Chapter XII: Front Matter (12)

To the question, "What is the origin of this civilization? Is it of foreign derivation or of native growth?" it is not possible to give a direct answer. It is clear, on the one hand that it was developed, by a gradual process of differentiation, from a culture which was common to the whole Aegean basin and extended as far to the west as Sicily. It is equally clear, on the other hand, that foreign influences contributed largely to the process of development. Egyptian influences, in particular, can be traced throughout the "Minoan" and "Mycenaean" periods. The developed art, however, both in Crete and on the mainland, displays characteristics which are the very opposite of those which are commonly associated with the term "oriental." Egyptian work, even of the best period, is stiff and conventional; in the best Cretan work, and, in a less degree, in Mycenaean work, we find an originality and a freedom of treatment which remind one of the spirit of the Greek artists. The civilization is, in many respects, of an advanced type. The Cretan architects could design on a grand scale, and could carry out their designs with no small degree of mechanical skill. At Cnossus we find a system of drainage in use, which is far in advance of anything known in the modern world before the 19th century. If the art of the Minoan age falls short of the art of the Periclean age, it is hardly inferior to that of the age of Peisistratus. It is a civilization, too, which has long been familiar with the art of writing. But it is one that belongs entirely to the Bronze Age. Iron is not found until the very end of the Mycenaean period, and then only in small quantities. Nor is this the only point of contrast between the culture of the earliest age and that of the historical period in Greece. The chief seats of the early culture are to be found either in the island of Crete, or, on the mainland, at Tiryns and Mycenae. In the later history Crete plays no part, and Tiryns and Mycenae are obscure. With the great names of a later age, Argos, Sparta and Athens, no great discoveries are connected. In northern Greece, Orchomenos rather than Thebes is the centre of influence. Further points of contrast readily suggest themselves. The so-called Phoenician alphabet, in use amongst the later Greeks, is unknown in the earliest age. Its systems of writing, both the earlier and the later one, are syllabic in character, and analogous to those in vogue in Asia Minor and Cyprus. In the art of war, the chariot is of more importance than the foot-soldier, and the latter, unlike the Greek hoplite, is lightly clad, and trusts to a shield large enough to cover the whole body, rather than to the metal helmet, breastplate and greaves of later times (see Arms and Armour: Greek). The political system appears to have been a despotic monarchy, and the realm of the monarch to have extended to far wider limits than those of the "city-states" of historical Greece. It is, perhaps, in the religious practices of the age, and in the ideas implied in them, that the contrast is most apparent. Neither in Crete nor on the mainland is there any trace of the worship of the "Olympian" deities. The cults in vogue remind us rather of Asia than of Greece. The worship of pillars and of trees carries us back to Canaan, while the double-headed axe, so prominent in the ritual of Cnossus, survives in later times as the symbol of the national deity of the Carians. The beehive-tombs, found on many sites on the mainland besides Mycenae, are evidence both of a method of sepulture and of ideas of the future state, which are alien to the practice and the thought of the Greeks of history. It is only in one region--in the island of Cyprus--that the culture of the Mycenaean age is found surviving into the historical period. As late as the beginning of the 5th century B.C. Cyprus is still ruled by kings, the alphabet has not yet displaced a syllabary, the characteristic forms of Mycenaean vases still linger on, and the chief deity of the island is the goddess with attendant doves whose images are among the common objects of Mycenaean finds.

3. _The Homeric Age._--Alike in Crete and on the mainland the civilization disclosed by excavation comes abruptly to an end. In Crete we can trace it back from c. 1200 B.C. to the Neolithic period. From the Stone Age to the end of the Minoan Age the development is continuous and uninterrupted.[4] But between the culture of the Early Age and the culture of the Dorians, who occupied the island in historical times, no connexion whatever can be established. Between the two there is a great gulf fixed. It would be difficult to imagine a greater contrast than that presented by the rude life of the Dorian communities in Crete when it is compared with the political power, the material resources and the extensive commerce of the earlier period. The same gap between the archaeological age and the historical exists on the mainland also. It is true that the solution of continuity is here less complete. Mycenaean art continues, here and there, in a debased form down to the 9th century, a date to which we can trace back the beginnings of the later Greek art. On one or two lines (e.g. architecture) it is even possible to establish some sort of connexion between them. But Greek art as a whole cannot be evolved from Mycenaean art. We cannot bridge over the interval that separates the latter art, even in its decline, from the former. It is sufficient to compare the "dipylon" ware (with which the process of development begins, which culminates in the pottery of the Great Age) with the Mycenaean vases, to satisfy oneself that the gulf exists. What then is the relation of the Heroic or Homeric Age (i.e. the age whose life is portrayed for us in the poems of Homer) to the Earliest Age? It too presents many contrasts to the later periods. On the other hand, it presents contrasts to the Minoan Age, which, in their way, are not less striking. Is it then to be identified with the Mycenaean Age? Schliemann, the discoverer of the Mycenaean culture, unhesitatingly identified Mycenaean with Homeric. He even identified the shaft-graves of Mycenae with the tombs of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. Later inquirers, while refusing to discover so literal a correspondence between things Homeric and things Mycenaean, have not hesitated to accept a general correspondence between the Homeric Age and the Mycenaean. Where it is a case of comparing literary evidence with archaeological, an exact coincidence is not of course to be demanded. The most that can be asked is that a general correspondence should be established. It may be conceded that the case for such a correspondence appears prima facie a strong one. There is much in Homer that seems to find confirmation or explanation in Schliemann's finds. Mycenae is Agamemnon's city; the plan of the Homeric house agrees fairly well with the palaces at Tiryns and Mycenae; the forms and the technique of Mycenaean art serve to illustrate passages in the poems; such are only a few of the arguments that have been urged. It is the great merit of Professor Ridgeway's work (_The Early Age of Greece_) that it has demonstrated, once and for all, that Mycenaean is not Homeric pure and simple. He insists upon differences as great as the resemblances. Iron is in common use in Homer; it is practically unknown to the Mycenaeans. In place of the round shield and the metal armour of the Homeric soldier, we find at Mycenae that the warrior is lightly clad in linen, and that he fights behind an oblong shield, which covers the whole body; nor are the chariots the same in form. The Homeric dead are cremated; the Mycenaean are buried. The gods of Homer are the deities of Olympus, of whose cult no traces are to be found in the Mycenaean Age. The novelty of Professor Ridgeway's theory is that for the accepted equation, Homeric = Achaean = Mycenaean, he proposes to substitute the equations, Homeric = Achaean = post-Mycenaean, and Mycenaean = pre-Achaean = Pelasgian. The Mycenaean civilization he attributes to the Pelasgians, whom he regards as the indigenous population of Greece, the ancestors of the later Greeks, and themselves Greek both in speech and blood. The Homeric heroes are Achaeans, a fair-haired Celtic race, whose home was in the Danube valley, where they had learned the use of iron. In Greece they are newcomers, a conquering class comparable to the Norman invaders of England or Ireland, and like them they have acquired the language of their subjects in the course of a few generations. The Homeric civilization is thus Achaean, i.e. it is Pelasgian (Mycenaean) civilization, appropriated by a ruder race; but the Homeric culture is far inferior to the Mycenaean. Here, at any rate, the Norman analogy breaks down. Norman art in England is far in advance of Saxon. Even in Normandy (as in Sicily), where the Norman appropriated rather than introduced, he not only assimilated but developed. In Greece the process must have been reversed.

The theory thus outlined is probably stronger on its destructive side than on its constructive. To treat the Achaeans as an immigrant race is to run counter to the tradition of the Greeks themselves, by whom the Achaeans were regarded as indigenous (cf. Herod. viii. 73). Nor is the Pelasgian part of the theory easy to reconcile with the Homeric evidence. If the Achaeans were a conquering class ruling over a Pelasgian population, we should expect to find this difference of race a prominent feature in Homeric society. We should, at least, expect to find a Pelasgian background to the Homeric picture. As a matter of fact, we find nothing of the sort. There is no consciousness in the Homeric poems of a distinction of race between the governing and the subject classes. There are, indeed, Pelasgians in Homer, but the references either to the people or the name are extraordinarily few. They appear as a people, presumably in Asia Minor, in alliance with the Trojans; they appear also, in a single passage, as one of the tribes inhabiting Crete. The name survives in "Pelasgicon Argos," which is probably to be identified with the valley of the Spercheius,[5] and as an epithet of Zeus of Dodona. The population, however, of Pelasgicon Argos and of Dodona is no longer Pelasgian. Thus, in the age of Homer, the Pelasgians belong, so far as Greece proper is concerned, to a past that is already remote. It is inadmissible to appeal to Herodotus against Homer. For the conditions of the Homeric age Homer is the sole authoritative witness. If, however, Professor Ridgeway has failed to prove that "Mycenaean" equals "Pelasgian," he has certainly proved that much that is Homeric is post-Mycenaean. It is possible that different strata are to be distinguished in the Homeric poems. There are passages which seem to assume the conditions of the Mycenaean age; there are others which presuppose the conditions of a later age. It may be that the latter passages reflect the circumstances of the poet's own times, while the former ones reproduce those of an earlier period. If so, the substitution of iron for bronze must have been effected in the interval between the earlier and the later periods.

The Homeric state.

It has already been pointed out that the question whether the makers of the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations were Greeks must still be regarded as an open one. No such question can be raised as to the Homeric Age. The Achaeans may or may not have been Greek in blood. What is certain is that the Achaean Age forms an integral part of Greek history. Alike on the linguistic, the religious and the political sides, Homer is the starting-point of subsequent developments. In the Greek dialects the great distinction is that between the Doric and the rest. Of the non-Doric dialects the two main groups are the Aeolic and Ionic, both of which have been developed, by a gradual process of differentiation, from the language of the Homeric poems. With regard to religion it is sufficient to refer to the judgment of Herodotus, that it was Homer and Hesiod who were the authors of the Greek theogony (ii. 53 [Greek: houtoi eisi hoi poiesantes theogonien Hellesi]). It is a commonplace that Homer was the Bible of the Greeks. On the political side, Greek constitutional development would be unintelligible without Homer. When Greek history, in the proper sense, begins, oligarchy is almost universal. Everywhere, however, an antecedent stage of monarchy has to be presupposed. In the Homeric system monarchy is the sole form of government; but it is monarchy already well on the way to being transformed into oligarchy. In the person of the king are united the functions of priest, of judge and of leader in war. He belongs to a family which claims divine descent and his office is hereditary. He is, however, no despotic monarch. He is compelled by custom to consult the council (_boule_) of the elders, or chiefs. He must ask their opinion, and, if he fails to obtain their consent, he has no power to enforce his will. Even when he has obtained the consent of the council, the proposal still awaits the approval of the assembly (_agora_), of the people.

Homeric society.

Thus in the Homeric state we find the germs not only of the oligarchy and democracy of later Greece, but also of all the various forms of constitution known to the Western world. And a monarchy such as is depicted in the Homeric poems is clearly ripe for transmutation into oligarchy. The chiefs are addressed as kings ([Greek: basilees]), and claim, equally with the monarch, descent from the gods. In Homer, again, we can trace the later organization into tribe ([Greek: phyle]), clan ([Greek: genos]), and phratry, which is characteristic of Greek society in the historical period, and meets us in analogous forms in other Aryan societies. The [Greek: genos] corresponds to the Roman _gens_, the [Greek: phyle] to the Roman tribe, and the phratry to the _curia_. The importance of the _phratry_ in Homeric society is illustrated by the well-known passage (_Iliad_ ix. 63) in which the outcast is described as "one who belongs to no phratry" ([Greek: aphretor]). It is a society that is, of course, based upon slavery, but it is slavery in its least repulsive aspect. The treatment which Eumaeus and Eurycleia receive at the hands of the poet of the _Odyssey_ is highly creditable to the humanity of the age. A society which regarded the slave as a mere chattel would have been impatient of the interest shown in a swineherd and a nurse. It is a society, too, that exhibits many of the distinguishing traits of later Greek life. Feasting and quarrels, it is true, are of more moment to the heroes than to the contemporaries of Pericles or Plato; but "music" and "gymnastic" (though the terms must be understood in a more restricted sense) are as distinctive of the age of Homer as of that of Pindar. In one respect there is retrogression in the historical period. Woman in Homeric society enjoys a greater freedom, and receives greater respect, than in the Athens of Sophocles and Pericles.

4. _The Growth of the Greek States._--The Greek world at the beginning of the 6th century B.C. presents a picture in many respects different from that of the Homeric Age. The Greek race is no longer confined to the Greek peninsula. It occupies the islands of the Aegean, the western seaboard of Asia Minor, the coasts of Macedonia and Thrace, of southern Italy and Sicily. Scattered settlements are found as far apart as the mouth of the Rhone, the north of Africa, the Crimea and the eastern end of the Black Sea. The Greeks are called by a national name, _Hellenes_, the symbol of a fully-developed national self-consciousness. They are divided into three great branches, the Dorian, the Ionian and the Aeolian, names almost, or entirely, unknown to Homer. The heroic monarchy has nearly everywhere disappeared. In Greece proper, south of Thermopylae, it survives, but in a peculiar form, in the Spartan state alone. What is the significance and the explanation of contrasts so profound?

Dorian invasion.

It is probable that the explanation is to be found, directly or indirectly, in a single cause, the Dorian invasion. In Homer the Dorians are mentioned in one passage only (_Odyssey_ xix. 177). They there appear as one of the races which inhabit Crete. In the historical period the whole Peloponnese, with the exception of Arcadia, Elis and Achaea, is Dorian. In northern Greece the Dorians occupy the little state of Doris, and in the Aegean they form the population of Crete, Rhodes and some smaller islands. Thus the chief centres of Minoan and Mycenaean culture have passed into Dorian hands, and the chief seats of Achaean power are included in Dorian states. Greek tradition explained the overthrow of the Achaean system by an invasion of the Peloponnese by the Dorians, a northern tribe, which had found a temporary home in Doris. The story ran that, after an unsuccessful attempt to force an entrance by the Isthmus of Corinth, they had crossed from Naupactus, at the mouth of the Corinthian Gulf, landed on the opposite shore, and made their way into the heart of the Peloponnese, where a single victory gave them possession of the Achaean states. Their conquests were divided among the invaders into three shares, for which lots were cast, and thus the three states of Argos, Sparta and Messenia were created. There is much in this tradition that is impossible or improbable. It is impossible, e.g. for the tiny state of Doris, with its three or four "small, sad villages" ([Greek: poleis mikrai kai lyprochoroi], Strabo, p. 427), to have furnished a force of invaders sufficient to conquer and re-people the greater part of the Peloponnese. It is improbable that the conquest should have been either as sudden, or as complete, as the legend represents. On the contrary, there are indications that the conquest was gradual, and that the displacement of the older population was incomplete. The improbability of the details affords, however, no ground for questioning the reality of the invasion.[6] The tradition can be traced back at Sparta to the 7th century B.C. (Tyrtaeus, quoted by Strabo, p. 362), and there is abundant evidence, other than that of legend, to corroborate it. There is the Dorian name, to begin with. If, as Beloch supposes, it originated on the coast of Asia Minor, where it served to distinguish the settlers in Rhodes and the neighbouring islands from the Ionians and Aeolians to the north of them, how came the great and famous states of the Peloponnese to adopt a name in use among the petty colonies planted by their kinsmen across the sea? Or, if Dorian is simply Old Peloponnesian, how are we to account for the Doric dialect or the Dorian pride of race?

It is true that there are great differences between the literary Doric, the dialect of Corinth and Argos, and the dialects of Laconia and Crete, and that there are affinities between the dialect of Laconia and the non-Dorian dialects of Arcadia and Elis. It is equally true, however, and of far more consequence, that all the Doric dialects are distinguished from all other Greek dialects by certain common characteristics. Perhaps the strongest sentiment in the Dorian nature is the pride of race. Indeed, it looks as if the Dorians claimed to be the sole genuine Hellenes. How can we account for an indigenous population, first imagining itself to be immigrant, and then developing a contempt for the rest of the race, equally indigenous with itself, on account of a fictitious difference in origin? Finally, there is the archaeological evidence. The older civilization comes to an abrupt end, and it does so, on the mainland at least, at the very period to which tradition assigns the Dorian migration. Its development is greatest, and its overthrow most complete, precisely in the regions occupied by the Dorians and the other tribes, whose migrations were traditionally connected with theirs. It is hardly too much to say that the archaeologist would have been compelled to postulate an inroad into central and southern Greece of tribes from the north, at a lower level of culture, in the course of the 12th and 11th centuries B.C., if the historian had not been able to direct him to the traditions of the great migrations ([Greek: metanastaseis]), of which the Dorian invasion was the chief. With the Dorian migration Greek tradition connected the expansion of the Greek race eastwards across the Aegean. In the historical period the Greek settlements on the western coast of Asia Minor fall into three clearly defined groups. To the north is the Aeolic group, consisting of the island of Lesbos and twelve towns, mostly insignificant, on the opposite mainland. To the south is the Dorian _hexapolis_, consisting of Cnidus and Halicarnassus on the mainland, and the islands of Rhodes and Cos. In the centre comes the Ionian _dodecapolis_, a group consisting of ten towns on the mainland, together with the islands of Samos and Chios. Of these three groups, the Ionian is incomparably the most important. The Ionians also occupy Euboea and the Cyclades. Although it would appear that Cyprus (and possibly Pamphylia) had been occupied by settlers from Greece in the Mycenaean age, Greek tradition is probably correct in putting the colonization of Asia Minor and the islands of the Aegean after the Dorian migration. Both the Homeric and the archaeological evidence seem to point to the same conclusion. Between Rhodes on the south and the Troad on the north scarcely any Mycenaean remains have been found. Homer is ignorant of any Greeks east of Euboea. If the poems are earlier than the Dorian Invasion, his silence is conclusive. If the poems are some centuries later than the Invasion, they at least prove that, within a few generations of that event, it was the belief of the Greeks of Asia Minor that their ancestors had crossed the seas after the close of the Heroic Age. It is probable, too, that the names Ionian and Aeolian, the former of which is found once in Homer, and the latter not at all, originated among the colonists in Asia Minor, and served to designate, in the first instance, the members of the Ionic and Aeolic _dodecapoleis_. As Curtius[7] pointed out, the only Ionia known to history is in Asia Minor. It does not follow that Ionia is the original home of the Ionian race, as Curtius argued. It almost certainly follows, however, that it is the original home of the Ionian name.

Government.

It is less easy to account for the name _Hellenes_. The Greeks were profoundly conscious of their common nationality, and of the gulf that separated them from the rest of mankind. They themselves recognized a common race and language, and a common type of religion and culture, as the chief factors in this sentiment of nationality (see Herod. viii. 144 [Greek: to Hellenikon eon homaimon te kai homoglosson kai theon hidrymata te koina kai thusiai ethea te homotropa]). "Hellenes" was the name of their common race, and "Hellas" of their common country. In Homer there is no distinct consciousness of a common nationality, and consequently no antithesis of Greek and Barbarian (see Thuc. i. 3). Nor is there a true collective name. There are indeed Hellenes (though the name occurs in one passage only, _Iliad_ ii. 684), and there is a Hellas; but his Hellas, whatever its precise signification may be, is, at any rate, not equivalent either to Greece proper or to the land of the Greeks, and his Hellenes are the inhabitants of a small district to the south of Thessaly. It is possible that the diffusion of the Hellenic name was due to the Dorian invaders. Its use can be traced back to the first half of the 7th century. Not less obscure are the causes of the fall of monarchy. It cannot have been the immediate effect of the Dorian conquest, for the states founded by the Dorians were at first monarchically governed. It may, however, have been an indirect effect of it. We have already seen that the power of the Homeric king is more limited than that of the rulers of Cnossus, Tiryns or Mycenae. In other words, monarchy is already in decay at the epoch of the Invasion. The Invasion, in its effects on wealth, commerce and civilization, is almost comparable to the irruption of the barbarians into the Roman empire. The monarch of the Minoan and Mycenaean age has extensive revenues at his command; the monarch of the early Dorian states is little better than a petty chief. Thus the interval, once a wide one, that separates him from the nobles tends to disappear. The decay of monarchy was gradual; much more gradual than is generally recognized. There were parts of the Greek world in which it still survived in the 6th century, e.g. Sparta, Cyrene, Cyprus, and possibly Argos and Tarentum. Both Herodotus and Thucydides apply the title "king" ([Greek: basileus]) to the rulers of Thessaly in the 5th century. The date at which monarchy gave place to a republican form of government must have differed, and differed widely, in different cases. The traditions relating to the foundation of Cyrene assume the existence of monarchy in Thera and in Crete in the middle of the 7th century (Herodotus iv. 150 and 154), and the reign of Amphicrates at Samos (Herod, iii. 59) can hardly be placed more than a generation earlier. In view of our general ignorance of the history of the 7th and 8th centuries, it is hazardous to pronounce these instances exceptional. On the other hand, the change from monarchy to oligarchy was completed at Athens before the end of the 8th century, and at a still earlier date in some of the other states. The process, again, by which the change was effected was, in all probability, less uniform than is generally assumed. There are extremely few cases in which we have any trustworthy evidence, and the instances about which we are informed refuse to be reduced to any common type. In Greece proper our information is fullest in the case of Athens and Argos. In the former case, the king is gradually stripped of his powers by a process of devolution. An hereditary king, ruling for life, is replaced by three annual and elective magistrates, between whom are divided the executive, military and religious functions of the monarch (see ARCHON). At Argos the fall of the monarchy is preceded by an aggrandisement of the royal prerogatives. There is nothing in common between these two cases, and there is no reason to suppose that the process elsewhere was analogous to that at Athens. Everywhere, however, oligarchy is the form of government which succeeds to monarchy. Political power is monopolized by a class of nobles, whose claim to govern is based upon birth and the possession of land, the most valuable form of property in an early society. Sometimes power is confined to a single clan (e.g. the Bacchiadae at Corinth); more commonly, as at Athens, all houses that are noble are equally privileged. In every case there is found, as the adviser of the executive, a Boule, or council, representative of the privileged class. Without such a council a Greek oligarchy is inconceivable. The relations of the executive to the council doubtless varied. At Athens it is clear that the real authority was exercised by the archons;[8] in many states the magistrates were probably subordinate to the council (cf. the relation of the consuls to the senate at Rome). And it is clear that the way in which the oligarchies used their power varied also. The cases in which the power was abused are naturally the ones of which we hear; for an abuse of power gave rise to discontent and was the ultimate cause of revolution. We hear little or nothing of the cases in which power was exercised wisely. Happy is the constitution which has no annals! We know, however, that oligarchy held its ground for generations, or even for centuries, in a large proportion of the Greek states; and a government which, like the oligarchies of Elis, Thebes or Aegina, could maintain itself for three or four centuries cannot have been merely oppressive.

Trade.

The period of the transition from monarchy to oligarchy is the period in which commerce begins to develop, and trade-routes to be organized. Greece had been the centre of an active trade in the Minoan and Mycenaean epochs. The products of Crete and of the Peloponnese had found their way to Egypt and Asia Minor. The overthrow of the older civilization put an end to commerce. The seas became insecure and intercourse with the East was interrupted. Our earliest glimpses of the Aegean after the period of the migrations disclose the raids of the pirate and the activity of the Phoenician trader. It is not till the 8th century has dawned that trade begins to revive, and the Phoenician has to retire before his Greek competitor. For some time to come, however, no clear distinction is drawn between the trader and the pirate. The pioneers of Greek trade in the West are the pirates of Cumae (Thucyd. vi. 4). The expansion of Greek commerce, unlike that of the commerce of the modern world, was not connected with any great scientific discoveries. There is nothing in the history of ancient navigation that is analogous to the invention of the mariner's compass or of the steam-engine. In spite of this, the development of Greek commerce in the 7th and 6th centuries was rapid. It must have been assisted by the great discovery of the early part of the former century, the invention of coined money. To the Lydians, rather than the Greeks, belongs the credit of the discovery; but it was the genius of the latter race that divined the importance of the invention and spread its use. The coinage of the Ionian towns goes back to the reign of Gyges (c. 675 B.C.). And it is in Ionia that commercial development is earliest and greatest. In the most distant regions the Ionian is first in the field. Egypt and the Black Sea are both opened up to Greek trade by Miletus, the Adriatic and the Western Mediterranean by Phocaea and Samos. It is significant that of the twelve states engaged in the Egyptian trade in the 6th century all, with the exception of Aegina, are from the eastern side of the Aegean (Herod. ii. 178). On the western side the chief centres of trade during these centuries were the islands of Euboea and Aegina and the town of Corinth. The Aeginetan are the earliest coins of Greece proper (c. 650 B.C.); and the two rival scales of weights and measures, in use amongst the Greeks of every age, are the Aeginetan and the Euboic. Commerce naturally gave rise to commercial leagues, and commercial relations tended to bring about political alliances. Foreign policy even at this early epoch seems to have been largely determined by considerations of commerce. Two leagues, the members of which were connected by political as well as commercial ties, can be recognized. At the head of each stood one of the two rival powers in the island of Euboea, Chalcis and Eretria. Their primary object was doubtless protection from the pirate and the foreigner. Competing routes were organized at an early date under their influence, and their trading connexions can be traced from the heart of Asia Minor to the north of Italy. Miletus, Sybaris and Etruria were members of the Eretrian league; Samos, Corinth, Rhegium and Zancle (commanding the Straits of Messina), and Cumae, on the Bay of Naples, of the Chalcidian. The wool of the Phrygian uplands, woven in the looms of Miletus, reached the Etruscan markets by way of Sybaris; through Cumae, Rome and the rest of Latium obtained the elements of Greek culture. Greek trade, however, was confined to the Mediterranean area. The Phoenician and the Carthaginian navigators penetrated to Britain; they discovered the passage round the Cape two thousand years before Vasco da Gama's time. The Greek sailor dared not adventure himself outside the Black Sea, the Adriatic and the Mediterranean. Greek trade, too, was essentially maritime. Ports visited by Greek vessels were often the starting points of trade-routes into the interior; the traffic along those routes was left in the hands of the natives (see e.g. Herod. iv. 24). One service, the importance of which can hardly be overestimated, was rendered to civilization by the Greek traders--the invention of geography. The science of geography is the invention of the Greeks. The first maps were made by them (in the 6th century); and it was the discoveries and surveys of their sailors that made map-making possible.

Colonization.

Closely connected with the history of Greek trade is the history of Greek colonization. The period of colonization, in its narrower sense, extends from the middle of the 8th to the middle of the 6th century. Greek colonization is, however, merely a continuation of the process which at an earlier epoch had led to the settlement, first of Cyprus, and then of the islands and coasts of the Aegean. From the earlier settlements the colonization of the historical period is distinguished by three characteristics. The later colony acknowledges a definite _metropolis_ ("mother-city"); it is planted by a definite _oecist_ ([Greek: oikistes]); it has a definite date assigned to its foundation.[9] It would be a mistake to regard Greek colonization as commercial in origin, in the sense that the colonies were in all cases established as trading-posts. This was the case with the Phoenician and Carthaginian settlements, most of which remained mere factories; and some of the Greek colonies (e.g. many of those planted by Miletus on the shores of the Black Sea) bore this character. The typical Greek colony, however, was neither in origin nor in development a mere trading-post. It was, or it became, a _polis_, a city-state, in which was reproduced the life of the parent state. Nor was Greek colonization, like the emigration from Europe to America and Australia in the 19th century, simply the result of over-population. The causes were as various as those which can be traced in the history of modern colonization. Those which were established for the purposes of trade may be compared to the factories of the Portuguese and Dutch in Africa and the Far East. Others were the result of political discontent, in some form or shape; these may be compared to the Puritan settlements in New England. Others again were due to ambition or the mere love of adventure (see Herod. v. 42 ff., the career of Dorieus). But however various the causes, two conditions must always be presupposed--an expansion of commerce and a growth of population. Within the narrow limits of the city-state there was a constant tendency for population to become redundant, until, as in the later centuries of Greek life, its growth was artificially restricted. Alike from the Roman colonies, and from those founded by the European nations in the course of the last few centuries, the Greek colonies are distinguished by a fundamental contrast. It is significant that the contrast is a political one. The Roman colony was in a position of entire subordination to the Roman state, of which it formed a part. The modern colony was, in varying degrees, in political subjection to the home government. The Greek colony was completely independent; and it was independent from the first. The ties that united a colony to its metropolis were those of sentiment and interest; the political tie did not exist. There were, it is true, exceptions. The colonies established by imperial Athens closely resembled the colonies of imperial Rome. The cleruchy (q.v.) formed part of the Athenian state; the cleruchs kept their status as citizens of Athens and acted as a military garrison. And if the political tie, in the proper sense, was wanting, it was inevitable that political relations should spring out of commercial or sentimental ones. Thus we find Corinth interfering twice to save her colony Syracuse from destruction, and Megara bringing about the revolt of Byzantium, her colony, from Athens. Sometimes it is not easy to distinguish political relations from a political tie (e.g. the relations of Corinth, both in the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars, to Ambracia and the neighbouring group of colonies). When we compare the development of the Greek and the modern colonies we shall find that the development of the former was even more rapid than that of the latter. In at least three respects the Greek settler was at an advantage as compared with the colonist of modern times. The differences of race, of colour and of climate, with which the chief problems of modern colonization are connected, played no part in the history of the Greek settlements. The races amongst whom the Greeks planted themselves were in some cases on a similar level of culture. Where the natives were still backward or barbarous, they came of a stock either closely related to the Greek, or at least separated from it by no great physical differences. We need only contrast the Carian, the Sicel, the Thracian or even the Scythian, with the native Australian, the Hottentot, the Red Indian or the Maori, to apprehend the advantage of the Greek. Amalgamation with the native races was easy, and it involved neither physical nor intellectual degeneracy as its consequence. Of the races with which the Greeks came in contact the Thracian was far from the highest in the scale of culture; yet three of the greatest names in the Great Age of Athens are those of men who had Thracian blood in their veins, viz. Themistocles, Cimon and the historian Thucydides. In the absence of any distinction of colour, no insuperable barrier existed between the Greek and the hellenized native. The _demos_ of the colonial cities was largely recruited from the native population,[10] nor was there anything in the Greek world analogous to the "mean whites" or the "black belt." Of hardly less importance were the climatic conditions. In this respect the Mediterranean area is unique. There is no other region of the world of equal extent in which these conditions are at once so uniform and so favourable. Nowhere had the Greek settler to encounter a climate which was either unsuited to his labour or subversive of his vigour. That in spite of these advantages so little, comparatively speaking, was effected in the work of Hellenization before the epoch of Alexander and the Diadochi, was the effect of a single counteracting cause. The Greek colonist, like the Greek trader, clung to the shore. He penetrated no farther inland than the sea-breeze. Hence it was only in islands, such as Sicily or Cyprus, that the process of Hellenization was complete. Elsewhere the Greek settlements formed a mere fringe along the coast.

The tyrants.

To the 7th century there belongs another movement of high importance in its bearing upon the economic, religious and literary development of Greece, as well as upon its constitutional history. This movement is the rise of the _tyrannis_. In the political writers of a later age the word possesses a clear-cut connotation. From other forms of monarchy it is distinguished by a twofold differentiation. The _tyrannus_ is an unconstitutional ruler, and his authority is exercised over unwilling subjects. In the 7th and 6th centuries the line was not drawn so distinctly between the tyrant and the legitimate monarch. Even Herodotus uses the words "tyrant" and "king" interchangeably (e.g. the princes of Cyprus are called "kings" in v. 110 and "tyrants" in v. 109), so that it is sometimes difficult to decide whether a legitimate monarch or a tyrant is meant (e.g. Aristophilides of Tarentum, iii. 136, or Telys of Sybaris, v. 44). But the distinction between the tyrant and the king of the Heroic Age is a valid one. It is not true that his rule was always exercised over unwilling subjects; it is true that his position was always unconstitutional. The Homeric king is a legitimate monarch; his authority is invested with the sanctions of religion and immemorial custom. The tyrant is an illegitimate ruler; his authority is not recognized, either by customary usage or by express enactment. But the word "tyrant" was originally a neutral team; it did not necessarily imply a misuse of power. The origin of the _tyrannis_ is obscure. The word _tyrannus_ has been thought, with some reason, to be a Lydian one. Probably both the name and the thing originated in the Greek colonies of Asia Minor, though the earliest tyrants of whom we hear in Asia Minor (at Ephesus and Miletus) are a generation later than the earliest in Greece itself, where, both at Sicyon and at Corinth, tyranny appears to date back to the second quarter of the 7th century. It is not unusual to regard tyranny as a universal stage in the constitutional development of the Greek states, and as a stage that occurs everywhere at one and the same period. In reality, tyranny is confined to certain regions, and it is a phenomenon that is peculiar to no one age or century. In Greece proper, before the 4th century B.C., it is confined to a small group of states round the Corinthian and Saronic Gulfs. The greater part of the Peloponnese was exempt from it, and there is no good evidence for its existence north of the Isthmus, except at Megara and Athens. It plays no part in the history of the Greek cities in Chalcidice and Thrace. It appears to have been rare in the Cyclades. The regions in which it finds a congenial soil are two, Asia Minor and Sicily. Thus it is incorrect to say that most Greek states passed through this stage. It is still wider of the mark to assume that they passed through it at the same time. There is no "Age of the Tyrants." Tyranny began in the Peloponnese a hundred years before it appears in Sicily, and it has disappeared in the Peloponnese almost before it begins in Sicily. In the latter the great age of tyranny comes at the beginning of the 5th century; in the former it is at the end of the 7th and the beginning of the 6th. At Athens the history of tyranny begins after it has ended both at Sicyon and Corinth. There is, indeed, a period in which tyranny is non-existent in the Greek states; roughly speaking, the last sixty years of the 5th century. But with this exception, there is no period in which the tyrant is not to be found. The greatest of all the tyrannies, that of Dionysius at Syracuse, belongs to the 4th century. Nor must it be assumed that tyranny always comes at the same stage in the history of a constitution; that it is always a stage between oligarchy and democracy. At Corinth it is followed, not by democracy but by oligarchy, and it is an oligarchy that lasts, with a brief interruption, for two hundred and fifty years. At Athens it is not immediately preceded by oligarchy. Between the Eupatrid oligarchy and the rule of Peisistratus there comes the timocracy of Solon. These exceptions do not stand alone. The cause of tyranny is, in one sense, uniform. In the earlier centuries, at any rate, tyranny is always the expression of discontent; the tyrant is always the champion of a cause. But it would be a mistake to suppose that the discontent is necessarily political, or that the cause which he champions is always a constitutional one. At Sicyon it is a racial one; Cleisthenes is the champion of the older population against their Dorian oppressors (see Herod. v. 67, 68). At Athens the discontent is economic rather than political; Peisistratus is the champion of the Diacrii, the inhabitants of the poorest region of Attica. The party-strifes of which we hear in the early history of Miletus, which doubtless gave the tyrant his opportunity, are concerned with the claims of rival industrial classes. In Sicily the tyrant is the ally of the rich and the foe of the _demos_, and the cause which he champions, both in the 5th century and the 4th, is a national one, that of the Greek against the Carthaginian. We may suspect that in Greece itself the tyrannies of the 7th century are the expression of an anti-Dorian reaction. It can hardly be an accident that the states in which the tyrannis is found at this epoch, Corinth, Megara, Sicyon, Epidaurus, are all of them states in which a Dorian upper class ruled over a subject population. In Asia Minor the _tyrannis_ assumes a peculiar character after the Persian conquest. The tyrant rules as the deputy of the Persian satrap. Thus in the East the tyrant is the enemy of the national cause; in the West, in Sicily, he is its champion.

Tyranny is not a phenomenon peculiar to Greek history. It is possible to find analogies to it in Roman history, in the power of Caesar, or of the Caesars; in the despotisms of medieval Italy; or even in the Napoleonic empire. Between the tyrant and the Italian despot there is indeed a real analogy; but between the Roman principate and the Greek _tyrannis_ there are two essential differences. In the first place, the principate was expressed in constitutional forms, or veiled under constitutional fictions; the tyrant stood altogether outside the constitution. And, secondly, at Rome both Julius and Augustus owed their position to the power of the sword. The power of the sword, it is true, plays a large part in the history of the later tyrants (e.g. Dionysius of Syracuse); the earlier ones, however, had no mercenary armies at their command. We can hardly compare the bodyguard of Peisistratus to the legions of the first or the second Caesar.

The view taken of the _tyrannis_ in Greek literature is almost uniformly unfavourable. In this respect there is no difference between Plato and Aristotle, or between Herodotus and the later historians.[11] His policy is represented as purely selfish, and his rule as oppressive. Herodotus is influenced partly by the traditions current among the oligarchs, who had been the chief sufferers, and partly by the odious associations which had gathered round tyranny in Asia Minor. The philosophers write under their impressions of the later _tyrannis_, and their account is largely an a priori one. It is seldom that we find any attempt, either in the philosophers or the historians, to do justice to the real services rendered by the tyrants.[12] Their first service was a constitutional one. They helped to break down the power of the old aristocratic houses, and thus to create the social and political conditions indispensable to democracy. The _tyrannis_ involved the sacrifice of liberty in the cause of equality. When tyranny falls, it is never succeeded by the aristocracies which it had overthrown. It is frequently succeeded by an oligarchy, but it is an oligarchy in which the claim to exclusive power is based, not upon mere birth, but upon wealth, or the possession of land. It would be unfair to treat this service as one that was rendered unconsciously and unwillingly. Where the tyrant asserted the claims of an oppressed class, he consciously aimed at the destruction of privilege and the effacement of class distinctions. Hence it is unjust to treat his power as resting upon mere force. A government which can last eighty or a hundred years, as was the case with the tyrannies at Corinth and Sicyon, must have a moral force behind it. It must rest upon the consent of its subjects. The second service which the tyrants rendered to Greece was a political one. Their policy tended to break down the barriers which isolated each petty state from its neighbours. In their history we can trace a system of widespread alliances, which are often cemented by matrimonial connexions. The Cypselid tyrants of Corinth appear to have been allied with the royal families of Egypt, Lydia and Phrygia, as well as with the tyrants of Miletus and Epidaurus, and with some of the great Athenian families. In Sicily we find a league of the northern tyrants opposed to a league of the southern; and in each ease there is a corresponding matrimonial alliance. Anaxilaus of Rhegium is the son-in-law and ally of Terillus of Himera; Gelo of Syracuse stands in the same relation to Theron of Agrigentum. Royal marriages have played a great part in the politics of Europe. In the comparison of Greek and modern history it has been too often forgotten how great a difference it makes, and how great a disadvantage it involves, to a republic that it has neither sons nor daughters to give in marriage. In commerce and colonization the tyrants were only continuing the work of the oligarchies to which they succeeded. Greek trade owed its expansion to the intelligent efforts of the oligarchs who ruled at Miletus and Corinth, in Samos, Aegina and Euboea; but in particular cases, such as Miletus, Corinth, Sicyon and Athens, there was a further development, and a still more rapid growth, under the tyrants. In the same way, the foundation of the colonies was in most cases due to the policy of the oligarchical governments. They can claim credit for the colonies of Chalcis and Eretria, of Megara, Phocaea and Samos, as well as for the great Achaean settlements in southern Italy. The Cypselids at Corinth, and Thrasybulus at Miletus, are instances of tyrants who colonized on a great scale.

Religion under the "tyrants."

In their religious policy the tyrants went far to democratize Greek religion. The functions of monarchy had been largely religious; but, while the king was necessarily a priest, he was not the only priest in the community. There were special priesthoods, hereditary in particular families, even in the monarchical period; and upon the fall of the monarchy, while the priestly functions of the kings passed to republican magistrates, the priesthoods which were in the exclusive possession of the great families tended to become the important ones. Thus, before the rise of tyranny, Greek religion is aristocratic. The cults recognized by the state are the _sacra_ of noble clans. The religious prerogatives of the nobles helped to confirm their political ones, and, as long as religion retained its aristocratic character, it was impossible for democracy to take root. The policy of the tyrants aimed at fostering popular cults which had no associations with the old families, and at establishing new festivals. The cult of the wine-god, Dionysus, was thus fostered at Sicyon by Cleisthenes, and at Corinth by the Cypselids; while at Athens a new festival of this deity, which so completely overshadowed the older festival that it became known as the Great Dionysia, probably owed its institution to Peisistratus. Another festival, the Panathenaea, which had been instituted only a few years before his rise to power, became under his rule, and thanks to his policy, the chief national festival of the Athenian state. Everywhere, again, we find the tyrants the patrons of literature. Pindar and Bacchylides, Aeschylus and Simonides found a welcome at the court of Hiero. Polycrates was the patron of Anacreon, Periander of Arion. To Peisistratus has been attributed, possibly not without reason, the first critical edition of the text of Homer, a work as important in the literary history of Greece as was the issue of the Authorized Version of the Bible in English history. If we would judge fairly of tyranny, and of what it contributed to the development of Greece, we must remember how many states there were in whose history the period of greatest power coincides with the rule of a tyrant. This is unquestionably true of Corinth and Sicyon, as well as of Syracuse in the 5th, and again in the 4th century; it is probably true of Samos and Miletus. In the case of Athens it is only the splendour of the Great Age that blinds us to the greatness of the results achieved by the policy of the Peisistratids.

The arts.