Chapter 3: , page 89 (21)

"It was now evident to the whole body of the allies of Athens
that by joining the league they had provided themselves with a
mistress rather than a leader. … Two years after the
reduction of Naxos another powerful island-state broke out
into rebellion against the supremacy of Athens. The people of
Thasos had from very early times possessed territory on the
mainland of Thrace opposite to their island. By holding this
coast-slip they engrossed the trade of the Valley of the
Strymon, and held the rich gold mines of Mount Pangaeus. But
the Athenians, after the capture of Eïon, set themselves to
develop that port as the commercial centre of Thrace. … A
spot called 'The Nine Ways,' … where that great river first
begins to broaden out into its estuary, but can still be
spanned by a bridge, was the chosen site of a fortress to
secure the hold of Athens on the land. But the native Thracian
tribes banded themselves together, and fell upon the invaders
with such desperation that … the Athenian armies were
defeated. … It was probably the discouragement which this
defeat caused at Athens that emboldened Thasos to declare her
secession from the Confederacy of Delos. She wished to save
her Thracian trade, before Athens could make another attempt
to divert it from her. The Thasians did not rely on their own
resources alone; they enlisted the Thracians and Macedonians
of the mainland, and sent to Sparta to endeavour to induce the
ephors to declare war on Athens." The Spartans were well
disposed to take up the cause of the Thasians; but at that
moment they were overwhelmed by the calamity of the frightful
Earthquake of 464, instantly followed by the rising of the
Helots and the third Messenian war (See MESSENIAN WAR, THE
THIRD). "The island-state was therefore left to its own
resources; and these were so considerable that she held out
against the force of the Athenian confederacy for two whole
years. … She was obliged at last to surrender to Cimon [B.
C. 463], whose army had long been lying before her walls. Like
Naxos, she was punished for her defection by the loss of her
war-fleet and her fortifications, and the imposition of a fine
of many talents. Still more galling must have been the loss of
her trade with Thrace, which now passed entirely into Athenian
hands. … The Spartans were still engaged in a desperate
struggle with their revolted subjects when the siege of Thasos
came to an end. Cimon, who was now at the height of his
reputation and power, saw with distress the troubles of the
city he so much admired. He set himself to persuade the
Athenians that they ought to forego old grudges, and save from
destruction the state which had shared with them the glory of
the Persian war. … His pleading was bitterly opposed by the
anti-Spartan party at Athens, headed by two statesmen,
Ephialtes and Pericles, who had already come into notice as
antagonists of Cimon. But the more generous and unwise policy
prevailed, and 4,000 hoplites were sent to the aid of Sparta
[B. C. 462]. This army was pursued by misfortune; it was so
unsuccessful in attacking Ithome that the Spartans attributed
its failure to ill will rather than ill luck. They, therefore,
began to treat their allies with marked discourtesy, and at
last sent them home without a word of thanks, merely stating
that their services could be of no further use [See MESSENIAN
WAR, THE THIRD]. This rudeness and ingratitude fully justified
the anti-Spartan party at Athens. … Cimon was now no longer
able to deal with the policy of the state as he chose, and the
conduct of affairs began to pass into the hands of men whose
foreign and domestic policy were alike opposed to all his
views. Ephialtes and Pericles proceeded to form alliances
abroad with all the states which were ill disposed toward
Sparta, and at home to commence a revision of the
constitution. They were determined to carry out to its
furthest logical development the democratic tendency which
Cleisthenes had introduced into the Athenian polity. Of
Ephialtes, the son of Sophonides, comparatively little is
known. But Pericles … was the son of Xanthippus, the accuser
of Miltiades in 489, B. C., and the victor of Mycale and
Sestos; while, on his mother's side, he came of the blood of
the Alcmaeonidae. Pericles was staid, self-contained, and
haughty—a strange chief for the popular party. But his
relationship to Cleisthenes, and the enmity which existed
between his house and that of Cimon, urged him to espouse the
cause of democracy. … While Cimon had Greece in his mind,
Pericles could only think of Athens, and the temper of the
times was favourable to the narrower policy. … The first aim
which Pericles and Ephialtes set before themselves was the
cutting down of the power of the Areopagus [See above: B. C.
477-462]. That body had since the Persian war become the
stronghold of the Conservative and philo-Laconian party. …
Ephialtes took the lead in the attack on the Areopagus. He
chose a moment when Cimon was away at sea, bent on assisting a
rebellion against the Great King which had broken out in
Egypt. After a violent struggle, he succeeded in carrying a
law which deprived the Areopagus of its ancient censorial
power, and reduced it to a mere court to try homicides. …
When Cimon came home from Egypt he was wildly enraged. …
Recourse was had to the test of ostracism. It decided against
Cimon, who therefore went into banishment [B. C. 459]. But
this wrong against the greatest general of Athens was, not
long after, avenged by an over-zealous and unscrupulous
friend. Ephialtes was slain by assassins in his own house. …
The immediate result of this murder was to leave Pericles in
sole and undivided command of the democratic party. The
foreign policy of Pericles soon began to involve Athens in
troubles at home. He concluded alliances with Argos and
Thessaly, both states at variance with Sparta, and thereby
made a collision with the Lacedæmonian confederacy inevitable.
He gave still more direct offence to Corinth, one of the most
powerful members of that confederacy, by concluding a close
alliance with Megara. … In Boeotia, too, he stirred up
enmity, by giving an active support to the democratic party in
that country. These provocations made a war inevitable. In 458
B. C. the storm burst. … At the moment of the outbreak of
the first important naval war which she had to wage with a
Greek enemy since the formation of her empire, Athens took two
important steps. The first was destined to guard against the risk
of misfortunes by sea; it consisted in the transference from
Delos to Athens [dated by different authorities between 461
and 454 B. C.] of the central treasury of the confederacy. …
{159}
It was not long before the Athenians came to regard the
treasury as their own, and to draw upon it for purely Attic
needs, which had no connection with the welfare of the other
confederates. … The second important event of the year 458
B. C. was the commencement of the famous 'Long Walls' of
Athens [See LONG WALLS]. … When they were finished Athens,
Peiræus, and Phalerum, formed the angles of a vast fortified
triangle, while the space between them, a considerable expanse
of open country, could be utilized as a place of refuge for
the population of Attica, and even for their flocks and
herds."

_C. W. C. Oman,
History of Greece,
chapters 23-24._

ALSO IN
_E. Abbott,
Pericles and the Golden Age of Athens,
chapters 5-6._

_C. Thirlwall,
History of Greece,
chapter 17 (volume 3)._

_Plutarch,
Cimon; Pericles._

ATHENS: B. C. 460-449.
Disastrous expedition to Egypt.
Attacks on the Peloponnesian Coast.
Recall of Cimon.
His last enterprise against the Persians.
The disputed Peace of Cimon or Callias.
Five years truce with Sparta.

"Inarus, king of some of the Libyan tribes on the western
border of Egypt, had excited an insurrection there against the
Persians [about 460 B. C.], and his authority was acknowledged
throughout the greater part of the country. Artaxerxes sent
his brother Achæmenes with a great army to quell this
rebellion. An Athenian armament of 200 galleys was lying at
the time off Cyprus, and Inarus sent to obtain its assistance.
The Athenian commanders, whether following their own
discretion, or after orders received from home, quitted
Cyprus, and having joined with the insurgents, enabled them to
defeat Achæmenes, who fell in the battle by the hand of
Inarus. They then sailed up the Nile to Memphis, where a body
of Persians, and some Egyptians, who still adhered to their
cause were in possession of one quarter of the city, called
White Castle. The rest was subject to Inarus, and there the
Athenians stationed themselves, and besieged the Persians. …
Artaxerxes sent a Persian, named Megabazus, to Sparta, with a
sum of money, to be employed in bribing the principal Spartans
to use their influence, so as to engage their countrymen in an
expedition against Attica. Megabazus did not find the leading
Spartans unwilling to receive his money; but they seem to have
been unable to render him the service for which it was
offered. Ithome still held out: and Sparta had probably not
yet sufficiently either recovered her strength or restored
internal tranquility, to venture on the proposed invasion.
Some rumours of this negotiation may have reached Athens, and
have quickened the energy with which Pericles now urged the
completion of the long walls. … But among his opponents
there was a faction who viewed the progress of this great work
in a different light from Cimon, and saw in it, not the means
of securing the independence of Athens, but a bulwark of the
hated commonalty. They too would have gladly seen an invading
army in Attica, which might assist them in destroying the work
and its authors." This party was accused of sympathy with the
Spartan expedition which came to the help of Doris against the
Phocians in 457 B. C., and which defeated the Athenians at
Tanagra (See GREECE: B. C. 458-456). In 455, "the Spartans
were reminded that they were also liable to be attacked at
home. An Athenian armament of 50 galleys, and, if we may trust
Diadorus, with 4,000 heavy armed troops on board, sailed round
Peloponnesus under Tolmides, burnt the Spartan arsenal at
Gythium, took a town named Chalcis belonging to the
Corinthians, and defeated the Sicyonians, who attempted to
oppose the landing of the troops. But the most important
advantage gained in the expedition was the capture of
Naupactus, which belonged to the Ozolian Locrians, and now
fell into the hands of the Athenians at a very seasonable
juncture. The third Messenian war had just come to a close.
The brave defenders of Ithome had obtained honourable terms.
… The besieged were permitted to quit Peloponnesus with
their families, on condition of being detained in slavery if
they ever returned. Tolmides now settled the homeless
wanderers in Naupactus. … But these successes were
counterbalanced by a reverse which befell the arms of Athens
this same year in another quarter. After the defeat of
Achæmens, Artaxerxes, disappointed in his hopes of assistance
from Sparta, … raised a great army, which he placed under
the command of an abler general, Megabyzus, son of Zopyrus.
Megabyzus defeated the insurgents and their allies, and forced
the Greeks to evacuate Memphis, and to take refuge in an
island of the Nile, named Prosopitis, which contained a town
called Byblus, where he besieged them for 18 months. At length
he resorted to the contrivance of turning the stream. … The
Greek galleys were all left aground, and were fired by the
Athenians themselves, that they might not fall into the
enemy's hands. The Persians then marched into the island over
the dry bed of the river: the Egyptians in dismay abandoned
their allies, who were overpowered by numbers and almost all
destroyed. … Inarus himself was betrayed into the hands of
the Persians and put to death. … Egypt … was again reduced
under the Persian yoke, except a part of the Delta, where
another pretender, named Amyrtæus, who assumed the title of
king … maintained himself for several years against the
power of the Persian monarchy. But the misfortune of the
Athenians did not end with the destruction of the great fleet
and army which had been first employed in the war. They had
sent a squadron of 50 galleys to the relief of their
countrymen, which, arriving before the news of the recent
disaster had reached them, entered the Mendesian branch of the
Nile. They were here surprised by a combined attack of the
Persian land force and a Phoenician fleet, and but few escaped
to bear the mournful tidings to Athens. Yet even after this
calamity we find the Athenians, not suing for peace, but bent
on extending their power, and annoying their enemies." Early
in 454 they sent an expedition into Thessaly, to restore a
ruler named Orestes, who had been driven out. "But the
superiority of the Thessalians in cavalry checked all their
operations in the field; they failed in an attempt upon
Pharsalus, and were at length forced to retire without having
accomplished any of their ends. It was perhaps to soothe the
public disappointment that Pericles shortly afterwards
embarked at Pegæ with 1,000 men, and, coasting the south side
of the Corinthian gulf made a descent on the territory of
Sicyon, and routed the Sicyon force sent to oppose his landing.
{160}
He then … laid siege to the town of Œniadæ. … This
attempt, however, proved unsuccessful; and the general result
of the campaign seems not to have been on the whole
advantageous or encouraging. … It seems to have been not
long after the events which have been just related that Cimon
was recalled from his exile; and the decree for that purpose
was moved by Pericles himself;—a fact which seems to intimate
that some change had taken place in the relations or the
temper of parties at Athens. … The three years next
following Cimon's return, as we have fixed its date [B. C. 454
or 453], passed, happily for his contemporaries, without
affording any matter for the historian; and this pause was
followed by a five years' truce [with Sparta], in the course
of which Cimon embarked in his last expedition, and died near
the scene of his ancient glory. The pretender Amyrtæus had
solicited succour from the Athenians. … Cimon was appointed
to the command of a fleet of 200 galleys, with which he sailed
to Cyprus, and sent a squadron of 60 to the assistance of
Amyrtæus, while he himself with the rest laid siege to Citium.
Here he was carried off by illness, or the consequences of a
wound; and the armament was soon after compelled, by want of
provisions, to raise the siege. But Cymon's spirit still
animated his countrymen, who, when they had sailed away with
his remains, fell in with a great fleet of Phoenician and
Cilician galleys, near the Cyprian Salamis, and, having
completely defeated them, followed up their naval victory with
another which they gained on shore, either over the troops
which had landed from the enemy's ships, or over a land force
by which they were supported. After this they were joined by
the squadron which had been sent to Egypt, and which returned,
it would appear, without having achieved any material object,
and all sailed home (B. C. 449). In after-times Cimon's
military renown was enhanced by the report of a peace
[sometimes called the Peace of Cimon, and sometimes the Peace
of Callias], which his victories had compelled the Persian
king to conclude on terms most humiliating to the monarchy.
Within less than a century after his death it was, if not
commonly believed, confidently asserted, that by this treaty,
negotiated, as it was supposed, by Callias, son of Hipponicus,
the Persians had agreed to abandon at least the military
occupation of Asia Minor, to the distance of three days
journey on foot, or one on horseback, from the coast, or,
according to another account, the whole peninsula west of the
Halys, and to abstain from passing the mouth of the Bosphorus
and the Chelidonian islands, on the coast of Lycia, or the
town of Phaselis, into the Western Sea. The mere silence of
Thucydides on so important a transaction would be enough to
render the whole account extremely suspicious."

_C. Thirlwall,
History of Greece,
chapter 17 (volume 3)._

Mr. Grote accepts the Peace of Cimon as an historical fact;
Professor Curtius rejects it.

_G. Grote,
History of Greece,
part 2, chapter 45 (volume 5)._

_E. Curtius,
History of Greece,
book 3, chapter 2 (volume 2)._

ATHENS: B. C. 458-456.
War for Megara with Corinth and Ægina.
Victories of Myronides.
Siege and conquest of Ægina.
Collision with the Spartans in Bœotia.
Defeat at Tanagra.
Overthrow of the Thebans.
Recovered Ascendency.

See GREECE: B. C. 458-456.

ATHENS: B. C. 449-445.
Hostile revolution in Bœotia.
Defeat at Coroneia.
Revolt of Eubœa and Megara.
The thirty years' truce.
Territorial losses.
Spartan recognition of the Delian Confederacy.

See GREECE: B. C. 449-445.

ATHENS: B. C. 445-431.
Supremacy of Pericles and the popular arts by which he
attained it.
The splendor of Athens and grandeur of the Athenian Empire
under his rule.

"The conclusion of peace left the Athenians to their
confederacy and their internal politics. … After the death
of Cimon the oligarchical party at Athens had been led by
Thucydides, the son of Melesias, a man of high character and a
kinsman of Cimon. … Hitherto the members had sat here or
there in the assembly as they pleased; now they were combined
into a single body, and sat in a special place. Such a
consolidation was doubtless needed if the party was to hold
its own against Pericles, who was rapidly carrying all before
him. For years past he had provided a subsistence for many of
the poorer citizens by means of his numerous colonies—no
fewer than 5,000 Athenians must have been sent out to the
'cleruchies' in the interval between 453 B. C. and 444 B. C.
The new system of juries [See DICASTERIA] had also been
established on the fall of the Areopagus, and the jurymen were
paid—a second source of income to the poor. Such measures
were beyond anything that the private liberality of
Cimon—splendid as it was—could achieve; and on Cimon's death
no other aristocrat came forward to aid his party with his
purse. Pericles did not stop here. Since the cessation of the
war with Persia there had been fewer drafts on the public
purse, and the contributions of the allies were accumulating
in the public treasury. A scrupulous man would have regarded
the surplus as the money of the allies. … Pericles took
another view. He plainly told the Athenians that so long as
the city fulfilled the contract made with the allied cities,
and kept Persian vessels from their shores, the surplus was at
the disposal of Athens. Acting on this principle, he devoted a
part of it to the embellishment of the city. With the aid of
Pheidias, the sculptor, and Ictinus, the architect, a new
temple began to rise on the Acropolis in honour of Athena—the
celebrated Parthenon or 'Virgin's Chamber' [See PARTHENON].
… Other public buildings were also begun about this time.
Athens was in fact a vast workshop, in which employment was
found for a great number of citizens. Nor was this all. …
For eight months of the year 60 ships were kept at sea with
crews on board, in order that there might be an ample supply
of practical seamen. … Thus by direct or indirect means
Pericles made the state the paymaster of a vast number of
citizens, and the state was practically himself, with these
paid citizens at his back. At the same time the public
festivals of the city were enlarged and adorned with new
splendour. … That all might attend the theatre in which the
plays were acted, Pericles provided that every citizen should
receive from the state a sum sufficient to pay the charge
demanded from the spectators by the lessee [See DIOBOLY]. We
may look on these measures as the arts of a demagogue. … Or
we may say that Pericles was able to gratify his passion for
art at the expense of the Athenians and their allies.
{161}
Neither of these views is altogether untenable; and both are
far from including the whole truth. Pericles … was, if we
please to say it, a demagogue and a connoisseur. But he was
something more. Looking at the whole evidence before us with
impartial eyes, we cannot refuse to acknowledge that he
cherished aspirations worthy of a great statesman. He
sincerely desired that every Athenian should owe to his city
the blessing of an education in all that was beautiful, and
the opportunity of a happy and useful life. … The oligarchs
determined to pull down Pericles, if it were possible. …
They proposed, in the winter of 445 B. C., that there should
be an ostracism in the city. The people agreed, and the usual
arrangements were made. But when the day came for decision, in
the spring of 444 B. C., the sentence fell, not on Pericles,
but on Thucydides. The sentence left no doubt about the
feeling of the Athenian people, and it was accepted as final.
Thucydides disappeared from Athens, and for the next fifteen
years Pericles was master of the city. … While Athens was
active, organizing her confederacy and securing her
communication with the north, the Peloponnesians had allowed
the years to pass in apathy and inattention. At length they
awoke to a sense of the situation. It was clear that Athens
had abandoned all idea of war with Persia, and that the
confederacy of Delos was transformed into an Athenian empire,
of whose forces the great city was absolutely mistress. And
meanwhile in visible greatness Athens had become far the first
city in Greece."

_E. Abbott,
Pericles,
chapters 10-11_.

"A rapid glance will suffice to show the eminence which Athens
had attained over the other states of Greece. She was the head
of the Ionian League—the mistress of the Grecian seas; with
Sparta, the sole rival that could cope with her armies and
arrest her ambition, she had obtained a peace; Corinth was
Humbled—Ægina ruined—Megara had shrunk into her dependency
and garrison. The states of Bœotia had received their very
constitution from the hands of an Athenian general—the
democracies planted by Athens served to make liberty itself
subservient to her will, and involved in her safety. She had
remedied the sterility of her own soil by securing the rich
pastures of the neighbouring Eubœa. She had added the gold of
Thasos to the silver of Laurion, and established a footing in
Thessaly which was at once a fortress against the Asiatic arms
and a mart for Asiatic commerce. The fairest lands of the
opposite coast—the most powerful islands of the Grecian
seas—contributed to her treasury, or were almost legally
subjected to her revenge. … In all Greece, Myronides was
perhaps the ablest general—Pericles … was undoubtedly the
most highly educated, cautious and commanding statesman. …
In actual possession of the tribute of her allies, Athens
acquired a new right to its collection and its management, and
while she devoted some of the treasures to the maintenance of
her strength, she began early to uphold the prerogative of
appropriating a part to the enhancement of her splendour. …
It was now [about B. C. 444] resolved to make Athens also the
seat and centre of the judicial authority. The subject-allies
were compelled, if not on minor, at least on all important
cases, resort to Athenian courts of law for justice. And thus
Athens became, as it were, the metropolis of the allies. …
Before the Persian war, and even scarcely before the time of
Cimon, Athens cannot be said to have eclipsed her neighbours
in the arts and sciences. She became the centre and capital of
the most polished communities of Greece, and she drew into a
focus all the Grecian intellect; she obtained from her
dependents the wealth to administer the arts, which universal
traffic and intercourse taught her to appreciate; and thus the
Odeon, and the Parthenon, and the Propylæa arose. During the
same administration, the fortifications were completed, and a
third wall, parallel and near to that uniting Piræus with
Athens, consummated the works of Themistocles and Cimon, and
preserved the communication between the two-fold city, even
should the outer walls fall into the hands of an enemy."

_E. G. Bulwer-Lytton,
Athens: Its Rise and Fall,
book 4, chapter 5,
book 5, chapter 2._

ALSO IN:
_W. W. Lloyd,
The Age of Pericles,_

_Plutarch,
Pericles_.

ATHENS: B. C. 445-429.
The Age of Pericles: Art.

"The Greeks … were industrious, commercial, sensitive to
physical and moral beauty, eager for discussion and
controversy; they were proud of their humanity, and happy in
the possession of their poets, their historians, their orators
and artists. It is singular, in the history of nations, to
meet with a people distinguished at once by mercantile
aptitude, and by an exquisite feeling and sympathy for works
of art; to see the vanity of wealth compatible with a nice
discernment for the true principles of taste; to behold a
nation, inconstant in ideas; inconceivably fickle in
prejudices, worshipping a man one day and proscribing him the
next, yet at the same time progressing with unheard-of
rapidity; within the space of a few years traversing all
systems of philosophy, all forms of government, laying the
foundations of all sciences, making war on all its neighbors,
yet, in the midst of this chaos of ideas, systems, and
passions, developing art steadily and with calm intelligence,
giving to it novelty, originality, and beauty, while
preserving it pure from the aberrations and caprices of what
we now call fashion. At the time of the battle of Salamis, 480
B. C., Athens had been destroyed, its territory ravaged, and
the Athenians had nothing left but their ships; yet so great
was the activity of this commercial but artistic people, that,
only twenty years afterwards, they had built the Parthenon."

_E. E. Viollet-le-Duc,
Discourses on Architecture,
page 65._

ATHENS: B. C. 445-429.
The Age of Pericles: Domestic life.
The Athenian house.

"For any one coming from Asia it seemed as if in entering
Athens he was coming into an ant's nest. Possessing, at the
epoch of its greatest power, the three ports of Munychia,
Phalerum and the Piræus, it covered a district whose
circumference measured two hundred stadia (twenty-four miles).
But it was around the Acropolis that the houses were crowded
together and the population always in activity. There wagons
were passing to and fro, filled with merchandise from the
ports or conveying it thither. The streets and public places
in which people passed their lives presented a busy and noisy
scene. Strangers, who came to buy or to sell, were continually
entering or leaving the shops and places of manufacture, and
slaves were carrying messages or burdens.
{162}
Women as well as men were to be seen in the streets,
going to the markets, the public games and the meetings of
corporate bodies. From the earliest hours of the day large
numbers of peasants might be seen bringing in vegetables,
fruit and poultry, and crying their wares in the streets.
Houses of the higher class occupied the second zone; they
generally possessed a garden and sometimes outbuildings of
considerable extent. Around them were to be seen clients and
parasites, waiting for the hour when the master should make
his appearance; and whiling away the time discussing the news
of the day, repeating the rumours, true or false, that were
current in the city; getting the slaves to talk, and laughing
among themselves at the strangers that happened to be passing,
or addressing them with a view to make fun of their accent,
garb or dress. The house of Chremylus, recently built in that
second zone, was a subject of remark for all the idlers.
Chremylus, who had lately become wealthy by means of commerce,
and of certain transactions of more or less creditable
character in the colonies, was an object of envy and criticism
to most people, and of admiration for some who did justice to
his intelligence and energy. He enjoyed a certain degree of
influence in the public assemblies—thanks to his liberality;
while he took care to secure the good graces of the archons
and to enrich the temples."

[Image] Plan Of Athenian House.

"We have [in the accompanying figure] the ground-plan of the
residence of this Athenian citizen. The entrance x opens on
the public road. The site is bounded on either side by narrow
streets. This entrance x opens on the court O, which is
surrounded by porticos. At A is the porter's lodge, and at B
the rooms for the slaves, with kitchen at C and latrines at a.
From this first court: in the centre of which is a small
fountain with a basin which receives the rain water, the
passage D leads into the inner court E; which is larger and is
likewise surrounded by porticos. At G is the reception room,
at H the strong room for valuables, and at S the private
altar. At F is a large storeroom containing provisions and
wine; and at I the small dining room (triclinium); the
cooking-room for the family being at J with latrines at b. The
large triclinium is at K. The passage m admits to the
gynæceum, containing the bedrooms P along the portico M, a
common room for the women, with its small enclosed garden, and
closets at e. The quarters for visitors are entered by the
passage t, and consist of bedrooms V, a portico T, a small
garden and closets f. At d is an opening into the lane for the
servants, when required. The gardens extend in the direction
Z. This house is situated on the slopes of the hill which to
the south-west looks towards the Acropolis; thus it is
sheltered from the violent winds which sometimes blow from
this quarter. From the large dining-hall and from the terrace
L, which adjoins it, there is a charming prospect; for, above
the trees of the garden is seen the city overlooked by the
Acropolis, and towards the left the hill of the Areopagus.
From this terrace L there is a descent to the garden by about
twelve steps. The position was chosen with a view to
protection against the sun's heat and the troublesome winds.
From the portico of the gynæceum are seen the hills extending
towards the north, covered with houses surrounded by
olive-trees; and in the background Mount Pentelicus. … In
the dwelling of Chremylus the various departments were
arranged at the proprietor's discretion, and the architect
only conformed to his instructions. Thus the front part of the
house is assigned to the external relations of the owner. In
this court O assemble the agents or factors who come to give
an account of the commissions they have executed, or to
receive orders. If the master wishes to speak to any of them,
he takes him into his reception room; his bedchamber being at
R, he can easily repair to that reception-room or to the
gynæceum reserved for the women and younger children. If he
entertains friends, they have their separate apartments, which
are shut off, not being in communication with the first court
except through the passage t. All that part of the habitation
which is beyond the wide entrance-hall D is consecrated to
domestic life; and only the intimate friends of the family are
admitted into the second court; for example, if they are
invited to a banquet,—which is held in the great hall K. The
master usually takes his meals with his wife and one or two
members of his family who live in the house, in the smaller
room I, the couches of which will hold six persons; whereas
fifteen guests can be accommodated on the couches of the great
hall K. Chremylus has spared nothing to render his house one
of the most sumptuous in the city. The columns of Pentelican
marble support architraves of wood, surmounted by friezes and
cornices overlaid with stucco and ornamented with delicate
painting. Everywhere the walls are coated with fine smooth
plaster, adorned with paintings; and the ceilings are of
timber artistically wrought and coloured."

_E. Viollet-le-Duc,
The Habitations of Man in all Ages,
chapter 17._

{163}

ATHENS: B. C. 445-429.
The Age of Pericles: Law and its Administration.
Contrast with the Romans.

"It is remarkable … that the 'equality' of laws on which the
Greek democracies prided themselves—that equality which, in
the beautiful drinking song of Callistratus, Harmodius and
Aristogiton are said to have given to Athens—had little in
common with the 'equity' of the Romans. The first was an equal
administration of civil laws among the citizens, however
limited the class of citizens might be; the last implied the
applicability of a law, which was not civil law, to a class
which did not necessarily consist of citizens. The first
excluded a despot; the last included foreigners, and for some
purposes slaves. … There are two special dangers to which
law, and society which is held together by law, appear to be
liable in their infancy. One of them is that law may be too
rapidly developed. This occurred with the codes of the more
progressive Greek communities, which disembarrassed themselves
with astonishing facility from cumbrous forms of procedure and
needless terms of art, and soon ceased to attach any
superstitious value to rigid rules and prescriptions. It was
not for the ultimate advantage of mankind that they did so,
though the immediate benefit conferred on their citizens may
have been considerable. One of the rarest qualities of
national character is the capacity for applying and working
out the law, as such, at the cost of constant miscarriages of
abstract justice, without at the same time losing the hope or
the wish that law may be conformed to a higher ideal. The
Greek intellect, with all its nobility and elasticity, was
quite unable to confine itself within the strait waistcoat of
a legal formula; and, if we may judge them by the popular
courts of Athens, of whose working we possess accurate
knowledge, the Greek tribunals exhibited the strongest
tendency to confound law and fact. The remains of the Orators
and the forensic commonplaces preserved by Aristotle in his
Treatise on Rhetoric, show that questions of pure law were
constantly argued on every consideration which could possibly
influence the mind of the judges. No durable system of
jurisprudence could be produced in this way. A community which
never hesitated to relax rules of written law whenever they
stood in the way of an ideally perfect decision on the facts
of particular cases, would only, if it bequeathed any body of
judicial principles to posterity, bequeath one consisting of
the ideas of right and wrong which happened to be prevalent at
the time. Such jurisprudence would contain no framework to
which the more advanced conceptions of subsequent ages could
be fitted. It would amount at best to a philosophy, marked
with the imperfections of the civilisation under which it grew
up. … The other liability to which the infancy of society is
exposed has prevented or arrested the progress of far the
greater part of mankind. The rigidity of primitive law,
arising chiefly from its earlier association and
identification with religion, has chained down the mass of the
human race to those views of life and conduct which they
entertained at the time when their usages were first
consolidated into a systematic form. There were one or two
races exempted by a marvellous fate from this calamity, and
grafts from these stocks have fertilised a few modern
societies; but it is still true that, over the larger part of
the world, the perfection of law has always been considered as
consisting in adherence to the ground plan supposed to have
been marked out by the original legislator. If intellect has
in such cases been exercised on jurisprudence, it has
uniformly prided itself on the subtle perversity of the
conclusions it could build on ancient texts without
discoverable departure from their literal tenour. I know no
reason why the law of the Romans should be superior to the
laws of the Hindoos, unless the theory of Natural Law had
given it a type of excellence different from the usual one."

_H. S. Maine,
Ancient Law,
chapters 3-4._

"But both the Greek and the English trial by jury were at one
time the great political safeguard against state oppression
and injustice; and, owing to this origin, free nations become
so attached to it that they are blind to its defects. And just
as Ireland would now benefit beyond conception by the
abolition of the jury system, so the secured Athenian (or any
other) democracy would have thriven better had its laws been
administered by courts of skilled judges. For these large
bodies of average citizens, who, by the way, were not like our
jurymen, unwilling occupants of the jury-box, but who made it
a paid business and an amusement, did not regard the letter of
the law. They allowed actions barred by the reasonable limits
of time; they allowed arguments totally beside the question,
though this too was illegal, for there was no competent judge
to draw the line; they allowed hearsay evidence, though that
too was against the law; indeed the evidence produced in most
of the speeches is of the loosest and poorest kind. Worse than
all, there were no proper records kept of their decisions, and
witnesses were called in to swear what had been the past
decisions of a jury sitting in the same city, and under the
same procedure. This is the more remarkable, as there were
state archives, in which the decrees of the popular assembly
were kept. … There is a most extraordinary speech of Lysias
against a man called Nichomachus, who was appointed to
transcribe the laws of Solon in four months, but who kept them
in his possession for six years, and is accused of having so
falsified them as to have substituted himself for Solon. Hence
there can have been no recognized duplicate extant, or such a
thing could not be attempted. So again, in the Trapeziticus of
Isocrates, it is mentioned as a well known fact, that a
certain Pythodorus was convicted of tampering with state
documents, signed and sealed by the magistrates, and deposited
in the Acropolis. All these things meet us in every turn in
the court speeches of the Attic orators. We are amazed at
seeing relationships proved in will cases by a man coming in
and swearing that such a man's father had told him that his
brother was married to such a woman, of such a house. We find
the most libellous charges brought against opponents on
matters totally beside the question at issue, and even formal
evidence of general bad character admitted. We find some
speakers in consequence treating the jury with a sort of
mingled deference and contempt which is amusing. 'On the
former trial of this case,' they say, 'my opponent managed to
tell you many well devised lies; of course you were deceived,
how could it be otherwise, and you made a false decision;' or
else, 'You were so puzzled that you got at variance with one
another, you voted at sixes and sevens, and by a small
majority you came to an absurd decision.'
{164}
'But I think you know well,' says Isocrates,
'that the city has often repented so bitterly ere this for
decisions made in passion and without evidence, as to desire
after no long interval to punish those who misled it, and to
wish those who had been calumniated were more than restored to
their former prosperity. Keeping these facts before you, you
ought not to be hasty in believing the prosecutors, nor to
hear the defendants with interruption and ill temper. For it
is a shame to have the character of being the gentlest and
most humane of the Greeks in other respects, and yet to act
contrary to this reputation in the trials which take place
here. It is a shame that in other cities, when a human life is
at stake, a considerable majority of votes is required for
conviction, but that among you those in danger do not even get
an equal chance with their false accusers. You swear indeed
once a year that you will attend to both plaintiff and
defendant, but in the interval only keep your oath so far as
to accept whatever the accusers say, but you sometimes will
not let those who are trying to refute them utter even a
single word. You think those cities uninhabitable, in which
citizens are executed without trial, and forget that those who
do not give both sides a fair hearing are doing the very same
thing.'"

_J. P. Mahaffy,
Social Life in Greece,
chapter 13._

ATHENS: B. C. 445-429.
The Age of Pericles: Political life.
The democracy.

"The real life of Athens lasted at the most for 200 years: and
yet there are moments in which all that we have won by the
toils of so many generations seems as if it would be felt to
be but a small thing beside a single hour of Periklês. The
Democracy of Athens was in truth the noblest fruit of that
self-developing power of the Greek mind which worked every
possession of the common heritage into some new and more
brilliant shape, but which learned nothing, nothing of all
that formed its real life and its real glory, from the
Barbarians of the outer world. Men tell us that Greece learned
this or that mechanical invention from Phœnicia or Egypt or
Assyria. Be it so; but stand in the Pnyx; listen to the
contending orators; listen to the ambassadors of distant
cities; listen to each side as it is fairly hearkened to, and
see the matter in hand decided by the peaceful vote of
thousands—here at least of a truth is something which Athens
did not learn from any Assyrian despot or from any Egyptian
priest. And we, children of the common stock, sharers in the
common heritage, as we see man, Aryan man, in the full growth
of his noblest type, we may feel a thrill as we think that
Kleisthenês and Periklês were, after all, men of our own
blood—as we think that the institutions which grew up under
their hands and the institutions under which we ourselves are
living are alike branches sprung from one stock, portions of
one inheritance in which Athens and England have an equal
right. In the Athenian Democracy we see a popular constitution
taking the form which was natural for such a constitution to
take when it was able to run its natural course in a
common-wealth which consisted only of a single city. Wherever
the Assembly really remains, in truth as well as in name, an
Assembly of the whole people in their own persons, it must in
its own nature be sovereign. It must, in the nature of things,
delegate more or less of power to magistrates and generals;
but such power will be simply delegated. Their authority will
be a mere trust from the sovereign body, and to that sovereign
body they will be responsible for its exercise. That is to
say, one of the original elements of the State, the King or
chief, now represented by the elective magistracy, will lose
its independent powers, and will sink into a body who have
only to carry out the will of the sovereign Assembly. So with
another of the original elements, the Council. This body too
loses its independent being; it has no ruling or checking
power; it becomes a mere Committee of the Assembly, chosen or
appointed by lot to put measures into shape for more easy
discussion in the sovereign body. As society becomes more
advanced and complicated, the judicial power can no longer be
exercised by the Assembly itself, while it would be against
every democratic instinct to leave it in the arbitrary power
of individual magistrates. Other Committees of the Assembly,
Juries on a gigantic scale, with a presiding magistrate as
chairman rather than as Judge, are therefore set apart to
decide causes and to sit in judgment on offenders. Such is
pure Democracy, the government of the whole people and not of
a part of it only, as carried out in its full perfection in a
single city. It is a form of government which works up the
faculties of man to a higher pitch than any other; it is the
form of government which gives the freest scope to the inborn
genius of the whole community and of every member of it. Its
weak point is that it works up the faculties of man to a pitch
so high that it can hardly be lasting, that its ordinary life
needs an enthusiasm, a devotion too highly strung to be likely
to live through many generations. Athens in the days of her
glory, the Athens of Periklês, was truly 'the roof and crown
of things;' her democracy raised a greater number of human
beings to a higher level than any government before or since;
it gave freer play than any government before or since to the
personal gifts of the foremost of mankind. But against the few
years of Athenian glory we must set the long ages of Athenian
decline. Against the city where Periklês was General we must
set the city where Hadrian was Archon. On the Assemblies of
other Grecian cities it is hardly needful to dwell. Our
knowledge of their practical working is slight. We have one
picture of a debate in the popular Assembly of Sparta, an
Assembly none the less popular in its internal constitution
because it was the assembly of what, as regarded the excluded
classes of the State, was a narrow oligarchy. We see that
there, as might be looked for, the chiefs of the State, the
Kings, and yet more the Ephors, spoke with a degree of
official, as distinguished from personal, authority which fell
to the lot of no man in the Assembly of Athens. Periklês
reigned supreme, not because he was one of Ten Generals, but
because he was Periklês. … In the Ekklêsia which listened to
Periklês and Dêmosthenes we feel almost as much at home as in
an institution of our own land and our own times. At least we
ought to feel at home there; for we have the full materials
for calling up the political life of Athens in all its
fullness, and within our own times one of the greatest minds
of our own or of any age has given its full strength to clear
away the mists of error and calumny which so long shrouded the
parent state of justice and freedom.
{165}
Among the contemporaries and countrymen of Mr. Grote it is
shame indeed if men fail to see in the great Democracy the
first state which taught mankind that the voice of persuasion
could be stronger than a despot's will, the first which taught
that disputes could be settled by a free debate and a free
vote which in other lands could have been decided only by the
banishment or massacre of the weaker side. … It must be
constantly borne in mind that the true difference between an
aristocratic and a democratic government, as those words were
understood in the politics of old Greece, lies in this. In the
Democracy all citizens, all who enjoy civil rights, enjoy also
political rights. In the aristocracy political rights belong
to only a part of those who enjoy civil rights. But, in either
case, the highest authority of the State is the general
Assembly of the whole ruling body, whether that ruling body be
the whole people or only a part of it. … The slaves and
strangers who were shut out at Athens were, according to Greek
ideas, no Athenians; but every Athenian had his place in the
sovereign assembly of Athens, while every Corinthian had not
his place in the sovereign assembly of Corinth. But the
aristocratic and the democratic commonwealth both agreed in
placing the final authority of the State in the general
Assembly of all who enjoy the highest franchise. … The
people, of its own will, placed at its head men of the same
class as those who in the earlier state of things had ruled it
against its will. Periklês, Nikias, Alkibiadês, were men
widely differing in character, widely differing in their
relations to the popular government. But all alike were men of
ancient birth, who, as men of ancient birth, found their way,
almost as a matter of course, to those high places of the
State to which Kleôn found his way only by a strange freak of
fortune. At Rome we find quite another story. There, no less
than at Athens, the moral influence of nobility survived its
legal privileges; but, more than this, the legal privileges of
the elder nobility were never wholly swept away, and the
inherent feeling of respect for illustrious birth called into
being a younger nobility by its side. At Athens one stage of
reform placed a distinction of wealth instead of a distinction
of birth: another stage swept away the distinction of wealth
also. But the reform, at each of its stages, was general; it
affected all offices alike, save those sacred offices which
still remained the special heritage of certain sacred
families. … In an aristocratic commonwealth there is no room
for Periklês; there is no room for the people that hearkened
to Periklês; but in men of the second order, skilful
conservative administrators, men able to work the system which
they find established, no form of government is so fertile.
… But everywhere we learn the same lesson, the inconsistency
of commonwealths which boast themselves of their own freedom
and exalt themselves at the cost of the freedom of others."

_E. A. Freeman,
Comparative Politics,
lectures 5-6._

"Dêmos was himself King, Minister, and Parliament. He had his
smaller officials to carry out the necessary details of public
business, but he was most undoubtedly his own First Lord of
the Treasury, his own Foreign Secretary, his own Secretary for
the Colonies. He himself kept up a personal correspondence
both with foreign potentates and with his own officers on
foreign service; the 'despatches' of Nikias and the 'notes' of
Philip were alike addressed to no officer short of the
sovereign himself; he gave personal audience to the
ambassadors of other states, and clothed his own with just so
great or so small a share as he deemed good of his own
boundless authority. He had no need to entrust the care of his
thousand dependencies to the mysterious working of a Foreign
Office; he himself sat in judgment upon Mitylenaian rebels; he
himself settled the allotment of lands at Chalkis or
Amphipolis; he decreed by his own wisdom what duties should be
levied at the Sound of Byzantion; he even ventured on a task
of which two-and-twenty ages have not lessened the difficulty,
and undertook, without the help of a Lord High Commissioner,
to adjust the relations and compose the seditions even of
Korkyra and Zakynthos. He was his own Lord High Chancellor,
his own Lord Primate, his own Commander-in-Chief. He listened
to the arguments of Kleôn on behalf of a measure, and to the
arguments of Nikias against it, and he ended by bidding Nikias
to go and carry out the proposal which he had denounced as
extravagant or unjust. He listened with approval to his own
'explanations;' he passed votes of confidence in his own
policy; he advised himself to give his own royal assent to the
bills which he had himself passed, without the form of a
second or third reading, or the vain ceremony of moving that
the Prytaneis do leave their chairs. … We suspect that the
average Athenian citizen was, in political intelligence, above
the average English Member of Parliament. It was this
concentration of all power in an aggregate of which every
citizen formed a part, which is the distinguishing
characteristic of true Greek democracy. Florence had nothing
like it; there has been nothing like it in the modern world:
the few pure democracies which have lingered on to our own day
have never had such mighty questions laid before them, and
have never had such statesmen and orators to lead them. The
great Democracy has had no fellow; but the political lessons
which it teaches are none the less lessons for all time and
for every land and people."

_E. A. Freeman,
Historical Essays (volume 2): The Athenian Democracy._