wrested the larger portion of Sicily from the
preëxisting Sikanians.

[655] For the early habitation of Sikels or Siculi in Latium and
Campania, see Dionys. Hal. A. R. i, 1-21: it is curious that
Siculi and Sicani, whether the same or different, the primitive
ante-Hellenic population of Sicily, are also numbered as the
ante-Roman population of Rome: see Virgil, Æneid, viii, 328, and
Servius ad Æneid. xi, 317.

The alleged ancient emigration of Evander from Arcadia to Latium
forms a parallel to the emigration of Œnotrus from Arcadia to
southern Italy as recounted by Pherekydês: it seems to have been
mentioned even as early as in one of the Hesiodic poems (Servius
ad Virg. Æn. viii, 138): compare Steph. Byz. v. Παλλάντιον. The
earliest Latin authors appear all to have recognized Evander
and his Arcadian emigrants: see Dionys. Hal. i, 31-32, ii, 9,
and his references to Fabius Pictor and Ælius Tubero, i, 79-80;
also Cato ap. Solinum, c. 2. If the old reading Ἀρκάδων, in
Thucyd. vi, 2 (which Bekker has now altered into Σικελῶν), be
retained, Thucydidês would also stand as witness for a migration
from Arcadia into Italy. A third emigration of Pelasgi, from
Peloponnesus to the river Sarnus in southern Italy (near
Pompeii), was mentioned by Conon (ap. Servium ap. Virg. Æn. vii,
730).

[656] Herodotus (i, 24-167) includes Elea (or Velia) in
Œnotria,—and Tarentum in Italia; while Antiochus considers
Tarentum as in Iapygia, and the southern boundary of the
Tarentine territory as the northern boundary of Italia: Dionysius
of Halikarnassus (A. R. ii, 1) seems to copy from Antiochus when
he extends the Œnotrians along the whole south-western corner
of Italy, within the line drawn from Tarentum to Poseidonia, or
Pæstum. Hence the appellation Οἰνωτρίδες νῆσοι to the two islands
opposite Elea (Strabo, vi, p. 253). Skymnus Chius (v. 247)
recognizes the same boundaries.

Twelve Œnotrian cities are cited by name (in Stephanus
Byzantinus) from the Εὐρώπη of Hekatæus (Frag. 30-39, ed. Didot):
Skylax in his Periplus does not name Œnotrians; he enumerates
Campanians, Samnites, and Lucanians (cap. 9-13). The intimate
connection between Milêtus and Sybaris would enable Hekatæus to
inform himself about the interior Œnotrian country.

Œnotria and Italia together, as conceived by Antiochus and
Herodotus, comprised what was known a century afterwards as
Lucania and Bruttium: see Mannert, Geographie der Griech. und
Römer, part ix, b. 9, ch. i, p. 86. Livy, speaking with reference
to 317 B. C., when the Lucanian nation as well as the Bruttians
were in full vigor, describes only the sea-coast of the lower
sea as Grecian,—“cum omni orâ Græcorum inferi maris a Thuriis
Neapolim et Cumas,” (ix, 19.) Verrius Flaccus considered the
Sikels as _Græci_ (Festus, v, Major Græcia, with Müller’s note).

[657] Sophoklês, Triptolem. Fr. 527, ed. Dindorf. He places
the lake Avernus, which was close to the Campanian Cumæ, in
Tyrrhenia: see Lexicon Sophocleum, ad calc. ed. Brunck, v.
Ἄορνος. Euripidês (Medea, 1310-1326) seems to extend Tyrrhenia to
the strait of Messina.

[658] Aristot. Polit. vii, 9, 3. ᾤκουν δὲ τὸ μὲν πρὸς τὴν
Τυῤῥηνίαν Ὀπικοὶ, καὶ πρότερον καὶ νῦν καλούμενοι τὴν ἐπίκλησιν
Αὔσονες. Festus: “_Ausoniam_ appellavit Auson, Ulyssis et
Calypsûs filius, eam primam partem Italiæ in quâ sunt urbes
Beneventum et Cales: deinde paulatim tota quoque Italia quæ
Apennino finitur, dicta est Ausonia,” etc. The original Ausonia
would thus coincide nearly with the territory called Samnium,
after the Sabine emigrants had conquered it: see Livy, viii, 16;
Strabo, v, p. 250; Virg. Æn. vii, 727, with Servius. Skymnus
Chius (v, 227) has copied from the same source as Festus. For the
extension of Ausonians along various parts of the more southern
coast of Italy, even to Rhegium, as well as to the Liparæan
isles, see Diodor. v, 7-8; Cato, Origg. Fr. lib. iii, ap. Probum
ad Virg. Bucol. v, 2. The Pythian priestess, in directing the
Chalkidic emigrants to Rhegium, says to them,—Ἔνθα πόλιν οἴκιζε,
διδοῖ δέ σοι Αὔσονα χώραν (Diodor. Fragm. xiii, p. 11, ap
Scriptt. Vatic. ed. Maii). Temesa is Ausonian in Strabo, vi, p.
255.

[659] Thucyd. vi. 3; Aristot. ap. Dionys. Hal. A. R. i, 72.
Ἀχαιῶν τινας τῶν ἀπὸ Τροίης ἀνακομιζομένων,—ἐλθεῖν εἰς τὸν τόπον
τοῦτον τῆς Ὀπικῆς, ὃς καλεῖται Λάτιον.

Even in the time of Cato the elder, the Greeks comprehended the
Romans under the general, and with them contemptuous, designation
of Opici (Cato ap. Plin. H. N. xxii, 1: see Antiochus ap. Strab.
v, p. 242).

[660] Thucyd. vi, 2. Σικελοὶ δὲ ἐξ Ἰταλίας φεύγοντες Ὀπικοὺς
διέβησαν ἐς Σικελίαν (see a Fragment of the geographer Menippus
of Pergamus, in Hudson’s Geogr. Minor. i, p. 76). Antiochus
stated that the Sikels were driven out of Italy into Sicily by
the Opicians and Œnotrians; but the Sikels themselves, according
to him, were also Œnotrians (Dionys. H. i, 12-22). It is
remarkable that Antiochus (who wrote at a time when the name of
Rome had not begun to exercise that fascination over men’s minds
which the Roman power afterwards occasioned), in setting forth
the mythical antiquity of the Sikels and Œnotrians, represents
the eponymous Sikelus as an exile from Rome, who came into the
south of Italy to the king Morgês, successor of Italus,—Ἐπεὶ δὲ
Ἰταλὸς κατεγήρα, Μόργης ἐβασίλευσεν. Ἐπὶ τούτου δὲ ἀνὴρ ἀφίκετο
ἐκ Ῥώμης φυγὰς, Σικελὸς ὄνομα αὐτῷ (Antiochus ap. Dionys. H. i,
73: compare c. 12).

Philistus considered Sikelus to be a son of Italus: both he and
Hellanikus believed in early migrations from Italy into Sicily,
but described the emigrants differently (Philistus, Frag. 2, ed.
Didot).

This imperfect account, representing the ideas of Greeks of the fifth
century B. C. as to the early population of southern Italy, is borne
out by the fullest comparison which can be made between the Greek,
Latin, and Oscan language,—the first two certainly, and the third
probably, sisters of the same Indo-European family of languages.
While the analogy, structural and radical, between Greek and Latin,
establishes completely such community of family—and while comparative
philology proves that on many points the Latin departs less from the
supposed common type and mother-language than the Greek—there exists
also in the former a non-Grecian element, and non-Grecian classes of
words, which appear to imply a confluence of two or more different
people with distinct tongues; and the same non-Grecian element, thus
traceable in the Latin, seems to present itself still more largely
developed in the scanty remains of the Oscan.[661] Moreover, the
Greek colonies in Italy and Sicily caught several peculiar words
from their association with the Sikels, which words approach in most
cases very nearly to the Latin,—so that a resemblance thus appears
between the language of Latium on the one side, and that of Œnotrians
and Sikels (in southern Italy and Sicily) on the other, prior to
the establishments of the Greeks. These are the two extremities
of the Sikel population; between them appear, in the intermediate
country, the Oscan or Ausonian tribes and language; and these latter
seem to have been in a great measure conquerors and intruders from
the central mountains. Such analogies of language countenance the
supposition of Thucydidês and Antiochus, that these Sikels had once
been spread over a still larger portion of southern Italy, and had
migrated from thence into Sicily in consequence of Oscan invasions.
The element of affinity existing between Latins, Œnotrians, and
Sikels—to a certain degree also between all of them together and
the Greeks, but not extending to the Opicians or Oscans, or to the
Iapygians—may be called Pelasgic, for want of a better name; but, by
whatever name it be called, the recognition of its existence connects
and explains many isolated circumstances in the early history of Rome
as well as in that of the Italian and Sicilian Greeks.

[661] See the learned observations upon the early languages of
Italy and Sicily, which Müller has prefixed to his work on the
Etruscans (Einleitung, i, 12). I transcribe the following summary
of his views respecting the early Italian dialects and races:
“The notions which we thus obtain respecting the early languages
of Italy are as follows: the _Sikel_, a sister language, nearly
allied to the Greek or Pelasgic; the _Latin_, compounded from
the Sikel and from the rougher dialect of the men called
_Aborigines_; the _Oscan_, akin to the Latin in both its two
elements; the language spoken by the Sabine emigrants in their
various conquered territories, _Oscan_; the _Sabine proper_, a
distinct and peculiar language, yet nearly connected with the
non-Grecian element in Latin and Oscan, as well as with the
language of the oldest Ausonians and Aborigines.”

[N. B. This last statement, respecting the original Sabine
language, is very imperfectly made out: it seems equally probable
that the Sabellians may have differed from the Oscans no more
than the Dorians from the Ionians: see Niebuhr, Röm. Gesch. tom.
i, p. 69.]

“Such a comparison of languages presents to us a certain view,
which I shall here briefly unfold, of the earliest history of
the Italian races. At a period anterior to all records, a single
people, akin to the Greeks, dwelling extended from the south of
Tuscany down to the straits of Messina, occupies in the upper
part of its territory only the valley of the Tiber,—lower down,
occupies the mountainous districts also, and in the south,
stretches across from sea to sea,—called Sikels, Œnotrians, or
Peucetians. Other mountain tribes, powerful, though not widely
extended, live in the northern Abruzzo and its neighborhood: in
the east, the Sabines, southward from them the cognate Marsi,
more to the west the Aborigines, and among them probably the old
Ausonians or Oscans. About 1000 years prior to the Christian
era, there arises among these tribes—from whom almost all the
popular migrations in ancient Italy have proceeded—a movement
whereby the Aborigines more northward, the Sikels more southward,
are precipitated upon the Sikels of the plains beneath. Many
thousands of the great Sikel nation withdraw to their brethren
the Œnotrians, and by degrees still farther across the strait
to the island of Sicily. Others of them remain stationary in
their residences, and form, in conjunction with the Aborigines,
the Latin nation,—in conjunction with the Ausonians, the Oscan
nation: the latter extends itself over what was afterwards
called Samnium and Campania. Still, the population and power of
these mountain tribes, especially that of the Sabines, goes on
perpetually on the increase: as they pressed onward towards the
Tiber, at the period when Rome was only a single town, so they
also advanced southwards, and conquered,—first, the mountainous
Opica; next, some centuries later, the Opician plain, Campania;
lastly, the ancient country of the Œnotrians, afterwards
denominated Lucania.”

Compare Niebuhr, Römisch. Geschicht. vol. i, p. 80, 2d edit., and
the first chapter of Mr. Donaldson’s Varronianus.

The earliest Grecian colony in Italy or Sicily, of which we know the
precise date, is placed about 735 B. C., eighteen years subsequent
to the Varronian era of Rome; so that the causes, tending to subject
and Hellenize the Sikel population in the southern region, begin
their operation nearly at the same time as those which tended
gradually to exalt and aggrandize the modified variety of it which
existed in Latium. At that time, according to the information given
to Thucydidês, the Sikels had been established for three centuries
in Sicily: Hellanikus and Philistus—who both recognized a similar
migration into that island out of Italy, though they give different
names, both to the emigrants and to those who expelled them—assign
to the migration a date three generations before the Trojan
war.[662] Earlier than 735 B. C., however, though we do not know the
precise era of its commencement, there existed one solitary Grecian
establishment in the Tyrrhenian sea,—the Campanian Cumæ, near cape
Misenum; which the more common opinion of chronologists supposed to
have been founded in 1050 B. C., and which has even been carried
back by some authors to 1139 B. C.[663] Without reposing any faith
in this early chronology, we may at least feel certain that it is
the most ancient Grecian establishment in any part of Italy, and
that a considerable time elapsed before any other Greek colonists
were bold enough to cut themselves off from the Hellenic world by
occupying seats on the other side of the strait of Messina,[664]
with all the hazards of Tyrrhenian piracy as well as of Scylla and
Charybdis. The Campanian Cumæ—known almost entirely by this its Latin
designation—received its name and a portion of its inhabitants from
the Æolic Kymê in Asia Minor. A joint band of settlers, partly from
this latter town, partly from Chalkis in Eubœa,—the former under the
Kymæan Hippoklês, the latter under the Chalkidian Megasthenês,—having
combined to form the new town, it was settled by agreement that Kymê
should bestow the name, and that Chalkis should enjoy the title and
honors of the mother-city.[665]

[662] Thucyd. vi, 2; Philistus, Frag. 2, ed. Didot.

[663] Strabo, v, p. 243; Velleius Patercul. i, 5; Eusebius, p
121. M. Raoul Rochette, assuming a different computation of the
date of the Trojan war, pushes the date of Cumæ still farther
back to 1139 B. C. (Histoire des Colonies Grecques, book iv, c.
12, p. 100.)

The mythes of Cumæ extended to a period preceding the Chalkidic
settlement. See the stories of Aristæus and Dædalus ap. Sallust.
Fragment. Incert. p. 204, ed. Delphin.; and Servius ad Virgil.
Æneid. vi, 17. The fabulous Thespiadæ, or primitive Greek
settlers in Sardinia, were supposed in early ages to have left
that island and retired to Cumæ (Diodor. v, 15).

[664] Ephorus, Frag. 52, ed. Didot.

[665] Strabo, v, p. 243; Velleius Paterc. i, 5.

Cumæ, situated on the neck of the peninsula which terminates in cape
Misenum, occupied a lofty and rocky hill overhanging the sea,[666]
and difficult of access on the land side. The unexampled fertility
of the Phlegræan plains in the immediate vicinity of the city, the
copious supply of fish in the Lucrine lake,[667] and the gold mines
in the neighboring island of Pithekusæ,—both subsisted and enriched
the colonists. They were joined by fresh settlers from Chalkis,
from Eretria, and even from Samos; and became numerous enough to
form distinct towns at Dikæarchia and Neapolis, thus spreading over
a large portion of the bay of Naples. In the hollow rock under the
very walls of the town was situated the cavern of the prophetic
Sibyl,—a parallel and reproduction of the Gergithian Sibyl, near Kymê
in Æolis: in the immediate neighborhood, too, stood the wild woods
and dark lake of Avernus, consecrated to the subterranean gods, and
offering an establishment of priests, with ceremonies evoking the
dead, for purposes of prophecy or for solving doubts and mysteries.
It was here that Grecian imagination localized the Cimmerians and the
fable of Odysseus; and the Cumæans derived gains from the numerous
visitors to this holy spot,[668] perhaps hardly less than those
of the inhabitants of Krissa from the vicinity of Delphi. Of the
relations of these Cumæans with the Hellenic world generally, we
unfortunately know nothing; but they seem to have been in intimate
connection with Rome during the time of the kings, and especially
during that of the last king Tarquin,[669]—forming the intermediate
link between the Greek and Latin world, whereby the feelings of the
Teukrians and Gergithians near the Æolic Kymê, and the legendary
stories of Trojan as well as Grecian heroes—Æneas and Odysseus—passed
into the antiquarian imagination of Rome and Latium.[670] The writers
of the Augustan age knew Cumæ only in its decline, and wondered at
the vast extent of its ancient walls, yet remaining in their time.
But during the two centuries prior to 500 B. C., these walls inclosed
a full and thriving population, in the plenitude of prosperity,—with
a surrounding territory extensive as well as fertile,[671] resorted
to by purchasers of corn from Rome in years of scarcity, and
unassailed as yet by formidable neighbors,—and with a coast and
harbors well suited to maritime commerce. At that period, the town of
Capua, if indeed it existed at all, was of very inferior importance,
and the chief part of the rich plain around it was included in the
possessions of Cumæ[672]—not unworthy probably, in the sixth century
B. C., to be numbered with Sybaris and Krotôn.

[666] See the site of Cumæ as described by Agathias (on occasion
of the siege of the place by Narses, in 552 A. D.), Histor. i,
8-10; also by Strabo, v, p. 244.

[667] Diodor. iv, 21, v, 71; Polyb. iii, 91; Pliny, H. N. iii,
5; Livy, viii, 22. “In Baiano sinu Campaniæ contra Puteolanam
civitatem lacus sunt duo, Avernus et Lucrinus: qui olim propter
piscium copiam vectigalia magna præstabant,” (Servius ad Virg.
Georgic. ii, 161.)

[668] Strabo, v, p. 243. Καὶ εἰσέπλεόν γε οἱ προθυσόμενοι καὶ
ἱλασόμενοι τοὺς καταχθονίους δαίμονας, ὄντων τῶν ὑφηγουμένων τὰ
τοιάδε ἱερέων, ἠργολαβηκότων τὸν τόπον.

[669] Dionys. H. iv, 61-62, vi, 21; Livy, ii, 34.

[670] See, respecting the transmission of ideas and fables from
the Æolic Kymê to Cumæ in Campania, the first volume of this
History, chap. xv, p. 457.

The father of Hesiod was a native of the Æolic Kymê: we find
in the Hesiodic Theogony (_ad fin._) mention of Latinus as the
son of Odysseus and Circê: Servius cites the same from the
Ἀσπιδοποιΐα of Hesiod (Servius ad Virg. Æn. xii, 162; compare
Cato, Fragment. p. 33, ed. Lion). The great family of the Mamilii
at Tusculum, also derived their origin from Odysseus and Circê
(Livy, i, 49).

The tomb of Elpênôr, the lost companion of Odysseus, was shown at
Circeii in the days of Theophrastus (Hist. Plant. v, 8, 3) and
Skylax (c. 10).

Hesiod notices the promontory of Pelôrus. the strait of Messina,
and the islet of Ortygia near Syracuse (Diodor. iv, 85; Strabo,
i, p. 23).

[671] Livy, ii. 9.

[672] Niebuhr, Römisch. Geschicht. vol. i. p. 76, 2d edit.

The decline of Cumæ begins in the first half of the fifth century
B. C. (500-450 B. C.), first, from the growth of hostile powers in
the interior,—the Tuscans and Samnites,—next, from violent intestine
dissensions and a destructive despotism. The town was assailed by a
formidable host of invaders from the interior, Tuscans reinforced
by Umbrian and Daunian allies; which Dionysius refers to the 64th
Olympiad (524-520 B. C.), though upon what chronological authority
we do not know, and though this same time is marked by Eusebius as
the date of the foundation of Dikæarchia from Cumæ. The invaders,
in spite of great disparity of number, were bravely repelled by the
Cumæans, chiefly through the heroic example of a citizen then first
known and distinguished,—Aristodêmus Malakus. The government of
the city was oligarchical, and the oligarchy from that day became
jealous of Aristodêmus; who, on his part, acquired extraordinary
popularity and influence among the people. Twenty years afterwards,
the Latin city of Aricia, an ancient ally of Cumæ was attacked by a
Tuscan host, and intreated succor from the Cumæans. The oligarchy
of the latter thought this a good opportunity to rid themselves of
Aristodêmus, whom they despatched by sea to Aricia, with rotten
vessels and an insufficient body of troops. But their stratagem
failed and proved their ruin; for the skill and intrepidity of
Aristodêmus sufficed for the rescue of Aricia, and he brought back
his troops victorious and devoted to himself personally. Partly by
force, partly by stratagem, he subverted the oligarchy, put to death
the principal rulers, and constituted himself despot: by a jealous
energy, by disarming the people, and by a body of mercenaries, he
maintained himself in this authority for twenty years, running his
career of lust and iniquity until old age. At length a conspiracy of
the oppressed population proved successful against him; he was slain,
with all his family and many of his chief partisans, and the former
government was restored.[673]

[673] The history of Aristodêmus Malakus is given at some length
by Dionysius of Halikarnassus (viii, 3-10).

The despotism of Aristodêmus falls during the exile of the expelled
Tarquin[674] (to whom he gave shelter) from Rome, and during the
government of Gelôn at Syracuse; and this calamitous period of
dissension and misrule was one of the great causes of the decline of
Cumæ. Nearly at the same time, the Tuscan power, both by land and
sea, appears at its maximum, and the Tuscan establishment at Capua
begins, if we adopt the era of the town as given by Cato.[675] There
was thus created at the expense of Cumæ a powerful city, which was
still farther aggrandized afterwards when conquered and occupied by
the Samnites; whose invading tribes, under their own name or that of
Lucanians, extended themselves during the fifth and fourth centuries
B. C., even to the shores of the gulf of Tarentum.[676] Cumæ was also
exposed to formidable dangers from the sea-side: a fleet, either of
Tuscans alone, or of Tuscans and Carthaginians united, assailed it
in 474 B. C., and it was only rescued by the active interposition
of Hiero, despot of Syracuse; by whose naval force the invaders
were repelled with slaughter.[677] These incidents go partly to
indicate, partly to explain, the decline of the most ancient Hellenic
settlement in Italy,—a decline from which it never recovered.

[674] Livy, ii, 21.

[675] Velleius Patercul. i, 5.

[676] Compare Strabo, v, p. 250; vi. p. 264. “Cumanos Osca
mutavit vicinia,” says Velleius, _l. c._

[677] Diodor. xi, 51; Pindar, Pyth. i, 71.

After briefly sketching the history of Cumæ, we pass naturally to
that series of powerful colonies which were established in Sicily
and Italy, beginning with 735 B. C.—enterprises in which Chalkis,
Corinth, Megara, Sparta, the Achæans in Peloponnesus, and the
Lokrians out of Peloponnesus, were all concerned. Chalkis, the
metropolis of Cumæ, became also the metropolis of Naxos, the most
ancient Grecian colony in Sicily, on the eastern coast of the island,
between the strait of Messina and Mount Ætna.

The great number of Grecian settlements, from different colonizing
towns, which appear to have taken effect within a few years upon the
eastern coast of Italy and Sicily—from the Iapygian cape to cape
Pachynus—leads us to suppose that the extraordinary capacities
of the country for receiving new settlers had become known only
suddenly. The colonies follow so close upon each other, that the
example of the first cannot have been the single determining motive
to those which followed. I shall have occasion to point out, even
a century later (on the occasion of the settlement of Kyrênê), the
narrow range of Grecian navigation; so that the previous supposed
ignorance would not be at all incredible, were it not for the fact of
the preëxisting colony of Cumæ. According to the practice universal
with Grecian ships—which rarely permitted themselves to lose sight
of the coast except in cases of absolute necessity—every man, who
navigated from Greece to Italy or Sicily, first coasted along the
shores of Akarnania and Epirus until he reached the latitude of
Korkyra; he then struck across first to that island, next to the
Iapygian promontory, from whence he proceeded along the eastern
coast of Italy (the gulfs of Tarentum and Squillace) to the southern
promontory of Calabria and the Sicilian strait; he would then sail,
still coastwise, either to Syracuse or to Cumæ, according to his
destination. So different are nautical habits now, that this fact
requires special notice; we must recollect, moreover, that in 735
B. C., there were yet no Grecian settlements either in Epirus or in
Korkyra: outside of the gulf of Corinth, the world was non-Hellenic,
with the single exception of the remote Cumæ. A little before the
last-mentioned period, Theoklês (an Athenian or a Chalkidian—probably
the latter) was cast by storms on the coast of Sicily, and became
acquainted with the tempting character of the soil, as well as the
dispersed and half-organized condition of the petty Sikel communities
who occupied it.[678] The oligarchy of Chalkis, acting upon the
information which he brought back, sent out under his guidance
settlers,[679] Chalkidian and Naxian, who founded the Sicilian Naxos.
Theoklês and his companions on landing first occupied the eminence
of Taurus, immediately overhanging the sea (whereon was established
four centuries afterwards the town of Tauromenium, after Naxos had
been destroyed by the Syracusan despot Dionysius); for they had to
make good their position against the Sikels, who were in occupation
of the neighborhood, and whom it was requisite either to dispossess
or to subjugate. After they had acquired secure possession of the
territory, the site of the city was transferred to a convenient spot
adjoining; but the hill first occupied remained ever memorable,
both to Greeks and to Sikels. On it was erected the altar of Apollo
Archêgetês, the divine patron who (through his oracle at Delphi) had
sanctioned and determined Hellenic colonization in the island. The
altar remained permanently as a sanctuary common to all the Sicilian
Greeks, and the Theôrs or sacred envoys from their various cities,
when they visited the Olympic and other festivals of Greece, were
always in the habit of offering sacrifice upon it immediately before
their departure. To the autonomous Sikels, on the other hand, the
hill was an object of durable but odious recollection, as the spot
in which Grecian conquest and intrusion had first begun; and at the
distance of three centuries and a half from the event, we find them
still animated by this sentiment in obstructing the foundation of
Tauromenium.[680]

[678] Thucyd. vi, 3; Strabo, vi, p. 267.

[679] The admixture of Naxian colonists may be admitted, as well
upon the presumption arising from the name, as from the statement
of Hellanikus, ap. Stephan. Byz. v. Χαλκίς.

Ephorus put together into one the Chalkidian and the Megarian
migrations, which Thucydidês represents as distinct (Ephorus ap.
Strabo, vi, p. 267).

[680] Thucyd. vi, 3; Diodor. xiv, 59-88.

At the time when Theoklês landed, the Sikels were in possession of
the larger half of the island, lying chiefly to the east of the
Heræan mountains,[681]—a chain of hills stretching in a southerly
direction from that principal chain, called the Neurode or Nebrode
mountains, which runs from east to west for the most part parallel
with the northern shore. West of the Heræan hills were situated the
Sikans; and west of these latter, Eryx and Egesta, the possessions
of the Elymi: along the western portion of the northern coast, also,
were placed Motyê, Soloêis, and Panormus (now Palermo), the Phenician
or Carthaginian seaports. The formation, or at least the extension,
of these three last-mentioned ports, however, was a consequence of
the multiplied Grecian colonies; for the Phenicians down to this
time had not founded any territorial or permanent establishments, but
had contented themselves with occupying in a temporary way various
capes or circumjacent islets, for the purpose of trade with the
interior. The arrival of formidable Greek settlers, maritime like
themselves, induced them to abandon these outlying factories, and
to concentrate their strength in the three considerable towns above
named, all near to that corner of the island which approached most
closely to Carthage. The east side of Sicily, and most part of the
south, were left open to the Greeks, with no other opposition than
that of the indigenous Sikels and Sikans, who were gradually expelled
from all contact with the sea-shore, except on part of the north side
of the island,—and who were indeed, so unpractised at sea as well as
destitute of shipping, that in the tale of their old migration out
of Italy into Sicily, the Sikels were affirmed to have crossed the
narrow strait upon rafts at a moment of favorable wind.[682]

[681] Mannert places the boundary of Sikels and Sikans at these
mountains: Otto Siefert (Akragas und sein Gebiet, Hamburg, 1845,
p. 53) places it at the Gemelli Colles, rather more to the
westward,—thus contracting the domain of the Sikans: compare
Diodor. iv, 82-83.

[682] Thucyd. vi, 2.

In the very next year[683] to the foundation of Naxos, Corinth began
her part in the colonization of the island. A body of settlers, under
the œkist Archias, landed in the islet Ortygia, farther southward
on the eastern coast, expelled the Sikel occupants, and laid the
first stone of the mighty Syracuse. Ortygia, two English miles in
circumference, was separated from the main island only by a narrow
channel, which was bridged over when the city was occupied and
enlarged by Gelôn in the 72d Olympiad, if not earlier. It formed only
a small part, though the most secure and best-fortified part, of the
vast space which the city afterwards occupied; but it sufficed alone
for the inhabitants during a considerable time, and the present city
in its modern decline has again reverted to the same modest limits.
Moreover, Ortygia offered another advantage of not less value; it
lay across the entrance of a spacious harbor, approached by a narrow
mouth, and its fountain of Arethusa was memorable in antiquity both
for the abundance and goodness of its water. We should have been glad
to learn something respecting the numbers, character, position,
nativity, etc. of these primitive emigrants, the founders of a city
which we shall hereafter find comprising a vast walled circuit,
which Strabo reckons at one hundred and eighty stadia, but which the
modern observations of Colonel Leake announce as fourteen English
miles,[684] or about one hundred and twenty-two stadia. We are told
only that many of them came from the Corinthian village of Tenea,
and that one of them sold to a comrade on the voyage his lot of land
in prospective, for the price of a honey-cake: the little which we
hear about the determining motives[685] of the colony refers to
the personal character of the œkist. Archias son of Euagêtus, one
of the governing gens of the Bacchiadæ at Corinth, in the violent
prosecution of unbridled lust, had caused, though unintentionally,
the death of a free youth named Aktæon, whose father Melissus,
after having vainly endeavored to procure redress, slew himself at
the Isthmian games, invoking the vengeance of Poseidôn against the
aggressor.[686] Such were the destructive effects of this paternal
curse, that Archias was compelled to expatriate, and the Bacchiadæ
placed him at the head of the emigrants to Ortygia, in 734 B. C.: at
that time, probably, this was a sentence of banishment to which no
man of commanding station would submit except under the pressure of
necessity.

[683] Mr. Fynes Clinton discusses the era of Syracuse, Fasti
Hellenici, ad B. C. 734, and the same work, vol. ii. Appendix xi,
p. 264.

[684] See Colonel Leake, notes on the Topography of Syracuse, p.
41.

[685] Athenæ. iv, 167; Strabo, ix, p. 380.

[686] Diodor. Frag. Lit. viii, p. 24; Plutarch, Narrat. Amator.
p. 772; Schol. Apollon. Rhod. iv, 1212.

There yet remained room for new settlements between Naxos and
Syracuse: and Theoklês, the œkist of Naxos, found himself in a
situation to occupy part of this space only five years after the
foundation of Syracuse: perhaps he may have been joined by fresh
settlers. He attacked and expelled the Sikels[687] from the fertile
spot called Leontini, seemingly about half-way down on the eastern
coast between Mount Ætna and Syracuse; and also from Katana,
immediately adjoining to Mount Ætna, which still retains both its
name and its importance. Two new Chalkidic colonies were thus
founded,—Theoklês himself becoming œkist of Leontini, and Euarchus
chosen by the Katanæan settlers themselves, of Katana.

[687] Polyænus (v. 5. 1) describes the stratagem of Theoklês on
this occasion.

The city of Megara was not behind Corinth and Chalkis in furnishing
emigrants to Sicily. Lamis the Megarian, having now arrived with
a body of colonists, took possession first of a new spot called
Trotilus, but afterwards joined the recent Chalkidian settlement
at Leontini. The two bodies of settlers, however, could not live
in harmony, and Lamis, with his companions, was soon expelled; he
then occupied Thapsus,[688] at a little distance to the northward
of Ortygia or Syracuse, and shortly afterwards died. His followers
made an alliance with Hyblôn, king of a neighboring tribe of Sikels,
who invited them to settle in his territory; they accepted the
proposition, relinquished Thapsus, and founded, in conjunction with
Hyblôn, the city called the Hyblæan Megara, between Leontini and
Syracuse. This incident is the more worthy of notice, because it is
one of the instances which we find of a Grecian colony beginning by
amicable fusion with the preëxisting residents: Thucydidês seems to
conceive the prince Hyblôn as betraying his people against their
wishes to the Greeks.[689]

[688] Polyænus details a treacherous stratagem whereby this
expulsion is said to have been accomplished (v, 5. 2).

[689] Thucydid. vi, 3. Ὕβλωνος τοῦ βασιλέως προδόντος τὴν χώραν
καὶ καθηγησαμένου.

It was thus that, during the space of five years, several distinct
bodies of Greek emigrants had rapidly succeeded each other in Sicily:
for the next forty years, we do not hear of any fresh arrivals,
which is the more easy to understand as there were during that
interval several considerable foundations on the coast of Italy,
which probably took off the disposable Greek settlers. At length,
forty-five years after the foundation of Syracuse, a fresh body
of settlers arrived, partly from Rhodes under Antiphêmus, partly
from Krête under Entimus, and founded the city of Gela on the
south-western front of the island, between cape Pachynus and Lilybæum
(B. C. 690)—still on the territory of the Sikels, though extending
ultimately to a portion of that of the Sikans.[690] The name of the
city was given from that of the neighboring river Gela.

[690] Thucydid. vi, 4; Diodor. Excerpt. Vatican. ed. Maii, Fragm.
xiii, p. 13; Pausanias, viii, 46, 2.

One other fresh migration from Greece to Sicily remains to be
mentioned, though we cannot assign the exact date of it. The town of
Zanklê (now Messina), on the strait between Italy and Sicily, was
at first occupied by certain privateers or pirates from Cumæ,—the
situation being eminently convenient for their operations. But the
success of the other Chalkidic settlements imparted to this nest
of pirates a more enlarged and honorable character: a body of new
settlers joined them from Chalkis and other towns of Eubœa, the land
was regularly divided, and two joint œkists were provided to qualify
the town as a member of the Hellenic communion—Periêrês from Chalkis,
and Kratæmenês from Cumæ. The name Zanklê had been given by the
primitive Sikel occupants of the place, meaning in their language
_a sickle_; but it was afterwards changed to Messênê by Anaxilas,
despot of Rhegium, who, when he conquered the town, introduced new
inhabitants, in a manner hereafter to be noticed.[691]

[691] Thucydid. vi, 4.

Besides these emigrations direct from Greece, the Hellenic colonies
in Sicily became themselves the founders of sub-colonies. Thus the
Syracusans, seventy years after their own settlement (B. C. 664),
founded Akræ—Kasmenæ, twenty years afterwards (B. C. 644), and
Kamarina forty-five years after Kasmenæ (B. C. 599): Daskôn and
Menekôlus were the œkists of the latter, which became in process
of time an independent and considerable town, while Akræ and
Kasmenæ seem to have remained subject to Syracuse. Kamarina was on
the south-western side of the island, forming the boundary of the
Syracusan territory towards Gela. Kallipolis was established from
Naxos, and Eubœa (a town so called) from Leontini.[692]

[692] Strabo, vi, p. 272.

Hitherto, the Greeks had colonized altogether on the territory
of the Sikels; the three towns which remain to be mentioned were
all founded in that of the Sikans,[693]—Agrigentum or Akragas,
Selinûs, and Himera. The two former were both on the south-western
coast,—Agrigentum bordering upon Gela on the one side, and upon
Selinûs on the other. Himera was situated on the westerly portion of
the northern coast,—the single Hellenic establishment in the time of
Thucydidês which that long line of coast presented. The inhabitants
of the Hyblæan Megara were founders of Selinûs, about 630 B. C., a
century after their own establishment: the œkist Pamillus, according
to the usual Hellenic practice, was invited from their metropolis
Megara in Greece proper, but we are not told how many fresh settlers
came with him: the language of Thucydidês leads us to suppose
that the new town was peopled chiefly from the Hyblæan Megarians
themselves. The town of Akragas, or Agrigentum, called after the
neighboring river of the former name, was founded from Gela in B.
C. 582. Its œkists were Aristonous and Pystilus, and it received
the statutes and religious characteristics of Gela. Himera, on the
other hand, was founded from Zanklê, under three œkists, Eukleidês,
Simus, and Sakôn. The chief part of its inhabitants were of Chalkidic
race, and its legal and religious characteristics were Chalkidic; but
a portion of the settlers were Syracusan exiles, called Mylêtidæ,
who had been expelled from home by a sedition, so that the Himeræan
dialect was a mixture of Doric and Chalkidic. Himera was situated not
far from the towns of the Elymi,—Eyrx and Egesta.

[693] Stephanus Byz. Σικανία, ἡ περίχωρος Ἀκραγαντινῶν. Herodot.
vii, 170; Diodor. iv, 78.

Vessa, the most considerable among the Sikanian townships or
villages, with its prince Teutus, is said to have been conquered
by Phalaris despot of Agrigentum, through a mixture of craft and
force (Polyæn. v, 1, 4).

Such were the chief establishments founded by the Greeks in Sicily
during the two centuries after their first settlement in 735 B.
C. The few particulars just stated respecting them are worthy of
all confidence,—for they come to us from Thucydidês,—but they are
unfortunately too few to afford the least satisfaction to our
curiosity. It cannot be doubted that these first two centuries were
periods of steady increase and prosperity among the Sicilian Greeks,
undisturbed by those distractions and calamities which supervened
afterwards, and which led indeed to the extraordinary aggrandizement
of some of their communities, but also to the ruin of several others:
moreover, it seems that the Carthaginians in Sicily gave them no
trouble until the time of Gelôn. Their position will indeed seem
singularly advantageous, if we consider the extraordinary fertility
of the soil in this fine island, especially near the sea,—its
capacity for corn, wine, and oil, the species of cultivation to
which the Greek husbandman had been accustomed under less favorable
circumstances,—its abundant fisheries on the coast, so important in
Grecian diet, and continuing undiminished even at the present day,
together with sheep, cattle, hides, wool, and timber from the native
population in the interior. These natives seem to have been of rude
pastoral habits, dispersed either among petty hill-villages, or in
caverns hewn out of the rock, like the primitive inhabitants of the
Balearic islands and Sardinia; so that Sicily, like New Zealand in
our century, was now for the first time approached by organized
industry and tillage.[694] Their progress, though very great, during
this most prosperous interval (between the foundation of Naxos, in
735 B. C. to the reign of Gelôn at Syracuse in 485 B. C.), is not to
be compared to that of the English colonies in America; but it was
nevertheless very great, and appears greater from being concentrated
as it was in and around a few cities. Individual spreading and
separation of residence were rare, nor did they consist either with
the security or the social feelings of a Grecian colonist. The city
to which he belonged was the central point of his existence, where
the produce which he raised was brought home to be stored or sold,
and where alone his active life, political, domestic, religious,
recreative, etc., was carried on. There were dispersed throughout
the territory of the city small fortified places and garrisons,[695]
serving as temporary protection to the cultivators in case of sudden
inroad; but there was no permanent residence for the free citizen
except the town itself. This was, perhaps, even more the case in
a colonial settlement, where everything began and spread from one
central point, than in Attica, where the separate villages had once
nourished a population politically independent. It was in the
town, therefore, that the aggregate increase of the colony palpably
concentrated itself,—property as well as population,—private comfort
and luxury not less than public force and grandeur. Such growth
and improvement was of course sustained by the cultivation of the
territory, but the evidences of it were manifested in the town;
and the large population which we shall have occasion to notice as
belonging to Agrigentum, Sybaris, and other cities, will illustrate
this position.

[694] Of these Sikel or Sikan caverns many traces yet remain: see
Otto Siefert, Akragas und sein Gebiet, pp. 39, 45, 49, 55, and
the work of Captain W. H. Smyth,—Sicily and its Islands, London,
1824, p. 190.

“These cryptæ (observes the latter) appear to have been the
earliest effort of a primitive and pastoral people towards a
town, and are generally without regularity as to shape and
magnitude: in after-ages they perhaps served as a retreat in time
of danger, and as a place of security in case of extraordinary
alarm, for women, children, and valuables. In this light, I was
particularly struck with the resemblance these rude habitations
bore to the caves I had seen in Owhyhee, for similar uses. The
Troglodyte villages of Northern Africa, of which I saw several,
are also precisely the same.”

About the early cave-residences in Sardinia and the Balearic
islands, consult Diodor. v, 15-17.

[695] Thucydid. vi, 45. τὰ περιπόλια τὰ ἐν τῇ χώρᾳ (of Syracuse).

There is another point of some importance to mention in regard to the
Sicilian and Italian cities. The population of the town itself may
have been principally, though not wholly, Greek; but the population
of the territory belonging to the town, or of the dependent villages
which covered it, must have been in a great measure Sikel or Sikan.
The proof of this is found in a circumstance common to all the
Sicilian and Italian Greeks,—the peculiarity of their weights,
measures, monetary system, and language. The pound and ounce are
divisions and denominations belonging altogether to Italy and Sicily,
and unknown originally to the Greeks, whose scale consisted of the
obolus, the drachma, the mina, and the talent: among the Greeks, too,
the metal first and most commonly employed for money was silver,
while in Italy and Sicily copper was the primitive metal made use
of. Now among all the Italian and Sicilian Greeks, a scale of weight
and money arose quite different from that of the Greeks at home, and
formed by a combination and adjustment of the one of these systems to
the other; it is in many points complex and difficult to understand,
but in the final result the native system seems to be predominant,
and the Grecian system subordinate.[696] Such a consequence as this
could not have ensued, if the Greek settlers in Italy and Sicily
had kept themselves apart as communities, and had merely carried on
commerce and barter with communities of Sikels: it implies a fusion
of the two races in the same community, though doubtless in the
relation of superior and subject, and not in that of equals. The
Greeks on arriving in the country expelled the natives from the town,
perhaps also from the lands immediately round the town; but when they
gradually extended their territory, this was probably accomplished,
not by the expulsion, but by the subjugation of those Sikel tribes
and villages, much subdivided and each individually petty, whom their
aggressions successively touched.

[696] Respecting the statical and monetary system, prevalent
among the Italian and Sicilian Greeks, see Aristot. Fragment.
περὶ Πολιτειῶν, ed. Neumann, p. 102; Pollux, iv, 174, ix, 80-87;
and above all, Boeckh, Metrologie, ch. xviii, p. 292, and the
abstract and review of that work in the Classical Museum, No. 1;
also, O. Müller, Die Etrusker, vol. i, p. 309.

The Sicilian Greeks reckoned by talents, each consisting of 120
litræ or libræ: the Æginæan obolus was the equivalent of the
litra, having been the value in silver of a pound-weight of
copper, at the time when the valuation was taken.

The common denominations of money and weight—with the exception
of the talent, the meaning of which was altered while the word
was retained—seem to have been all borrowed by the Italian
and Sicilian Greeks from the Sikel or Italic scale, not from
the Grecian,—νούμμος, λίτρα, δεκάλιτρον, πεντεκοντάλιτρον,
πεντούγκιον, ἑξᾶς, τετρᾶς, τριᾶς, ἥμινα, ἡμιλίτριον (see
Fragments of Epicharmus and Sophron, ap. Ahrens de Dialecto
Doricâ, Appendix, pp 435, 471, 472, and Athenæ. xi, p. 479).

At the time when Theoklês landed on the hill near Naxos, and
Archias in the islet of Ortygia, and when each of them expelled
the Sikels from that particular spot, there were Sikel villages
or little communities spread through all the neighboring country.
By the gradual encroachments of the colony, some of these might
be dispossessed and driven out of the plains near the coast into
the more mountainous regions of the interior, but many of them
doubtless found it convenient to submit, to surrender a portion of
their lands, and to hold the rest as subordinate villagers of an
Hellenic city-community:[697] and we find even at the time of the
Athenian invasion (414 B. C.) villages existing in distinct identity
as Sikels, yet subject and tributary to Syracuse. Moreover, the
influence which the Greeks exercised, though in the first instance
essentially compulsory, became also in part self-operating,—the
ascendency of a higher over a lower civilization. It was the
working of concentrated townsmen, safe among one another by their
walls and by mutual confidence, and surrounded by more or less of
ornament, public as well as private,—upon dispersed, unprotected,
artless villagers, who could not be insensible to the charm of that
superior intellect, imagination, and organization, which wrought
so powerfully upon the whole contemporaneous world. To understand
the action of these superior emigrants upon the native but inferior
Sikels, during those three earliest centuries (730-430 B. C.) which
followed the arrival of Archias and Theoklês, we have only to study
the continuance of the same action during the three succeeding
centuries which preceded the age of Cicero. At the period when
Athens undertook the siege of Syracuse (B. C. 415), the interior of
the island was occupied by Sikel and Sikan communities, autonomous,
and retaining their native customs and language;[698] but in the
time of Verres and Cicero (three centuries and a half afterwards)
the interior of the island, as well as the maritime regions had
become Hellenized: the towns in the interior were then hardly less
Greek than those on the coast. Cicero contrasts favorably the
character of the Sicilians with that of the Greeks generally (_i.
e._ the Greeks out of Sicily), but he nowhere distinguishes Greeks
in Sicily from native Sikels;[699] nor Enna and Centuripi from
Katana and Agrigentum. The little Sikel villages became gradually
semi-Hellenized and merged into subjects of a Grecian town during
the first three centuries, this change took place in the regions
of the coast,—during the following three centuries, in the regions
of the interior; and probably with greater rapidity and effect in
the earlier period, not only because the action of the Grecian
communities was then closer, more concentrated, and more compulsory,
but because also the obstinate tribes could then retire into the
interior.

[697] Thucyd. vi, 88.

[698] Thucyd. vi, 62-87; vii, 13.

[699] Cicero in Verrem, Act. ii, lib. iv, c. 26-51; Diodor. v. 6.

Contrast the manner in which Cicero speaks of Agyrium, Centuripi,
and Enna, with the description of these places as inhabited by
autonomous Sikels, B. C. 396, in the wars of the elder Dionysius
(Diodor. xiv, 55, 58, 78). Both Sikans and Sikels were at that
time completely distinguished from the Greeks, in the centre of
the island.

O. Müller states that “Syracuse, seventy years after its
foundation, colonized Akræ, also Enna, situated in the centre
of the island,” (Hist. of Dorians, i, 6, 7). Enna is mentioned
by Stephanus Byz. as a Syracusan foundation, but without notice
of the date of its foundation, which must have been much later
than Müller here affirms. Serra di Falco (Antichità di Sicilia,
Introd. t. i, p. 9) gives Enna as having been founded later
than Akræ, but earlier than Kasmenæ: for which date I find no
authority. Talaria (see Steph. Byz. _ad voc._) is also mentioned
as another Syracusan city, of which we do not know either the
date or the particulars of foundation.

The Greeks in Sicily are thus not to be considered as purely Greeks,
but as modified by a mixture of Sikel and Sikan language, customs,
and character. Each town included in its non-privileged population
a number of semi-Hellenized Sikels (or Sikans, as the case might
be), who, though in a state of dependence, contributed to mix the
breed and influence the entire mass. We have no reason to suppose
that the Sikel or Œnotrian language ever became written, like Latin,
Oscan, or Umbrian:[700] the inscriptions of Segesta and Halesus
are all in Doric Greek, which supplanted the native tongue for
public purposes as a separate language, but not without becoming
itself modified in the confluence. In following the ever-renewed
succession of violent political changes, the inferior capacity of
regulated and pacific popular government, and the more unrestrained
and voluptuous license, which the Sicilian and Italian Greeks[701]
exhibit as compared with Athens and the cities of Greece proper,—we
must call to mind that we are not dealing with pure Hellenism; and
that the native element, though not unfavorable to activity or
increase of wealth, prevented the Grecian colonist from partaking
fully in that improved organization which we so distinctly trace
in Athens from Solon downwards. How much the taste, habits, ideas,
religion, and local mythes, of the native Sikels passed into the
minds of the Sikeliots or Sicilian Greeks, is shown by the character
of their literature and poetry. Sicily was the native country of
that rustic mirth and village buffoonery which gave birth to the
primitive comedy,—politicized and altered at Athens so as to suit
men of the market-place, the ekklesia, and the dikastery,—blending,
in the comedies of the Syracusan Epicharmus, copious details about
the indulgences of the table (for which the ancient Sicilians were
renowned) with Pythagorean philosophy and moral maxims,—but given
with all the naked simplicity of common life, in a sort of rhythmical
prose, without even the restraint of a fixed metre, by the Syracusan
Sophrôn in his lost Mimes, and afterwards polished as well as
idealized in the Bucolic poetry of Theokritus.[702] That which is
commonly termed the Doric comedy was in great part at least, the
Sikel comedy taken up by Dorian composers,—the Doric race and dialect
being decidedly predominant in Sicily: the manners thus dramatized
belonged to that coarser vein of humor which the Doric Greeks of
the town had in common with the semi-Hellenized Sikels of the
circumjacent villages. Moreover, it seems probable that this rustic
population enabled the despots of the Greco-Sicilian towns to form
easily and cheaply those bodies of mercenary troops, by whom their
power was sustained,[703] and whose presence rendered the continuance
of popular government, even supposing it begun, all but impossible.

[700] Ahrens, De Dialecto Doricâ, sect. 1, p. 3.

[701] Plato, Epistol. vii, p. 326; Plautus, Rudens, Act i, Sc. 1,
56; Act ii. Sc. 6, 58.

[702] Timokreon, Fragment. 5 ap. Ahrens, De Dialecto Doricâ, p.
478,—Σικελὸς κομψὸς ἀνὴρ Ποτὶ τὰν ματέρ᾽ ἔφα.

Bernhardy, Grundriss der Geschichte der Griech. Litteratur, vol.
ii, ch. 120, sects. 2-5; Grysar, De Doriensium Comœdia, Cologne,
1828, ch. i, pp. 41, 55, 57, 210; Boeckh, De Græcæ Tragœd.
Princip. p. 52; Aristot. ap. Athenæ. xi, 505. The κότταβος seems
to have been a native Sikel fashion, borrowed by the Greeks
(Athenæus, xv, pp. 666-668).

The Sicilian βουκολιασμὸς was a fashion among the Sicilian
herdsmen earlier than Epicharmus, who noticed the alleged
inventor of it, Diomus, the βούκολος Σικελιώτης (Athenæ. xiv, p.
619). The rustic manners and speech represented in the Sicilian
comedy are contrasted with the town manners and speech of the
Attic comedy, by Plautus, Persæ. Act. iii. Sc. 1, v, 31:—

“Librorum eccillum habeo plenum soracum.
Dabuntur dotis tibi inde sexcenti logi,
Atque Attici omnes, nullum Siculum acceperis.”

Compare the beginning of the prologue to the Menæchmi of Plautus.

The comic μῦθος began at Syracuse with Epicharmus and Phormis
(Aristot. Poet, v, 5).

[703] Zenobius, Proverb. v, 84.—Σικελὸς στρατιώτης.

It was the destiny of most of the Grecian colonial establishments
to perish by the growth and aggression of those inland powers upon
whose coast they were planted,—powers which gradually acquired, from
the vicinity of the Greeks, a military and political organization,
and a power of concentrated action, such as they had not originally
possessed. But in Sicily, the Sikels were not numerous enough even
to maintain permanently their own nationality, and were ultimately
penetrated on all sides by Hellenic ascendency and manners. We shall,
nevertheless, come to one remarkable attempt, made by a native Sikel
prince in the 82d Olympiad (455 B. C.),—the enterprising Duketius,—to
group many petty Sikel villages into one considerable town, and
thus to raise his countrymen into the Grecian stage of polity and
organization. Had there been any Sikel prince endowed with these
superior ideas at the time when the Greeks first settled in Sicily,
the subsequent history of the island would probably have been very
different; but Duketius had derived his projects from the spectacle
of the Grecian towns around him, and these latter had acquired much
too great power to permit him to succeed. The description of his
abortive attempt, however, which we find in Diodorus,[704] meagre as
it is, forms an interesting point in the history of the island.

[704] Diodor. xi, 90-91; xii, 9.

Grecian colonization in Italy began nearly at the same time as in
Sicily, and was marked by the same general circumstances. Placing
ourselves at Rhegium (now Reggio) on the Sicilian strait, we trace
Greek cities gradually planted on various points of the coast as far
as Cumæ on the one sea, and Tarentum (Taranto) on the other. Between
the two seas runs the lofty chain of the Apennines, calcareous in
the upper part of its course, throughout middle Italy,—granitic and
schistose in the lower part, where it traverses the territories now
called the hither and the farther Calabria. The plains and valleys
on each side of the Calabrian Apennines exhibit a luxuriance of
vegetation extolled by all observers, and surpassing even that of
Sicily;[705] and great as the productive powers of this territory
are now, there is full reason for believing that they must have
been far greater in ancient times. For it has been visited by
repeated earthquakes, each of which has left calamitous marks of
devastation: those of 1638 and 1783—especially the latter, whose
destructive effects were on a terrific scale, both as to life and
property[706]—are of a date sufficiently recent to admit of recording
and measuring the damage done by each; and that damage, in many parts
of the south-western coast, was great and irreparable. Animated as
the epithets are, therefore, with which the modern traveller paints
the present fertility of Calabria, we are warranted in enlarging
their meaning when we conceive the country as it stood between
720-320 B. C., the period of Grecian occupation and independence;
while the unhealthy air, which now desolates the plains generally,
seems then to have been felt only to a limited extent, and over
particular localities. The founders of Tarentum, Sybaris, Krotôn,
Lokri, and Rhegium, planted themselves in situations of unexampled
promise to the industrious cultivator, which the previous inhabitants
had turned to little account: since the subjugation of the Grecian
cities, these once rich possessions have sunk into poverty and
depopulation, especially during the last three centuries, from
insalubrity, indolence, bad administration, and fear of the Barbary
corsairs.

[705] See Dolomieu, Dissertation on the Earthquakes of Calabria
Ultra, in 1783, in Pinkerton, Collection of Voyages and Travels,
vol. v, p. 280.

“It is impossible (he observes) to form an adequate idea of the
fertility of Calabria Ultra, particularly of that part called
the Plain (south-west of the Apennines, below the gulf of St.
Eufemia). The fields, productive of olive-trees of larger growth
than any seen elsewhere, are yet productive of grain. Vines
load with their branches the trees on which they grow, yet
lessen not their crops. All things grow there, and nature seems
to anticipate the wishes of the husbandman. There is never a
sufficiency of hands to gather the whole of the olives, which
finally fall and rot at the bottom of the trees that bore them,
in the months of February and March. Crowds of foreigners,
principally Sicilians, come there to help to gather them, and
share the produce with the grower. Oil is their chief article of
exportation: in every quarter their wines are good and precious.”
Compare pp. 278-282.

[706] Mr. Keppel Craven observes (Tour through the Southern
Provinces of Naples, ch. xiii, p. 254), “The earthquake of 1783
may be said to have altered the face of the whole of Calabria
Ultra, and extended its ravages as far northward as Cosenza.”

The Œnotrians, Sikels, or Italians, who were in possession of
these territories in 720 B. C., seem to have been rude petty
communities,—procuring for themselves safety by residence on lofty
eminences,—more pastoral than agricultural, and some of them
consuming the produce of their fields in common mess, on a principle
analogous to the syssitia of Sparta or Krête. King Italus was said
to have introduced this peculiarity[707] among the southernmost
portion of the Œnotrian population, and at the same time to have
bestowed upon them the name of Italians, though they were also known
by the name of Sikels. Throughout the centre of Calabria between
sea and sea, the high chain of the Apennines afforded protection to
a certain extent both to their independence and to their pastoral
habits. But these heights are made to be enjoyed in conjunction with
the plains beneath, so as to alternate winter and summer pasture for
the cattle: it is in this manner that the richness of the country is
rendered available, since a large portion of the mountain range is
buried in snow during the winter months. Such remarkable diversity
of soil and climate rendered Calabria a land of promise for Grecian
settlement: the plains and lower eminences being as productive of
corn, wine, oil, and flax, as the mountains in summer-pasture and
timber,—and abundance of rain falling upon the higher ground, which
requires only industry and care to be made to impart the maximum of
fertility to the lower: moreover, a long line of sea-coast,—though
not well furnished with harbors,—and an abundant supply of fish, came
in aid of the advantages of the soil. While the poorer freemen of the
Grecian cities were enabled to obtain small lots of fertile land in
the neighborhood, to be cultivated by their own hands, and to provide
for the most part their own food and clothing, the richer proprietors
made profitable use of the more distant portions of the territory by
means of their cattle, sheep, and slaves.

[707] Aristot. Polit. vii, 9, 3.

Of the Grecian towns on this favored coast, the earliest as well as
the most prosperous were Sybaris and Krotôn: both in the gulf of
Tarentum,—both of Achæan origin, and conterminous with each other
in respect of territory. Krotôn was placed not far to the west of
the south-eastern extremity of the gulf, called in ancient times
the Lakinian cape, and ennobled by the temple of the Lakinian Hêrê,
which became alike venerated and adorned by the Greek resident
as well as by the passing navigator: one solitary column of the
temple, the humble remnant of its past magnificence, yet marks the
extremity of this once celebrated promontory. Sybaris seems to have
been planted in the year 720 B. C., Krotôn in 710 B. C.: Iselikeus
was œkist of the former,[708] Myskellus of the latter. This large
Achæan emigration seems to have been connected with the previous
expulsion of the Achæan population from the more southerly region
of Peloponnesus by the Dorians, though in what precise manner we
are not enabled to see: the Achæan towns in Peloponnesus appear in
later times too inconsiderable to furnish emigrants, but probably
in the eighth century B. C. their population may have been larger.
The town of Sybaris was planted between two rivers, the Sybaris and
the Krathis,[709] the name of the latter borrowed from a river of
Achaia,—the town of Krotôn about twenty-five miles distant, on the
river Æsarus. The primitive settlers of Sybaris consisted in part
of Trœzenians, who were, however, subsequently expelled by the more
numerous Achæans,—a deed of violence which was construed by the
religious sentiment of Antiochus and some other Grecian historians,
as having drawn down upon them the anger of the gods in the ultimate
destruction of the city by the Krotoniates.[710]

[708] Strabo, vi, p. 263. Kramer, in his new edition of Strabo
follows Koray in suspecting the correctness of the name
Ἰσελικεὺς, which certainly departs from the usual analogy of
Grecian names. Assuming it to be incorrect, however, there are
no means of rectifying it: Kramer prints,—οἰκιστὴς δὲ αὐτῆς ὁ
Ἰσ...Ἑλικεὺς: thus making Ἑλικεὺς the ethnicon of the Achæan town
Helikê.

There were also legends which connected the foundation of Krotôn
with Hêraklês, who was affirmed to have been hospitably sheltered
by the eponymous hero Krotôn. Hêraklês was οἰκεῖος at Krotôn: see
Ovid, Metamorph. xv, 1-60; Jamblichus, Vit. Pythagor. c. 8, p.
30, c. 9, p. 37, ed Kuster.

[709] Herodot. i, 145.

[710] Strabo, vi, p. 262; Livy, xxiv, 3.

The fatal contest between these two cities, which ended in the ruin
of Sybaris, took place in 510 B. C., after the latter had subsisted
in her prosperity for two hundred and ten years. And the astonishing
prosperity to which both of them attained is a sufficient proof that
during the most of this period they had remained in peace at least,
if not in alliance and common Achæan brotherhood. Unfortunately, the
general fact of their great size, wealth, and power, is all that we
are permitted to know. The walls of Sybaris embraced a circuit of
fifty stadia, or more than six miles, while those of Krotôn were
even larger, and comprised not less than twelve miles:[711] a large
walled circuit was advantageous for sheltering the movable property
in the territory around, which was carried in on the arrival of an
invading enemy. Both cities possessed an extensive dominion across
the Calabrian peninsula from sea to sea; but the territorial range of
Sybaris seems to have been greater and her colonies wider and more
distant,—a fact which may, perhaps, explain the smaller circuit of
the city.

[711] Aristot. Polit. v, 2, 10

The Sybarites were founders of Laus and Skidrus, on the
Mediterranean sea in the gulf of Policastro, and even of the
more distant Poseidonia,—now known by its Latin name of Pæstum,
as well as by the temples which still remain to decorate its
deserted site. They possessed twenty-five dependent towns, and
ruled over four distinct native tribes or nations. What these
nations were we are not told,[712] but they were probably
different sections of the Œnotrian name. The Krotoniates also
reached across to the Mediterranean sea, and founded (upon
the gulf now called St. Euphemia) the town of Terina, and
seemingly also that of Lametini.[713] The inhabitants of the
Epizephyrian Lokri, which was situated in a more southern part
of Calabria Ultra, near the modern town of Gerace, extended
themselves in like manner across the peninsula, and founded
upon the Mediterranean coast the towns of Hippônium, Medma, and
Mataurum,[714] as well as Melæ and Itoneia, in localities not now
exactly ascertained.

[712] Strabo, vi, p. 263, v, p. 251; Skymn. Chi. v, 244; Herodot.
vi, 21.

[713] Stephan. Byz. v. Τέρινα—Λαμητῖνοι; Skymn. Chi. 305.

[714] Thucydid. v, 5; Strabo, vi, p. 256; Skymn. Chi. 307. Steph.
Byz. calls Mataurum πόλις Σικελίας.

Myskellus of Rhypes in Achaia, the founder of Krotôn under the
express indication of the Delphian oracle, is said to have thought
the site of Sybaris preferable, and to have solicited permission from
the oracle to plant his colony there, but he was admonished to obey
strictly the directions first given.[715] It is farther affirmed
that the foundation of Krotôn was aided by Archias, then passing
along the coast with his settlers for Syracuse, who is also brought
into conjunction in a similar manner with the foundation of Lokri:
but neither of these statements appears chronologically admissible.
The Italian Lokri (called Epizephyrian, from the neighborhood of
cape Zephyrium) was founded in the year 683 B. C. by settlers from
the Lokrians,—either the Ozolian Lokrians in the Krissæan gulf,
or those of Opus on the Eubœan strait. This point was disputed
even in antiquity, and perhaps both the one and the other may have
contributed: Euanthus was the œkist of the place.[716] The first
years of the Epizephyrian Lokri are said to have been years of
sedition and discord. And the vile character which we hear ascribed
to the primitive colonists, as well as their perfidious dealing with
the natives, are the more to be noted, as the Lokrians, of the times
both of Aristotle and of Polybius, fully believed these statements in
regard to their own ancestors.

[715] Herodot. viii, 47. Κροτωνιῆται, γένος εἰσὶν Ἀχαιοί: the
date of the foundation is given by Dionysius of Halikarnassus (A.
R. ii, 59).

The oracular commands delivered to Myskellus are found at length
in the Fragments of Diodorus, published by Maii (Scriptt. Vet.
Fragm. x, p. 8): compare Zenob. Proverb. Centur. iii, 42.

Though Myskellus is thus given as the œkist of Krotôn, yet we
find a Krotoniatic coin with the inscription Ἡρακλῆς Οἰκίστας
(Eckhel, Doctrin. Numm. Vet. vol. i, p. 172): the worship of
Hêraklês at Krotôn under this title is analogous to that of
Ἀπολλὼν Οἰκίστης καὶ Δωματίτης at Ægina (Pythænêtus ap. Schol.
Pindar. Nem. v, 81). There were various legends respecting
Hêraklês, the Eponymus Krotôn, and Lakinius. Herakleidês
Ponticus, Fragm. 30, ed. Köller; Diodor. iv, 24; Ovid, Metamorph.
xv, 1-53.

[716] Strabo, vi, p. 259. Euantheia, Hyantheia, or Œantheia,
was one of the towns of the Ozolian Lokrians on the north side
of the Krissæan gulf, from which, perhaps, the emigrants may
have departed, carrying with them the name and patronage of its
eponymous œkist (Plutarch, Quæst. Græc. c. 15; Skylax, p. 14).

The original emigrants to Lokri were, according to Aristotle, a
body of runaway slaves, men-stealers, and adulterers, whose only
legitimate connection with an honorable Hellenic root arose from a
certain number of well-born Lokrian women who accompanied them. These
women belonged to those select families called the Hundred Houses,
who constituted what may be called the nobility of the Lokrians in
Greece proper, and their descendants continued to enjoy a certain
rank and preëminence in the colony, even in the time of Polybius. The
emigration is said to have been occasioned by disorderly intercourse
between these noble Lokrian women and their slaves,—perhaps by
intermarriage with persons of inferior station, where there had
existed no recognized _connubium_;[717] a fact referred, by the
informants of Aristotle, to the long duration of the first Messenian
war,—the Lokrian warriors having for the most part continued in the
Messenian territory as auxiliaries of the Spartans during the twenty
years of that war,[718] permitting themselves only rare and short
visits to their homes. This is a story resembling that which we shall
find in explanation of the colony of Tarentum. It comes to us too
imperfectly to admit of criticism or verification; but the unamiable
character of the first emigrants is a statement deserving credit,
and very unlikely to have been invented. Their first proceedings on
settling in Italy display a perfidy in accordance with the character
ascribed to them. They found the territory in this southern portion
of the Calabrian peninsula possessed by native Sikels, who, alarmed
at their force, and afraid to try the hazard of resistance, agreed
to admit them to a participation and joint residence. The covenant
was concluded and sworn to by both parties in the following terms:
“There shall be friendship between us, and we will enjoy the land
in common, so long as we stand upon this earth and have heads upon
our shoulders.” At the time when the oath was taken, the Lokrians
had put earth into their shoes and concealed heads of garlic upon
their shoulders; so that, when they had divested themselves of these
appendages, the oath was considered as no longer binding. Availing
themselves of the first convenient opportunity, they attacked the
Sikels by surprise and drove them out of the territory, of which
they thus acquired the exclusive possession.[719] Their first
establishment was formed upon the headland itself, cape Zephyrium
(now Bruzzano); but after three or four years the site of the town
was moved to an eminence in the neighboring plain, in which the
Syracusans are said to have aided them.[720]

[717] Polyb. xii, 5, 8, 9; Dionys. Perieget. v, 365.

[718] This fact may connect the foundation of the colony of Lokri
with Sparta; but the statement of Pausanias (iii, 3, 1), that the
Spartans in the reign of king Polydorus founded both Lokri and
Krotôn, seems to belong to a different historical conception.

[719] Polyb. xii, 5-12.

[720] Strabo, vi, p. 259. We find that, in the accounts given of
the foundation of Korkyra, Krotôn, and Lokri, reference is made
to the Syracusan settlers, either as contemporary in the way
of companionship, or as auxiliaries: perhaps the accounts all
come from the Syracusan historian Antiochus, who exaggerated the
intervention of his own ancestors.

In describing the Grecian settlers in Sicily, I have already stated
that they are to be considered as Greeks with a considerable infusion
of blood, of habits, and of manners, from the native Sikels: the case
is the same with the Italiots, or Italian Greeks, and in respect to
these Epizephyrian Lokrians, especially, we find it expressly noticed
by Polybius. Composed as their band was of ignoble and worthless men,
not bound together by strong tribe-feelings or traditional customs,
they were the more ready to adopt new practices, as well religious
as civil,[721] from the Sikels. One in particular is noticed by
the historian,—the religious dignity called the Phialêphorus, or
censer-bearer, enjoyed among the native Sikels by a youth of noble
birth, who performed the duties belonging to it in their sacrifices;
but the Lokrians, while they identified themselves with the religious
ceremony, and adopted both the name and the dignity, altered the
sex, and conferred it upon one of those women of noble blood who
constituted the ornament of their settlement. Even down to the
days of Polybius, some maiden descended from one of these select
Hundred Houses, still continued to bear the title and to perform the
ceremonial duties of Phialêphorus. We learn from these statements how
large a portion of Sikels must have become incorporated as dependents
in the colony of the Epizephyrian Lokri, and how strongly marked was
the intermixture of their habits with those of the Greek settlers;
while the tracing back among them of all eminence of descent to a few
emigrant women of noble birth, is a peculiarity belonging exclusively
to their city.

[721] “Nil patrium, nisi nomen, habet Romanus alumnus,” observes
Propertius (iv, 37) respecting the Romans: repeated with still
greater bitterness in the epistle in Sallust from Mithridatês to
Arsacês, (p. 191, Delph. ed.) The remark is well-applicable to
Lokri.

That a body of colonists, formed of such unpromising materials,
should have fallen into much lawlessness and disorder, is noway
surprising; but these mischiefs appear to have become so utterly
intolerable in the early years of the colony, as to force upon every
one the necessity of some remedy. Hence arose a phenomenon new in the
march of Grecian society,—the first promulgation of written laws.
The Epizephyrian Lokrians, having applied to the Delphian oracle for
some healing suggestion under their distress, were directed to make
laws for themselves;[722] and received the ordinances of a shepherd
named Zaleukus, which he professed to have learned from the goddess
Athênê in a dream. His laws are said to have been put in writing and
promulgated in 664 B. C., forty years earlier than those of Drako at
Athens.

[722] Aristot. ap. Schol. Pindar. Olymp. x, 17.

That these first of all Grecian written laws were few and simple,
we may be sufficiently assured. The only fact certain respecting
them is their extraordinary rigor:[723] they seem to have enjoined
the application of the _lex talionis_ as a punishment for personal
injuries. In this general character of his laws, Zaleukus was the
counterpart of Drako. But so little was certainly known, and so
much falsely asserted, respecting him, that Timæus the historian
went so far as to call in question his real existence,[724]—against
the authority not only of Ephorus, but also of Aristotle and
Theophrastus. The laws must have remained, however, for a long time,
formally unchanged; for so great was the aversion of the Lokrians,
we are told, to any new law, that the man who ventured to propose
one appeared in public with a rope round his neck, which was at once
tightened if he failed to convince the assembly of the necessity of
his proposition.[725] Of the government of the Epizephyrian Lokri we
know only, that in later times it included a great council of one
thousand members, and a chief executive magistrate called Kosmopolis:
it is spoken of also as strictly and carefully administered.

[723] Proverb. Zenob. Centur. iv, 20. Ζαλεύκου νόμος, ἐπὶ τῶν
ἀποτόμων.

[724] Strabo, vi, p. 259; Skymnus Chius, v, 313; Cicero de Legg.
ii, 6, and Epist. ad Atticum, vi, 1.

Heyne, Opuscula, vol. ii, Epimetrum ii, pp. 60-68; Göller
ad Timæi Fragment, pp. 220-259. Bentley (on the Epistles of
Phalaris, ch. xii, p 274) seems to countenance, without adequate
reason, the doubt of Timæus about the existence of Zaleukus.
But the statement of Ephorus, that Zaleukus had collected his
ordinances from the Kretan, Laconian, and Areiopagitic customs,
when contrasted with the simple and far more credible statement
above cited from Aristotle, shows how loose were the affirmations
respecting the Lokrian lawgiver (ap. Strabo, vi, p. 260). Other
statements, also, concerning him, alluded to by Aristotle
(Politic. ii, 9, 3), were distinctly at variance with chronology.

Charondas, the lawgiver of the Chalkidic towns in Italy and
Sicily, as far as we can judge amidst much confusion of
testimony, seems to belong to an age much later than Zaleukus: I
shall speak of him hereafter.

[725] Dêmosthen. cont. Timokrat. p. 744; Polyb. xii, 10.

The date of Rhegium (Reggio), separated from the territory of the
Epizephyrian Lokri by the river Halex, must have been not only
earlier than Lokri, but even earlier than Sybaris,—if the statement
of Antiochus be correct, that the colonists were joined by those
Messenians, who, prior to the first Messenian war, were anxious
to make reparation to the Spartans for the outrage offered to the
Spartan maidens at the temple of Artemis Limnatis, but were overborne
by their countrymen and forced into exile. A different version,
however, is given by Pausanias of this migration of Messenians to
Rhegium, yet still admitting the fact of such migration at the close
of the first Messenian war, which would place the foundation of the
city earlier than 720 B. C. Though Rhegium was a Chalkidic colony,
yet a portion of its inhabitants seem to have been undoubtedly of
Messenian origin, and amongst them Anaxilas, despot of the town
between 500-470 B. C., who traced his descent through two centuries
to a Messenian emigrant named Alkidamidas.[726] The celebrity and
power of Anaxilas, just at the time when the ancient history of the
Greek towns was beginning to be set forth in prose, and with some
degree of system, caused the Messenian element in the population
of Rhegium to be noticed prominently; but the town was essentially
Chalkidic, connected by colonial sisterhood with the Chalkidic
settlements in Sicily,—Zanklê, Naxos, Katana, and Leontini. The
original emigrants departed from Chalkis, as a tenth of the citizens
consecrated by vow to Apollo in consequence of famine; and the
directions of the god, as well as the invitation of the Zanklæans,
guided their course to Rhegium. The town was flourishing, and
acquired a considerable number of dependent villages around,[727]
inhabited doubtless by cultivators of the indigenous population.
But it seems to have been often at variance with the conterminous
Lokrians, and received one severe defeat, in conjunction with the
Tarentines, which will be hereafter recounted.

[726] Strabo, vi, p. 257; Pausan. iv, 23, 2.

[727] Strabo, vi, p. 258. ἴσχυσε δὲ μάλιστα ἡ τῶν Ῥηγινῶν πόλις,
καὶ περιοικίδας ἔσχε συχνὰς, etc.

Between Lokri and the Lakinian cape were situated the Achæan colony
of Kaulônia, and Skyllêtium; the latter seemingly included in the
domain of Krotôn, though pretending to have been originally founded
by Menestheus, the leader of the Athenians at the siege of Troy:
Petilia, also, a hill-fortress north-west of the Lakinian cape, as
well as Makalla, both comprised in the territory of Krotôn, were
affirmed to have been founded by Philoktêtês. Along all this coast of
the gulf of Tarentum, there were various establishments ascribed to
the heroes of the Trojan war,[728]—Epeius, Philoktêtês, Nestor,—or
to their returning troops. Of these establishments, probably the
occupants had been small, miscellaneous, unacknowledged bands
of Grecian adventurers,[729] who assumed to themselves the most
honorable origin which they could imagine, and who became afterwards
absorbed into the larger colonial establishments which followed; the
latter adopting and taking upon themselves the heroic worship of
Philoktêtês or other warriors from Troy, which the prior emigrants
had begun.

[728] Strabo, vi. p. 263; Aristot. Mirab. Ausc. c. 106; Athenæ.
xii, p. 523. It is to these reputed Rhodian companions of
Tlêpolemus before Troy, that the allusion in Strabo refers, to
Rhodian occupants near Sybaris (xiv, p. 655).

[729] See Mannert, Geographie, part ix, b. 9, ch. 11, p. 234.

During the flourishing times of Sybaris and Krotôn, it seems that
these two great cities divided the whole length of the coast of the
Tarentine gulf, from the spot now called Rocca Imperiale down to the
south of the Lakinian cape. Between the point where the dominion
of Sybaris terminated on the Tarentine side, and Tarentum itself,
there were two considerable Grecian settlements,—Siris, afterwards
called Herakleia, and Metapontium. The fertility and attraction of
the territory of Siris, with its two rivers, Akiris and Siris, were
well known even to the poet Archilochus[730] (660 B. C.), but we do
not know the date at which it passed from the indigenous Chônians
or Chaonians into the hands of Greek settlers. A citizen of Siris
is mentioned among the suitors for the daughter of the Sikyonian
Kleisthenês, (580-560 B. C.) We are told that some Kolophonian
fugitives, emigrating to escape the dominion of the Lydian kings,
attacked and possessed themselves of the spot, giving to it the
name Polieion. The Chônians of Siris ascribed to themselves a Trojan
origin, exhibiting a wooden image of the Ilian Athênê, which they
affirmed to have been brought away by their fugitive ancestors after
the capture of Troy. When the town was stormed by the Ionians,
many of the inhabitants clung to this relic for protection, but
were dragged away and slain by the victors,[731] whose sacrilege
was supposed to have been the cause that their settlement was not
durable. At the time of the invasion of Greece by Xerxês, the fertile
territory of Siritis was considered as still open to be colonized;
for the Athenians when their affairs appeared desperate, had this
scheme of emigration in reserve as a possible resource;[732] and
there were inspired declarations from some of the contemporary
prophets, which encouraged them to undertake it. At length, after the
town of Thurii had been founded by Athens, in the vicinity of the
dismantled Sybaris, the Thurians tried to possess themselves of the
Siritid territoiy, but were opposed by the Tarentines.[733] According
to the compromise concluded between them, Tarentum was recognized as
the metropolis of the colony, but joint possession was allowed both
to Tarentines and Thurians. The former transferred the site of the
city, under the new name Herakleia, to a spot three miles from the
sea, leaving Siris as the place of maritime access to it.[734]

[730] Archiloch. Fragm. 17, ed. Schneidewin.

[731] Herodot. vi, 127; Strabo, vi, p. 263. The name Polieion
seems to be read Πλεῖον in Aristot. Mirab. Auscult. 106.

Niebuhr assigns this Kolophonian settlement of Siris to the
reign of Gygês in Lydia; for which I know no other evidence
except the statement that Gygês took τῶν Κολοφωνίων τὸ ἄστυ
(Herodot. i, 14); but this is no proof that the inhabitants then
emigrated; for Kolophôn was a very flourishing and prosperous
city afterwards.

Justin (xx, 2) gives a case of sacrilegious massacre committed
near the statue of Athênê at Siris, which appears to be totally
different from the tale respecting the Kolophonians.

[732] Herodot. viii, 62.

[733] Strabo, vi, p. 264.

[734] Strabo, vi, p. 264.

About twenty-five miles eastward of Siris, on the coast of the
Tarentine gulf, was situated Metapontium, a Greek town which was
affirmed by some to draw its origin from the Pylian companions
of Nestor,—by others, from the Phocian warriors of Epeius, on
their return from Troy. The proofs of the former were exhibited
in the worship of the Neleid heroes,—the proofs of the latter in
the preservation of the reputed identical tools with which Epeius
had constructed the Trojan horse.[735] Metapontium was planted on
the territory of the Chônians or Œnotrians, but the first colony
is said to have been destroyed by an attack of the Samnites,[736]
at what period we do not know. It had been founded by some Achæan
settlers,—under the direction of the œkist Daulius, despot of the
Phocian Krissa, and invited by the inhabitants of Sybaris, who feared
that the place might be appropriated by the neighboring Tarentines,
colonists from Sparta and hereditary enemies in Peloponnesus of
the Achæan race. Before the new settlers arrived, however, the
place seems to have been already appropriated by the Tarentines;
for the Achæan Leukippus only obtained their permission to land by
a fraudulent promise, and, after all, had to sustain a forcible
struggle both with them and with the neighboring Œnotrians, which
was compromised by a division of territory. The fertility of the
Metapontine territory was hardly less celebrated than that of the
Siritid.[737]

[735] Strabo, _l. c._; Justin, xx, 2; Velleius Paterc. i, 1;
Aristot. Mirab. Auscult. c. 108. This story respecting the
presence and implements of Epeius may have arisen through the
Phocian settlers from Krissa.

[736] The words of Strabo—ἠφανίσθη δ᾽ ὑπὸ Σαυνιτῶν (vi, p. 264)
can hardly be connected with the immediately following narrative,
which he gives out of Antiochus, respecting the revival of
the place by new Achæan settlers, invited by the Achæans of
Sybaris. For the latter place was reduced to impotence in 510
B. C.: invitations by the Achæans of Sybaris must, therefore,
be anterior to that date. If Daulius despot of Krissa is to be
admitted as the œkist of Metapontium, the plantation of it must
be placed early in the first half of the sixth century B. C.; but
there is great difficulty in admitting the extension of Samnite
conquests to the gulf of Tarentum at so early a period as this.
I therefore construe the words of Antiochus as referring to the
original settlement of Metapontium by the Greeks, not to the
revival of the town after its destruction by the Samnites.

[737] Strabo, _l. c._; Stephanus Byz. (v. Μεταπόντιον) identifies
Metapontium and Siris in a perplexing manner.

Livy (xxv, 15) recognizes Metapontium as Achæan: compare Heyne
Opuscula, vol. ii, Prolus. xii, p. 207.

Farther eastward of Metapontium, again at the distance of about
twenty-five miles, was situated the great city of Taras, or
Tarentum, a colony from Sparta founded after the first Messenian
war, seemingly about 707 B. C. The œkist Phalanthus, said to have
been an Herakleid, was placed at the head of a body of Spartan
emigrants,—consisting principally of some citizens called Epeunaktæ,
and of the youth called Partheniæ, who had been disgraced by their
countrymen on account of their origin, and were on the point of
breaking out into rebellion. It was out of the Messenian war that
this emigration is stated to have arisen, in a manner analogous to
that which has been stated respecting the Epizephyrian Lokrians.
The Lacedæmonians, before entering Messenia to carry on the war,
had made a vow not to return until they should have completed the
conquest; a vow in which it appears that some of them declined to
take part, standing altogether aloof from the expedition. When the
absent soldiers returned after many years of absence consumed in
the war, they found a numerous progeny which had been born to their
wives and daughters during the interval, from intercourse with those
(Epeunaktæ) who had stayed at home. The Epeunaktæ were punished by
being degraded to the rank and servitude of Helots; the children thus
born, called Partheniæ,[738] were also cut off from all the rights
of citizenship, and held in dishonor. But the parties punished were
numerous enough to make themselves formidable, and a conspiracy was
planned among them, intended to break out at the great religious
festival of the Hyacinthia, in the temple of the Amyklæan Apollo.
Phalanthus was the secret chief of the conspirators, who agreed to
commence their attack upon the authorities at the moment when he
should put on his helmet. The leader, however, never intending that
the scheme should be executed, betrayed it beforehand, stipulating
for the safety of all those implicated in it. At the commencement of
the festival, when the multitude were already assembled, a herald
was directed to proclaim aloud, that Phalanthus would not on that
day put on his helmet,—a proclamation which at once revealed to the
conspirators that they were betrayed. Some of them sought safety
in flight, others assumed the posture of suppliants; but they were
merely detained in confinement, with assurance of safety, while
Phalanthus was sent to the Delphian oracle to ask advice respecting
emigration. He is said to have inquired whether he might be permitted
to appropriate the fertile plain of Sikyon, but the Pythian priestess
emphatically dissuaded him, and enjoined him to conduct his
emigrants to Satyrium and Tarentum, where he would be “a mischief
to the Iapygians.” Phalanthus obeyed, and conducted the detected
conspirators as emigrants to the Tarentine gulf,[739] which he
reached a few years after the foundation of Sybaris and Krotôn by the
Achæans. According to Ephorus, he found these prior emigrants at war
with the natives, aided them in the contest, and received in return
their aid to accomplish his own settlement. But this can hardly
have consisted with the narrative of Antiochus, who represented
the Achæans of Sybaris as retaining, even in their colonies,
the hatred against the Dorian name which they had contracted in
Peloponnesus.[740] Antiochus stated that Phalanthus and his colonists
were received in a friendly manner by the indigenous inhabitants, and
allowed to establish their new town in tranquillity.

[738] Partheniæ, _i. e. children of virgins_: the description
given by Varro of the Illyrian _virgines_ illustrates this
phrase: “Quas _virgines_ ibi appellant, nonnunquam annorum xx,
quibus mos eorum non denegavit, ante nuptias ut succumberent
quibus vellent, et incomitatis ut vagari liceret, et _liberos
habere_.” (Varro, De Re Rusticâ, ii, 10, 9.)

[739] For this story respecting the foundation of Tarentum, see
Strabo, vi, pp. 278-280 (who gives the versions both of Antiochus
and Ephorus); Justin, iii, 4; Diodorus, xv, 66; Excerpta Vatican.
lib. vii-x, ed. Maii, Fr. 12; Servius ad Virgil. Æneid. iii, 551.

There are several points of difference between Antiochus,
Ephorus, and Servius; the story given in the text follows the
former.

The statement of Hesychius (v. Παρθενεῖαι) seems on the whole
some what more intelligible than that given by Strabo,—Οἱ κατὰ
τὸν Μεσσηνιακὸν πόλεμον αὐτοῖς γενόμενοι ἐκ τῶν θεραπαίνων·
καὶ οἱ ἐξ ἀνεκδότου λάθρα γεννώμενοι παῖδες. Justin translates
Partheniæ, _Spurii_.

The local eponymous heroes Taras and Satyrus (from Satyrium) were
celebrated and worshipped among the Tarentines. See Cicero, Verr.
iv, 60, 13; Servius ad Virg. Georg. ii, 197; Zumpt. ap. Orelli,
Onomasticon Tullian. ii, p. 570.

[740] Compare Strabo, vi, p. 264 and p. 280.

If such was really the fact, it proves that the native inhabitants
of the soil must have been of purely inland habits, making no use of
the sea either for commerce or for fishery, otherwise they would
hardly have relinquished such a site as that of Tarentum,—which,
while favorable and productive, even in regard to the adjoining land,
was with respect to sea-advantages without a parallel in Grecian
Italy.[741] It was the only spot in the gulf which possessed a
perfectly safe and convenient harbor,—a spacious inlet of the sea
is there formed, sheltered by an isthmus and an outlying peninsula,
so as to leave only a narrow entrance. This inlet, still known as
the Mare Piccolo, though its shores and the adjoining tongue of land
appear to have undergone much change, affords at the present day a
constant, inexhaustible, and varied supply of fish, especially of
shell-fish; which furnish both nourishment and employment to a large
proportion among the inhabitants of the contracted modern Taranto,
just as they once served the same purpose to the numerous, lively,
and jovial population of the mighty Tarentum. The concentrated
population of fishermen formed a predominant element in the character
of the Tarentine democracy.[742] Tarentum was just on the borders
of the country originally known as Italy, within which Herodotus
includes it, while Antiochus considers it in Iapygia, and regards
Metapontium as the last Greek town in Italy.

[741] Strabo, vi, p. 278; Polyb. x, 1.

[742] Juvenal, Sat. vi, 297. “Atque coronatum et petulans
madidumque Tarentum:” compare Plato, Legg. i, p. 637; and Horat.
Satir. ii, 4, 34. Aristot. Polit. iv, 4, 1. οἱ ἁλιεῖς ἐν Τάραντι
καὶ Βυζαντίῳ. “Tarentina ostrea,” Varro, Fragm. p. 301, ed.
Bipont.

To illustrate this remark of Aristotle on the fishermen of
Tarentum, as the predominant class in the democracy, I transcribe
a passage from Mr. Keppel Craven’s Tour in the Southern Provinces
of Naples, ch. x, p. 182. “Swinburne gives a list of ninety-three
different sorts of shell-fish which are found in the gulf of
Taranto; but more especially in the Mare Piccolo. Among these, in
ancient times, the murex and purpura ranked foremost in value;
in our degenerate days, the mussel and oyster seem to have
usurped a preëminence as acknowledged but less dignified; but
there are numerous other tribes held in proportionate estimation
for their exquisite flavor, and as greedily sought for during
their respective seasons. The appetite for shell-fish of all
sorts, which seems peculiar to the natives of these regions,
is such as to appear exaggerated to a foreigner, accustomed to
consider only a few of them as eatable. This taste exists at
Taranto, if possible, in a stronger degree than in any other
part of the kingdom, and accounts for the comparatively large
revenue which government draws from this particular branch of
commerce. The Mare Piccolo is divided into several portions,
which are let to different societies, who thereby become the only
privileged fishermen; the lower classes are almost all employed
by these corporations, as every revolving season of the year
affords occupation for them, so that Nature herself seems to have
afforded the exclusive trade most suited to the inhabitants of
Taranto. Both seas abound with varieties of testacea, but the
inner gulf (the Mare Piccolo) is esteemed most favorable to their
growth and flavor; the sandy bed is literally blackened by the
mussels that cover it; the boats that glide over its surface are
laden with them; they emboss the rocks that border the strand,
and appear equally abundant on the shore, piled up in heaps.”
Mr. Craven goes on to illustrate still farther the wonderful
abundance of this fishery; but that which has been already
transcribed, while it illustrates the above-noticed remark of
Aristotle, will at the same time help to explain the prosperity
and physical abundance of the ancient Tarentum.

For an elaborate account of the state of cultivation, especially
of the olive, near the degenerate modern Taranto, see the Travels
of M. De Salis Marschlins in the Kingdom of Naples (translated by
Aufrere, London, 1795), sect. 5, pp. 82-107, 163-178.

Its immediate neighbors were the Iapygians, who, under various
subdivisions of name and dialect, seem to have occupied the greater
part of south-eastern Italy, including the peninsula denominated
after them,—yet sometimes also called the Salentine,—between the
Adriatic and the Tarentine gulf,—and who are even stated at one time
to have occupied some territory on the south east of that gulf, near
the site of Krotôn. The Iapygian name appears to have comprehended
Messapians, Salentines, and Kalabrians; according to some, even
Peuketians and Daunians, as far along the Adriatic as Mount Garganus,
or Drion; Skylax notices in his time (about 360 B. C.) five different
tongues in the country which he calls Iapygia.[743] The Messapians
and Salentines are spoken of as emigrants from Krête, akin to the
Minoian or primitive Kretans; and we find a national genealogy
which recognizes Iapyx son of Dædalus, an emigrant from Sicily.
But the story told to Herodotus was, that the Kretan soldiers who
had accompanied Minos in his expedition to recover Dædalus from
Kamikus in Sicily, were on their return home cast away on the shores
of Iapygia, and became the founders of Hyria and other Messapian
towns in the interior of the country.[744] Brundusium also, or
Brentesion, as the Greeks called it,[745] inconsiderable in the days
of Herodotus, but famous in the Roman times afterwards, as the most
frequented seaport for voyaging to Epirus, was a Messapian town. The
native language spoken by the Iapygian Messapians was a variety of
the Oscan: the Latin poet Ennius, a native of Rudiæ in the Iapygian
peninsula, spoke Greek, Latin, and Oscan, and even deduced his
pedigree from the ancient national prince or hero Messapus.[746]

[743] Skylax does not mention at all the name of Italy; he
gives to the whole coast, from Rhegium to Poseidonia on the
Mediterranean, and from the same point to the limit between
Thurii and Herakleia on the gulf of Tarentum, the name of Lucania
(c. 12-13). From this point he extends Iapygia to the Mount
Drion, or Garganus, so that he includes not only Metapontium, but
also Herakleia in Iapygia.

Antiochus draws the line between Italy and Iapygia at the
extremity of the Metapontine territory; comprehending Metapontium
in Italy, and Tarentum in Iapygia (Antiochus, Frag. 6, ed. Didot;
ap. Strabo, vi, p. 254).

Herodotus, however, speaks not only of Metapontium but also of
Tarentum, as being in Italy (i, 24; iii, 136; iv, 15).

I notice this discrepancy of geographical speech, between the
two contemporaries Herodotus and Antiochus, the more especially,
because Niebuhr has fallen into a mistake by exclusively
following Antiochus, and by saying that _no writer_, even of
the days of Plato, would have spoken of Tarentum as being _in
Italy_, or of the Tarentines as Italiots. This is perfectly true
respecting Antiochus, but is certainly not true with respect
to Herodotus; nor can it be shown to be true with respect
to Thucydidês,—for the passage of the latter, which Niebuhr
produces, does not sustain his inference. (Niebuhr, Römische
Geschichte, vol. i. pp. 16-18, 2d edit.)

[744] Herodot. vii, 170: Pliny, H. N. iii, 16; Athenæ. xii, p.
523; Servius ad Virgil. Æneid. viii, 9.

[745] Herodot. iv. 99.

[746] Servius ad Virgil. Æneid. vii, 691. Polybius distinguishes
Iapygians from Messapians (ii, 24).

We are told that during the lifetime of Phalanthus, the Tarentine
settlers gained victories over the Messapians and Peuketians, which
they commemorated afterwards by votive offerings at Delphi,—and
that they even made acquisitions at the expense of the inhabitants
of Brundusium,[747]—a statement difficult to believe, if we look
to the distance of the latter place, and to the circumstance that
Herodotus, even in his time, names it only as a harbor. Phalanthus
too, driven into exile, is said to have found a hospitable reception
at Brundusium, and to have died there. Of the history of Tarentum,
however, during the first two hundred and thirty years of its
existence, we possess no details; we have reason to believe that it
partook in the general prosperity of the Italian Greeks during those
two centuries, though it remained inferior both to Sybaris and to
Krotôn. About the year 510 B. C., these two latter republics went
to war, and Sybaris was nearly destroyed; while in the subsequent
half-century, the Krotoniates suffered the terrible defeat of Sagra
from the Lokrians, and the Tarentines experienced an equally ruinous
defeat from the Iapygian Messapians. From these reverses, however,
the Tarentines appear to have recovered more completely than the
Krotoniates; for the former stand first among the Italiots, or
Italian Greeks, from the year 400 B. C. down to the supremacy of the
Romans, and made better head against the growth of the Lucanians and
Bruttians of the interior.

[747] Pausanias, x, 10, 3; x, 13, 5; Strabo, vi, p. 282: Justin,
iii, 4.

Such were the chief cities of the Italian Greeks from Tarentum on
the upper sea to Poseidonia on the lower; and if we take them during
the period preceding the ruin of Sybaris (in 510 B. C.), they will
appear to have enjoyed a degree of prosperity even surpassing that
of the Sicilian Greeks. The dominion of Sybaris, Krotôn, and Lokri
extended across the peninsula from sea to sea, and the mountainous
regions of the interior of Calabria were held in amicable connection
with the cities and cultivators in the plain and valley near the
sea,—to the reciprocal advantage of both. The petty native tribes of
Œnotrians, Sikels, or Italians, properly so called, were partially
Hellenized, and brought into the condition of village cultivators and
shepherds, dependent upon Sybaris and its fellow cities; a portion of
them dwelling in the town, probably, as domestic slaves of the rich
men, but most of them remaining in the country as serfs, penestæ, or
coloni, intermingled with Greek settlers, and paying over parts of
their produce to Greek proprietors.

But this dependence, though accomplished in the first instance
by force, was yet not upheld exclusively by force,—it was to a
great degree the result of an organized march of life, and of more
productive cultivation brought within their reach,—of new wants, both
created and supplied,—of temples, festivals, ships, walls, chariots,
etc., which imposed upon the imagination of the rude landsman and
shepherd. Against mere force the natives could have found shelter
in the unconquerable forests and ravines of the Calabrian Apennines,
and in that vast mountain region of the Sila, lying immediately
behind the plains of Sybaris, where even the French army, with its
excellent organization, in 1807, found so much difficulty in reaching
the bandit villagers.[748] It was not by arms alone, but by arms and
arts combined,—a mingled influence, such as enabled imperial Rome
to subdue the fierceness of the rude Germans and Britons,—that the
Sybarites and Krotoniates acquired and maintained their ascendency
over the natives of the interior. The shepherd of the banks of the
river Sybaris or Krathis not only found a new exchangeable value for
his cattle and other produce, becoming familiar with better diet and
clothing, and improved cultivation of the olive and the vine,—but
he was also enabled to display his prowess, if strong and brave, in
the public games at the festival of the Lakinian Hêrê, or even at
the Olympic games in Peloponnesus.[749] It is thus that we have to
explain the extensive dominion, the great population and the wealth
and luxury of the Sybarites and Krotoniates,—a population of which
the incidental reports as given in figures are not trustworthy, but
which we may well believe to have been very numerous. The native
Œnotrians, while unable to combine in resisting Greek force, were
at the same time less widely distinguished from the Greeks, in race
and language, than the Oscans of middle Italy, and therefore more
accessible to Greek pacific influences; while the Oscan race seem
to have been both fiercer in repelling the assaults of the Greeks,
and more intractable as to their seductions. Nor were the Iapygians
modified by the neighborhood of Tarentum, in the same degree as the
tribes adjoining to Sybaris and Krotôn were by their contact with
those cities. The dialect of Tarentum,[750] as well as of Herakleia,
though a marked Doric, admitted many local peculiarities, and the
farces of the Tarentine poet Rhinthon, like the Syracusan Sophron,
seem to have blended the Hellenic with the Italic in language as well
as in character.

[748] See a description of the French military operations in
these almost inaccessible regions, contained in a valuable
publication by a French general officer, on service in that
country for three years, “Calabria during a Military Residence of
three years,” London, 1832, Letter xx, p. 201.

The whole picture of Calabria contained in this volume is both
interesting and instructive: military operations had never before
been carried on, probably, in the mountains of the Sila.

[749] See Theokritus, Idyll, iv, 6-35, which illustrates the
point here stated.

[750] Suidas, v. Ῥίνθων; Stephan. Byz. v. Τάρας: compare
Bernhardy, Grundriss der Römischen Litteratur, Abschnitt ii, pt.
2, pp. 185-186, about the analogy of these φλύακες of Rhinthon
with the native Italic Mimes.

The dialect of the other cities of Italic Greece is very little
known: the ancient Inscription of Petilia is Doric: see Ahrens,
De Dialecto Doricâ, sect. 49, p. 418.

About the year 560 B. C., the time of the accession of Peisistratus
at Athens, the close of what may properly be called the first period
of Grecian history, Sybaris and Krotôn were at the maximum of their
power, which each maintained for half a century afterwards, until
the fatal dissension between them. We are told that the Sybarites,
in that final contest, marched against Krotôn with an army of three
hundred thousand men: fabulous as this number doubtless is, we
cannot doubt that, for an irruption of this kind into an adjoining
territory, their large body of semi-Hellenized native subjects
might be mustered in prodigious force. The few statements which
have reached us respecting them touch, unfortunately, upon little
more than their luxury, fantastic self-indulgence, and extravagant
indolence, for which qualities they have become proverbial in modern
times as well as in ancient. Anecdotes illustrating these qualities
were current, and served more than one purpose, in antiquity. The
philosopher recounted them, in order to discredit and denounce
the character which they exemplified,—while among gay companies,
“Sybaritic tales,” or tales respecting sayings and doing of ancient
Sybarites, formed a separate and special class of excellent
stories, to be told simply for amusement,[751]—with which view
witty romancers multiplied them indefinitely. It is probable that
the Pythagorean philosophers (who belonged originally to Krotôn,
but maintained themselves permanently as a philosophical sect in
Italy and Sicily, with a strong tinge of ostentatious asceticism
and mysticism), in their exhortations to temperance and in their
denunciations of luxurious habits, might select by preference
examples from Sybaris, the ancient enemy of the Krotonians, to
point their moral,—and that the exaggerated reputation of the city
thus first became the subject of common talk throughout the Grecian
world; for little could be actually known of Sybaris in detail,
since its humiliation dates from the first commencement of Grecian
contemporaneous history. Hekatæus of Milêtus may perhaps have visited
it in its full splendor, but even Herodotus knew it only by past
report, and the principal anecdotes respecting it are cited from
authors considerably later than him, who follow the tone of thought
so common in antiquity, in ascribing the ruin of the Sybarites to
their overweening corruption and luxury.[752]

[751] Aristophan. Vesp. 1260. Αἰσωπικὸν γελοῖον, ἢ Συβαριτικόν.
What is meant by Συβαριτικὸν γελοῖον is badly explained by the
Scholiast, but is perfectly well illustrated by Aristophanês
himself, in subsequent verses of the same play (1427-1436), where
Philokleon tells two good stories respecting “a Sybaritan man,”
and a “woman in Sybaris:” Ἀνὴρ Συβαρίτης ἐξέπεσεν ἐξ ἅρματος,
etc.—ἐν Συβάρει γυνή ποτε Κατέαξ᾽ ἐχῖνον, etc.

These Συβάρια ἐπιφθέγματα are as old as Epicharmus, whose mind
was much imbued with the Pythagorean philosophy. See Etymolog.
Magn. Συβαρίζειν. Ælian amused himself also with the ἱστόριαι
Συβαριτικαί (V. H. xiv, 20): compare Hesychius, Συβαριτικοὶ
λόγοι, and Suidas, Συβαριτικαῖς.

[752] Thus Herodotus (vi, 127) informs us that, at the time when
Kleisthenês of Sikyon invited from all Greece suitors of proper
dignity for the hand of his daughter, Smindyridês of Sybaris
came among the number, “the most delicate and luxurious man
ever known,” (ἐπὶ πλεῖστον δὴ χλιδῆς εἷς ἀνὴρ ἀφίκετο—Herodot.
vi, 127), and Sybaris was at that time (B. C. 580-560) in
its greatest prosperity. In Chamæleon, Timæus, and other
writers subsequent to Aristotle, greater details were given.
Smindyridês was said to have taken with him to the marriage
one thousand domestic servants, fishermen, bird-catchers, and
cooks (Athenæ. vi, 271; xii, 541). The details of Sybaritic
luxury, given in Athenæus, are chiefly borrowed from writers of
this post-Aristotelian age,—Herakleidês of Pontus, Phylarchus,
Klearchus, Timæus (Athenæ. xii, 519-522). The best-authenticated
of all the examples of Sybaritic wealth, is the splendid figured
garment, fifteen cubits in length, which Alkimenês the Sybarite
dedicated as a votive offering in the temple of the Lakinian
Hêrê. Dionysius of Syracuse plundered that temple, got possession
of the garment, and is said to have sold it to the Carthaginians
for the price of one hundred and twenty talents: Polemon, the
Periegetes, seems to have seen it at Carthage (Aristot. Mirab.
Ausc. 96; Athenæ. xii, 541). Whether the price be correctly
stated, we are not in a situation to determine.

Making allowance, however, for exaggeration on all these accounts,
there can be no reason to doubt that Sybaris, in 560 B. C., was one
of the most wealthy, populous, and powerful cities of the Hellenic
name; and that it also presented both comfortable abundance among
the mass of the citizens, arising from the easy attainment of
fresh lots of fertile land, and excessive indulgences among the
rich,—to a degree forming marked contrast with Hellas proper, of
which Herodotus characterized poverty as the foster-sister.[753] The
extraordinary productiveness of the neighboring territory,—alleged
by Varro, in his time, when the culture must have been much worse
than it had been under the old Sybaris, to yield an ordinary crop
of a hundred-fold,[754] and extolled by modern travellers, even in
its present yet more neglected culture,—has been already touched
upon. The river Krathis,—still the most considerable river of that
region,—at a time when there was an industrious population to keep
its water-course in order, would enable the extensive fields of
Sybaris to supply abundant nourishment for a population larger
perhaps than any other Grecian city could parallel. But though nature
was thus bountiful, industry, good management, and well-ordered
government were required to turn her bounty to account: where
these are wanting, later experience of the same territory shows
that its inexhaustible capacities may exist in vain. That luxury,
which Grecian moralists denounced in the leading Sybarites, between
560 and 510 B. C., was the result of acquisitions vigorously and
industriously pushed, and kept together by an orderly central force,
during a century and a half that the colony had existed. Though the
Trœzenian settlers who formed a portion of the original emigrants
had been expelled when the Achæans became more numerous, yet we are
told that, on the whole, Sybaris was liberal in the reception of
new emigrants to the citizenship,[755] and that this was one of the
causes of its remarkable advance. Of these additional comers, we may
presume that many went to form its colonies on the Mediterranean sea,
and some to settle both among its four dependent inland nations,
and its twenty-five subject towns. Five thousand horsemen, we are
told, clothed in showy attire, formed the processional march in
certain Sybaritic festivals,—a number which is best appreciated by
comparison with the fact, that the knights or horsemen of Athens, in
her best days, did not exceed twelve hundred. The Sybaritic horses,
if we are to believe a story purporting to come from Aristotle,
were taught to move at the sound of the flute; and the garments of
these wealthy citizens were composed of the finest wool from Milêtus
in Ionia,[756]—the Tarentine wool not having then acquired the
distinguished renown which it possessed five centuries afterwards
towards the close of the Roman republic. Next to the great abundance
of home produce,—corn, wine, oil, flax, cattle, fish, timber,
etc.,—the fact next in importance which we hear respecting Sybaris
is, the great traffic carried on with Milêtus: these two cities
were more intimately and affectionately connected together than
any two Hellenic cities within the knowledge of Herodotus.[757]
The tie between Tarentum and Knidus was also of a very intimate
character,[758] so that the great intercourse, personal as well as
commercial, between the Asiatic and the Italic Greeks, appears as a
marked fact in the history of the sixth century before the Christian
era.

[753] Herodot. vii, 102. τῇ Ἑλλάδι πενίη μὲν αἰεί κοτε σύντροφός
ἐστι.

[754] Varro, De Re Rusticâ, i, 44. “In Sybaritano dicunt etiam
cum centesimo redire solitum.” The land of the Italian Greeks
stands first for wheaten bread and beef; that of Syracuse for
pork and cheese (Hermippus ap. Athenæ. i, p. 27): about the
excellent wheat of Italy, compare Sophoklês, Triptolem. Fragm.
529, ed. Dindorf.

Theophrastus dwells upon the excellence of the land near Mylæ, in
the territory of the Sicilian Messênê, which produced, according
to him, thirty-fold. (Hist. Plant. ix, 2, 8, p. 259, ed.
Schneid.) This affords some measure of comparison, both for the
real excellence of the ancient Sybaritan territory, and for the
estimation in which it was held; its estimated produce being more
than three times that of Mylæ.

See in Mr. Keppel Craven’s Tour in the Southern Provinces of
Naples (chapters xi, xii, pp. 212-218), the description of the
rich and productive plain of the Krathis (in the midst of which
stood the ancient Sybaris), extending about sixteen miles from
Cassano to Corigliano, and about twelve miles from the former
town to the sea. Compare, also, the picture of the same country,
in the work by a French officer, referred to in a previous note,
“Calabria during a Military Residence of three years,” London,
1832, Letter xxii, pp. 219-226.

Hekatæus (c. 39, ed. Klausen) calls Cosa,—Κόσσα, πόλις Οἰνωτρῶν
ἐν μεσογαίᾳ. Cosa is considered to be identical, seemingly
on good grounds, with the modern Cassano (Cæsar, Bell. Civ.
iii, 22): assuming this to be correct, there must have been an
Œnotrian dependent town within eight miles of the ancient city of
Sybaris.

[755] Diodor xii, 9.

[756] Athenæus, xii, p. 519.

[757] Herodot. vi, 21. Respecting the great abundance of
ship-timber in the territory of the Italiots (Italian Greeks),
see Thucyd. vi, 90; vii, 25.

The pitch from the pine forests in the Sila was also abundant and
celebrated (Strabo, vi, p. 261).

[758] Herodot. iii, 138.

In this respect, as well as in several others, the Hellenic world
wears a very different aspect in 560 B. C. from that which it assumed
a century afterwards, and in which it is best known to modern
readers. At the former period, the Ionic and Italic Greeks are the
great ornaments of the Hellenic name, and carried on a more lucrative
trade with each other, than either of them maintained with Greece
proper; which both of them recognized as their mother-country, though
without admitting anything in the nature of established headship.
The military power of Sparta is indeed at this time great and
preponderant in Peloponnesus, but she has no navy, and she is only
just essaying her strength, not without reluctance, in ultramarine
interference. After the lapse of a century, these circumstances
change materially. The independence of the Asiatic Greeks is
destroyed, and the power of the Italic Greeks is greatly broken;
while Sparta and Athens not only become the prominent and leading
Hellenic states, but constitute themselves centres of action for the
lesser cities, to a degree previously unknown.

It was during the height of their prosperity, seemingly, in the
sixth century B. C., that the Italian Greeks either acquired for,
or bestowed upon, their territory the appellation of Magna Græcia,
which at that time it well deserved; for not only were Sybaris and
Krotôn then the greatest Grecian cities situated near together, but
the whole peninsula of Calabria may be considered as attached to
the Grecian cities on the coast. The native Œnotrians and Sikels
occupying the interior had become Hellenized, or semi-Hellenized,
with a mixture of Greeks among them,—common subjects of these great
cities; so that the whole extent of the Calabrian peninsula, within
the line which joins Sybaris with Poseidonia, might then be fairly
considered as Hellenic territory. Sybaris maintained much traffic
with the Tuscan towns in the Mediterranean, and the communication
between Greece and Rome, across the Calabrian isthmus,[759] may
perhaps have been easier during the time of the Roman kings—whose
expulsion was nearly contemporaneous with the ruin of Sybaris—than
it became during the first two centuries of the Roman republic. But
all these relations underwent a complete change after the breaking
up of the power of Sybaris in 510 B. C., and the gradual march of
the Oscan population from middle Italy towards the south. Cumæ was
overwhelmed by the Samnites, Poseidonia by the Lucanians; who became
possessed not only of these maritime cities, but also of the whole
inland territory—now called the Basilicata, with part of the hither
Calabria—across from Poseidonia to the neighborhood of the gulf of
Tarentum: while the Bruttians,—a mixture of outlying Lucanians with
the Greco-Œnotrian population once subject to Sybaris, speaking both
Greek and Oscan,[760]—became masters of the inland mountains in the
farther Calabria, from Consentia nearly to the Sicilian strait. It
was thus that the ruin of Sybaris, combined with the spread of the
Lucanians and Bruttians, deprived the Italian Greeks of that inland
territory which they had enjoyed in the sixth century B. C., and
restricted them to the neighborhood of the coast. To understand the
extraordinary power and prosperity of Sybaris and Krotôn, in the
sixth century B. C., when the whole of this inland territory was
subject to them, and before the rise of the Lucanians, and Bruttians,
and when the name Magna Græcia was first given, it is necessary to
glance by contrast at these latter periods; more especially since the
name still continued to be applied by the Romans to Italian Greece
after the contraction of territory had rendered it less appropriate.

[759] Athenæus, xii, p. 519.

[760] Festus, v. bilingues Brutates.

Of Krotôn at this early period of its power and prosperity we know
even less than of Sybaris. It stood distinguished both for the number
of its citizens who received prizes at the Olympic games, and for
the excellence of its surgeons or physicians. And what may seem
more surprising, if we consider the extreme present insalubrity of
the site upon which it stood, it was in ancient times proverbially
healthy,[761] which was not so much the case with the more fertile
Sybaris. Respecting all these cities of Italian Greeks, the same
remark is applicable as was before made in reference to the Sicilian
Greeks,—that the intermixture of the native population sensibly
affected both their character and habits. We have no information
respecting their government during this early period of prosperity,
except that we find mention at Krotôn, as at the Epizephyrian Lokri,
of a senate of one thousand members, yet not excluding occasionally
the ekklesia, or general assembly.[762] Probably, the steady increase
of their dominion in the interior, and the facility of providing
maintenance for new population, tended much to make their political
systems, whatever they may have been, work in a satisfactory manner.
The attempt of Pythagoras and his followers to constitute themselves
a ruling faction as well as a philosophical sect, will be recounted
in a subsequent chapter. The proceedings connected with that attempt
will show that there was considerable analogy and sympathy between
the various cities of Italian Greece, so as to render them liable
to be acted on by the same causes. But though the festivals of the
Lakinian Hêrê, administered by the Krotoniates, formed from early
times a common point of religious assemblage to all,[763]—yet the
attempts to institute periodical meetings of deputies, for the
express purpose of maintaining political harmony, did not begin
until after the destruction of Sybaris, nor were they ever more than
partially successful.

[761] Strabo, vi, p. 262.

[762] Jamblichus, Vit. Pythagor. c. 9, p. 33; c. 35, p. 210.

[763] Athenæus, xii, 541.

One other city, the most distant colony founded by Greeks in the
western regions, yet remains to be mentioned; and we can do no more
than mention it, since we have no facts to make up its history.
Massalia, the modern Marseilles, was founded by the Ionic Phokæans
in the 45th Olympiad, about 597 B. C.,[764] at the time when Sybaris
and Krotôn were near the maximum of their power,—when the peninsula
of Calabria was all Hellenic, and when Cumæ also had not yet been
visited by those calamities which brought about its decline. So much
Hellenism in the south of Italy doubtless facilitated the western
progress of the adventurous Phokæan mariner. It would appear that
Massalia was founded by amicable fusion of Phokæan colonists with
the indigenous Gauls, if we may judge by the romantic legend of
the Protiadæ, a Massaliotic family or gens existing in the time of
Aristotle. Euxenus, a Phokæan merchant, had contracted friendly
relations with Nanus, a native chief in the south of Gaul, and was
invited to the festival in which the latter was about to celebrate
the marriage of his daughter Petta. According to the custom of
the country, the maiden was to choose for herself a husband among
the guests, by presenting him with a cup: through accident, or by
preference, Petta presented it to Euxenus, and became his wife.
Prôtis of Massalia, the offspring of this marriage, was the primitive
ancestor and eponym of the Protiadæ. According to another story
respecting the origin of the same gens, Protis was himself the
Phokæan leader who married Gyptis, daughter of Nannus king of the
Segobrigian Gauls.[765]

[764] This date depends upon Timæus (as quoted by Skymnus Chius,
210) and Solinus; there seems no reason for distrusting it,
though Thucydidês (i, 13) and Isokratês (Archidamus, p. 316)
seem to conceive Massalia as founded by the Phokæans about 60
years later, when Ionia was conquered by Harpagus (see Bruckner,
Historia Reip. Massiliensium, sect. 2, p. 9, Raoul Rochette,
Histoire des Colonies Grecques, vol. iii, pp. 405-413, who,
however, puts the arrival of the Phokæans, in these regions and
at Tartêssus much too early).

[765] Aristotle, Μασσαλιώτων πολιτεῖα, ap. Athenæum, xiii, p.
576; Justin, xliii, 3. Plutarch (Solon, c. 2) seems to follow the
same story as Justin.

Of the history of Massalia we know nothing, nor does it appear to
have been connected with the general movement of the Grecian world.
We learn generally that the Massaliots administered their affairs
with discretion as well as with unanimity, and exhibited in their
private habits an exemplary modesty,—that although preserving
alliance with the people of the interior, they were scrupulously
vigilant in guarding their city against surprise, permitting no
armed strangers to enter,—that they introduced the culture of vines
and olives, and gradually extended the Greek alphabet, language,
and civilization among the neighboring Gauls,—that they possessed
and fortified many positions along the coast of the gulf of Lyons,
and founded five colonies along the eastern coast of Spain,—that
their government was oligarchical, consisting of a perpetual senate
of six hundred persons, yet admitting occasionally new members from
without, and a small council of fifteen members,—that the Delphinian
Apollo and the Ephesian Artemis were their chief deities, planted
as guardians of their outlying posts, and transmitted to their
colonies.[766] Although it is common to represent a deliberate march
and steady supremacy of the governing few, with contented obedience
on the part of the many, as the characteristic of Dorian states,
and mutability not less than disturbance as the prevalent tendency
in Ionia,—yet there is no Grecian community to whom the former
attributes are more pointedly ascribed than the Ionic Massalia. The
commerce of the Massaliots appears to have been extensive, and their
armed maritime force sufficiently powerful to defend it against
the aggressions of Carthage,—their principal enemy in the western
Mediterranean.

[766] Strabo, iv, pp. 179-182: Justin, xliii, 4-5; Cicero, Pro
Flacco. 26. It rather appears from Aristotle (Polit. v, 5, 2; vi,
4-5), that the senate was originally a body completely close,
which gave rise to discontent on the part of wealthy men not
included in it: a mitigation took place by admitting into it,
occasionally, men selected from the latter.

Some authors seem to have accused the Massaliots of luxurious and
effeminate habits (see Athenæus, xii, p. 523).

CHAPTER XXIII.

GRECIAN COLONIES IN AND NEAR EPIRUS.

On the eastern side of the Ionian sea were situated the Grecian
colonies of Korkyra, Leukas, Anaktorium, Ambrakia, Apollonia, and
Epidamnus.

Among these, by far the most distinguished, for situation, for
wealth, and for power, was Korkyra,—now known as Corfu, the same name
belonging, as in antiquity, both to the town and the island, which is
separated from the coast of Epirus by a strait varying from two to
seven miles in breadth. Korkyra was founded by the Corinthians, at
the same time, we are told, as Syracuse. Chersikratês, a Bacchiad,
is said to have accompanied Archias on his voyage from Corinth to
Syracuse, and to have been left with a company of emigrants on
the island of Korkyra, where he founded a settlement.[767] What
inhabitants he found there, or how they were dealt with, we cannot
clearly make out. The island was generally conceived in antiquity
as the residence of the Homeric Phæakians, and it is to this fact
that Thucydidês ascribes in part the eminence of the Korkyræan
marine.[768] According to another story, some Eretrians from Eubœa
had settled there, and were compelled to retire. A third statement
represents the Liburnians[769] as the prior inhabitants,—and
this perhaps is the most probable, since the Liburnians were an
enterprising, maritime, piratical race, who long continued to occupy
the more northerly islands in the Adriatic along the Illyrian and
Dalmatian coast. That maritime activity, and number of ships, both
warlike and commercial, which we find at an early date among the
Korkyræans, and in which they stand distinguished from the Italian
and Sicilian Greeks, may be plausibly attributed to their partial
fusion with preëxisting Liburnians; for the ante-Hellenic natives
of Magna Græcia and Sicily, as has been already noticed, were as
unpractised at sea as the Liburnians were expert.

[767] Strabo, vi, p. 269: compare Timæus, Fragm. 49, ed. Göller;
Fr. 53, ed Didot.

[768] Thucyd. i, 25.

[769] Strabo, _l. c._; Plutarch, Quæst. Græc. c. 11; a different
fable in Conon. Narrat. 3, ap. Photium Cod. 86.

At the time when the Corinthians were about to colonize Sicily, it
was natural that they should also wish to plant a settlement at
Korkyra, which was a post of great importance for facilitating the
voyage from Peloponnesus to Italy, and was farther convenient for
traffic with Epirus, at that period altogether non-Hellenic. Their
choice of a site was fully justified by the prosperity and power of
the colony, which, however, though sometimes in combination with the
mother-city, was more frequently alienated from her and hostile,
and continued so from an early period throughout most part of the
three centuries from 700-400 B. C.[770] Perhaps also Molykreia and
Chalkis,[771] on the south-western coast of Ætolia, not far from the
mouth of the Corinthian gulf, may have been founded by Corinth at a
date hardly less early than Korkyra.

[770] Herodot. iii, 49.

[771] Thucyd. i, 108; iii, 102.

It was at Corinth that the earliest improvements in Greek
ship-building, and the first construction of the trireme or warship
with a triple bank of oars, was introduced, and it was probably
from Corinth that this improvement passed to Korkyra, as it did to
Samos. In early times, the Korkyræan navy was in a condition to
cope with the Corinthian, and the most ancient naval battle known
to Thucydidês[772] was one between these two states, in 664 B. C.
As far as we can make out, it appears that Korkyra maintained her
independence, not only during the government of the Bacchiads at
Corinth, but also throughout the long reign of the despot Kypselus,
and a part of the reign of his son Periander. But towards the close
of this latter reign, we find Korkyra subject to Corinth; and the
barbarous treatment inflicted by Periander, in revenge for the death
of his son, upon three hundred Korkyræan youths, has already been
recounted in a former chapter.[773] After the death of Periander,
the island seems to have regained its independence, but we are left
without any particulars respecting it, from about 585 B. C. down to
the period shortly preceding the invasion of Greece by Xerxes,—nearly
a century. At this later epoch the Korkyræans possessed a naval
force hardly inferior to any state in Greece. The expulsion of
Kypselids from Corinth, and the reëstablishment of the previous
oligarchy, or something like it, does not seem to have reconciled the
Korkyræans to their mother-city; for it was immediately previous to
the Peloponnesian war that the Corinthians preferred the bitterest
complaints against them,[774] of setting at nought those obligations
which a colony was generally understood to be obliged to render.
No place of honor was reserved at the public festivals of Korkyra
for Corinthian visitors, nor was it the practice to offer to the
latter the first taste of the victims sacrificed,—observances which
were doubtless respectfully fulfilled at Ambrakia and Leukas.
Nevertheless, the Korkyræans had taken part conjointly with the
Corinthians in favor of Syracuse, when that city was in imminent
danger of being conquered and enslaved by Hippokratês[775] despot of
Gela (about 492 B. C.),—an incident which shows that they were not
destitute of generous sympathy with sister states, and leads us to
imagine that their alienation from Corinth was as much the fault of
the mother-city as their own.

[772] Thucyd. i, 13.

[773] Herodot. iii, 49-51: see above, chap. ix, p. 42 of this
volume.

[774] Thucyd. i, 25-37.

[775] Herodot. vii. 155.

The grounds of the quarrel were, probably, jealousies of
trade,—especially trade with the Epirotic and Illyrian tribes,
wherein both were to a great degree rivals. Safe at home, and
industrious in the culture of their fertile island, the Korkyræans
were able to furnish wine and oil to the Epirots on the main-land in
exchange for the cattle, sheep, hides, and wool of the latter,—more
easily and cheaply than the Corinthian merchant. And for the purposes
of this trade, they had possessed themselves of a peræa or strip
of the main-land immediately on the other side of the intervening
strait, where they fortified various posts for the protection of
their property.[776] The Corinthians were personally more popular
among the Epirots than the Korkyræans;[777] but it was not until
long after the foundation of Korkyra that they established their
first settlement on the main-land,—Ambrakia, on the north side of
the Ambrakiotic gulf, and near the mouth of the river Arachthus. It
was during the reign of Kypselus, and under the guidance of his son
Gorgus, that this settlement was planted, which afterwards became
populous and considerable. We know nothing respecting its growth, and
we hear only of a despot named Periander as ruling in it, probably
related to the despot of the same name at Corinth.[778] Periander of
Ambrakia was overthrown by a private conspiracy, provoked by his own
brutality, and warmly seconded by the citizens, who lived constantly
afterwards under a popular government.[779]

[776] Thucyd. iii, 85. These fortifications are probably alluded
to also i, 45-54. ἢ ἐς τῶν ἐκείνων χωρίων.

[777] Thucyd. i, 47.

[778] Strabo, vii, p. 325, x. p. 452; Skymn. Chi. 453, Raoul
Rochette, Hist. des Colon. Grecq. vol. iii, p. 294.

[779] Aristot. Polit. v, 3, 5; v, 8, 9.

Notwithstanding the long-continued dissensions between Korkyra and
Corinth, it appears that four considerable settlements on this same
line of coast were formed by the joint enterprise of both,—Leukas and
Anaktorium, to the south of the mouth of the Ambrakiotic gulf,—and
Apollonia and Epidamnus, both in the territory of the Illyrians, at
some distance to the north of the Akrokeraunian promontory. In the
settlement of the two latter, the Korkyræans seem to have been the
principals,—in that of the two former, they were only auxiliaries;
and it probably did not suit their policy to favor the establishment
of any new colony on the intermediate coast opposite to their own
island, between the promontory and the gulf above mentioned. Leukas,
Anaktorium, and Ambrakia are all referred to the agency of Kypselus
the Corinthian, and the tranquillity which Aristotle ascribes to his
reign may be in part ascribed to the new homes thus provided for poor
or discontented Corinthian citizens. Leukas was situated near the
modern Santa Maura: the present island was originally a peninsula,
and continued to be so until the time of Thucydidês; but in the
succeeding half-century, the Leukadians cut through the isthmus,
and erected a bridge across the narrow strait connecting them with
the main-land. It had been once an Akarnanian settlement, named
Epileukadii, the inhabitants of which falling into civil dissension,
invited one thousand Corinthian settlers to join them. The new-comers
choosing their opportunity for attack, slew or expelled those who
had invited them, made themselves masters of the place with its
lands, and converted it from an Akarnanian village into a Grecian
town.[780] Anaktorium was situated a short distance within the mouth
of the Ambrakian gulf,—founded, like Leukas, upon Akarnanian soil,
and with a mixture of Akarnanian inhabitants, by colonists under
the auspices of Kypselus or Periander. In both these establishments
Korkyræan settlers participated;[781] in both, also, the usual
religious feelings connected with Grecian emigration were displayed
by the neighborhood of a venerated temple of Apollo overlooking
the sea,—Apollo Aktius near Anaktorium, and Apollo Leukatas near
Leukas.[782]

[780] About Leukas, see Strabo, x, p. 452; Skylax, p. 34; Steph.
Byz. v. Ἐπιλευκάδιοι.

Strabo seems to ascribe the cutting through of the isthmus to the
original colonists. But Thucydidês speaks of this isthmus in the
plainest manner (iii, 81), and of the Corinthian ships of war
as being transported across it. The Dioryktos, or intervening
factitious canal, was always shallow, only deep enough for boats,
so that ships of war had still to be carried across by hand or
machinery (Polyb. v, 5): both Plutarch (De Serâ Num. Vind. p.
552) and Pliny treat Leukadia as having again become a peninsula,
from the accumulation of sand (H. N. iv, 1): compare Livy,
xxxiii, 17.

Mannert (Geograph. der Gr. und Röm. part viii, b. 1, p. 72)
accepts the statement of Strabo, and thinks that the Dioryktos
had already been dug before the time of Thucydidês. But it seems
more reasonable to suppose that Strabo was misinformed as to the
date, and that the cut took place at some time between the age of
Thucydidês and that of Skylax.

Boeckh (ad Corp. Inscriptt. Gr. t. i, p. 58) and W. C. Müller (De
Corcyræor Republicâ, Götting. 1835, p. 18) agree with Mannert.

[781] Skymn. Chius, 458; Thucyd. i, 55; Plutarch, Themistoklês,
c. 24.

[782] Thucyd. i, 46; Strabo, x, p. 452. Before 220 B. C., the
temple of Apollo Aktius, which in the time of Thucydidês belonged
to Anaktorium, had come to belong to the Akarnanians; it seems,
also, that the town itself had been merged in the Akarnanian
league, for Polybius does not mention it separately (Polyb. iv,
63).

Between these three settlements,—Ambrakia, Anaktorium, and
Leukas,—and the Akarnanian population of the interior, there were
standing feelings of hostility; perhaps arising out of the violence
which had marked the first foundation of Leukas. The Corinthians,
though popular with the Epirots, had been indifferent or unsuccessful
in conciliating the Akarnanians. It rather seems, indeed, that
the Akarnanians were averse to the presence or neighborhood of
any powerful seaport; for in spite of their hatred towards the
Ambrakiots, they were more apprehensive of seeing Ambrakia in the
hands of the Athenians than in that of its own native citizens.[783]

[783] Thucyd. iii, 94, 95, 115.

The two colonies, north of the Akrokeraunian promontory, and on the
coast-land of the Illyrian tribes,—Apollonia and Epidamnus,—were
formed chiefly by the Korkyræans, yet with some aid and a portion
of the settlers from Corinth, as well as from other Doric towns.
Especially it is to be noticed, that the œkist was a Corinthian and
a Herakleid, Phalius the son of Eratokleidês,—for, according to the
usual practice of Greece, whenever a city, itself a colony, founded a
sub-colony, the œkist of the latter was borrowed from the mother-city
of the former.[784] Hence the Corinthians acquired a partial right
of control and interference in the affairs of Epidamnus, which we
shall find hereafter leading to important practical consequences.
Epidamnus,—better known under its subsequent name Dyrrhachium,—was
situated on an isthmus on or near the territory of the Illyrian
tribe called Taulantii, and is said to have been settled about 627
B. C. Apollonia, of which the god Apollo himself seems to have been
recognized as œkist,[785] was founded under similar circumstances,
during the reign of Periander of Corinth, on a maritime plain both
extensive and fertile, near the river Aôus, two days’ journey south
of Epidamnus.

[784] Thucyd. i, 24-26.

[785] The rhetor Aristeidês pays a similar compliment to Kyzikus,
in his Panegyrical Address at that city,—the god Apollo had
founded it personally and directly himself, not through any human
œkist, as was the case with other colonies (Aristeidês, Λόγος
περὶ Κυζίκου, Or. xvi, p. 414; vol. i, p, 384, Dindorf).

Both the one and the other of these two cities seem to have
flourished, and to have received accession of inhabitants from
Triphylia in Peloponnesus, when that country was subdued by the
Eleians. Respecting Epidamnus, especially, we are told that it
acquired great wealth and population during the century preceding
the Peloponnesian war.[786] A few allusions which we find in
Aristotle, too brief to afford much instruction, lead us to suppose
that the governments of both began by being close oligarchies, under
the management of the primitive leaders of the colony,—that in
Epidamnus, the artisans and tradesmen in the town were considered
in the light of slaves belonging to the public,—but that in process
of time, seemingly somewhat before the Peloponnesian war, intestine
dissensions broke up this oligarchy,[787] substituted a periodical
senate, with occasional public assemblies, in place of the permanent
phylarchs, or chiefs of tribes, and thus introduced a form more or
less democratical, yet still retaining the original single-headed
archon. The Epidamnian government was liberal in the admission of
metics, or resident aliens,—a fact which renders it probable that the
alleged public slavery of artisans in that town was a status carrying
with it none of the hardships of actual slavery. It was through
an authorized selling agent, or polêtês, that all traffic between
Epidamnus and the neighboring Illyrians was carried on,—individual
dealing with them being interdicted.[788] Apollonia was in one
respect pointedly distinguished from Epidamnus, since she excluded
metics, or resident strangers, with a degree of rigor hardly inferior
to Sparta. These few facts are all that we are permitted to hear
respecting colonies both important in themselves and interesting
as they brought the Greeks into connection with distant people and
regions.

[786] Thucyd. i, 24. ἐγένετο μεγάλη καὶ πολυάνθρωπος; Strabo,
vii, p. 316, viii, p. 357; Steph. Byz. v. Ἀπολλωνία; Plutarch, De
Serâ Numin. Vind. p. 553; Pausan. v, 22, 2.

Respecting the plain near the site of the ancient Apollonia,
Colonel Leake observes: “The cultivation of this noble plain,
capable of supplying grain to all Illyria and Epirus, with an
abundance of other productions, is confined to a few patches of
maize near the villages,” (Travels in Northern Greece, vol. i,
ch. vii, p. 367.) Compare c. ii, p. 70.

The country surrounding Durazzo (the ancient Epidamnus) is
described by another excellent observer as highly attractive,
though now unhealthy. See the valuable topographical work,
“Albanien, Rumelien, und die Oesterreichisch-montenegrinische
Gränze,” von Dr. Joseph Müller (Prag. 1844), p. 62.

[787] Thucyd. i, 25; Aristot. Polit. ii, 4, 13; iii, 11, 1; iv,
3, 8; v, 1, 6; v, 3, 4.

The allusions of the philosopher are so brief, as to convey
little or no knowledge: see O. Müller, Dorians, b. iii, 9, 6;
Tittmann, Griech. Staatsverfass. p. 491.

[788] Plutarch, Quæst. Græc. p. 297, c. 29; Ælian, V. H. xiii, 16.

The six colonies just named,—Korkyra, Ambrakia, Anaktorium, Leukas,
Apollonia, and Epidamnus,—form an aggregate lying apart from the
rest of the Hellenic name, and connected with each other, though
not always maintained in harmony, by analogy of race and position,
as well as by their common original from Corinth. That the commerce
which the Corinthian merchants carried on with them, and through
them with the tribes in the interior, was lucrative, we can have no
doubt; and Leukas and Ambrakia continued for a long time to be not
merely faithful allies, but servile imitators, of their mother-city.
The commerce of Korkyra is also represented as very extensive, and
carried even to the northern extremity of the Ionic gulf. It would
seem that they were the first Greeks to open a trade and to establish
various settlements on the Illyrian and Dalmatian coasts, as the
Phokæans were the first to carry their traffic along the Adriatic
coast of Italy: the jars and pottery of Korkyra enjoyed great
reputation throughout all parts of the gulf.[789] The general trade
of the island, and the encouragement for its shipping, must probably
have been greater during the sixth century B. C., while the cities
of Magna Græcia were at the maximum of their prosperity, than in
the ensuing century, when they had comparatively declined. Nor can
we doubt that the visitors and presents to the oracle of Dodona in
Epirus, which was distant two days’ journey on landing from Korkyra,
and the importance of which was most sensible during the earlier
periods of Grecian history, contributed to swell the traffic of the
Korkyræans.

[789] W. C. Müller. De Corcyræor. Repub. ch. 3, pp. 60-63:
Aristot. Mirab. Ausc. c. 104;. Hesychius, v. Κερκυραῖοι ἀμφορεῖς;
Herodot. i, 145.

The story given in the above passage of the Pseudo-Aristotle is
to be taken in connection with the succeeding chapter of the same
work (105), wherein the statement, largely credited in antiquity,
is given that the river Danube forked at a certain point of its
course into two streams, one flowing into the Adriatic, the other
into the Euxine.

It is worthy of notice that the monetary system established at
Korkyra was thoroughly Grecian and Corinthian, graduated on the usual
scale of obols, drachms, minæ, and talents, without including any of
those native Italian or Sicilian elements which were adopted by the
cities in Magna Græcia and Sicily. The type of the Corinthian coins
seems also to have passed to those of Leukas and Ambrakia.[790]

[790] See the Inscriptions No. 1838 and No. 1845, in the
collection of Boeckh, and Boeckh’s Metrologie, vii, 8, p. 97.
Respecting the Corinthian coinage our information is confused and
imperfect.

Of the islands of Zakynthus and Kephallenia, Zante and Cephalonia,
we hear very little: of Ithaka, so interesting from the story of the
Odyssey, we have no historical information at all. The inhabitants of
Zakynthus were Achæans from Peloponnesus: Kephallenia was distributed
among four separate city governments.[791] Neither of these islands
play any part in Grecian history until the time of the maritime
empire of Athens, after the Persian war.

[791] Thucyd. ii, 30-66.

CHAPTER XXIV.

AKARNANIANS. — EPIROTS.

Some notice must be taken of those barbarous or non-Hellenic nations
who formed the immediate neighbors of Hellas, west of the range
of Pindus, and north of that range which connects Pindus with
Olympus,—as well as of those other tribes, who, though lying more
remote from Hellas proper, were yet brought into relations of traffic
or hostility with the Hellenic colonies.

Between the Greeks and these foreign neighbors, the Akarnanians,
of whom I have already spoken briefly in my preceding volume, form
the proper link of transition. They occupied the territory between
the river Achelôus, the Ionian sea, and the Ambrakian gulf: they
were Greeks, and admitted as such to contend at the Pan-Hellenic
games,[792] yet they were also closely connected with the Amphilochi
and Agræi, who were not Greeks. In manners, sentiments, and
intelligence, they were half-Hellenic and half-Epirotic,—like
the Ætolians and the Ozolian Lokrians. Even down to the time of
Thucydidês, these nations were subdivided into numerous petty
communities, lived in unfortified villages, were frequently in the
habit of plundering each other, and never permitted themselves to be
unarmed: in case of attack, they withdrew their families and their
scanty stock, chiefly cattle, to the shelter of difficult mountains
or marshes. They were for the most part light-armed, few among
them being trained to the panoply of the Grecian hoplite; but they
were both brave and skilful in their own mode of warfare, and the
sling, in the hands of the Akarnanian, was a weapon of formidable
efficiency.[793]

[792] See Aristot. Fragm. περὶ Πολιτειῶν, ed. Neumann: Fragm. 2,
Ἀκαρνάνων πολιτεία.

[793] Pollux, i, 150; Thucyd. ii. 81.

Notwithstanding this state of disunion and insecurity, however, the
Akarnanians maintained a loose political league among themselves,
and a hill near the Amphilochian Argos, on the shores of the
Ambrakian gulf, had been fortified to serve as a judgment-seat, or
place of meeting, for the settlement of disputes. And it seems that
Stratus and Œniadæ had both become fortified in some measure towards
the commencement of the Peloponnesian war. The former, the most
considerable township in Akarnania, was situated on the Achelôus,
rather high up its course,—the latter was at the mouth of the river,
and was rendered difficult of approach by its inundations.[794]
Astakus, Solium, Palærus, and Alyzia, lay on or near the coast of
the Ionian sea, between Œniadæ and Leukas: Phytia, Koronta, Medeôn,
Limnæa, and Thyrium, were between the southern shore of the Ambrakian
gulf and the river Achelôus.

[794] Thucyd. ii, 102; iii, 105.

The Akarnanians appear to have produced many prophets. They traced
up their mythical ancestry, as well as that of their neighbors the
Amphilochians, to the most renowned prophetic family among the
Grecian heroes,—Amphiaraus, with his sons Alkmæôn and Amphilochus:
Akarnan, the eponymous hero of the nation, and other eponymous
heroes of the separate towns, were supposed to be the sons of
Alkmæôn.[795] They are spoken of, together with the Ætolians, as
mere rude shepherds, by the lyric poet Alkman, and so they seem to
have continued with little alteration until the beginning of the
Peloponnesian war, when we hear of them, for the first time, as
allies of Athens and as bitter enemies of the Corinthian colonies on
their coast. The contact of those colonies, however, and the large
spread of Akarnanian accessible coast, could not fail to produce some
effect in socializing and improving the people. And it is probable
that this effect would have been more sensibly felt, had not the
Akarnanians been kept back by the fatal neighborhood of the Ætolians,
with whom they were in perpetual feud,—a people the most unprincipled
and unimprovable of all who bore the Hellenic name, and whose
habitual faithlessness stood in marked contrast with the rectitude
and steadfastness of the Akarnanian character.[796] It was in order
to strengthen the Akarnanians against these rapacious neighbors,
that the Macedonian Kassander urged them to consolidate their
numerous small townships into a few considerable cities. Partially,
at least, the recommendation was carried into effect, so as to
aggrandize Stratus and one or two other towns; but in the succeeding
century, the town of Leukas seems to lose its original position as
a separate Corinthian colony, and to pass into that of chief city
of Akarnania,[797] which is lost only by the sentence of the Roman
conquerors.

[795] Thucyd. ii, 68-102; Stephan. Byz. v. Φοίτιαι. See the
discussion in Strabo (x, p. 462), whether the Akarnanians did,
or did not, take part in the expedition against Troy; Ephorus
maintaining the negative, and stringing together a plausible
narrative to explain _why_ they did not. The time came when the
Akarnanians gained credit with Rome for this supposed absence of
their ancestors.

[796] Polyb. iv, 30: compare also ix, 40.

[797] Diodor. xix, 67; Livy, xxxiii, 16-17; xlv, 31.

Passing over the borders of Akarnania, we find small nations or
tribes not considered as Greeks, but known, from the fourth century
B. C. downwards, under the common name of Epirots. This word
signifies properly, inhabitants of a continent, as opposed to those
of an island or a peninsula, and came only gradually to be applied by
the Greeks as their comprehensive denomination to designate all those
diverse tribes, between the Ambrakian gulf on the south and west,
Pindus on the east, and the Illyrians and Macedonians to the north
and north-east. Of these Epirots, the principal were,—the Chaonians,
Thesprotians, Kassôpians, and Molossians,[798] who occupied the
country inland as well as maritime along the Ionian sea, from the
Akrokeraunian mountains to the borders of Ambrakia in the interior
of the Ambrakian gulf. The Agræans and Amphilochians dwelt eastward
of the last-mentioned gulf, bordering upon Akarnania: the Athamânes,
the Tymphæans, and the Talares, lived along the western skirts and
high range of Pindus. Among these various tribes it is difficult to
discriminate the semi-Hellenic from the non-Hellenic; for Herodotus
considers both Molossians and Thesprotians as Hellenic,—and the
oracle of Dôdôna, as well as the Nekyomanteion, or holy cavern
for evoking the dead, of Acheron, were both in the territory
of the Thesprotians, and both, in the time of the historian,
Hellenic. Thucydidês, on the other hand, treats both Molossians and
Thesprotians as barbaric, and Strabo says the same respecting the
Athamânes, whom Plato numbers as Hellenic.[799] As the Epirots were
confounded with the Hellenic communities towards the south, so they
become blended with the Macedonian and Illyrian tribes towards the
north. The Macedonian Orestæ, north of the Cambunian mountains and
east of Pindus, are called by Hekatæus a Molossian tribe; and Strabo
even extends the designation Epirots to the Illyrian Paroræia and
Atintânes, west of Pindus, nearly on the same parallel of latitude
with the Orestæ.[800] It must be remembered, as observed above,
that while the designations Illyrians and Macedonians are properly
ethnical, given to denote analogies of language, habits, feeling,
and supposed origin, and probably acknowledged by the people
themselves,—the name Epirots belongs to the Greek language, is given
by Greeks alone, and marks nothing except residence on a particular
portion of the continent. Theopompus (about 340 B. C.) reckoned
fourteen distinct Epirotic nations, among whom the Molossians and
Chaonians were the principal. It is possible that some of these may
have been semi-Illyrian, others semi-Macedonian, though all were
comprised by him under the common name Epirots.[801]

[798] Skylax. c. 28-32.

[799] Herodot. ii, 56, v, 92, vi, 127; Thucyd. ii, 80; Plato,
Minos, p. 315. The Chaonians and Thesprotians were separated by
the river Thyamis (now Kalamas),—Thucyd. i, 46; Stephanus Byz. v.
Τροία.

[800] Hekatæus, Fr. 77, ed. Klausen; Strabo, vii, p. 326; Appian,
Illyric. c. 7. In the time of Thucydidês, the Molossi and the
Atintânes were under the same king (ii, 80). The name Ἠπειρῶται,
with Thucydidês, means only inhabitants of a continent,—οἱ ταύτῃ
ἠπειρῶται (i, 47; ii, 80) includes Ætolians and Akarnanians (iii,
94-95), and is applied to inhabitants of Thrace (iv, 105).

Epirus is used in its special sense to designate the territory
west of Pindus by Xenophon, Hellen. vi, 1, 7.

Compare Mannert. Geographie der Griech. und Römer, part vii, book
2 p. 283.

[801] Strabo, vii, p. 324.

Of these various tribes, who dwelt between the Akrokeraunian
promontory and the Ambrakian gulf, some, at least, appear to have
been of ethnical kindred with portions of the inhabitants of
southern Italy. There were Chaonians on the gulf of Tarentum, before
the arrival of the Greek settlers, as well as in Epirus; we do
not find the name Thesprotians in Italy, but we find there a town
named Pandosia, and a river named Acheron, the same as among the
Epirotic Thesprotians: the ubiquitous name Pelasgian is connected
both with one and with the other. This ethnical affinity, remote or
near, between Œnotrians and Epirots, which we must accept as a fact
without being able to follow it into detail, consists at the same
time with the circumstance,—that both seem to have been susceptible
of Hellenic influences to an unusual degree, and to have been
moulded, with comparatively little difficulty, into an imperfect
Hellenism, like that of the Ætolians and Akarnanians. The Thesprotian
conquerors of Thessaly passed in this manner into Thessalian Greeks,
and the Amphilochians who inhabited Argos on the Ambrakian gulf,
were Hellenized by the reception of Greeks from Ambrakia, though the
Amphilochians situated without the city, still remained barbarous in
the time of Thucydidês:[802] a century afterwards, probably, they
would be Hellenized, like the rest, by a longer continuance of the
same influences,—as happened with the Sikels in Sicily.

[802] Thucyd. ii, 68.

To assign the names and exact boundaries of the different tribes
inhabiting Epirus, as they stood in the seventh and sixth centuries
B. C., at the time when the western stream of Grecian colonization
was going on, and when the newly established Ambrakiots must have
been engaged in subjugating or expelling the prior occupants of their
valuable site,—is out of our power. We have no information prior
to Herodotus and Thucydidês, and that which they tell us cannot be
safely applied to a time either much earlier or much later than their
own. That there was great analogy between the inland Macedonians and
the Epirots, from Mount Bermius across the continent to the coast
opposite Korkyra, in military equipment, in the fashion of cutting
the hair, and in speech, we are apprized by a valuable passage of
Strabo; who farther tells us, that many of the tribes spoke two
different languages,[803]—a fact which at least, proves very close
intercommunion, if not a double origin and incorporation. Wars, or
voluntary secessions and new alliances, would alter the boundaries
and relative situation of the various tribes. And this would be the
more easily effected, as all Epirus, even in the fourth century B.
C., was parcelled out among an aggregate of villages, without any
great central cities; so that the severance of a village from the
Molossian union, and its junction with the Thesprotian (abstracting
from the feelings with which it might be connected), would make
little practical difference in its condition or proceedings. The
gradual increase of Hellenic influence tended partially to centralize
this political dispersion, enlarging some of the villages into small
towns by the incorporation of some of their neighbors; and in this
way, probably, were formed the seventy Epirotic cities which were
destroyed and given up to plunder on the same day, by Paulus Emilius
and the Roman senate. The Thesprotian Ephyrê is called a city, even
by Thucydidês.[804] Nevertheless, the situation was unfavorable to
the formation of considerable cities, either on the coast or in
the interior, since the physical character of the territory is an
exaggeration of that of Greece,—almost throughout, wild, rugged,
and mountainous. The valleys and low grounds, though frequent, are
never extensive,—while the soil is rarely suited, in any continuous
spaces, for the cultivation of corn: insomuch that the flour for
the consumption of Janina, at the present day, is transported
from Thessaly over the lofty ridge of Pindus, by means of asses
and mules;[805] while the fruits and vegetables are brought from
Arta, the territory of Ambrakia. Epirus is essentially a pastoral
country: its cattle as well as its shepherds and shepherd’s dogs were
celebrated throughout all antiquity; and its population then, as now,
found divided village residence the most suitable to their means and
occupations. In spite of this natural tendency, however, Hellenic
influences were to a certain extent efficacious, and it is to them
that we are to ascribe the formation of towns like Phœnikê,—an inland
city a few miles removed from the sea, in a latitude somewhat north
of the northernmost point of Korkyra, which Polybius notices as the
most flourishing[806] of the Epirotic cities at the time when it was
plundered by the Illyrians in 230 B. C. Passarôn, the ancient spot
where the Molossian kings were accustomed on their accession to take
their coronation-oath, had grown into a considerable town, in this
last century before the Roman conquest; while Tekmôn, Phylakê, and
Horreum also became known to us at the same period.[807] But the
most important step which those kings made towards aggrandizement,
was the acquisition of the Greek city of Ambrakia, which became the
capital of the kingdom of Pyrrhus, and thus gave to him the only site
suitable for a concentrated population which the country afforded.

[803] Strabo, vii, p. 324. In these same regions, under the
Turkish government of the present day, such is the mixture
and intercourse of Greeks, Albanians, Bulgaric Sclavonians,
Wallachians, and Turks, that most of the natives find themselves
under the necessity of acquiring two, sometimes three, languages:
see Dr. Grisebach, Reise durch Rumelien und nach Brussa, ch. xii,
vol. ii, p. 68.

[804] Livy, xlv, 34; Thucyd. i, 47. Phanotê, in the more
northerly part of Epirus, is called only a _castellum_, though it
was an important military post (Livy, xliii, 21).

[805] Leake’s Travels in Northern Greece, ch. xxxviii, vol. iv,
pp. 207, 210, 233; ch. ix. vol. i, p. 411; Cyprien Robert, Les
Slaves de Turquie, book iv, ch. 2.

Βουβόται πρῶνες ἐξόχοι—Pindar, Nem. iv, 81; Cæsar, Bell. Civil.
iii, 47.

[806] Polybius, ii, 5, 8.

[807] Plutarch, Pyrrh. c. i; Livy, xlv, 26.

If we follow the coast of Epirus from the entrance of the Ambrakian
gulf northward to the Akrokeraunian promontory, we shall find it
discouraging to Grecian colonization. There are none of those
extensive maritime plains which the gulf of Tarentum exhibits on
its coast, and which sustained the grandeur of Sybaris and Krotôn.
Throughout the whole extent, the mountain-region, abrupt and
affording little cultivable soil, approaches near to the sea,[808]
and the level ground, wherever it exists, must be commanded and
possessed, as it is now, by villagers on hill-sites, always
difficult of attack and often inexpugnable. From hence, and from
the neighborhood of Korkyra,—herself well situated for traffic
with Epirus, and jealous of neighboring rivals,—we may understand
why the Grecian emigrants omitted this unprofitable tract, and
passed on either northward to the maritime plains of Illyria, or
westward to Italy. In the time of Herodotus and Thucydidês, there
seems to have been no Hellenic settlement between Ambrakia and
Apollonia. The harbor called Glykys Limên, and the neighboring
valley and plain, the most considerable in Epirus, next to that
of Ambrakia, near the junction of the lake and river of Acheron
with the sea, were possessed by the Thesprotian town of Ephyrê,
situated on a neighboring eminence; perhaps also, in part, by the
ancient Thesprotian town of Pandosia, so pointedly connected, both
in Italy and Epirus, with the river Acheron.[809] Amidst the almost
inexpugnable mountains and gorges which mark the course of that
Thesprotian river, was situated the memorable recent community
of Suli, which held in dependence many surrounding villages in
the lower grounds and in the plain,—the counterpart of primitive
Epirotic rulers in situation, in fierceness, and in indolence,
but far superior to them in energetic bravery and endurance. It
appears that after the time of Thucydidês, certain Greek settlers
must have found admission into the Epirotic towns in this region.
For Dêmosthenês[810] mentions Pandosia, Buchetia, and Elæa, as
settlements from Elis, which Philip of Macedon conquered and handed
over to his brother-in-law the king of the Molossian Epirots; and
Strabo tells us that the name of Ephyrê had been changed to Kichyrus,
which appears to imply an accession of new inhabitants.

[808] See the description of the geographical features of Epirus
in Boué, La Turquie en Europe, Géographie Générale, vol. i, p. 57.

[809] See the account of this territory in Colonel Leake’s
Travels in Northern Greece, vol. i. ch. v; his journey from
Janina, through the district of Suli and the course of the
Acheron, to the plain of Glyky and the Acherusian lake and
marshes near the sea. Compare, also, vol. iv, ch. xxxv, p. 73.

“To the ancient sites (observes Colonel Leake) which are so
numerous in the great valleys watered by the lower Acheron,
the lower Thyamis, and their tributaries, it is a mortifying
disappointment to the geographer not to be able to apply a single
name with absolute certainty.”

The number of these sites affords one among many presumptions
that each must have been individually inconsiderable.

[810] Dêmosthenês, De Haloneso, ch. 7, p. 84 R; Strabo, vii, p.
324.

Both the Chaonians and Thesprotians appear, in the time of
Thucydidês, as having no kings: there was a privileged kingly
race, but the presiding chief was changed from year to year. The
Molossians, however, had a line of kings, succeeding from father to
son, which professed to trace its descent through fifteen generations
downward, from Achilles and Neoptolemus to Tharypas about the year
400 B. C.; they were thus a scion of the great Æakid race. Admêtus,
the Molossian king to whom Themistoklês presented himself as a
suppliant, appears to have lived in the simplicity of an inland
village chief. But Arrybas, his son or grandson, is said to have
been educated at Athens, and to have introduced improved social
regularity into his native country: while the subsequent kings both
imitated the ambition and received the aid of Philip of Macedon,
extending their dominion[811] over a large portion of the other
Epirots: even in the time of Skylax, they covered a large inland
territory, though their portion of sea-coast was confined. From the
narrative of Thucydidês, we gather that all the Epirots, though held
together by no political union, were yet willing enough to combine
for purposes of aggression and plunder. The Chaonians enjoyed a
higher military reputation than the rest,—but the account which
Thucydidês gives of their expedition against Akarnania exhibits a
blind, reckless, boastful impetuosity, which contrasts strikingly
with the methodical and orderly march of their Greek allies and
companions.[812] We may here notice, that the Kassopæans, whom Skylax
places in the south-western portion of Epirus between the Acheron
and the Ambrakian gulf, are not noticed either by Herodotus or
Thucydidês: the former, indeed, conceives the river Acheron and the
Thesprotians as conterminous with the Ambrakiotic territory.

[811] Skylax, c. 32; Pausanias, i, 11; Justin, xvii, 6.

That the _Arrhybas_ of Justin is the same as the _Tharypas_ of
Pausanias,—perhaps, also, the same as _Tharyps_ in Thucydidês,
who was a minor at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war,—seems
probable.

[812] Thucyd. ii, 81.

To collect the few particulars known respecting these ruder
communities adjacent to Greece, is a task indispensable for the
just comprehension of the Grecian world, and for the appreciation
of the Greeks themselves, by comparison or contrast with their
contemporaries. Indispensable as it is, however, it can hardly be
rendered in itself interesting to the reader, whose patience I have
to bespeak by assuring him that the facts hereafter to be recounted
of Grecian history would be only half understood without this
preliminary survey of the lands around.

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "History of Greece, Volume 03 (of 12)" ***

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