Chapter II: PERIOD OF MIGRATIONS AND FORMATION OF STATES.--The first

governments of Greece were small monarchies, and they continued such
until after the Trojan war. Soon after this we find the country
involved in fatal civil wars, in which the people, under a number of
petty chieftains hostile to each other, suffered extremely from
calamity and oppression. These evils led to change in the form of
government, and the substitution of the _popular_ instead of the
_regal_ system. The same evils also probably contributed to the
spirit of emigration, which so strikingly marks the period. During
this period of colonization we notice the origin of the four
principal dialects in the Greek language. In this period two of the
Grecian states are chiefly conspicuous--Athens and Sparta, whose
special effort was to provide themselves with a suitable political
constitution, civil code and government.

These great migrations which swept over Greece created a congestion of the population which was eventually relieved by widespread colonization on the west coast of Asia Minor and in the neighboring islands of the Ægean Sea. These colonies were settled by the three races, the Æolians, Ionians and Dorians. The Æolians colonized the northwestern part, the coast of Mysia, and the island of Lesbos. The Ionians settled in the central part, on the coast of Lydia, and in the islands of Chios and Samos. The Dorians occupied the southwest corner of Asia Minor (the coast of Caria) and the adjacent islands. Of all these by far the most important, wealthy and powerful were the Ionians.

OTHER GREEK COLONIES

The Greeks gradually spread themselves in settlements along the northern coast of the Ægean Sea and the Propontis, in Macedonia and Thrace, so that the whole Ægean became encircled with Greek colonies, and its islands were covered with them. The tide of emigration flowed westward also in great strength.

The coasts of Southern Italy were occupied by Dorians, Achæans, and Ionians in settlements which grew to such importance that the region took the name of Magna Græcia, or Greater Greece. The cities of Tarentum, Croton and Sybaris became famous for their wealth, the latter giving rise to the proverbial name for a luxurious liver.

On the southwestern coast of Italy was Rhegium, and farther north came Pæstum, Cumæ, and Neapolis (Naples). In Sicily flourishing Greek settlements abounded, the chief being Messana, Syracuse, Leontini, Catana, Gela, Selinus, and Agrigentum. Farther west still a colony from Phocæa, in Asia Minor, founded the city of Massilia, now Marseilles. On the southern coast of the Mediterranean, westwards from Egypt, the Greek colony of Cyrene became the chief town of a flourishing district called Cyrenaica.

The establishment of the later of these colonies brings us down well within authentic historical times, and the whole period of Greek colonization extends from about 1100 to 600 B. C., the colonies being, in many cases, offshoots of colonies previously established and risen to wealth and over-population. In all these movements and settlements, the enterprise and ability of the Greeks made them great commercial rivals to, and successors of, the Phœnicians.

CONTRAST BETWEEN IONIANS AND DORIANS

The two leading races of Greece were the Ionians and the Dorians, and they stand to each other in a strong contrast of character which largely affected Greek political history. These prominent points of difference run through the whole historical career of the two chief states, _Ionian_ Athens and _Dorian_ Sparta, and were the cause of the strong antagonism that we find so often in action between them. The Dorian was distinguished by severity, bluntness, simplicity of life, conservative ways, and oligarchic tendency in politics; the Ionian was equally marked by vivacity, excitability, refinement, love of change, taste in the arts, commercial enterprise, and attachment to democracy. The Dorian, in the best times of his history, reverenced age, ancient usage, and religion; the Ionian, at all periods of his career, loved enjoyment, novelty and enterprise.

THE EARLY CAREER OF SPARTA

The Spartans, or the people of Lacedæmon, properly the southern half of Laconia, first became the dominant nation in that part of Greece. Of Spartan doings and fortunes we know almost nothing until the time of the great Legislator Lycurgus, who is said to have organized, about 850 B. C. the famous Spartan constitution. The probable account is that he altered and reformed existing usages, and that the reverence of after ages ascribed to him the promulgation and establishment of a full grown, brand new set of institutions, which must have been, in many points, of gradual growth.

THE FAMOUS LAWS OF LYCURGUS

The government was that of an aristocratic republic under the form of a monarchy. There were two kings, whose powers were nominally those of high priests, judges, and leaders in war, but in the two latter capacities their functions were in time greatly restricted and almost superseded. The chief legislative and judicial and much of the executive, power lay with the Senate, or council of twenty-eight elders. No citizen could be a member of this body until he had become sixty years of age, and the office was held for life. The popular assembly, open to every Spartan citizen over thirty years old, really handed over its powers to a board of five commissioners, officers called Ephors (“overseers”), whom it annually elected. These high officials had a secret and irresponsible control over the executive power, both at home and abroad; and in military enterprises, where the kings were the nominal leaders, the two Ephors who accompanied the army exercised much influence. The whole body of Spartan citizens was an aristocracy, and among themselves entire political equality existed.

TRAINING OF THE SPARTAN CITIZEN

The object of the peculiar training of Spartan citizens, ascribed to Lycurgus, was the maintenance of Spartan supremacy over the subject population. It was necessary for safety that the small body of men, surrounded by enemies in their own land, should be ready at all points, against every attempt at opposition or rebellion, and against the outside world as well.

As every man had to be a soldier, and the citizen existed only for the state, the state took the Spartan citizen in hand at his birth, and regulated him almost from the cradle to the grave. From the age of seven the body was cultivated, and every means was used to give the instrument the finest temper, in a physical sense, and to bring it to the sharpest edge. Such training lasted till the sixtieth year of life, when the Spartan became qualified by age, if not by wisdom, for election to the Senate, or “assembly of old men,” above described.

The girls were trained in athletic exercises like those of the youths, and everything was done to produce vigorous and stern women, prepared to gladly see their sons die on the battle-field for Sparta.

The result of all was that the Spartans became a race of well-drilled and intrepid warriors, but a state distinguished in the history of Greece for the display of a domineering arrogance, a rapacity, and a corruption, which contributed not a little to its downfall. However, the Spartan institutions were very successful in giving the state security at home and success in war abroad. Sparta was free from domestic revolutions, and the spectacle it presented of constancy to fixed maxims of policy gave it a great ascendancy over the Hellenic mind.

EARLY HISTORY OF ATHENS. THESEUS

The Athenians became by far the most famous, in political ascendancy and in artistic and intellectual eminence, of all the Ionian race, to which they belonged.

At first they were under kings like the other Hellenes; but about 1050 B. C. the title of king became changed to that of archon (“ruler”), though the office was still held for life, and continued in the same family. The archon was responsible for his acts to a general assembly of the people, in which, however, the nobles had the chief influence; and down to long after the time of the first Olympiad, Athens may be regarded as an oligarchic republic, in which the supreme office, the archonship, was confined to one family; and members of the chief court of justice, called Areopagus (lit. “hill of Ares,” the place of its assembly at Athens), were elected only from the noble houses.

IMPORTANCE OF THE OLYMPIADS IN GREEK CHRONOLOGY

We come, in the year 776 B. C., to the era when the chronology of Grecian history becomes consecutive, and dates are reckoned by Olympiads. These were the periods of four years each which elapsed between the successive celebrations of the Olympic games in honor of the Olympian Zeus (the chief Greek deity) in the plain of Olympia in Elis (in Peloponnesus). The First Olympiad began at midsummer, 776 B. C., the Second Olympiad at midsummer, 772 B. C., and so on--any event being dated by a particular year of a specified Olympiad.

THE UNPOPULAR LAWS OF DRACO

Down to the year 621 B. C. the people were still without a substantial share in the government, and popular discontent demanded a written code. Consequently Draco, one of the archons, drew up laws, the severity of which has become proverbial, and which were intended, by their rigor, to check the growth of the democracy that was clamoring for a change. The penalty of death was assigned to all offenses, great or small, to enable the nobles to get rid of dangerous leaders of the people; but such a system did not long continue.

Anarchy prevailed in Attica, owing to the various factions of the oligarchs, the democrats, and a middle party (the moderates).

SOLON REFORMS THE LAWS

A wise reformer was found in Solon, chosen as an archon in 594 B. C., and invested by his fellow citizens, for the special purpose of restoring tranquility, with unlimited power to change the laws. He was already distinguished as a poet and as a general in the war of Athens against her neighbor, Megara. His great object was to remove the oppressive and excessive power of the aristocracy without introducing pure democracy.

Solon began with the abolition of Draco’s code, but retained the penalty of death for murder. His celebrated disburdening ordinance for the relief of debtors won the complete confidence of the people. This had the immediate effect of mitigating the oppressions caused by the old laws of debt: in future neither the person, family, nor estate of the debtor might be pledged in security for the loan. A further democratic character was given at the outset to the constitution of Solon by the division of the people into four classes, according to property, which was now substituted for birth as a qualification for the higher offices of state.

A council of state, or senate, called the Boule (council) was chosen annually by lot, to prepare measures for submission to the popular assembly, or Ecclesia, in which the citizens of the fourth or lowest class (who could hold no state office) had the right of voting. The Ecclesia included all classes of the citizens, who there legislated, elected the magistrates, decided on peace or war, and other matters sent down to it from the Boule.

For the courts of justice below the Areopagus, a body of six thousand jurors was to be annually selected by lot from the popular assembly, and the causes were tried by divisions of the whole body.

Solon was also the author of many laws which regulated private life and rights, public amusements, slavery, marriage, and other matters. Among his miscellaneous enactments may be noted that which legalized the export of olive oil only, that which obliged the father to teach his son a trade, that which penalized a citizen for remaining neutral on the outbreak of civil strife, and that which empowered a man who died childless to dispose of his property by will.

SOLON’S CONSTITUTION OVERTHROWN BY PISISTRATUS

During Solon’s absence on a tour of travel a renewal of factions followed and their struggles ended in the seizure of power by Pisistratus, in the year 560 B. C. He was one of the class of rulers called “Tyrants” by the Greeks, who held power in Greek states during this and the preceding century.

The Greek Tyrants were aristocratic adventurers who took advantage of their position and of special circumstances to make themselves masters of the government in their respective states.

It is to Pisistratus, however, that the world owes the preservation in their present form of the poems of Homer, which he caused to be collected and edited in a complete written text. He was succeeded by his sons Hippias and Hipparchus, as joint rulers; but the severity of Hippias (after the murder of Hipparchus) caused his expulsion by the people, and the end of the despotism at Athens, 510 B. C.

ATHENS A PURE DEMOCRACY UNDER CLEISTHENES

The government at Athens now (507 B. C.) became a pure democracy, under the auspices of Cleisthenes. At the head of the popular party he effected important changes in the constitution. The public offices of power were thrown open to all the citizens, the whole people was divided into ten tribes or wards, and the senate (Boule) now consisted of five hundred members, fifty from each ward or tribe.

POLITICAL OSTRACISM.--Cleisthenes introduced the ostracism (from ostrakon, the oyster-shell, on which the vote was written), by which the citizens could banish for ten years, by a majority of votes, any citizen whose removal from the state might seem desirable. This device was intended to secure a fair trial for the new constitution by checking the power of individuals who might be dangerous to popular liberties, and by putting a stop to quarrels between rival politicians.

Athens had at last secured a government of the thoroughly democratic type, and from this time began to assume a new and ever-growing importance in Greece, and was soon regarded as the chief of the Ionian States. The people, through the Ecclesia, became thoroughly versed in public affairs, and practically, as well as legally, supreme in the state.

GROWTH AND IMPORTANCE OF SPARTA

As Athens had Draco and Solon as its great lawgivers, so Sparta found in Lycurgus her lawgiver. His institutions gave a permanent cast to the Spartan character, and were not abolished until the last ages of Greece. The system of Lycurgus, meanwhile, had made Sparta a thoroughly military state, and in two great wars (743-723 and 685-668 B. C.) it conquered its neighbors on the west, the Messenians, reducing them to the condition of the Helots, and appropriating their land. By this and by successful war against its northern neighbors, the people of Argos, Sparta acquired the supremacy and became the leading Dorian state of Peloponnesus and of the Grecian world. These two great states of Greece, Athens and Sparta, now were (about 500 B. C.) with the rest of Greece to encounter Persia; and Europe, with united Greece for her champion and representative, was to triumph over the older civilization and prowess of Asia.