Chapter IV: , VII (23)

"The government of the family of Este at Ferrara, Modena, and
Reggio displays curious contrasts of violence and popularity.
Within the palace frightful deeds were perpetrated; a princess
was beheaded [1425] for alleged adultery with a stepson;
legitimate and illegitimate children fled from the court, and
even abroad their lives were threatened by assassins sent in
pursuit of them (1471). Plots from without were incessant; the
bastard of a bastard tried to wrest the crown from the lawful
heir, Hercules I.: this latter is said afterwards (1493) to
have poisoned his wife on discovering that she, at the
instigation of her brother, Ferrante of Naples, was going to
poison him. This list of tragedies is closed by the plot of
two bastards against their brothers; the ruling Duke Alfonso
I. and the Cardinal Ippolito (1506), which was discovered in
time, and punished with imprisonment for life. ... It is
undeniable that the dangers to which these princes were
constantly exposed developed in them capacities of a
remarkable kind."

_J. Burckhardt,
The Civilization of the Period of the Renaissance in Italy,
part 1, chapter 5._

For the facts of the ending of the legitimate Italian line of
Este,

See PAPACY: A. D. 1597.

ESTHONIA, OR ESTONIA:
Origin of the name.

See ÆSTII.

ESTHONIA, OR ESTONIA: Christian conquest.

See LIVONIA: 12TH-13TH CENTURIES.

ESTIENNES, The Press of the.

See PRINTING: A. D. 1496-1598.

ESTREMOS, OR AMEIXAL, Battle of (1663).

See PORTUGAL: A. D. 1637-1668.

ETCHEMINS, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: ALGONQUIAN FAMILY.

ETHANDUN, OR EDINGTON, Battle of (A. D. 878).

See ENGLAND: A. D. 855-880.

ETHEL, ETHELINGS, OR ÆTHELINGS.

"The sons and brothers of the king [of the English] were
distinguished by the title of Æthelings. The word Ætheling,
like eorl, originally denoted noble birth simply; but as the
royal house of Wessex rose to pre-eminence and the other royal
houses and the nobles generally were thereby reduced to a
relatively lower grade, it became restricted to the near
kindred of the national king."

_T. P. Taswell-Langmead,
English Constitutional History,
page 29._

"It has been sometimes held that the only nobility of blood
recognized in England before the Norman Conquest was that of
the king's kin. The statement may be regarded as deficient in
authority, and as the result of a too hasty generalization
from the fact that only the sons and brothers of the kings
bear the name of ætheling. On the other hand must be alleged
the existence of a noble (edhiling) class among the
continental Saxons who had no kings at all. ... The laws of
Ethelbert prove the existence of a class bearing the name of
eorl of which no other interpretation can be given. That
these, eorlas and æthel, were the descendants of the primitive
nobles of the first settlement, who, on the institution of
royalty, sank one step in dignity from the ancient state of
rude independence, in which they had elected their own chiefs
and ruled their own dependents, may be very reasonably
conjectured. ... The ancient name of eorl, like that of
ætheling, changed its application, and, under the influence,
perhaps, of Danish association, was given like that of jarl to
the official ealdorman. Henceforth the thegn takes the place
of the æthel, and the class of thegns probably embraces all
the remaining families of noble blood. The change may have
been very gradual; the 'north people's law' of the tenth or
early eleventh century still distinguishes the eorl and
ætheling with a wergild nearly double that of the ealdorman
and seven times that of the thegn; but the north people's law
was penetrated with Danish influence, and the eorl probably
represents the jarl rather than the ealdorman, the great eorl
of the fourth part of England as it was divided by Canute. ...
The word eorl is said to be the same as the Norse jarl and
another form of ealdor (?); whilst the ceorl answers to the
Norse Karl; the original meaning of the two being old man and
young man."

_W. Stubbs,
Constitutional History of England,
chapter 6, section 64, and note._

ETHEL.--Family-land.

See ALOD; and FOLCLAND.

ETHELBALD,
King of Mercia, A. D. 716-755.
Ethelbald, King of Wessex, A. D. 858-860.

ETHELBERT,
King of Kent, A. D. 565-616.
Ethelbert, King of Wessex, A. D. 860-866.

ETHELFRITH, King of Northumberland, A. D. 593-617.

ETHELRED,
King of Wessex, A. D. 866-871.
Ethelred, called the Unready, King of Wessex, A. D. 979-1016.

{988}

ETHELSTAN, King of Wessex, A. D. 925-940.

ETHELWULF, King of Wessex, A. D. 836-858.

ETHIOPIA.

The Ethiopia of the ancients, "in the ordinary and vague sense
of the term, was a vast tract extending in length above a
thousand miles, from the 9th to the 24th degree of north
latitude, and in breadth almost 900 miles, from the shores of
the Red Sea and Indian Ocean to the desert of the Sahara. This
tract was inhabited for the most part by wild and barbarous
tribes--herdsmen, hunters, or fishermen--who grew no corn,
were unacquainted with bread, and subsisted on the milk and
flesh of their cattle, or on game, turtle, and fish, salted or
raw. The tribes had their own separate chiefs, and
acknowledged no single head, but on the contrary were
frequently at war one with the other, and sold their prisoners
for slaves. Such was Ethiopia in the common vague sense; but
from this must be distinguished another narrower Ethiopia,
known sometimes as 'Ethiopia Proper' or 'Ethiopia above
Egypt,' the limits of which were, towards the south, the
junction of the White and Blue Niles, and towards the north
the Third Cataract. Into this tract, called sometimes 'the
kingdom of Meroë,' Egyptian civilisation had, long before the
eighth century [B. C.], deeply penetrated. Temples of the
Egyptian type, stone pyramids, avenues of sphinxes, had been
erected; a priesthood had been set up, which was regarded as
derived from the Egyptian priesthood; monarchical institutions
had been adopted; the whole tract formed ordinarily one
kingdom, and the natives were not very much behind the
Egyptians in arts or arms, or very different from them in
manners, customs, and mode of life. Even in race the
difference was not great. The Ethiopians were darker in
complexion than the Egyptians, and possessed probably a
greater infusion of Nigritic blood; but there was a common
stock at the root of the two races--Cush and Mizraim were
brethren. In the region of Ethiopia Proper a very important
position was occupied in the eighth century [B. C.] by Napata.
Napata was situated midway in the great bend of the Nile,
between latitude 18° and 19°. ... It occupied the left bank of
the river in the near vicinity of the modern Gebel Berkal. . .
Here, when the decline of Egypt enabled the Ethiopians to
reclaim their ancient limits, the capital was fixed of that
kingdom, which shortly became a rival of the old empire of the
Pharaohs, and aspired to take its place. ... The kingdom of
Meroë, whereof it was the capital, reached southward as far as
the modern Khartoum, and eastward stretched up to the
Abyssinian highlands, including the valleys of the Atbara and
its tributaries, together with most of the tract between the
Atbara and the Blue Nile. ... Napata continued down to Roman
times a place of importance, and only sank to ruin in
consequence of the campaigns of Petronius against Candacé in
the first century after our era."

_G. Rawlinson,
History of Ancient Egypt,
chapter 25._

ALSO IN:
_A. H. L. Heeren,
Historical Researches, Carthaginians,
Ethiopians, &c., pages 143-249._

See, also, EGYPT: ABOUT B. C. 1200-670;
and LIBYANS, THE.

ETON SCHOOL.

See EDUCATION, MODERN: EUROPEAN COUNTRIES.--ENGLAND.

ETRURIA, Ancient.

See ETRUSCANS.

ETRURIA, The kingdom of.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1801-1803;
also PORTUGAL: A. D. 1807;
and FRANCE: A. D. 1807-1808(NOVEMBER-FEBRUARY).

ETRUSCANS, The.

"At the time when Roman history begins, we find that a
powerful and warlike race, far superior to the Latins in
civilisation and in the arts of life, hemmed in the rising
Roman dominion in the north. The Greeks called them Turrhenoi,
the Romans called them Etrusci, they called themselves the
Rasenna. Who they were and whence they came has ever been
regarded as one of the most doubtful and difficult problems in
ethnology. One conclusion only can be said to have been
universally accepted both in ancient and in modern times. It
is agreed on every hand that in all essential points, in
language, in religion, in customs, and in appearance, the
Etruscans were a race wholly different from the Latins. There
is also an absolute agreement of all ancient tradition to the
effect that the Etruscans were not the original inhabitants of
Etruria, but that they were an intrusive race of conquerors.
... It has been usually supposed that the Rasenna made their
appearance in Italy some ten or twelve centuries before the
Christian era. ... For some six or seven centuries, the
Etruscan power and territory continued steadily to increase,
and ultimately stretched far south of the Tiber, Rome itself
being included in the Etruscan dominion, and being ruled by an
Etruscan dynasty. The early history of Rome is to a great
extent the history of the uprising of the Latin race, and its
long struggle for Italian supremacy with its Etruscan foe. It
took Rome some six centuries of conflict to break through the
obstinate barrier of the Etruscan power. The final conquest of
Etruria by Rome was effected in the year 281 B. C. ... The
Rasennic people were collected mainly in the twelve great
cities of Etruria proper, between the Arno and the Tiber.
[Modern Tuscany takes its name from the ancient Etruscan
inhabitants of the region.] This region was the real seat of
the Etruscan power. ... From the 'Shah-nameh,' the great
Persian epic, we learn that the Aryan Persians called their
nearest non-Aryan neighbours--the Turkic or Turcoman tribes to
the north of them--by the name Turan, a word from which we
derive the familiar ethnologic term Turanian. The Aryan
Greeks, on the other hand, called the Turkic tribe of the
Rasenna, the nearest non-Aryan race, by the name of Turrhenoi.
The argument of this book is to prove that the Tyrrhenians of
Italy were of kindred race with the Turanians of Turkestan. Is
it too much to conjecture that the Greek form Turrhene may be
identically the same word as the Persian form Turan?"

_I. Taylor,
Etruscan Researches,
chapter 2._

"The utmost we can say is that several traces, apparently
reliable, point to the conclusion that the Etruscans may be on
the whole included among the Indo-Germans. ... But even
granting those points of connection, the Etruscan people
appears withal scarcely less isolated. 'The Etruscans,'
Dionysius said long ago, 'are like no other nation in language
and manners'; and we have nothing to add to his statement. ...
Reliable traces of any advance of the Etruscans beyond the
Tiber, by land, are altogether wanting. ... South of the Tiber
no Etruscan settlement can be pointed out as having owed its
origin to founders who came by land; and that no indication
whatever is discernible of any serious pressure by the
Etruscans upon the Latin nation."

_T. Mommsen,
History of Rome,
book 1, chapter 9._

{989}

EUBŒA.

"The island of Eubœa, long and narrow like Krête, and
exhibiting a continuous backbone of lofty mountains from
northwest to southeast, is separated from Bœotia at one point
by a strait so narrow (celebrated in antiquity under the name
of the Eurīpus) that the two were connected by a bridge for a
large portion of the historical period of Greece, erected
during the later times of the Peloponnesian war by the
inhabitants of Chalkis [Chalcis]. Its general want of breadth
leaves little room for plains. The area of the island consists
principally of mountain, rock, dell, and ravine, suited in
many parts for pasture, but rarely convenient for
grain-culture or town habitations. Some plains there were,
however, of great fertility, especially that of Lelantum,
bordering on the sea near Chalkis, and continuing from that
city in a southerly direction towards Eretria. Chalkis and
Eretria, both situated on the western coast, and both
occupying parts of this fertile plain, were the two principal
places in the island: the domain of each seems to have
extended across the island from sea to sea. ... Both were in
early times governed by an oligarchy, which among the
Chalcidians was called the Hippobotæ, or Horse feeders,--
proprietors probably of most part of the plain called
Lelantum."

_G. Grote,
History of Greece,
part 2, chapter 12._

See, also, NEGROPONT.

EUBOIC TALENT.

See TALENT.

EUCHITES, The.

See MYSTICISM.

EUDES, King of France
(in partition with Charles the Simple), A. D. 887-898.

EUDOSES, The.

See AVIONES.

EUGENE (Prince) of Savoy, Campaigns of.

See HUNGARY: A. D. 1699-1718;
GERMANY: A. D. 1704;
ITALY (SAVOY AND PIEDMONT): A. D. 1701-1713;
NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1708-1709, and 1710-1712.

EUGENE I., Pope, A. D. 655-657.
Eugene II., Pope, A. D. 824-827.
Eugene III., Pope, A. D. 1145-1153.
Eugene IV., Pope, A. D. 1431-1447.

EUGENIANS, The.

See HY-NIALS.

EUMENES, and the wars of the Diadochi.

See MACEDONIA: B. C. 323-316.

EUMOLPHIDÆ, The.

See PHYLÆ.

EUPATRIDÆ, The.

"The Eupatridæ [in ancient Athens] are the wealthy and
powerful men, belonging to the most distinguished families in
all the various gentes, and principally living in the city of
Athens, after the consolidation of Attica: from them are
distinguished the middling and lower people, roughly
classified into husbandmen and artisans. To the Eupatridæ is
ascribed a religious as well as a political and social
ascendency. They are represented as the source of all
authority on matters both sacred and profane,"

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

EUROKS, OR YUROKS.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: MODOCS.

EUROPE.

A HISTORICAL SKETCH.

A general sketch of the history of Europe at large cannot, for
obvious reasons, be constructed of quotations from the
historians, on the plan followed in other parts of this work.
The editor has found it necessary, therefore, to introduce
here an essay of his own.

The first inhabitants of the continent of Europe have left no
trace of their existence on the surface of the land. The
little that we know of them has been learned by the discovery
of deeply buried remains, including a few bones and skulls,
many weapons and tools which they had fashioned out of stone
and bone, and some other rude marks of their hands which time
has not destroyed. The places in which these remains are
found--under deposits that formed slowly in ancient river beds
and in caves--have convinced geologists that the people whose
existence they reveal lived many thousands of years ago, and
that the continent of Europe in their time was very different
from the Europe of the present day, in its climate, in its
aspect, and in its form. They find reason to suppose that the
peninsula of Italy, as well as that of Spain, was then an
isthmus which joined Europe to Africa; and this helps to
explain the fact that remains of such animals as the elephant,
the lion, the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, and the hyena, as
well as the mammoth, are found with the remains of these early
men. They all seem to have belonged, together, to a state of
things, on the surface of the earth, which was greatly changed
before the men and the animals that we have historical
knowledge of appeared.

The Stone Age.

These primitive Europeans were evidently quite at the bottom
of the savage state. They had learned no use of metals, since
every relic of their workmanship that can be found is of
stone, or bone, or wood. It is thought possible that they
shaped rough vessels out of unbaked clay; but that is
uncertain. There is nothing to show that they had domesticated
any animals. It is plain that they dwelt in caves, wherever
nature provided such dwellings; but what shelters they may
have built elsewhere for themselves is unknown.

In one direction, only, did these ancient people exhibit a
faculty finer than we see in the lowest savages of the present
day: they were artists, in a way. They have left carvings and
drawings of animals--the latter etched with a sharp point on
horns, bones, and stones--which are remarkable for uncultured
men.

The period in man's life on the earth at which these people
lived--the period before metals were known--has been named by
archæologists the Stone Age. But the Stone Age covers two
stages of human culture--one in which stone implements were
fashioned unskilfully, and a second in which they were
finished with expert and careful hands. The first is called
the Palæolithic or Old Stone Age, the second the Neolithic or
New Stone Age. Between the two periods in Europe there seems
to have been a long interval of time, and a considerable
change in the condition of the country, as well as in that of
its people.
{990}
In fact, the Europe of the Neolithic Age was probably not very
different in form and climate from the Europe of our own day.
Relics of the human life of that time are abundantly scattered
over the face of the continent. There are notable deposits of
them in the so-called "kitchen-middens" of Denmark, which are
great mounds of shells,--shells of oysters and other
molluscs,--which these ancient fishermen had opened and
emptied, and then cast upon a refuse heap. Buried in those
mounds, many bits of their workmanship have been preserved,
and many hints of their manner of life are gleaned from the
signs and tokens which these afford. They had evidently risen
some degrees above the state of the men of the Palæolithic or
Old Stone Age; but they were inferior in art.

The Bronze Age.

The discovery and use of copper--the metal most easily worked,
and most frequently found in the metallic state--is the event
by which archæologists mark the beginning of a second state in
early civilizations. The period during which copper, and
copper hardened by an alloy of tin, are the only metals found
in use, they call the Bronze Age. There is no line of positive
division between this and the Neolithic period which it
followed. The same races appear to have advanced from the one
stage to the other, and probably some were in possession of
tools and weapons of bronze, while others were still
contenting themselves with implements of stone.

Lake Dwellings.

In many parts of Europe, especially in Switzerland and
northern Italy, plain traces of some curious habitations of
people who lived through the later Stone Age into the Bronze
Age, and even after it, have been brought to light. These are
the "lake dwellings," or "lacustrine habitations," as they
have been called, which have excited interest in late years.
They were generally built on piles, driven into a lake-bottom,
at such distance from shore as would make them easy of defence
against enemies. The foundations of whole villages of these
dwellings have been found in the Swiss and North Italian
lakes, and less numerously elsewhere. From the lake-mud under
and around them, a great quantity of relics of the
lake-dwellers have been taken, and many facts about their arts
and mode of life have been learned. It is known that, even
before a single metal had come into their hands, they had
begun to cultivate the earth; had raised wheat and barley and
flax; had domesticated the horse, the ox, the sheep, the goat,
the pig and the dog; had become fairly skilful in weaving, in
rope-making, and in the art of the potter, but without the
potter's wheel.

Gradually copper and bronze made their appearance among the
implements of these people, as modern search discovers them
imbedded, layer upon layer, in the old ooze of the lake-beds
where they were dropped. In time, iron, too, reveals itself
among their possessions, showing that they lived in their
lake-villages from the later Stone Age into that third period
of the early process of civilization which is named the Iron
Age--when men first acquired the use of the most useful of all
the metals. It appears, in fact, that the lake-dwellings were
occupied even down to Roman times, since articles of Roman
make have been found in the ruins of them.

Barrows.

In nearly all parts of Europe there are found burial mounds,
called barrows, which contain buried relics of people who
lived at one or the other of the three periods named. For the
most part, they represent inhabitants of the Neolithic and of
the Bronze Ages. In Great Britain some of these barrows are
long, some are round; and the skulls found in the long barrows
are different in shape from those in the round ones, showing a
difference of race. The people to whom the first belonged are
called "long-headed," or "dolichocephalic"; the others are
called "broad-headed," or "brachycephalic." In the opinion of
some ethnologists, who study this subject of the distinctions
of race in the human family, the broad-headed people were
ancestors of the Celtic or Keltic tribes, whom the Romans
subdued in Gaul and Britain; while the long-headed men were of
a preceding race, which the Celts, when they came, either
drove out of all parts of Europe, except two or three
mountainous corners, or else absorbed by intermarriage. The
Basques of northwestern Spain, and some of their neighbors on
the French side of the Pyrenees, are supposed to be survivals
of this very ancient people; and there are suspected to be
traces of their existence seen in the dark-haired and
dark-skinned people of parts of Wales, Ireland, Corsica, North
Africa, and elsewhere.

The Aryan Nations.

At least one part of this conjecture has much to rest upon.
The inhabitants of western Europe when our historical
knowledge of them--that is, our recorded and reported
knowledge of them--begins, were, certainly, for the most
part, Celtic peoples, and it is extremely probable that they
had been occupying the country as long as the period
represented by the round barrows. It is no less probable that
they were the lake-dwellers of Switzerland, North Italy, and
other regions; and that they did, in fact, displace some
earlier people in most parts of Western Europe.

The Celts--whose nearly pure descendants are found now in the
Bretons of France, the Welsh, the Highland Scotch and the
Celtic Irish, and who formed the main stock of the larger part
of the French nation--were one branch of the great family of
nations called Aryan or Indo-European. The Aryan peoples are
assumed to be akin to one another--shoots from one
stem--because their languages are alike in grammatical
structure and contain great numbers of words that are
manifestly formed from the same original "root"; and because
they differ in these respects from all other languages. The
nations thus identified as Aryan are the nations that have
acted the most important parts in all human history except the
history of extremely ancient times. Besides the Celtic peoples
already mentioned, they include the English, the Dutch, the
Germans, and the Scandinavians, forming the Teutonic race; the
Russians, Poles, and others of the Slavonic group; the ancient
Greeks and Romans, with their modern representatives, and the
Persians and Hindus in Asia. According to the evidence of
their languages, there must have been a time and a place, in
the remote past, when and where a primitive Aryan race, which
was ancestral to all these nations, lived and multiplied until
it outgrew its original country and began to send forth
successive "swarms," or migrating hordes, as many unsettled
races have been seen to do within the historic age.
{991}
It is hopeless, perhaps, to think of determining the time when
such a dispersion of the Aryan peoples began; but many
scholars believe it possible to trace, by various marks and
indications, in language and elsewhere, the lines of movement
in the migration, so far as to guess with some assurance the
region of the primitive Aryan home; but thus far there are
great disagreements in the guessing. Until recent years, the
prevailing judgment pointed to that highland district in
Central Asia which lies north of the Hindoo-Koosh range of
mountains, and between the upper waters of the Oxus and
Jaxartes. But later studies have discredited this first theory
and started many opposing ones. The strong tendency now is to
believe that the cradle of all the peoples of Aryan speech was
somewhere in Europe, rather than in Asia, and in the north of
Europe rather than in the center or the south. At the same
time, there seems to be a growing opinion that the language of
the Aryans was communicated to conquered peoples so
extensively that its spread is not a true measure of the
existing diffusion of the race.

The Celtic Branch.

Whatever may have been the starting-point of the Aryan
migrations, it is supposed that the branch now distinguished
as Celtic was the first to separate from the parent stem and
to acquire for itself a new domain. It occupied southwestern
Europe, from northern Spain to the Rhine, and across the
Channel to the British islands, extending eastward into
Switzerland, North It&ly and the Tyrol. But little of what the
tribes and nations forming this Celtic race did is known,
until the time when another Aryan people, better civilized,
came into collision with them, and drew them into the written
history of the world by conquering them and making them its
subjects.

The people who did this were the Romans, and the Romans and
the Greeks are believed to have been carried into the two
peninsulas which they inhabited, respectively, by one and the
same movement in the Aryan dispersion. Their languages show
more affinity to one another than to the other Aryan tongues,
and there are other evidences of a near relationship between
them; though they separated, it is quite certain, long before
the appearance of either in history.

The Hellenes, or Greeks.

The Greeks, or Hellenes, as they called themselves, were the
first among the Aryan peoples in Europe to make themselves
historically known, and the first to write the record which
transmits history from generation to generation. The peninsula
in which they settled themselves is a very peculiar one in its
formation. It is crossed in different directions by mountain
ranges, which divide the land into parts naturally separated
from one another, and which form barriers easily defended
against invading foes. Between the mountains lie numerous
fertile valleys. The coast is ragged with gulfs and bays,
which notch it deeply on all sides, making the whole main
peninsula a cluster of minor peninsulas, and supplying the
people with harbors which invite them to a life of seafaring
and trade. It is surrounded, moreover, with islands, which
repeat the invitation.

Almost necessarily, in a country marked with such features so
strongly, the Greeks became divided politically into small
independent states--city-states they have been named--and
those on the sea-coast became engaged very early in trade with
other countries of the Mediterranean Sea. Every city of
importance in Greece was entirely sovereign in the government
of itself and of the surrounding territory which formed its
domain. The stronger among them extended their dominion over
some of the weaker or less valiant ones; but even then the
subject cities kept a considerable measure of independence.
There was no organization of national government to embrace
the whole, nor any large part, of Greece. Certain among the
states were sometimes united in temporary leagues, or
confederacies, for common action in war; but these were
unstable alliances, rather than political unions. In their
earliest form, the Greek city-states were governed by kings,
whose power appears to have been quite limited, and who were
leaders rather than sovereigns. But kingship disappeared from
most of the states in Greece proper before they reached the
period of distinct and accepted history. The kings were first
displaced by aristocracies--ruling families, which took all
political rights and privileges to themselves, and allowed
their fellows (whom they usually oppressed) no part or voice
in public affairs. In most instances these aristocracies, or
oligarchies, were overthrown, after a time, by bold agitators
who stirred up a revolution, and then contrived, while
confusion prevailed, to gather power into their own hands.
Almost every Greek city had its time of being ruled by one or
more of these Tyrants, as they were called. Some of them, like
Pisistratus of Athens, ruled wisely and justly for the most
part, and were not "tyrants" in the modern sense of the term;
but all who gained and held a princely power unlawfully were
so named by the Greeks. The reign of the Tyrants was nowhere
lasting. They were driven out of one city after another until
they disappeared. Then the old aristocracies came uppermost
again in some cities, and ruled as before. But some, like
Athens, had trained the whole body of their citizens to such
intelligence and spirit that neither kingship nor oligarchy
would be endured any longer, and the people undertook to
govern themselves. These were the first democracies--the first
experiments in popular government--that history gives any
account of. "The little commonwealths of Greece," says a great
historian, "were the first states at once free and civilized
which the world ever saw. They were the first states which
gave birth to great statesmen, orators, and generals who did
great deeds, and to great historians who set down those great
deeds in writing. It was in the Greek commonwealths, in short,
that the political and intellectual life of the world began."

In the belief of the Greeks, or of most men among them, their
early history was embodied with truth in the numerous legends
and ancient poems which they religiously preserved; but people
in modern times look differently upon those wonderful myths
and epics, studying them with deep interest, but under more
critical views. They throw much light on the primitive life of
the Hellenes, and more light upon the development of the
remarkable genius and spirit of those thoughtful and
imaginative people; but of actual history there are only
glimpses and guesses to be got from them.

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The Homeric poems, the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey," describe a
condition of things in which the ruling state of Peloponnesus
(the southern peninsula of Greece) was a kingdom of the
Achaians, having its capital at Mycenæ, in Argolis,--the realm
of King Agamemnon,--and in which Athens is unknown to the
poet. Within recent years, Dr. Schliemann has excavated the
ruins of Mycenæ, and has found evidence that it really must
have been, in very early times, the seat of a strong and rich
monarchy. But the Achaian kingdom had entirely disappeared,
and the Achaian people had shrunk to an insignificant
community, on the Gulf of Corinth, when the first assured
views of Greek history open to us.

The Dorians.

It seems to be a fact that the Achaians had been overwhelmed
by a great invasion of more barbarous Greek tribes from the
North, very much as the Roman Empire, in later times, was
buried under an avalanche of barbarism from Germany. The
invaders were a tribe or league of tribes called Dorians, who
had been driven from their own previous home on the slopes of
the Pindus mountain range. Their movement southward was part,
as appears, of an extensive shifting of place, or migration,
that occurred at that time (not long, it is probable, before
the beginning of the historic period) among the tribes of
Hellas. The Dorians claimed that in conquering Peloponnesus
they were recovering a heritage from which their chiefs had
been anciently expelled, and their legends were shaped
accordingly. The Dorian chiefs appeared in these legends as
descendants of Hercules, and the tradition of the conquest
became a story of "The Return of the Heraclids."

The principal states founded or possessed and controlled by
the Dorians in Peloponnesus, after their conquest, were
Sparta, or Lacedæmon, Argos, and Corinth. The Spartans were
the most warlike of the Greeks,--the most resolute and
energetic,--and their leadership in practical affairs common
to the whole came to be generally acknowledged. At the same
time they had little of the intellectual superiority which
distinguished some of their Hellenic kindred in so remarkable
a degree. Their state was organized on military principles;
its constitution (the body of famous ordinances ascribed to
Lycurgus) was a code of rigid discipline, which dealt with the
citizen as a soldier always under training for war, and
demanded from him the utmost simplicity of life. Their form of
government combined a peculiar monarchy (having two royal
families and two kings) with an aristocratic senate (the
Gerousia), and a democratic assembly (which voted on matters
only as submitted to it by the senate), with an irresponsible
executive over the whole, consisting of five men called the
Ephors. This singular government, essentially aristocratic or
oligarchical, was maintained, with little disturbance or
change, through the whole independent history of Sparta. In
all respects, the Spartans were the most conservative and the
least progressive among the politically important Greeks.

At the beginning of the domination of the Dorians in
Peloponnesus, their city of Argos took the lead, and was the
head of a league which included Corinth and other city-states.
But Sparta soon rose to rivalry with Argos; then reduced it to
a secondary place, and finally subjugated it completely.

The Ionians.

The extensive shifting of population which had produced its
most important result in the invasion of Peloponnesus by the
Dorians, must have caused great commotions and changes
throughout the whole Greek peninsula; and quite as much north
of the Corinthian isthmus as south of it. But in the part
which lies nearest to the isthmus--the branch peninsula of
Attica--the old inhabitants appear to have held their ground,
repelling invaders, and their country was affected only by an
influx of fugitives, flying from the conquered Peloponnesus.
The Attic people were more nearly akin to the expelled
Achaians and Ionians than to the conquering Dorians, although
a common brotherhood in the Hellenic race was recognized by
all of them. Whatever distinction there may have been before
between Achaians and Ionians now practically disappeared, and
the Ionic name became common to the whole branch of the Greek
people which derived itself from them. The important division
of the race through all its subsequent history was between
Dorians and Ionians. The Æolians constituted a third division,
of minor importance and of far less significance. The
distinction between Ionians and Dorians was a very real one,
in character no less than in traditions and name. The Ionians
were the superior Greeks on the intellectual side. It was
among them that the wonderful genius resided which produced
the greater marvels of art, literature and philosophy in Greek
civilization. It was among them, too, that the institutions of
political freedom were carried to their highest attainment.
Their chief city was Athens, and the splendor of its history
bears testimony to their unexampled genius. On the other hand,
the Dorians were less thoughtful, less imaginative, less broad
in judgment or feeling--less susceptible, it would seem, of a
high refinement of culture; but no less capable in practical
pursuits, no less vigorous in effective action, and sounder,
perhaps, in their moral constitution. Sparta, which stood at
the head of the Doric states, contributed almost nothing to
Greek literature, Greek thought, Greek art, or Greek commerce,
but exercised a great influence on Greek political history.
Other Doric states, especially Corinth, were foremost in
commercial and colonizing enterprise, and attained some
brilliancy of artistic civilization, but with moderate
originality.

Greeks and Phœnicians.

It was natural, as noted above, that the Greeks should be
induced at an early day to navigate the surrounding seas, and
to engage in trade with neighboring nations. They were not
original, it is supposed, in these ventures, but learned more
or less of ship-building and the art of navigation from an
older people, the Phœnicians, who dwelt on the coast of Syria
and Palestine, and whose chief cities were Sidon and Tyre. The
Phœnicians had extended their commerce widely through the
Mediterranean before the Greeks came into rivalry with them.
Their ships, and their merchants, and the wares they bartered,
were familiar in the Ægean when the Homeric poems were
composed.
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They seem to have been the teachers of the early Greeks in
many things. They gave them, with little doubt, the invention
of the alphabet, which they themselves had borrowed from
Egypt. They conveyed hints of art, which bore astonishing
fruits when planted in the fertile Hellenic imagination. They
carried from the East strange stories of gods and demigods,
which were woven into the mythology of the Greeks. They gave,
in fact, to Greek civilization, at its beginning, the greatest
impulse it received. But all that Hellas took from the outer
world it wrought into a new character, and put upon it the
stamp of its own unmistakable genius. In navigation and
commerce the Greeks of the coast-cities and the islands were
able, ere long, to compete on even terms with the Phœnicians,
and it happened, in no great space of time, that they had
driven the latter entirely from the Ægean and the Euxine seas.

Greek Colonies.

They had now occupied with colonies the coast of Asia Minor
and the islands on both their own coasts. The Ionian Greeks
were the principal colonizers of the Asiatic shore and of the
Cyclades. On the former and near it they founded twelve towns
of note, including Samos, Miletus, Ephesus, Chios, and Phocæa,
which are among the more famous cities of ancient times. Their
important island settlements in the Cyclades were Naxos,
Delos, Melos, and Paros. They possessed, likewise, the great
island of Eubœa, with its two wealthy cities of Chalcis and
Eretria. These, with Attica, constituted, in the main, the
Ionic portion of Hellas.

The Dorians occupied the islands of Rhodes and Cos, and
founded on the coast of Asia Minor the cities of Halicarnassus
and Cnidus. The important Æolian colonies in Asia were Smyrna
(acquired later by the Ionians), Temnos, Larissa, and Cyme. Of
the islands they occupied Lesbos and Tenedos.

From these settlements on neighboring coasts and islands the
vigorous Greeks pushed on to more distant fields. It is
probable that their colonies were in Cyprus and Crete before
the eighth century, B. C. In the seventh century B. C., during
a time of confusion and weakness in Egypt, they had entered
that country as allies or as mercenaries of the kings, and had
founded a city, Naucratis, which became an important agent in
the exchange of arts and ideas, as well as of merchandise,
between the Nile and the Ægean. Within a few years past the
site of Naucratis has been uncovered by explorers, and much
has been brought to light that was obscure in Greek and
Egyptian history before. Within the same seventh century,
Cyrene and Barca had been built on the African coast, farther
west. Even a century before that time, the Corinthians had
taken possession of Corcyra (modern Corfu), and they, with the
men of Chalcis and Megara, had been actively founding cities
that grew great and rich, in Sicily and in southern Italy,
which latter acquired the name of "Magna Græcia" (Great
Greece). At a not much later time they had pressed northwards
to the Euxine or Black Sea, and had scattered settlements
along the Thracian and Macedonian coast, including one
(Byzantium) on the Bosphorus, which became, after a thousand
years had passed, the imperial city of Constantinople. About
597 B. C., the Phocæans had planted a colony at Massalia, in
southern Gaul, from which sprang the great city known in
modern times as Marseilles. And much of all this had been
done, by Ionians and Dorians together, before Athens (in which
Attica now centered itself, and which loomed finally greater
in glory than the whole Hellenic world besides) had made a
known mark in history.

Rise of Athens.

At first there had been kings in Athens, and legends had
gathered about their names which give modern historians a
ground-work for critical guessing, and scarcely more. Then the
king disappeared and a magistrate called Archon took his
place, who held office for only ten years. The archons are
believed to have been chosen first from the old royal family
alone; but after a time the office was thrown open to all
noble families. This was the aristocratic stage of political
evolution in the city-state. The next step was taken in 683 B.
C. (which is said to be the beginning of authentic Athenian
chronology) when nine archons were created, in place of the
one, and their term of office was reduced to a single year.

Fifty years later, about 621 B. C., the people of Athens
obtained their first code of written law, ascribed to one
Draco, and described as a code of much severity. But it gave
certainty to law, for the first time, and was the first great
protective measure secured by the people. In 612 B. C. a noble
named Kylon attempted to overthrow the aristocratic government
and establish a tyranny under himself, but he failed.

Legislation of Solon.

Then there came forward in public life another noble, who was
one of the wisest men and purest patriots of any country or
age, and who made an attempt of quite another kind. This was
Solon, the famous lawgiver, who became archon in 594 B. C. The
political state of Athens at that time has been described for
us in an ancient Greek treatise lately discovered, and which
is believed to be one of the hitherto lost writings of
Aristotle. "Not only," says the author of this treatise, "was
the constitution at this time oligarchical in every respect,
but the poorer classes, men, women, and children, were in
absolute slavery to the rich. ... The whole country was in the
hands of a few persons, and if the tenants failed to pay their
rent, they were liable to be haled into slavery, and their
children with them. Their persons were mortgaged to their
creditors." Solon saw that this was a state of things not to
be endured by such a people as the Athenians, and he exerted
himself to change it. He obtained authority to frame a new
constitution and a new code of laws for the state. In the
latter, he provided measures for relieving the oppressed class
of debtors. In the former, he did not create a democratic
government, but he greatly increased the political powers of
the people. He classified them according to their wealth,
defining four classes, the citizens in each of which had
certain political duties and privileges measured to them by
the extent of their property and income. But the whole body of
citizens, in their general assembly (the Ecclesia), were given
the important right of choosing the annual archons, whom they
must select, however, from the ranks of the wealthiest class.
At the same time, Solon enlarged the powers of the old
aristocratic senate--the Areopagus--giving it a supervision of
the execution of the laws and a censorship of the morals of
the people.

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"These changes did not constitute Democracy,--a form of
government then unknown, and for which there was as yet no
word in the Greek language. But they initiated the democratic
spirit. ... Athens, thus fairly started on her
way,--emancipated from the discipline of aristocratic
school-masters, and growing into an age of manly liberty and
self-restraint,--came eventually nearer to the ideal of 'the
good life' [Aristotle's phrase] than any other State in
Hellas."

(W. W. Fowler.)

Tyranny of Pisistratus.

But before the Athenians reached their nearness to this "good
life," they had to pass under the yoke of a "tyrant,"
Pisistratus, who won the favor of the poorer people, and, with
their help, established himself in the Acropolis (560 B. C.)
with a foreign guard to maintain his power. Twice driven out,
he was twice restored, and reigned quite justly and prudently,
on the whole, until his death in 527 B. C. He was succeeded by
his two sons, Hippias and Hipparchus; but the latter was
killed in 514, and Hippias was expelled by the Spartans in 510
B. C.; after which there was no tyranny in Athens.

The Democratic Republic.

On the fall of the Pisistratidæ, a majority of the noble or
privileged class struggled hard to regain their old
ascendancy; but one of their number, Cleisthenes, took the
side of the people and helped them to establish a democratic
constitution. He caused the ancient tribal division of the
citizens to be abolished, and substituted a division which
mixed the members of clans and broke up or weakened the
clannish influence in politics. He enlarged Solon's senate or
council and divided it into committees, and he brought the
"ecclesia," or popular assembly, into a more active exercise
of its powers. He also introduced the custom of ostracism,
which permitted the citizens of Athens to banish by their vote
any man whom they thought dangerous to the state. The
constitution of Cleisthenes was the final foundation of the
Athenian democratic republic. Monarchical and aristocratic
Sparta resented the popular change, and undertook to restore
the oligarchy by force of arms; but the roused democracy of
Athens defended its newly won liberties with vigor and
success.

The Persian Wars.

Not Athens only, but all Greece, was now about to be put to a
test which proved the remarkable quality of both, and formed
the beginning of their great career. The Ionian cities of Asia
Minor had recently been twice conquered, first by Crœsus, King
of Lydia, and then by Cyrus the Great, founder of the Persian
empire, who had overthrown Crœsus (B. C. 547), and taken his
dominions. The Persians oppressed them, and in 500 B. C. they
rose in revolt. Athens and Eretria sent help to them, while
Sparta refused. The revolt was suppressed, and Darius, the
king of Persia, planned vengeance upon the Athenians and
Eretrians for the aid they had given to it. He sent an
expedition against them in 493 B. C., which was mostly
destroyed by a storm. In 490 B. C. he sent a second powerful
army and fleet, which took Eretria and razed it to the ground.
The great Persian army then marched upon Athens, and was met at
Marathon by a small Athenian force of 9,000 men. The little
city of Platæa sent 1,000 more to stand with them in the
desperate encounter. They had no other aid in the fight, and
the Persians were a great unnumbered host. But Miltiades, the
Greek general that day, planned his battle-charge so well that
he routed the Asiatic host and lost but 192 men. The Persians
abandoned their attempt and returned to their wrathful king.
One citizen of Athens, Themistocles, had sagacity enough to
foresee that the "Great King," as he was known, would not rest
submissive under his defeat; and with difficulty he persuaded
his fellow citizens to prepare themselves for future conflicts
by building a fleet and by fortifying their harbors, thus making
themselves powerful at sea. The wisdom of his counsels was
proved in 480 B. C., when Xerxes, the successor of Darius, led
an army of prodigious size into Greece, crossing the
Hellespont by a bridge of boats. This time, Sparta, Corinth,
and several of the lesser states, rallied with Athens to the
defence of the common country; but Thebes and Argos showed
friendship to the Persians, and none of the important
island-colonies contributed any help. Athens was the brain and
right arm of the war, notwithstanding the accustomed
leadership of Sparta in military affairs.

The first encounter was at Thermopylæ, where Leonidas and his
300 Spartans defended the narrow pass, and died in their place
when the Persians found a way across the mountain to surround
them. But on that same day the Persian fleet was beaten at
Artemisium. Xerxes marched on Athens, however, found the city
deserted, and destroyed it. His fleet had followed him, and
was still stronger than the naval force of the Greeks.
Themistocles forced a battle, against the will of the
Peloponnesian captains, and practically destroyed the Persian
fleet. This most memorable battle of Salamis was decisive of
the war, and decisive of the independence of Greece. Xerxes,
in a panic, hastened back into Asia, leaving one of his
generals, Mardonius, with 300,000 men, to pursue the war. But
Mardonius was routed and his host annihilated, at Platæa, the
next year, while the Persian fleet was again defeated on the
same day at Mycale.

The Golden Age of Athens.

The war had been glorious for the Athenians, and all could see
that Greece had been saved by their spirit and their
intelligence much more than by the valor of Sparta and the
other states. But they were in a woful condition, with their
city destroyed and their families without homes. Wasting no
time in lamentations, they rebuilt the town, stretched its
walls to a wider circuit, and fortified it more strongly than
before, under the lead of the sagacious Themistocles. Their
neighbors were meanly jealous, and Sparta made attempts to
interfere with the building of the walls; but Themistocles
baffled them cunningly, and the new Athens rose proudly out of
the ashes of the old.

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The Ionian islands and towns of Asia Minor (which had broken
the Persian yoke) now recognized the superiority and
leadership of Athens, and a league was formed among them,
which held the meetings of its deputies and kept its treasury
in the temple of Apollo on the sacred island of Delos; for
which reason it was called the Confederacy of Delos, or the
Delian League. The Peloponnesian states formed a looser rival
league under the headship of Sparta. The Confederacy of Delos
was in sympathy with popular governments and popular parties
everywhere, while the Spartans and their following favored
oligarchies and aristocratic parties. There were many
occasions for hostility between the two.

The Athenians, at the head of their Confederacy, were strong,
until they impaired their power by using it in tyrannical
ways. Many lesser states in the league were foolish enough to
commute in money payments the contribution of ships and men
which they had pledged themselves to make to the common naval
force. This gave Athens the power to use that force
despotically, as her own, and she did not scruple to exercise
the power. The Confederacy was soon a name; the states forming
it were no longer allies of Athens, but her subjects; she
ruled them as the sovereign of an Empire, and her rule was
neither generous nor just. Thereby the double tie of kinship
and of interest which might have bound the whole circle of
Ionian states to her fortunes and herself was destroyed by her
own acts. Provoking the hatred of her allies and challenging
the jealous fear of her rivals, Athens had many enemies.

At the same time, a dangerous change in the character of her
democratic institutions was begun, produced especially by the
institution of popular jury-courts, before which prosecutions
of every kind were tried, the citizens who constituted the
courts acting as jury and judge at once. This gave them a
valuable training, without doubt, and helped greatly to raise
the common standard of intelligence among the Athenians so
high; but it did unquestionably tend also to demoralizations
that were ruinous in the end. The jury service, which was
slightly paid, fell more and more to an unworthy class, made
up of idlers or intriguers. Party feeling and popular passions
gained an increasing influence over the juries, and demagogues
acquired an increasing skill in making use of them.

But these evils were scarcely more than in their seed during
the great period of "Athenian Empire," as it is sometimes
called, and everything within its bounds was suffused with the
shining splendor of that matchless half-century. The genius of
this little Ionic state was stimulated to amazing achievements
in every intellectual field. Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides,
Aristophanes, within a single generation, crowded Athenian
literature with the masterpieces of classic drama. Pheidias
and his companions crowned the Acropolis and filled the city
with works that have been the models in art for all ages
since. Socrates began the quizzing which turned philosophy
into honest truth-seeking paths, and Plato listened to him and
was instructed for his mission. Thucydides watched events with
sagacious young eyes, and prepared his pen for the chronicling
of them; while Herodotus, pausing at Athens from his wide
travels, matured the knowledge he had gathered up and
perfected it for his final work. Over all of them came
Pericles to preside and rule, not as a master, or "tyrant,"
but as leader, guide, patron, princely republican,--statesman
and politician in one.

The Peloponnesian War.

The period of the ascendancy of Pericles was the "golden age"
of Athenian prosperity and power, both material and
intellectual. The beginning of the end of it was reached a
little before he died, when the long-threatened war between
Athens and the Peloponnesian league, led by Sparta, broke out
(B. C. 431). If Athens had then possessed the good will of the
cities of her own league, and if her citizens had retained
their old sobriety and intelligence, she might have triumphed
in the war; for she was all powerful at sea and fortified
almost invincibly against attacks by land. But the subject
states, called allies, were hostile, for the most part, and
helped the enemy by their revolts, while the death of Pericles
(B. C. 429) let loose on the people a swarm of demagogues who
flattered and deluded them, and baffled the wiser and more
honest, whose counsels and leadership might have given her
success.