Chapter XIX: Front Matter (19)

For matter relating to Assyrian history, the reader is
referred to the caption SEMITES, under which it will be given.
The subject is deferred to that part of this work which will
go later into print, for the reason that every month is adding
to the knowledge of the students of ancient oriental history
and clearing away disputed questions. It is quite possible
that the time between the publication of our first volume and
our fourth or fifth may make important additions to the scanty
literature of the subject in English. Modern excavation on the
sites of the ancient cities in the East, bringing to light
large library collections of inscribed clay tablets,--sacred
and historical writings, official records, business contracts
and many varieties of inscriptions,--have almost
revolutionized the study of ancient history and the views of
antiquity derived from it.
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"M. Botta, who was appointed French consul at Mosul in 1842,
was the first to commence excavations on the sites of the
buried cities of Assyria, and to him is due the honour of the
first discovery of her long lost palaces. M. Botta commenced
his labours at Kouyunjik, the large mound opposite Mosul, but
he found here very little to compensate for his labours. New
at the time to excavations, he does not appear to have worked
in the best manner; M. Botta at Kouyunjik contented himself
with sinking pits in the mound, and on these proving
unproductive abandoning them. While M. Botta was excavating at
Kouyunjik, his attention was called to the mounds of Khorsabad
by a native of the village on that site; and he sent a party
of workmen to the spot to commence excavation. In a few days
his perseverance was rewarded by the discovery of some
sculptures, after which, abandoning the work at Kouyunjik, he
transferred his establishment to Khorsabad and thoroughly
explored that site. ... The palace which M. Botta had
discovered ... is one of the most perfect Assyrian buildings
yet explored, and forms an excellent example of Assyrian
architecture. Beside the palace on the mound of Khorsabad, M.
Botta also opened the remains of a temple, and a grand porch
decorated by six winged bulls. ... The operations of M. Botta
were brought to a close in 1845, and a splendid collection of
sculptures and other antiquities, the fruits of his labours,
arrived in Paris in 1846 and was deposited in the Louvre.
Afterwards the French Government appointed M. Place consul at
Mosul, and he continued some of the excavations of his
predecessor. ... Mr. Layard, whose attention was early turned
in this direction, visited the country in 1840, and afterwards
took a great interest in the excavations of M. Botta. At
length, in 1845, Layard was enabled through the assistance of
Sir Stratford Canning to commence excavations in Assyria
himself. On the 8th of November he started from Mosul, and
descended the Tigris to Nimroud. ... Mr. Layard has described
in his works with great minuteness his successive excavations,
and the remarkable and interesting discoveries he made. ...
After making these discoveries in Assyria, Mr. Layard visited
Babylonia, and opened trenches in several of the mounds there.
On the return of Mr. Layard to England, excavations were
continued in the Euphrates valley under the superintendence of
Colonel (now Sir Henry) Rawlinson. Under his directions, Mr.
Hormuzd Rassam, Mr. Loftus, and Mr. Taylor excavated various
sites and made numerous discoveries, the British Museum
receiving the best of the monuments. The materials collected
in the national museums of France and England, and the
numerous inscriptions published, attracted the attention of
the learned, and very soon considerable light was thrown on
the history, language, manners, and customs of ancient Assyria
and Babylonia."

_G. Smith, Assyrian Discoveries, chapter 1._

"One of the most important results of Sir A. H. Layard's
explorations at Nineveh was the discovery of the ruined
library of the ancient city, now buried under the mounds of
Kouyunjik. The broken clay tablets belonging to this library
not only furnished the student with an immense mass of
literary matter, but also with direct aids towards a knowledge
of the Assyrian syllabary and language. Among the literature
represented in the library of Kouyunjik were lists of
characters, with their various phonetic and ideographic
meanings, tables of synonymes, and catalogues of the names of
plants and animals. This, however, was not all. The inventors
of the cuneiform system of writing had been a people who
preceded the Semites in the occupation of Babylonia, and who
spoke an agglutinative language utterly different from that of
their Semitic successors. These Accadians, as they are usually
termed, left behind them a considerable amount of literature,
which was highly prized by the Semitic Babylonians and
Assyrians. A large portion of the Ninevite tablets,
accordingly, consists of interlinear or parallel translations
from Accadian into Assyrian, as well as of reading books,
dictionaries, and grammars, in which the Accadian original is
placed by the side of its Assyrian equivalent. ... The
bilingual texts have not only enabled scholars to recover the
long-forgotten Accadian language; they have also been of the
greatest possible assistance to them in their reconstruction
of the Assyrian dictionary itself. The three expeditions
conducted by Mr. George Smith [1873-1876], as well as the
later ones of Mr. Hormuzd Rassam, have added largely to the
stock of tablets from Kouyunjik originally acquired for the
British Museum by Sir A. H. Layard, and have also brought to
light a few other tablets from the libraries of Babylonia."

_A. H. Sayce, Fresh Light from the Ancient Monuments, chapter 1._

ALSO IN:
_G. Rawlinson, Five Great Monarchies:
The Second Monarchy, chapter 9._

_Mr. Duncker, History of Antiquity, books 3-4._

_George Smith, Ancient History from the Monuments:
Assyria._

See, also, BABYLONIA and SEMITES.

ASSYRIA, Eponym Canon of.

"Just as there were archons at Athens and consuls at Rome who
were elected annually, so among the Assyrians there was a
custom of electing one man to be over the year, whom they
called 'limu,' or 'eponym.' ... Babylonian and Assyrian
documents were more generally dated by the names of these
eponyms than by that of the reigning King. ... In 1862 Sir
Henry Rawlinson discovered the fragment of the eponym canon of
Assyria. It was one of the grandest and most important
discoveries ever made, for it has decided definitely a great
many points which otherwise could never have been cleared up.
Fragments of seven copies of this canon were found, and from
these the chronology of Assyria has been definitely settled
from B. C. 1330 to about B. C. 620."

_E. A. W. Budge, Babylonian Life and History, chapter 3._

ASTOLF, King of the Lombards, A. D. 749-759.

ASTRAKHAN:
The Khanate.

See MONGOLS: A. D. 1238-1391.

ASTRAKHAN: A. D. 1569.
Russian repulse of the Turks.

See RUSSIA: A. D. 1569-1571.

ASTURIANS, The.

See CANTABRIANS.

ASTURIAS:
Resistance to the Moorish Conquest.

See SPAIN: A. D. 713-737.

ASTY, OR ASTU, The.

The ancient city of Athens proper, as distinguished from its
connected harbors, was called the Asty, or Astu.

_J. A. St. John, The Hellenes, book 1, chapter 4._

ALSO IN:
_W. M. Leake, Topography of Athens, section 10._

See also, ATHENS: AREA, &c.

A Logical Outline of Athenian and Greek History

[Red ] Physical or material. [Blue ] Ethnological. [Green] Social and political. [Brown] Intellectual, moral and religious. [Black] Foreign.

In which the dominant conditions and influences
are distinguished by colors.

The Land

The most capable people of early times, placed in the most favorable environment that the world in those times could offer them, worked out a civilization--perfect in all refinements except the moral--which has been the admiration and the marvel of later days.

Under modern conditions, the country of the Greeks gives no marked advantage to its inhabitants; but in the age of fiercer struggles, when war among men was tribal, universal, and hand to hand, and when the larger possibilities of pacific intercourse were bounded by one small sea, its intersecting mountains, its separated valleys and plains, its penetrating gulfs and bays, its clustered peninsulas in peninsulas, were helpful beyond measure to their social and political advance. In no other region of Europe could the independent city-states of ancient Hellas have grown up in shelter so safe, under skies so kindly, amid influences from the outer world so urgent and so strong.

It is reasonable to say that these happy conditions had much to do with the shaping of the character and career of the Greek people as a whole. But they differed very greatly from one another in their various political groups, and by differences that cannot be traced to varied surroundings of earth, or air, or sea, or human neighborhood. When every circumstance which distinguishes Athens in situation from Sparta, or from Corinth, or from Argos, has been weighed and reckoned, the Athenian is still parted from the Spartan, from the Corinthian and from the Argive, by a distinction which we name and do not explain by calling it family or race.

Ionians and Dorians.

At some time in the unknown past, there had been a parting of kindred among the ancestors of the Greeks, and the current of descent ran, for many centuries, perhaps, in two clearly divided streams, which acquired (in what manner, who can guess?) very different characteristics and qualities in their course. Then, in time, the great migrations, which are at the beginning of the traditions of the Greeks, brought these two branches of the race (the Doric and the Ionic, as they are named), into contact again, and associated them in a common career. In the inherited nature of the Ionian Greeks there was something which made them more sensitive to the finer delights of the mind, and prepared them to be more easily moved by every impulse toward philosophy and art, from the civilizations that were older than their own. In the Dorians there was less of this. They shared in equal measure, perhaps, the keen, clear Greek intellect, but they narrowed it to commoner aims.

Achaians.--Mycenæ.

It is possible that all which the Athenians came to be, their elder kindred, the Achaians, might have been. Their peninsula of Argolis is the peninsula of Attica in duplicate,--washed by the same waves, and reaching out to the same eastern world. They were first to touch hands with Phœnicia and with Egypt, and first to borrow arts and ideas from Memphis and Tyre. But their civilization, which they had raised to the height which Homer portrays, was overwhelmed by the Doric conquest; and the fact that these invaders, succeeding to the same vantage ground, remained as poor in culture as the Argives and their final masters, the Spartans, appear to have been, gives evidence of the strange difference that was rooted in the constitution of the two branches of the race.

Sparta.-Athens.

By force of this difference, the Spartans formed their state upon the grim lines of a military camp, and took leadership among the Greeks in practical affairs; the Athenians adorned a free city with great and beautiful works, made it hospitable to all genius and all the knowledge of the time, and created a capital for the civilization of the ancient world.

In all the Greek communities there was a primitive stage in which kings ruled over therm in a patriarchal way. In most of them the kingship surrendered to an oligarchy,--the oligarchy in time, was overthrown by some bold adventurer, who led a rising of the people and snatched power in the turmoil to make himself a "tyrant,"--and the tyrant in his turn fell after no long reign. In Athens that course of revolution was run; but it did not end as with the rest. The Athenian tyranny gave way to the purest democracy that has ever had trial in the world.

Æthel democracy.

That this Athenian democracy was wise in itself may be open to doubt; but it produced wise men, and, for the century of its great career, it was wonderfully led. How far that came to it from superiority of race, and how far as the fruitage of free institutions, no man can say; but the succession of statesmen who raised Athens to her pitch of greatness, without shattering the government of the people by the people, has no parallel in the annals of so small a state.

Sparta, not Athens, was the military head of Greece; but when a great emergency came upon the whole Greek world, it was the larger intelligence and higher spirit of the Attic state which inspired and guided the defence of the land and drove the Persians back.

B.C. 498-479. The Persian War.
B.C. 477. Confederacy of Delos.
B.C. 445-429. Age of Pericles.

Making prompt use of the ascendancy she had won in the Persian War, Athens rose rapidly in power and wealth. Under the guise of a federation of the Ionian cities of the islands and of Asia Minor, she created an empire subject to her rule. She commanded the sea with superior fleets, and became first in commerce, as she was first in knowledge, in politics and in arts. Her coffers overran with the riches poured into them by her tribute-gatherers and her men of trade, and she employed them with a noble prodigality upon her temples and the buildings of the state. Her abounding genius yielded fruits, in learning, letters, and art, which surpass the whole experience of the world, before and since, when measured against the smallness of the numbers from which they came.

B. C. 431-404. Peloponnesian War.

But the power attained by the Athenian democracy was arrogantly and harshly used; its sovereignty was exercised without generosity or restraint. It provoked the hatred of its subjects, and the bitter jealousy of rival states. Hence war in due time was inevitable, and Athens, alone in the war, was thrown down from her high estate. The last of the great leaders of her golden age died when her need of him was greatest, and her citizens were given over to demagogues who beguiled them to the ruin of the republic.

B.C. 404-379--Sparta
B.C. 379-362--Thebes

Sparta regained the supremacy in Greece, and her rude domination, imposed upon all, was harder to bear than the superiority of Athens had been. Under the lead of Epaminondas of Thebes--the most high-souled statesman who ever swayed the Hellenic race--the Spartan yoke was broken.

B.C. 338--Macedonian supremacy.

But, in breaking it, all unity in Hellas was destroyed, and all hope of resistance to any common foe. The foe who first appeared was the half-Greek Macedonian, King Philip, who subdued the whole peninsula with ease, and found none to defend it so heroically as the orator Demosthenes.

B. C. 384-328.
Alexander's conquests.
Hellenization of the East.

But the subjugated Greeks were not yet at the end of their career. With Philip's great son they went forth to a new and higher destiny than the building of petty states. Unwittingly he made conquest of an empire for them, and not for himself. They Hellenized it from the Euxine to the Nile. In Egypt, in Syria, and in Asia Minor, they entered and took possession of every field of activity, an put their impress on every movement of thought. Their philosophy and their literature fed all the intellectual hunger of the age; their energy was its civilizing force.

B. C. 197-146.--Roman conquest.

Then the Romans came, to conquer and be conquered by the spirit of Athenian Greece, and to do for Europe, in the West, what the Macedonians had done in the East. They effaced Greece from history, in the political sense; but they kneeled to her teaching, and became the servants of her civilization, to carry it wherever the Roman eagles went.

Christianity.

A little later, when that civilization was changed by the transforming spirit of the Gospel of Christ, it did not cease to be essentially Greek; for Hellenism and Hebraism were fused in the theology of the rising Christian Church, and Greek thought ruled mankind again in an altered phase.

A. D. 476-1458.--The Eastern Empire.

At last, when Roman imperialism was driven from the West, Greece drew it to herself, and reigned in the great name of Rome, and fought gloriously with barbarians and with infidels for a thousand added years, defending the Christian world till it grew strong and stood in peril no more.

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ASTYNOMI.

Certain police officials in ancient Athens, ten in number.
"They were charged with all that belongs to street
supervision, e. g., the cleansing of the streets, for which
purpose the coprologi, or street-sweepers, were under their
orders; the securing of morality and decent behaviour in the
streets."

_G. F. Schömann, Antiquity of Greece: The State,
part 3, chapter 3._

ASUNCION: A. D. 1537.
The founding of the city.

See PARAGUAY: A. D. 1515-1557.

ATABEGS, ATTABEGS, OR ATTABECKS.

"From the decline of the dynasty of Seljook to the conquest of
Persia by Hulakoo Khan, the son of Chenghis, a period of more
than a century, that country was distracted by the contests of
petty princes, or governors, called Attabegs; who, taking
advantage of the weakness of the last Seljookian monarchs, and
of the distractions which followed their final extinction,
established their authority over some of the finest provinces
of the Empire. Many of these petty dynasties acquired such a
local fame as, to this day, gives an importance to their
memory with the inhabitants of the countries over which they
ruled. ... The word Attabeg is Turkish: it is a compound word
of 'atta,' master, or tutor, and 'beg,' lord; and signifies a
governor, or tutor, of a lord or prince."

_Sir J. Malcolm, History of Persia, volume 1; chapter 9._

"It is true that the Atabeks appear but a short space as
actors on the stage of Eastern history; but these 'tutors of
princes' occupy a position neither insignificant nor
unimportant in the course of events which occurred in Syria
and Persia at the time they flourished."-

_W. H. Morley, Preface to Mirkhond's History of the
Atabeks._

See, also, SALADIN, THE EMPIRE OF.

ATAHUALPA, The Inca.

See PERU: A. D. 1581-1533.

ATELIERS NATIONAUX OF 1848, AT PARIS.

See FRANCE; A. D. 1848 (FEBRUARY-MAY),
and (APRIL-DECEMBER).

ATHABASCA, The District of.

See NORTHWEST TERRITORIES OF CANADA.

ATHABASCANS, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: ATHABASCAN FAMILY.

ATHALAYAS.

See SARDINIA, THE ISLAND: NAME AND EARLY HISTORY.

ATHEL.--ATHELING.--ATHELBONDE,

See ADEL.

ATHENRY, Battle of.

The most desperate battle fought by the Irish in resisting the
English conquest of Ireland. They were terribly slaughtered
and the chivalry of Connaught was crushed. The battle occurred
Aug. 10, A. D. 1316.

M. Haverty, _History of Ireland, p, 282._

----------ATHENRY: End----------

ATHENS:

ATHENS:
The Preëminence of Athens.

"When we speak of Greece we think first of Athens. ... To
citizens and to strangers by means of epic recitations and
dramatic spectacles, she presented an idealised image of life
itself. She was the home of new ideas, the mother-city from
which poetry, eloquence, and philosophy spread to distant
lands. While the chief dialects of Greece survive, each not as
a mere dialect but as the language of literature,--a thing
unknown in the history of any other people,--the Attic idiom,
in which the characteristic elements of other dialects met and
were blended, has become to us, as it did to the ancients, the
very type of Hellenic speech. Athens was not only the 'capital
of Greece,' the 'school of Greece;' it deserves the name
applied to it in an epitaph on Euripides: 'his country is
Athens, Greece of Greece.' The rays of the Greek genius here
found a centre and a focus."

_S. H. Butcher, Some Aspects of the Greek Genius, pages 38-39._

"Our interest in ancient history, it may be said, lies not in
details but in large masses. It matters little how early the
Arcadians acquired a political unity or what Nabis did to
Mycenæ; that which interests us is the constitution of Athens,
the repulse of Persia, the brief bloom of Thebes. Life is not
so long that we can spend our days over the unimportant fates
of uninteresting tribes and towns."

ATHENS:
Area and Population.

"The entire circuit of the Asty [the lower city, or Athens
proper], Long Walls and maritime city, taken as one inclosure,
is equal to about 17 English miles, or 148 stades. This is
very different from the 200 stades which Dion Chrysostom
states to have been the circumference of the same walls, an
estimate exceeding by more than 20 stades even the sum of the
peripheries of the Asty and Peimic towns, according to the
numbers of Thucydides. ... Rome was circular, Syracuse
triangular, and Athens consisted of two circular cities,
joined by a street of four miles in length,--a figure, the
superficies of which was not more than the fourth part of that
of a city of an equal circumference, in a circular form.
Hence, when to Rome within the walls were added suburbs of
equal extent, its population was greater than that of all
Attica. That of Athens, although the most populous city in
Greece, was probably never greater than 200,000."

_W. M. Leake, Topography of Athens, section 10._

Ionian Origin.

See DORIANS AND IONIANS.

ATHENS:
The Beginning of the city-state.
How Attica was absorbed in its capital.

"In the days of Cecrops and the first kings [see ATTICA] down
to the reign of Theseus, Attica was divided into communes,
having their own town-halls and magistrates. Except in case of
alarm the whole people did not assemble in council under the
king, but administered their own affairs, and advised together
in their several townships. Some of them at times even went to
war with him, as the Eleusinians under Eumolpus with
Erectheus. But when Theseus came to the throne, he, being a
powerful as well as a wise ruler, among other improvements in
the administration of the country, dissolved the councils and
separate governments, and united all the inhabitants of Attica
in the present city, establishing one council and town-hall.
They continued to live on their own lands, but he compelled
them to resort to Athens as their metropolis, and henceforward
they were all inscribed in the roll of her citizens. A great
city thus arose which was handed down by Theseus to his
descendants, and from his day to this the Athenians have
regularly celebrated the national festival of the Synoecia, or
'union of the communes' in honour of the goddess Athenè.
Before his time, what is now the Acropolis and the ground
lying under it to the south was the city. Many reasons may be
urged in proof of this statement."

_Thucydides, History (Jowett's translation), book 2,
section 15._

ALSO IN:
_M. Duncker, History of Greece, book 3, chapter 7 (volume 2)_.

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[Image: Map]

PLAN OF ATHENS.

From "Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens," by Jane E. Harrison and Margaret de G. Verrall.

[Image: Map]

HARBORS OF ATHENS.

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ATHENS:
From the Dorian Migration to B. C. 683.
End of kingship and institution of the Archons.

At the epoch of the Boeotian and Dorian migrations (see
GREECE: THE MIGRATIONS), Attica was flooded by fugitives, both
from the north and from the Peloponnesus. "But the bulk of the
refugees passed on to Asia, and built up the cities of Ionia.
... When the swarms of emigrants cleared off, and Athens is
again discernable, the crown has passed from the old royal
house of the Cecropidæ to a family of exiles from
Peloponnesus. ... A generation later the Dorian invasion,
which had overwhelmed Corinth and torn away Megara from the
Attic dominion, swept up to the very gates of Athens. An
oracle declared that the city would never fall if its ruler
perished by the hand of the invaders; therefore King Codrus
disguised himself as a peasant, set out for the Dorian camp,
struck down the first man he met, and was himself slain by the
second. The invasion failed, and the Athenians, to perpetuate
the memory of their monarch's patriotism, would not allow the
title of 'king' to be borne by the descendants who succeeded
him on the throne, but changed the name to 'archon,' or
'ruler.' ... These legends evidently cover some obscure
changes in the internal history of Attica."

_C. W. C. Oman, History of Greece, chapter 11._

"After the death of Codrus the nobles, taking advantage,
perhaps, of the opportunity afforded by the dispute between
his sons, are said to have abolished the title of king, and to
have substituted for it that of Archon. This change, however,
seems to have been important, rather as it indicated the new,
precarious tenure by which the royal power was held, than as
it immediately affected the nature of the office. It was,
indeed, still held for life; and Medon, the son of Codrus,
transmitted it to his posterity. ... After twelve reigns,
ending with that of Alcmæon [B. C. 752], the duration of the
office was limited to ten years; and through the guilt or
calamity of Hippomenes, the fourth decennial archon, the house
of Medon was deprived of its privilege, and the supreme
magistracy was thrown open to the whole body of nobles. This
change was speedily followed by one much more important. ...
The duration of the archonship was again reduced to a single
year [B. C. 683]; and, at the same time, its branches were
severed and distributed among nine new magistrates. Among
these, the first in rank retained the distinguishing title of
the Archon, and the year was marked by his name. He
represented the majesty of the state, and exercised a peculiar
jurisdiction--that which had belonged to the king as the
common parent of his people, the protector of families, the
guardian of orphans and heiresses, and of the general rights
of inheritance. For the second archon the title of king
[basileus], if it had been laid aside, was revived, as the
functions assigned to him were those most associated with
ancient recollections. He represented the king as the
high-priest of his people; he regulated the celebration of the
mysteries and the most solemn festivals; decided all causes
which affected the interests of religion. ... The third archon
bore the title of Polemarch, and filled the place of the king
as the leader of his people in war, and the guardian who
watched over its security in time of peace. ... The remaining
six archons received the common title of thesmothetes, which
literally signifies legislators, and was probably applied to
them as the judges who determined the great variety of causes
which did not fall under the cognizance of their colleagues;
because, in the absence of a written code, those who declare
and interpret the laws may be properly said to make them."

_C. Thirlwall, History of Greece, chapter 11._

"We are in no condition to determine the civil classification
and political constitution of Attica, even at the period of
the Archonship of Kreon, 683 B. C., when authentic Athenian
chronology first commences, much less can we pretend to any
knowledge of the anterior centuries. ... All the information
which we possess respecting that old polity is derived from
authors who lived after all or most of these great changes [by
Solon, and later]--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."

_G. Grote, History of Greece, part 2, chapter 10._

ALSO IN: _G. F. Schömann, Antiquity of Greece:
The State, part 3, chapter 3._

ATHENS: B. C. 624.
Under the Draconian Legislation.

"Drako was the first thesmothet, who was called upon to set
down his thesmoi [ordinances and decisions] in writing, and
thus to invest them essentially with a character of more or
less generality. 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 of 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.... 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 favouritism 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. He did not meddle with
the political constitution, and in his ordinances Aristotle
finds little worthy of remark except the extreme severity of
the punishments awarded: petty thefts, or even proved idleness
of life, being visited with death or disfranchisement. 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. ... 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."

_G. Grote, History of Greece, part 2, chapter 10 (volume 3)._

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ATHENS: B. C. 612-595.
Conspiracy of Cylon.
Banishment of the Alcmæonids.

The first attempt at Athens to overturn the oligarchical
government and establish a personal tyranny was made, B. C.
612, by Cylon (Kylon), a patrician, son-in-law of the tyrant
of Megara, who was encouraged and helped in his undertaking by
the latter. The conspiracy failed miserably. The partisans of
Cylon, blockaded in the acropolis, were forced to surrender;
but they placed themselves under the protection of the goddess
Minerva and were promised their lives. More effectually to
retain the protection of the goddess until their escape was
effected, they attached a cord to her altar and held it in
their hands as they passed out through the midst of their
enemies. Unhappily the cord broke, and the archon Megacles at
once declared that the safeguard of Minerva was withdrawn from
them, whereupon they were massacred without mercy, even though
they fled to the neighboring altars and clung to them. The
treachery and bad faith of this cruel deed does not seem to
have disturbed the Athenian people, but the sacrilege involved
in it caused horror and fear when they had had time to reflect
upon it. Megacles and his whole family--the Alcmæonids as they
were called, from the name of one of their ancestors--were
held accountable for the affront to the gods and were
considered polluted and accursed. Every public calamity was
ascribed to their sin, and at length, after a solemn trial,
they were banished from the city (about 596 or 595 B. C.),
while the dead of the family were disinterred and cast out.
The agitations of this affair exercised an important influence
on the course of events, which opened the way for Solon and
his constitutional reforms.

_C. Thirlwall, History of Greece, chapter 11._

ALSO IN: _G. Grote, History of Greece, part 2, chapter 10._

ATHENS: B. C. 610-586.
Struggle with Megara for Salamis.
Cirrhæan or First Sacred War.

"The petty state of Megara, which, since the earlier ages,
had, from the dependent of Athens, grown up to the dignity of
her rival, taking advantage of the internal dissensions in the
latter city, succeeded in wresting from the Athenian
government the isle of Salamis. It was not, however, without
bitter and repeated struggles that Athens at last submitted to
the surrender of the isle. But, after signal losses and
defeats, as nothing is ever more odious to the multitude than
unsuccessful war, so the popular feeling was such as to induce
the government to enact a decree by which it was forbidden,
upon pain of death, to propose reasserting the Athenian
claims. ... Many of the younger portion of the community,
pining at the dishonour of their country, and eager for
enterprise, were secretly inclined to countenance any
stratagem that might induce the reversal of the decree. At
this time there went a report through the city that a man of
distinguished birth ... had incurred the consecrating
misfortune of insanity. Suddenly this person appeared in the
market place, wearing the peculiar badge [a cap] that
distinguished the sick. ... Ascending the stone from which the
heralds made their proclamations, he began to recite aloud a
poem upon the loss of Salamis, boldly reproving the cowardice
of the people, and inciting them again to war. His supposed
insanity protected him from the law--his rank, reputation, and
the circumstance of his being himself a native of Salamis,
conspired to give to his exhortation a powerful effect, and
the friends he had secured to back his attempt loudly
proclaimed their applauding sympathy with the spirit of the
address. The name of the pretended madman was Solon, son of
Execestides, the descendant of Codrus. ... The stratagem and
the eloquence of Solon produced its natural effect upon his
spirited and excitable audience, and the public enthusiasm
permitted the oligarchical government to propose and effect
the repeal of the law. An expedition was decreed and planned,
and Solon was invested with its command. It was but a brief
struggle to recover the little island of Salamis. ... But the
brave and resolute Megarians were not men to be disheartened
by a single reverse; they persisted in the contest--losses
were sustained on either side, and at length both states
agreed to refer their several claims on the sovereignty of the
island to the decision of Spartan arbiters. And this appeal
from arms to arbitration is a proof how much throughout Greece
had extended that spirit of civilisation which is but an
extension of the sense of justice. ... The arbitration of the
umpires in favour of Athens only suspended hostilities; and
the Megarians did not cease to watch (and shortly afterwards
they found) a fitting occasion to regain a settlement so
tempting to their ambition. The credit acquired by Solon in
this expedition was shortly afterwards greatly increased in
the estimation of Greece. In the Bay of Corinth was situated a
town called Cirrha, inhabited by a fierce and lawless race,
who, after devastating the Sacred territories of Delphi,
sacrilegiously besieged the city itself, in the desire to
possess themselves of the treasures which the piety of Greece
had accumulated in the Temple of Apollo. Solon appeared at the
Amphictyonic council, represented the sacrilege of the
Cirrhæans, and persuaded the Greeks to arm in defence of the
altars of their tutelary god [B. C. 595]. Clisthenes, the
tyrant of Sicyon, was sent as commander-in-chief against the
Cirrhæans; and (according to Plutarch) the records of Delphi
inform us that Alcmæon was the leader of the Athenians. The
war [known as the First Sacred War] was not very successful at
the onset; the oracle of Apollo was consulted, and the answer
makes one of the most amusing anecdotes of priestcraft. The
besiegers were informed by the god that the place would not be
reduced until the waves of the Cirrhæan Sea washed the
territories of Delphi. The reply perplexed the army; but the
superior sagacity of Solon was not slow in discovering that
the holy intention of the oracle was to appropriate the lands
of the Cirrhæans to the profit of the temple. He therefore
advised the besiegers to attack and to conquer Cirrha, and to
dedicate its whole territory to the service of the god. The
advice was adopted--Cirrha was taken [B. C. 586]; it became
thenceforth the arsenal of Delphi, and the insulted deity had
the satisfaction of seeing the sacred lands washed by the
waves of the Cirrhæan Sea. ... The Pythian games commenced, or
were revived, in celebration of this victory of the Pythian god."

_Sir E. Bulwer Lytton, Athens: Its Rise and Fall,
book 2, chapter 1._

See, also, DELPHI.

{148}

ATHENS: B. C. 594.
The Constitution of Solon.
The Council of Four Hundred.

"Solon, Archon Ol. 46,1, was chosen mediator. Equity and
moderation are described by the ancients as the
characteristics of his mind; he determined to abolish the
privileges of particular classes, and the arbitrary power of
officers, and to render all the participators in civil and
political freedom equal in the eye of the law, at the same
time ensuring to everyone the integrity of those lights to
which his real merits entitled him; on the other hand, he was
far from contemplating a total subversion of existing
regulations. ... Whatever was excellent in prescription was
incorporated with the new laws and thereby stamped afresh; but
prescription as such, with the exception of some unwritten
religious ordinances of the Eumolpids, was deprived of force.
The law was destined to be the sole centre, whence every
member of the political community was to derive a fixed rule
of conduct."

_W. Wachsmuth, Historical Antiquities of the Greeks,
section 46 (volume 1)_.

"The factions, to allay the reviving animosities of which was
Solon's immediate object, had, at that time, formed parties
corresponding to the geographical division of the country,
which we have already adverted to; the Pediæi, or inhabitants
of the lowlands, insisted on a strict oligarchy; the Parali,
on the coast, who, did we not find the Alcmaeonid Megacles at
their head, might be considered the wealthier portion of the
people, wished for a mixed constitution; but the Diacrii or
Hyperacrii [of the mountainous district] formed the great
majority, who, in their impoverished state, looked for relief
only from a total revolution. Solon might, had he so chosen,
have made himself tyrant by heading this populace: but he
preferred acting as mediator, and with this view caused
himself to be elected archon, B. C. 594, as being an Eupatrid
of the house ... of Codrus."

_C. F. Hermann, Manual of the Political
Antiquities of Greece, chapter 5, section 106._

"The chief power was vested in the collective people; but in
order that it might be exercised with advantage it was
necessary that they should be endowed with common rights of
citizenship. Solon effected this by raising the lower class
from its degradation, and by subjecting to legal control those
who had till now formed the governing order, as well as by
rendering the liberty of both dependent upon the law. ... This
change was brought about by two ordinances, which must not be
regarded as mere remedies for the abuses of that period, but
as the permanent basis of free and legal citizenship. The one
was the Seisachtheia; this was enacted by Solon to afford
relief to oppressed debtors, by reducing their debts in
amount, and by raising the value of money in the payment of
interest and principal; at the same time he abrogated the
former rigorous law of debt by which the freeman might be
reduced to servitude, and thus secured to him the unmolested
possession of his legal rights. ... A second ordinance
enjoined, that their full and entire rights should be restored
to all citizens who had incurred Atimia, except to absolute
criminals. This was not only destined to heal the wounds which
had been caused by the previous dissensions, but as till that
time the law of debt had been able to reduce citizens to
Atimia, and the majority of the Atimoi pointed out by Solon
were slaves for debt, that declaration stood in close
connection with the Seisachtheia, and had the effect of a
proclamation from the state of its intention to guarantee the
validity of the new citizenship. ... The right of
naturalization was granted by Solon to deserving aliens, when
6,000 citizens declared themselves in favour of the measure,
but these new citizens were likewise deficient in a few of the
privileges of citizenship. ... The statement that Solon
received a great many foreigners as citizens, and every
artizan that presented himself, appears highly improbable, as
Solon was the first legislator who systematically regulated
the condition of the Metœci. The Metœci ... probably took the
place of the former Demiurgi; their position was one of
sufferance, but the protection of the laws was guaranteed
them. ... The servile order, exclusively consisting of
purchased aliens and their descendants, did not, as a body,
stand in direct relation with the state; individual slaves
became the property of individual citizens, but a certain
number were employed by the state as clerks, etc., and were
abandoned to the arbitrary pleasure of their oppressive
taskmasters. ... Those who were manumitted stood upon the
footing of Metœci; the citizens who enfranchised them becoming
their Prostatæ. ... Upon attaining the age of puberty, the
sons of citizens entered public life under the name of Ephebi.
The state gave them two years for the full development of
their youthful strength. ... Upon the expiration of the
second, and according to the most authentic accounts, in their
eighteenth year, they received the shield and spear in the
popular assembly, complete armour being given to the sons of
those who had fallen in battle, and in the temple of Agraulos
took the oath of young citizens, the chief obligations of
which concerned the defence of their country, and then for the
space of one or two years performed military service in the
Attic border fortresses under the name of Peripoli. The
ceremony of arming them was followed by enrolment in the book
which contained the names of those who had attained majority;
this empowered the young citizen to manage his own fortune,
preside over a household, enter the popular assembly, and
speak. When he asserted the last right, viz., the Isegoria,
Parrhesia, he was denominated Rhetor, and this appellation
denoted the difference between him and the silent member of
the assembly, the Idiotes. ... Upon attaining his 30th year,
the citizen might assert his superior rights; he was qualified
for a member of the sworn tribunal entitled Heliæa. ... The
word Heliast does not merely signify a judge; but the citizen
who has fully attained maturity. ... The judges of the courts
of the Diætetæ and Ephetæ, which existed without the circle of
the ordinary tribunals, were required to be still older men
than the Heliasts, viz., 50 or 60 years of age. Solon
appointed gradations in the rights of citizenship, according
to the conditions of a census in reference to offices of
state. ... Upon the principle of a conditional equality of
rights, which assigns to everyone as much as he deserves, and
which is highly characteristic of Solon's policy in general,
he instituted four classes according to a valuation; these
were the Pentacosiomedimni [whose land yielded 500 measures of
wheat or oil], the Hippeis [horsemen], the Zeugitæ [owners of
a yoke of mules], and the Thetes [or laborers]. The valuation,
however, only affected that portion of capital from which
contributions to the state-burthens were required,
consequently, according to Böckh, a taxable capital. ... The
Thetes, the last of these classes, were not regularly summoned
to perform military service, but only exercised the civic
right as members of the assembly and the law-courts; ... the
highest class exclusively supplied the superior offices, such
as the archonship, and through this the council of the
Areopagus. ... In lieu of the former council of
administration, of which no memorial has been preserved, Solon
instituted a Council of four hundred citizens taken from the
first three classes, 100 from every Phyle, of which no person
under 30 years of age could be a member. The appointments were
renewed annually; the candidates underwent an examination, and
such as were deemed eligible drew lots."

_W. Wachsmuth, Historical Antiquities of the Greeks,
section 46-47 (volume 1)._

ALSO IN:
_G. F. Schömann, Antiquity of Greece: The State,
part 3, chapter 3, section 4._

_E. Abbott, History of Greece, part 11, chapter 3._

_G. Grote, History of Greece, chapter 11._

_Plutarch, Solon._

_Aristotle, On the Constitution of Athens
(translated by E. Poste), chapters 5-13._

See, also,
AREOPAGUS, PRYTANES, HELIÆA, and DEBT.

{149}

ATHENS: B. C. 560-510.
The tyranny of the Pisistratidæ.

"The constitution which he [Solon] framed was found to be
insufficient even in his own life-time. ... The poor citizens
were still poor, in spite of the Seisachtheia and the reform
of the constitution. At the same time the admission of the
lowest class in the scale of property to the rights of
Athenian citizenship, and the authority given to the General
Assembly, had thrown a power into the hands of the masses
which filled the more conservative citizens with resentment
and alarm. And so the old party quarrels, which had divided
Attica before the reforms of Solon, reappeared after them with
even greater violence. The men of the plain were led by
Miltiades, a grandson of the tyrant of Corinth, and Lycurgus,
the son of Aristolaidas; the men of the shore by Megacles, the
Alcmæonid, who had recently strengthened the position of his
family by his marriage with Agariste, the daughter of
Clisthenes of Sicyon. At the head of the mountaineers stood
Pisistratus, a descendant of the royal stock of Nestor, who
... had greatly distinguished himself in the Salaminian war.
As he possessed property in the neighborhood of Marathon,
Pisistratus may have been intimately known to the inhabitants
of the adjacent hills. ... Solon watched the failure of his
hopes with the deepest distress. He endeavoured to recall the
leaders of the contending parties to a sense of their duty to
the country, and to soothe the bitterness of their followers.
With a true instinct he regarded Pisistratus as by far the
most dangerous of the three. Pisistratus was an approved
general, and the faction which he led was composed of poor men
who had nothing to lose. ... Pisistratus met the vehement
expressions of Solon by driving wounded into the market-place.
The people's friend had suffered in the people's cause; his
life was in danger. The incident roused the Athenians to an
unusual exercise of political power. Without any previous
discussion in the Council, a decree was passed by the people
allowing Pisistratus to surround himself with a body-guard of
fifty men, and to arm them with clubs. Thus protected, he
threw off all disguises, and established himself in the
Acropolis as tyrant of Athens [B. C. 560]. ... Herodotus tells
us that Pisistratus was a just and moderate ruler. He did not
alter the laws or remove the existing forms of government. The
Council was still elected, the Assembly continued to meet,
though it is improbable that either the one or the other was
allowed to extend its functions beyond domestic affairs. The
archons still continued to be the executive magistrates of the
city, and cases of murder were tried, as of old, at the
Areopagus. The tyrant contented himself with occupying the
Acropolis with his troops and securing important posts in the
administration for his family or his adherents." Twice,
however, Pisistratus was driven from power by the combination
of his opponents, and into exile, for four years in the first
instance and for ten years in the last; but Athens was
compelled to accept him for a ruler in the end. "Pisistratus
remained in undisturbed possession of the throne till his
death in 527 B. C. He was succeeded by his eldest son Hippias,
with whom Hipparchus and Thessalus, his younger sons, were
associated in the government." But these younger tyrants soon
made themselves intolerably hateful, and a conspiracy formed
against them by Harmodius and Aristogeiton was successful in
taking the life of Hipparchus. Four years later, in 510 B. C.,
with the help of Delphi and Sparta, Hippias was driven from
the city. Clisthenes, at the head of the exiled Alcmæonids,
was the master-spirit of the revolution, and it was under his
guidance that the Athenian democratic
constitution was reorganized.

_E. Abbott, History of Greece, volume 1, chapter 15._

ALSO IN:
_G. Grote, History of Greece, chapter 11 and 30._

ATHENS: B. C. 510-507.
The constitution of Cleisthenes.
Advance of democracy.

"The expulsion of the Pisistratides left the democratical
party, which had first raised them to power, without a leader.
The Alcmæonids had always been considered as its adversaries,
though they were no less opposed to the faction of the nobles,
which seems at this time to have been headed by Isagoras. ...
Cleisthenes found himself, as his party had always been,
unable to cope with it; he resolved, therefore, to shift his
ground, and to attach himself to that popular cause which
Pisistratus had used as the stepping stone of his ambition.
His aims, however, were not confined to a temporary advantage
over his rivals; he planned an important change in the
constitution, which should forever break the power of his
whole order, by dissolving some of the main links by which
their sway was secured. For this purpose, having gained the
confidence of the commonalty and obtained the sanction of the
Delphic oracle, he abolished the four ancient tribes, and made
a fresh geographical division of Attica into ten new tribes,
each of which bore a name derived from some Attic hero. The
ten tribes were subdivided into districts of various extent,
called demes, each containing a town or village. ...
Cleisthenes appears to have preserved the ancient phratries;
but as they were now left insulated by the abolition of the
tribes to which they belonged, they lost all political
importance. ... Cleisthenes at the same time increased the
strength of the commonalty by making a great many new
citizens, and he is said to have enfranchised not only
aliens--and these both residents and adventurers from
abroad--but slaves. ... The whole frame of the state was
reorganized to correspond with the new division of the country.
{150}
The Senate of the Four Hundred was increased to Five Hundred,
that fifty might be drawn from each tribe, and the rotation of
the presidency was adapted to this change, the fifty
councillors of each tribe filling that office for thirty-five
or thirty-six days in succession, and nine councillors being
elected one from each of the other tribes to preside at the
Council and the Assembly of the People, which was now called
regularly four times in the month, certain business being
assigned to each meeting. The Heliæa was also distributed into
ten courts: and the same division henceforth prevailed in most
of the public offices, though the number of the archons
remained unchanged. To Cleisthenes also is ascribed the formal
institution of the ostracism. ... These changes, and the
influence they acquired for their author, reduced the party of
Isagoras to utter weakness, and they saw no prospect of
maintaining themselves but by foreign aid." Isagoras,
accordingly, applied for help to Cleomenes, one of the kings
of Sparta, who had already interfered in Athenian affairs by
assisting at the expulsion of the Pisistratidæ. Cleomenes
responded by coming to Athens with a small force [B. C. 508],
which sufficed to overawe the people, and, assuming
dictatorial authority, he established Isagoras in power, with
an attempted rearrangement of the government. "He began by
banishing 700 families designated by Isagoras, and then
proceeded to suppress the Council of the Five Hundred, and to
lodge the government in the hands of Three Hundred of his
friend's partisans. When, however, the councillors resisted
this attempt, the people took heart, and, Cleomenes and
Isagoras having occupied the citadel, rose in a body and
besieged them there. As they were not prepared to sustain a
siege, they capitulated on the third day: Cleomenes and
Isagoras were permitted to depart with the Lacedæmonian
troops, but they were compelled to abandon their adherents to
the mercy of their enemies. All were put to death, and
Cleisthenes and the 700 banished families returned
triumphantly to Athens." Cleomenes soon afterwards raised a
force with which to subdue Athens and restore Isagoras. The
Athenians in their alarm sent an embassy to Sardis to solicit
the protection of the Persians. Fortunately, nothing came of
it, and Cleomenes was so much opposed in his project, by the
Corinthians and other allies of Sparta, that he had to give it
up.

_C. Thirlwall, History of Greece, chapter 11._

ALSO IN:
_G. Grote, History of Greece, part 2, chapter 31._

_E. Abbott, History of Greece, chapter 15._

_Aristotle, On the Constitution of Athens
(translated by E. Poste), chapter 20-22._

ATHENS: B. C. 509-506.
Hostile undertakings of Kleomenes and Sparta.
Help solicited from the Persian king.
Subjection refused.
Failure of Spartan schemes to restore tyranny.
Protest of the Corinthians.
Successful war with Thebes and Chalcis.