Chapter 3: , page 89 (24)

"A new period opens with the growth of the Macedonian power
under Philip (359-336 B. C.) We are here chiefly concerned to
notice the effect on the City-State [of Athens], not only of
the strength and policy of this new power, but also of the
efforts of the Greeks themselves to counteract it. At the time
of Philip's accession the so-called Theban supremacy had just
practically ended with the death of Epaminondias. There was
now a kind of balance of power between the three leading
States, Sparta, Athens, and Thebes, no one of which was
greatly stronger than the others; and such a balance could
easily be worked upon by any great power from without. Thus
when Macedon came into the range of Greek politics, under a
man of great diplomatic as well as military capacity, who,
like a Czar of to-day, wished to secure a firm footing on the
sea-board of the Ægean [see GREECE: B. C. 359-358], she found
her work comparatively easy. The strong imperial policy of
Philip found no real antagonist except at Athens. Weak as she
was, and straitened by the break-up of her new confederacy,
Athens could still produce men of great talent and energy; but
she was hampered by divided counsels. Two Athenians of this
period seem to represent the currents of Greek political
thought, now running in two different directions. Demosthenes
represents the cause of the City-State in this age, of a
union, that is, of perfectly free Hellenic cities against the
common enemy. Phocion represents the feeling, which seems to
have been long growing up among thinking men at Athens, that
the City-State was no longer what it had been, and could no
longer stand by itself; that what was needed was a general
Hellenic peace, and possibly even an arbiter from without, an
arbiter not wholly un-Hellenic like the Persian, yet one who
might succeed in stilling the fatal jealousies of the leading
States. … The efforts of Demosthenes to check Philip fall
into two periods divided by the peace of Philocrates in 346 B.
C. In the first of these he is acting chiefly with Athens
alone; Philip is to him not so much the common enemy of Greece
as the dangerous rival of Athens in the north. His whole mind
was given to the internal reform of Athens so as to strengthen
her against Philip. In her relation to other Greek States he
perhaps hardly saw beyond a balance of power. … After 346
his Athenian feeling seems to become more distinctly Hellenic.
But what could even such a man as Demosthenes do with the
Hellas of that day? He could not force on the Greeks a real
and permanent union; he could but urge new alliances. His
strength was spent in embassies with this object, embassies
too often futile. No alliance could save Greece from the
Macedonian power, as subsequent events plainly showed. What
was needed was a real federal union between the leading
States, with a strong central controlling force; and
Demosthenes' policy was hopeless just because Athens could
never be the centre of such a union, nor could any other city.
Demosthenes is thus the last, and in some respects the most
heroic champion of the old Greek instinct for autonomy. He is
the true child of the City-State, but the child of its old age
and decrepitude. He still believes in Athens, and it is on
Athens that all his hopes are based. He looks on Philip as one
who must inevitably be the foe alike of Athens and of Greece.
He seems to think that he can be beaten off as Xerxes was, and
to forget that even Xerxes almost triumphed over the divisions
of the Greek States, and that Philip is a nearer, a more
prominent, and a far less barbarian foe. … Phocion was the
somewhat odd exponent of the practical side of a school of
thought which had been gaining strength in Greece for some
time past. This school was now brought into prominence by the
rise of Macedon, and came to have a marked influence on the
history of the City-State. It began with the philosophers, and
with the idea that the philosopher may belong to the world as
well as to a particular city. … Athens was far more open to
criticism now than in the days of Pericles; and a cynical
dislike betrays itself in the Republic for the politicians of
the day and their tricks, and a longing for a strong
government of reason. … Aristotle took the facts of city
life as they were and showed how they might be made the most
of. … To him Macedon was assuredly not wholly barbarian; and
war to the death with her kings could not have been to him as
natural or desirable as it seemed to Demosthenes. And though
he has nothing to tell us of Macedon, we can hardly avoid the
conclusion that his desire was for peace and internal reform,
even if it were under the guarantee of the northern power. …
Of this philosophical view of Greek politics Phocion was in a
manner the political exponent. But his policy was too much a
negative one; it might almost be called one of indifferentism,
like the feeling of Lessing and Goethe in Germany's most
momentous period. So far as we know, Phocion never proposed an
alliance of a durable kind, either Athenian or Hellenic, with
Macedon; he was content to be a purely restraining influence.
Athens had been constantly at war since 432; her own resources
were of the weakest; there was little military skill to be
found in her, no reserve force, much talk, but little solid
courage. Athens was vulnerable at various points, and could
not possibly defend more than one at a time, therefore Phocion
despaired of war, and the event proved him right. The
faithfulness of the Athenians towards him is a proof that they
also instinctively felt that he was right. But he was wanting
on the practical and creative side, and never really dominated
either Athens, Greece, or Philip. … A policy of resistance
found the City-State too weak to defend itself; a policy of
inaction would land it in a Macedonian empire which would
still further weaken its remaining vitality. The first policy,
that of Demosthenes, did actually result in disaster and the
presence of Macedonian garrisons in Greek cities. The second
policy then took its place, and initiated a new era for
Greece. After the fatal battle of Chæronea (338 B. C.) Philip
assumed the position of leader of the Greek cities."

_W. W. Fowler,
The City-State of the Greeks and Romans,
chapter 10._

See, also, GREECE: 357-336.

ATHENS: B. C. 340.
Alliance with Byzantium against Philip of Macedon.

See GREECE: B. C. 340.

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ATHENS: B. C. 336-322.
End of the Struggle with the Macedonians.
Fall of Democracy.
Death of Demosthenes.
Athenian decline.

"An unexpected incident changes the whole aspect of things.
Philip falls the victim of assassination; and a youth, who as
yet is but little known, is his successor. Immediately
Demosthenes institutes a second alliance of the Greeks; but
Alexander suddenly appears before Thebes; the terrible
vengeance which he here takes, instantly destroys the league;
Demosthenes, Lycurgus, and several of their supporters,
are required to be delivered up: but Demades is at that
time able to settle the difficulty and to appease the king.
His strength was therefore enfeebled as Alexander departed for
Asia; he begins to raise his head once more when Sparta
attempts to throw off the yoke: but under Antipater he is
overpowered. Yet it was about this very time that by the most
celebrated of his discourses he gained the victory over the
most eloquent of his adversaries; and Æschines was forced to
depart from Athens. But this seems only to have the more
embittered his enemies, the leaders of the Macedonian party;
and they soon found an opportunity of preparing his downfall.
When Harpalus, a fugitive from the army of Alexander, came
with his treasures to Athens, and the question arose, whether
he could be permitted to remain there, Demosthenes was accused
of having been corrupted by his money, at least to be silent.
This was sufficient to procure the imposition of a fine; and
as this was not paid, he was thrown into prison. From thence
he succeeded in escaping; but to the man who lived only for
his country, exile was no less an evil than imprisonment. He
resided for the most part in Ægina and at Trœzen, from whence
he looked with moist eyes toward the neighbouring Attica.
Suddenly and unexpectedly a new ray of light broke through the
clouds. Tidings were brought, that Alexander was dead. The
moment of deliverance seemed at hand; the excitement pervaded
every Grecian state; the ambassadors of the Athenians passed
through the cities; Demosthenes joined himself to the number
and exerted all his eloquence and power to unite them against
Macedonia. In requital for such services, the people decreed
his return; and years of sufferings were at last followed by a
day of exalted compensation. A galley was sent to Ægina to
bring back the advocate of liberty. … It was a momentary
glimpse of the sun, which still darker clouds were soon to
conceal. Antipater and Craterus were victorious; and with them
the Macedonian party in Athens: Demosthenes and his friends
were numbered among the accused, and at the instigation of
Demades were condemned to die. … Demosthenes had escaped to
the island Calauria in the vicinity of Trœzen; and took refuge
in the temple of Neptune. It was to no purpose that Archias,
the satellite of Antipater, urged him to surrender himself
under promise of pardon. He pretended he wished to write
something; bit the quill, and swallowed the poison contained
in it."

_A. H. L. Heeren,
Reflections on the Politics of Ancient Greece,
translated by G. Bancroft,
pages 278-280._

See, also, on the "Lamian War," the suppression of
Democracy at Athens, and the expulsion of poor citizens,
GREECE: B. C. 323-322.

"With the decline of political independence, … the mental
powers of the nation received a fatal blow. No longer knit
together by a powerful esprit de corps, the Greeks lost the
habit of working for the common weal; and, for the most part,
gave themselves up to the petty interests of home life and
their own personal troubles. Even the better disposed were too
much occupied in opposing the low tone and corruption of the
times, to be able to devote themselves, in their moments of
relaxation, to a free and speculative consideration of things.
What could be expected in such an age, but that philosophy
would take a decidedly practical turn, if indeed it were
studied at all? And yet such were the political antecedents of
the Stoic and Epicurean systems of philosophy. … Stoic
apathy, Epicurean self-satisfaction, and Sceptic
imperturbability, were the doctrines which responded to the
political helplessness of the age. They were the doctrines,
too, which met with the most general acceptance. The same
political helplessness produced the sinking of national
distinctions in the feeling of a common humanity, and the
separation of morals from politics which characterise the
philosophy of the Alexandrian and Roman period. The barriers
between nations, together with national independence, had been
swept away. East and West, Greeks and barbarians, were united
in large empires, being thus thrown together, and brought into
close contact on every possible point. Philosophy might teach
that all men were of one blood, that all were equally citizens
of one empire, that morality rested on the relation of man to
his fellow men, independently of nationalities and of social
ranks; but in so doing she was only explicitly stating truths
which had been already realised in part, and which were in
part corollaries from the existing state of society."

_E. Zeller,
The Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics,
pages 16-18_.

"What we have said concerning the evidence of comedy about the
age of the first Diadochi amounts to this: Menander and his
successors—they lasted barely two generations—printed in a
few stereotypes a small and very worthless society at Athens.
There was no doubt a similar set of people at Corinth, at
Thebes, possibly even in the city of Lycurgus. These people,
idle, for the most part rich, and in good society, spent their
earlier years in debauchery, and their later in sentimental
reflections and regrets. They had no serious object in life,
and regarded the complications of a love affair as more
interesting than the rise and fall of kingdoms or the gain and
loss of a nation's liberty. They were like the people of our
day who spend all their time reading novels from the
libraries, and who can tolerate these eternal variations in
twaddle not only without disgust but with interest. They were
surrounded with slaves, on the whole more intelligent and
interesting, for in the first place slaves were bound to
exercise their brains, and in the second they had a great
object—liberty—to give them a keen pursuit in life. The
relations of the sexes in this set or portion of society were
bad, owing to the want of education in the women, and the want
of earnestness in the men. As a natural consequence a class
was found, apart from household slaves, who took advantage of
these defects, and, bringing culture to fascinate unprincipled
men, established those relations which brought estragements,
if not ruin, into the home life of the day."

_J. P. Mahaffy,
Greek Life and Thought,
pages 123-124_.

{182}

"The amount of Persian wealth poured into Greece by the
accidents of the conquest, not by its own industries, must
have produced a revolution in prices not since equalled except
by the influx of the gold of the Aztecs and Incas into Spain.
I have already pointed out how this change must have pressed
upon poor people in Greece who did not share in the plunder.
The price of even necessary and simple things must have often
risen beyond their means. For the adventurers brought home
large fortunes, and the traders and purveyors of the armies
made them; and with these Eastern fortunes must have come in
the taste for all the superior comforts and luxuries which
they found among the Persian grandees. Not only the
appointments of the table, in the way of plate and pottery,
but the very tastes and flavours of Greek cookery must have
profited by comparison with the knowledge of the East. So also
the furniture, especially in carpets and hangings, must have
copied Persian fashion, just as we still affect oriental
stuffs and designs. It was not to be expected that the example
of so many regal courts and so much royal ceremony should not
affect those in contact with them. These influences were not
only shown in the vulgar 'braggart captain,' who came to show
off his sudden wealth in impudent extravagance among his old
townspeople, but in the ordinary life of rich young men. So I
imagine the personal appointments of Alcibiades, which were
the talk of Greece in his day, would have appeared poor and
mean beside those of Aratus, or of the generation which
preceded him. Pictures and statues began to adorn private
houses, and not temples and public buildings only—a change
beginning to show itself in Demosthenes's day, but coming in
like a torrent with the opening of Greece to the Eastern
world. It was noticed that Phocion's house at Athens was
modest in size and furniture, but even this was relieved from
shabbiness by the quaint wall decoration of shining plates of
bronze—a fashion dating from prehistoric times, but still
admired for its very antiquity."

_J. P. Mahaffy,
Greek Life and Thought,
pages 105-106._

"The modern historians of Greece are much divided on the
question where a history of Hellas ought to end. Curtius stops
with the battle of Chaeroncia and the prostration of Athens
before the advancing power of Macedon. Grote narrates the
campaigns of Alexander, but stops short at the conclusion of
the Lamian War, when Greece had in vain tried to shake off the
supremacy of his generals. Thirlwall brings his narrative down
to the time of Mummius, the melancholy sack of Corinth and the
constitution of Achaia as a Roman province. Of these divergent
views we regard that of the German historian as the most
correct. … The historic sense of Grote did not exclude
prejudices, and in this case he was probably led astray by
political bias. At the close of his ninety-sixth chapter,
after mentioning the embassies sent by the degenerate
Athenians to King Ptolemy, King Lysimachus, and Antipater, he
throws down his pen in disgust, 'and with sadness and
humiliation brings his narrative to a close.' Athens was no
longer free and no longer dignified, and so Mr. Grote will
have done with Greece at the very moment when the new Comedy
was at its height, when the Museum was founded at Alexandria,
when the plays of Euripides were acted at Babylon and Cabul,
and every Greek soldier of fortune carried a diadem in his
baggage. Surely the historian of Greece ought either to have
stopped when the iron hand of Philip of Macedon put an end to
the liberties and the political wranglings of Hellas, or else
persevered to the time when Rome and Parthia crushed Greek
power between them, like a ship between two icebergs. No doubt
his reply would be, that he declined to regard the triumph
abroad of Macedonian arms as a continuation of the history of
Hellas. … The truth is, that the history of Greece consists
of two parts, in every respect contrasted one with the other.
The first recounts the stories of the Persian and
Peloponnesian wars, and ends with the destruction of Thebes
and the subjugation of Athens and Sparta. The Hellas of which
it speaks is a cluster of autonomous cities in the
Peloponnesus, the Islands, and Northern Greece, together with
their colonies scattered over the coasts of Italy, Sicily,
Thrace, the Black Sea, Asia Minor, and Africa. These cities
care only to be independent, or at most to lord it over one
another. Their political institutions, their religious
ceremonies, their customs, are civic and local. Language,
commerce, a common Pantheon, and a common art and poetry are
the ties that bind them together. In its second phase, Greek
history begins with the expedition of Alexander. It reveals to
us the Greek as everywhere lord of the barbarian, as foundling
kingdoms and federal systems, as the instructor of all mankind
in art and science, and the spreader of civil and civilized
life over the known world. In the first period of her history
Greece is forming herself, in her second she is educating the
world. We will venture to borrow from the Germans a convenient
expression, and call the history of independent Greece the
history of Hellas, that of imperial Greece the history of
Hellenism. … The Athens of Pericles was dictator among the
cities which had joined her alliance. Corinth, Sparta, Thebes,
were each the political head of a group of towns, but none of
the three admitted these latter to an equal share in their
councils, or adopted their political views. Even in the
Olynthian League, the city of Olynthus occupied a position
quite superior to that of the other cities. But the Greek
cities had not tried the experiment of an alliance on equal
terms. This was now attempted by some of the leading cities of
the Peloponnese, and the result was the Achaean League, whose
history sheds a lustre on the last days of independent Greece,
and whose generals will bear comparison with the statesmen of
any Greek Republic [sec GREECE: B. C. 280-146]. … On the
field of Sellasia the glorious hopes of Cleomenes were
wrecked, and the recently reformed Sparta was handed over to a
succession of bloodthirsty tyrants, never again to emerge from
obscurity. But to the Achaeans themselves the interference of
Macedon was little less fatal. Henceforth a Macedonian
garrison occupied Corinth, which had been one of the chief
cities of the League; and King Antigonus Doson was the
recognized arbiter in all disputes of the Peloponnesian
Greeks. … In Northern Greece a strange contrast presented
itself. The historic races of the Athenians and Boeotians
languished in peace, obscurity, and luxury. With them every
day saw something added to the enjoyments and elegancies of
life, and every day politics drifted more and more into the
background. On the other hand, the rude semi-Greeks of the
West, Aetolians, Acarnanians, and Epirotes, to whose manhood
the repulse of the Gauls was mainly due, came to the front and
showed the bold spirit of Greeks divorced from the finer
faculties of the race. The Acarnanians formed a league
somewhat on the plan of the Achaean.
{183}
But they were overshadowed by their neighbors the Aetolians,
whose union was of a different character. It was the first
time that there had been formed in Hellas a state framed in
order to prey upon its neighbours. … In the course of the
Peloponnesian War Greek religion began to lose its hold on the
Greeks. This was partly the work of the sophists and
philosophers, who sought more lofty and moral views of Deity
than were furnished by the tales of popular mythology. Still
more it resulted from growing materialism among the people,
who saw more and more of their immediate and physical needs,
and less and less of the underlying spiritual elements in
life. But though philosophy and materialism had made the
religion of Hellas paler and feebler, they had not altered its
nature or expanded it. It still remained essentially national,
almost tribal. When, therefore, Greeks and Macedonians
suddenly found themselves masters of the nations of the East,
and in close contact with a hundred forms of religion, an
extraordinary and rapid change took place in their religions
ideas. In religion, as in other matters, Egypt set to the
world the example of prompt fusion of the ideas of Greeks and
natives. … Into Greece proper, in return for her population
which flowed out, there flowed in a crowd of foreign deities.
Isis was especially welcomed at Athens, where she found many
votaries. In every cult the more mysterious elements were made
more of, and the brighter and more materialistic side passed
by. Old statues which had fallen somewhat into contempt in the
days of Pheidias and Praxiteles were restored to their places
and received extreme veneration, not as beautiful, but as old
and strange. On the coins of the previous period the
representations of deities had been always the best that the
die-cutter could frame, taking as his models the finest
contemporary sculpture; but henceforth we often find them
strange, uncouth figures, remnants of a period of struggling
early art, like the Apollo at Amyclae, or the Hera of Samos.
… In the intellectual life of Athens there was still left
vitality enough to formulate the two most complete expressions
of the ethical ideas of the times, the doctrines of the Stoics
and the Epicureans, towards one or the other of which all
educated minds from that day to this have been drawn. No doubt
our knowledge of these doctrines, being largely drawn from the
Latin writers and their Greek contemporaries, is somewhat
coloured and unjust. With the Romans a system of philosophy
was considered mainly in its bearing upon conduct, whence the
ethical elements in Stoicism and Epicureanism have been by
their Roman adherents so thrust into the foreground, that we
have almost lost sight of the intellectual elements, which can
have had little less importance in the eyes of the Greeks.
Notwithstanding, the rise of the two philosophies must be held
to mark a new era in the history of thought, an era when the
importance of conduct was for the first time recognized by the
Greeks. It is often observed that the ancient Greeks were more
modern than our own ancestors of the Middle Ages. But it is
less generally recognized how far more modern than the Greeks
of Pericles were the Greeks of Aratus. In very many respects
the age of Hellenism and our own age present remarkable
similarity. In both there appears a sudden increase in the
power over material nature, arising alike from the greater
accessibility of all parts of the world and from the rapid
development of the sciences which act upon the physical forces
of the world. In both this spread of science and power acts
upon religion with a dissolving and, if we may so speak,
centrifugal force, driving some men to take refuge in the most
conservative forms of faith, some to fly to new creeds and
superstitions, some to drift into unmeasured scepticism. In
both the facility of moving from place to place, and finding a
distant home, tends to dissolve the closeness of civic and
family life, and to make the individual rather than the family
or the city the unit of social life. And in the family
relations, in the character of individuals, in the state of
morality, in the condition of art, we find at both periods
similar results from the similar causes we have mentioned."

_P. Gardner,
New Chapters in Greek History,
chapter 15._

ATHENS: B. C. 317-316.
Siege by Polysperchon.
Democracy restored.
Execution of Phocion.
Demetrius of Phaleron at the head of the government.

See GREECE: B. C. 321-312.

ATHENS: B.C. 307-197.
Under Demetrius Poliorcetes and the Antigonids.

See GREECE: B. C.307-197.

ATHENS: B. C. 288-263.
Twenty years of Independence.
Siege and subjugation by Antigonus Gonatas.

When Demetrius Poliorcetes lost the Macedonian throne, B. C.
288, his fickle Athenian subjects and late worshippers rose
against his authority, drove his garrisons from the Museum and
the Piræus and abolished the priesthood they had consecrated
to him. Demetrius gathered an army from some quarter and laid
siege to the city, but without success. The Athenians went so
far as to invite Pyrrhus, the warrior king of Epirus, to
assist them against him. Pyrrhus came and Demetrius retired.
The dangerous ally contented himself with a visit to the
Acropolis as a worshipper, and left Athens in possession,
undisturbed, of her freshly gained freedom. It was enjoyed
after a fashion for twenty years, at the end of which period,
B. C. 268, Antigonus Gonatas, the son of Demetrius, having
regained the Macedonian crown, reasserted his claim on Athens,
and the city was once more besieged. The Lacedæmonians and
Ptolemy of Egypt both gave some ineffectual aid to the
Athenians, and the siege, interrupted on several occasions,
was prolonged until B. C. 263, when Antigonus took possession
of the Acropolis, the fortified Museum and the Piræus as a
master (see MACEDONIA, &c.: B. C. 277-244). This was sometimes
called the Chremonidean War, from the name of a patriotic
Athenian who took the most prominent part in the long defence
of his city.

_C. Thirlwall,
History of Greece,
chapter 61._

ATHENS: B. C. 229.
Liberation by the Achaian League.

See GREECE: B. C. 280-146.

ATHENS: B. C. 200.
Vandalism of the second Macedonian Philip.

In the year B. C. 200 the Macedonian king, Philip, made an
attempt to surprise Athens and failed. "He then encamped in
the outskirts, and proceeded to wreak his vengeance on the
Athenians, as he had indulged it at Thermus and Pergamus. He
destroyed or defaced all the monuments of religion and of art,
all the sacred and pleasant places which adorned the suburbs.
The Academy, the Lycenm, and Cynosarges, with their temples,
schools, groves and gardens, were all wasted with fire. Not
even the sepulchres were spared."

_C. Thirlwall,
History of Greece,
chapter 64._

{184}

ATHENS: B. C. 197-A. D. 138.
Under Roman rule.

"Athens … affords the disheartening picture of a
commonwealth pampered by the supreme power, and financially as
well us morally ruined. By rights it ought to have found
itself in a flourishing condition. … No city of antiquity
elsewhere possessed a domain of its own, such as was Attica,
of about 700 square miles. … But even beyond Attica they
retained what they possessed, as well after the Mithridatic
War, by favour of Sulla, as after the Pharsalian battle, in
which they had taken the side of Pompeius, by the favour of
Cæsar;—he asked them only how often they would still ruin
themselves and trust to be saved by the renown of their
ancestors. To the city there still belonged not merely the
territory, formerly possessed by Haliartus, in Boeotia, but
also on their own coast Salamis, the old starting-point of
their dominion of the sea, and in the Thracian Sea the
lucrative islands Scyros, Lemnos, and Imbros, as well as Delos
in the Aegean. … Of the further grants, which they had the
skill to draw by flattery from Antoninus, Augustus, against
whom they had taken part, took from them certainly Aegina and
Eretria in Euboea, but they were allowed to retain the smaller
islands of the Thracian Sea. … Hadrian, moreover, gave to
them the best part of the great island of Cephallenia in the
Ionian Sea. It was only by the Emperor Severus, who bore them
no good will, that a portion of these extraneous possessions
was withdrawn from them. Hadrian further granted to the
Athenians the delivery of a certain quantity of grain at the
expense of the empire, and by the extension of this privilege,
hitherto reserved for the capital, acknowledged Athens, as it
were, as another metropolis. Not less was the blissful
institute of alimentary endowments, which Italy had enjoyed
since Trajan's time, extended by Hadrian to Athens, and the
capital requisite for this purpose certainly presented to the
Athenians from his purse. … Yet the community was in
constant distress."

_T. Mommsen,
History of Rome,
book 8, chapter 7._

ALSO IN:
_J. P. Mahaffy,
The Greek World under Roman Sway._

See, also, GREECE: B. C. 146-A. D. 180.

ATHENS: B. C. 87-86.
Siege and capture by Sulla.
Massacre of citizens.
Pillage and depopulation.
Lasting injuries.

The early successes of Mithridates of Pontus, in his savage
war with the Romans, included a general rising in his favor
among the Greeks [see MITHRIDATIC WARS], supported by the
fleets of the Pontic king and by a strong invading army.
Athens and the Piræus were the strongholds of the Greek
revolt, and at Athens an adventurer named Aristion, bringing
from Mithridates a body-guard of 2,000 soldiers, made himself
tyrant of the city. A year passed before Rome, distracted by
the beginnings of civil war, could effectively interfere. Then
Sulla came (B. C. 87) and laid siege to the Piræus, where the
principal Pontic force was lodged, while he shut up Athens by
blockade. In the following March, Athens was starved to such
weakness that the Romans entered almost unopposed and killed
and plundered with no mercy; but the buildings of the city
suffered little harm at their hands. The siege of the Piræus
was carried on for some weeks longer, until Sulla had driven
the Pontic forces from every part except Munychia, and that
they evacuated in no long time.

_W. Ihne,
History of Rome,
book 7, chapter 17._

"Athens was … taken by assault. … The majority of the
citizens was slain; the carnage was so fearfully great as to
become memorable even in that age of bloodshed; the private
movable property was seized by the soldiery, and Sylla assumed
some merit to himself for not committing the rifled houses to
the flames. … The fate of the Piræus, which he utterly
destroyed, was more severe than that of Athens. From Sylla's
campaign in Greece the commencement of the ruin and
depopulation of the country is to be dated. The destruction of
property caused by his ravages in Attica was so great that Athens
from that time lost its commercial as well as its political
importance. The race of Athenian citizens was almost
extirpated, and a new population, composed of a heterogeneous
mass of settlers, received the right of
citizenship."

_G. Finlay,
Greece under the Romans,
chapter 1._

ATHENS: A. D. 54 (?).
The Visit of St. Paul.
Planting of Christianity.

"When the Jews of Thessalonica had knowledge that the word of
God was proclaimed of Paul at Berea also, they came thither
likewise, stirring up and troubling the multitude. And then
immediately the brethren sent forth Paul to go as far as to
the sea: and Silas and Timotheus abode there still. But they
that conducted Paul brought him as far as Athens; and
receiving a commandment unto Silas and Timotheus that they
should come to him with all speed, they departed. Now while
Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within
him, as he beheld the city full of idols. So he reasoned in
the synagogue with the Jews, and the devout persons, and in
the market place every day with them that met with him. And
certain also of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers
encountered him. And some said, what would this babbler say?
other some, He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods:
because he preached Jesus and the resurrection. And they took
hold of him, and brought him unto the Areopagus, saying, May
we know what this new teaching is, which is spoken by thee?
For thou bringest certain strange things to our ears: we would
know therefore what these things mean. (Now all the Athenians
and the strangers sojourning there spent their time in nothing
else, but either to tell or to hear some new thing.) And Paul
stood in the midst of the Areopagus, and said, Ye men of
Athens, in all things I perceive that ye are somewhat
superstitious. For as I passed along and observed the objects
of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription,
'To an Unknown God.' What therefore ye worship in ignorance,
this set I forth unto you. … Now when they heard of the
resurrection of the dead, some mocked; but others said, We
will hear thee concerning this yet again. Thus Paul went out
from among them. Howbeit certain men clave unto him, and
believed: among whom also was Dionysius the Areopagite, and a
woman named Damaris, and others with them."

_Acts of the Apostles,
Revised Version,
chapter 17_.

{185}

"Consider the difficulties which must have beset the planting
of the Church in Athens. If the burning zeal of the great
Apostle ever permitted him to feel diffidence in addressing an
assembly, he may well have felt it when he addressed on Mars'
Hill for the first time an Athenian crowd. No doubt the Athens
of his time was in her decay, inferior in opulence and
grandeur to many younger cities. Yet even to a Jew, provided
he had received some educational impressions beyond the
fanatical shibboleths of Pharisaism, there was much in that
wonderful centre of intelligence to shake his most inveterate
prejudices and inspire him with unwilling respect. Shorn
indeed of her political greatness, deprived even of her
philosophical supremacy, she still shone with a brilliant
afterglow of æsthetic and intellectual prestige. Her monuments
flashed on the visitor memories recent enough to dazzle his
imagination. Her schools claimed and obtained even from
Emperors the homage due to her unique past. Recognising her as
the true nurse of Hellenism and the chief missionary of human
refinement, the best spirits of the age held her worthy of
admiring love not unmixed with awe. As the seat of the most
brilliant and popular university, young men of talent and
position flocked to her from every quarter, studied for a time
within her colonnades, and carried thence the recollection of
a culture which was not always deep, not always erudite, but
was always and genuinely Attic. To subject to the criticism of
this people a doctrine professing to come direct from God, a
religion and not a philosophy, depending not on argument but
on revelation, was a task of which the difficulties might seem
insuperable. When we consider what the Athenian character was,
this language will not seem exaggerated. Keen, subtle,
capricious, satirical, sated with ideas, eager for novelty,
yet with the eagerness of amused frivolity, not of the
truth-seeker: critical by instinct, exquisitely sensitive to
the ridiculous or the absurd, disputatious, ready to listen,
yet impatient of all that was not wit, satisfied with
everything in life except its shortness, and therefore hiding
all references to this unwelcome fact under a veil of
complacent euphemism—where could a more uncongenial soil be
found for the seed of the Gospel? … To an Athenian the Jew
was not so much an object of hatred (as to the Roman), nor
even of contempt (as to the rest of mankind), as of absolute
indifference. He was simply ignored. To the eclectic
philosophy which now dominated the schools of Athens, Judaism
alone among all human opinions was as if non-existent. That
Athenians should be convinced by the philosophy of a Jew would
be a proposition expressible in words but wholly destitute of
meaning. On the other hand, the Jew was not altogether
uninfluenced by Greek thought. Wide apart as the two minds
were, the Hebraic proved not insensible to the charm of the
Hellenic; witness the Epistle to the Hebrews, witness Philo,
witness the intrusion of Greek methods of interpretation even
into the text-books of Rabbinism. And it was Athens, as the
quintessence of Hellas, Athens as represented by Socrates, and
still more by Plato, which had gained this subtle power. And
just as Judæa alone among all the Jewish communities retained
its exclusiveness wholly unimpaired by Hellenism, so Athens,
more than any Pagan capital, was likely to ignore or repel a
faith coming in the garb of Judaism. And yet within less than
a century we find this faith so well established there as to
yield to the Church the good fruits of martyrdom in the person
of its bishop, and of able defences in the person of three of
its teachers. The early and the later fortunes of the Athenian
Church are buried in oblivion; it comes but for a brief period
before the scene of history. But the undying interest of that
one dramatic moment when Paul proclaimed a bodily resurrection
to the authors of the conception of a spiritual immortality,
will always cause us to linger with a strange sympathy over
every relic of the Christianity of Athens."

_C. T. Cruttwell,
A Literary History of Early Christianity,
volume 1, book 3, chapter 4._

ALSO IN:
_W. J. Conybeare and J. S. Howson,
Life and Letters of St. Paul,
volume 1, chapter 10._

_F. C. Baur,
Paul,
part 1, chapter 7 (volume 1)_.

On the inscription,

See
_E. de Pressensé,
The Early Years of Christianity: The Apostolic Era,
book 2, chapter 1._

ATHENS: A. D. 125-134.
The works of Hadrian.

The Emperor Hadrian interested himself greatly in the
venerable decaying capital of the Greeks, which he visited, or
resided in, for considerable periods, several times, between
A. D. 125 and 134. These visits were made important to the
city by the great works of rebuilding which he undertook and
supervised. Large parts of the city are thought to have been
reconstructed by him, "in the open and luxurious style of
Antioch and Ephesus." One quarter came to be called
"Hadrianapolis," as though he had created it. Several new
temples were erected at his command; but the greatest of the
works of Hadrian at Athens was the completing of the vast
national temple, the Olympieum, the beginning of which dated
back to the age of Pisistratus, and which Augustus had put his
hand to without finishing.

_C. Merivale,
History of the Romans,
chapter 66._

ATHENS: A. D. 267.
Capture of, by the Goths.

See GOTHS: A. D. 258-267.

ATHENS: A. D. 395.
Surrender to Alaric and the Goths.

When the Goths under Alaric invaded and ravaged Greece, A. D.
395, Athens was surrendered to them, on terms which saved the
city from being plundered. "The fact that the depredations of
Alaric hardly exceeded the ordinary license of a rebellious
general, is … perfectly established. The public buildings
and monuments of ancient splendour suffered no wanton
destruction from his visit; but there can be no doubt that
Alaric and his troops levied heavy contributions on the city
and its inhabitants."

_G. Finlay,
Greece under the Romans,
chapter 2, section 8._

ALSO IN:
_E. Gibbon,
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
chapter 30.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25717_.

See, also, GOTHS: A. D. 395, ALARIC'S INVASION OF GREECE.

ATHENS: A. D. 529.
Suppression of the Schools by Justinian.

"The Attic schools of rhetoric and philosophy maintained their
superior reputation from the Peloponnesian War to the reign of
Justinian. Athens, though situate in a barren soil, possessed
a pure air, a free navigation, and the monuments of ancient
art. That sacred retirement was seldom disturbed by the
business of trade or government; and the last of the Athenians
were distinguished by their lively wit, the purity of their
taste and language, their social manners, and some traces, at
least in discourse, of the magnanimity of their fathers. In
the suburbs of the city, the Academy of the Platonists, the
Lycæum of the Peripatetics, the Portico of the Stoics and the
Garden of the Epicureans were planted with trees and decorated
with statues; and the philosophers, instead of being immured
in a cloister, delivered their instructions in spacious and
pleasant walks, which, at different hours, were consecrated to
the exercises of the mind and body. The genius of the founders
still lived in those venerable seats. …
{186}
The schools of Athens were protected by the wisest and most
virtuous of the Roman princes. … Some vestige of royal
bounty may be found under the successors of Constantine. …
The golden chain, as it was fondly styled, of the Platonic
succession, continued … to the edict of Justinian [A. D.
529] which imposed a perpetual silence on the schools of
Athens, and excited the grief and indignation of the few
remaining votaries of Greek science and superstition."

_E. Gibbon,
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
chapter 40.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25717_

ATHENS: A. D. 1205.
The founding of the Latin Dukedom.

"The portion of Greece lying to the south of the kingdom of
Saloniki was divided by the Crusaders [after their conquest of
Constantinople, A. D. 1204—see BYZANTINE EMPIRE: A. D.
1203-1204] among several great feudatories of the Empire of
Romania. … The lords of Boudonitza, Salona, Negropont, and
Athens are alone mentioned as existing to the north of the
isthmus of Corinth, and the history of the petty sovereigns of
Athens can alone be traced in any detail. … Otho de la
Roche, a Burgundian nobleman, who had distinguished himself
during the siege of Constantinople, marched southward with the
army of Boniface the king-marquis, and gained possession of
Athens in 1205. Thebes and Athens had probably fallen to his
share in the partition of the Empire, but it is possible that
the king of Saloniki may have found means to increase his
portion, in order to induce him to do homage to the crown of
Saloniki for this addition. At all events, it appears that
Otho de la Roche did homage to Boniface, either as his
immediate superior, or as viceroy for the Emperor of Romania.
… Though the Byzantine aristocracy and dignified clergy were
severe sufferers by the transference of the government into
the hands of the Franks, the middle classes long enjoyed peace
and security. … The social civilization of the inhabitants,
and their ample command of the necessaries and many of the
luxuries of life, were in those days as much superior to the
condition of the citizens of Paris and London as they are now
inferior. … The city was large and wealthy, the country
thickly covered with villages, of which the ruins may still be
traced in spots affording no indications of Hellenic sites.
… The trade of Athens was considerable, and the luxury of
the Athenian ducal court was celebrated in all the regions of
the West where chivalry flourished."

_G. Finlay,
History of Greece from its Conquest by the Crusaders,
chapter 7._

ALSO IN:
_C. C. Felton,
Greece, Ancient and Modern: 4th Course.
lecture 5._

ATHENS: A. D. 1311-1456.
Under the Catalans and the Florentines.

See CATALAN GRAND COMPANY.

ATHENS: A. D. 1456.
The Turks in possession.

Athens was not occupied by the Turks until three years after
the conquest of Constantinople (see CONSTANTINOPLE: A. D.
1453). In the meantime the reign of the Florentine dukes of
the house of Acciaioli came to a tragical close. The last of
the dukes, Maurice Acciaioli died, leaving a young son and a
young widow, the latter renowned for her beauty and her
talents. The duchess, whom the will of her husband had made
regent, married a comely Venetian named Palmerio, who was said
to have poisoned his wife in order to be free to accept her
hand. Thereupon a nephew of the late duke, named Franco,
stirred up insurrections at Athens and fled to Constantinople
to complain to the sultan, Mahomet II. "The sultan, glad of
all pretexts that coloured his armed intervention in the
affairs of these principalities, ordered Omar, son of
Tourakhan, chief of the permanent army of the Peloponnesus, to
take possession of Athens, to dethrone the duchess and to
confine her sons in his prisons of the citadel of Megara."
This was done; but Palmerio, the duchess's husband, made his
way to the sultan and interceded in her behalf. "Mahomet, by
the advice of his viziers, feigned to listen equally to the
complaints of Palmerio, and to march to reestablish the
legitimate sovereignty. But already Franco, entering Megara
under the auspices of the Ottomans, had strangled both the
duchess and her son. Mahomet, advancing in turn to punish him
for his vengeance, expelled Franco from Athens on entering it,
and gave him, in compensation, the inferior and dependent
principality of Thebes, in Boeotia. The sultan, as lettered as
he was warlike, evinced no less pride and admiration than
Sylla at the sight of the monuments of Athens. 'What
gratitude,' exclaimed he before the Parthenon and the temple
of Theseus, 'do not religion and the Empire owe to the son of
Tourakhan, who has made them a present of these spoils of the
genius of the Greeks.'"

_A. Lamartine,
History of Turkey,
book 13, sections 10-12._

ATHENS: A. D. 1466.
Capture and plundering by the Venetians.

See GREECE: A. D. 1454-1479.

ATHENS: A. D. 1687.
Siege, bombardment and capture by the Venetians.
Destructive explosion in the Parthenon.

See TURKS: A. D. 1684-1696.

ATHENS: A. D. 1821-1829.
The Greek revolution and war of independence.
Capture by the Turks.

See GREECE: A. D. 1821-1829.

----------ATHENS: End--------------

ATHERTON GAG, The.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1836.

ATHLONE, Siege of (A. D. 1691).

See IRELAND: A. D. 1689-1691.

ATHRAVAS.

See MAGIANS.

ATIMIA.
The penalty of Atimia, under ancient Athenian law, was the
loss of civic rights.

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

ATIMUCA, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: TIMUCUA.

ATLANTA: A. D. 1864 (May-September).
Sherman's advance to the city.
Its siege and capture.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1864 (MAY: GEORGIA); and (MAY-SEPTEMBER: GEORGIA).

ATLANTA: A. D. 1864 (September).
Exclusive military occupation of the city.
Removal of inhabitants.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1864
(SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER: GEORGIA).

ATLANTA: A. D. 1864 (November).
Destruction of the city.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1864
(NOVEMBER-DECEMBER: GEORGIA).

----------ATLANTA: End----------

ATLANTIC OCEAN:
The name.

The Atlantic Ocean is mentioned by that name in a single
passage of Herodotus; "but it is clear, from the incidental
way in which it [the name] is here introduced, that it was one
well known in his day."

_E. H. Bunbury,
History of Ancient Geography,
chapter 7, section 1, note._

For a sketch of the history of the modern use of the name,

See PACIFIC OCEAN.

{187}

ATREBATES, The.
This name was borne by a tribe in ancient Belgic Gaul, which
occupied modern Artois and part of French Flanders, and, also,
by a tribe or group of tribes in Britain, which dwelt in a
region between the Thames and the Severn. The latter was
probably a colony from the former.

See BELGÆ;
also BRITAIN, CELTIC TRIBES.

ATROPATENE. MEDIA ATROPATENE.

"Atropatene, as a name for the Alpine land in the northwest of
Iran (now Aderbeijan), came into use in the time of the Greek
Empire [Alexander's]; at any rate we cannot trace it earlier.
'Athrapaiti' means 'lord of fire;' 'Athrapata,' 'one protected
by fire;' in the remote mountains of this district the old
fire worship was preserved with peculiar zeal under the
Seleucids."

_M. Duncker,
History of Antiquity,
book 7, chapter 4._

Atropatene "comprises the entire basin of Lake Urumiyeh,
together with the country intervening between that basin and
the high mountain chain which curves round the southwestern
corner of the Caspian."

_G. Rawlinson,
Five Great Monarchies: Media,
chapter 1._

Atropatene was "named in honour of the satrap Atropates, who
had declared himself king after Alexander's death."

_J. P. Mahaffy,
Story of Alexander's Empire,
chapter 13._

ATSINAS.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: BLACKFEET.

ATTABEGS.

See ATABEGS.

ATTACAPAN FAMILY, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: ATTACAPAN FAMILY.

ATTAMAN, or HETMAN.

See COSSACKS.

ATTECOTTI, The.

See OTADENI;
also, BRITAIN, CELTIC TRIBES.

ATTIC SALT.

Thyme was a favorite condiment among the ancient Greeks,
"which throve nowhere else so well as in Attica. Even salt was
seasoned with thyme. Attic salt, however, is famed rather in
the figurative than in the literal sense, and did not form an
article of trade."

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

ATTIC TALENT.

See TALENT.

ATTIC WAR, The.

See TEN YEARS' WAR.

ATTICA.