Chapter VII: Introduction (5)

At Athens Peisistratus stood forth as champion of the poor shepherds of the Hill against the wealthier parties of the Coast and the Plain. He succeeded where Cylon had failed in gaining command of the Acropolis with his bodyguard. Twice the Athenians managed to expel him, but each time he got back, the first time by dressing up a tall and handsome woman as the goddess Athena and driving into the city with her, and the second time by hiring a contingent of horsemen from Eretria, with money which he had obtained by prudent operations in the goldfields of Thrace. From first to last he and his sons were in power from 560 to 510. It is difficult to estimate his services to Athens, for later generations did their utmost to deny and conceal them, giving some of his achievements to Solon and some to Theseus, and some even to Erechtheus. He founded an early Athenian empire. He won the island of Salamis from Megara, and until she possessed Salamis Athens had no open road to the sea. Later Athenians ascribed this feat to Solon. He regained Sigeum, on the Troad, after a war with Mitylene. He established the elder Miltiades as tyrant of the Thracian Chersonese. In these movements his policy was obviously to open up trade with the Black Sea, the granary of Greece. He extended olive-culture in Attica. He probably began to work the silver-mines at Laurium, which were thenceforth the principal source of Athenian revenue. He made the unfree tillers of the soil into peasant proprietors by confiscating the estates of his noble opponents. He was allied with Sparta and Argos, Thebes and Thessaly and Naxos. He introduced a police armed with bows into the city of Athens.

He probably did much of what Theseus is supposed to have done in synœcising Athens--that is, transforming Attica from a number of villages with a capital into a city-state with surrounding territory. We know that he sent judges on circuit round the country demes. The other indications are that Peisistratus pulled down the city wall in order that she might be able to expand, that he constructed a proper water-supply, and that he fostered the worship of the Olympian or city deities. At the same time he fostered agriculture, and tried to get the poor of Athens back to the land. As he had owed his return to Athena, he signalised his gratitude by surrounding the old temple of Athena Polias with a marble peristyle and sculptures. Some of the sculptures of this period are preserved on the Acropolis of Athens. They were generally carved of the softer _porus_ or rough limestone, and freely adorned with colour. But the decorations of Peisistratus’ temple are of Parian marble. Heracles and his labours seem to have been preferred to Theseus as a subject for representation. On the plain below the Acropolis Peisistratus began a temple to Olympian Zeus on so huge a scale that republican Athens was unable to complete it until the Emperor Hadrian brought his immense resources into play.

But Peisistratus did more than building for religion. He may fairly be called the founder of the State cults of Athens. He founded the Greater Panathenæa, as the symbol of union for Attica. This was a most solemn yearly procession of all the people, to carry up a new embroidered robe as a gift to the Virgin Goddess on the Acropolis. That is the scene depicted on the frieze of the Parthenon which is now the chief glory of the British Museum. Later Athenians, of course, ascribed the Panathenæa to Theseus or Erechtheus. Along with the procession there were athletic games and sacrifices. And the prizes in the games were those fine big oil-jars, the Panathenaic amphoræ, of which we have a long series preserved.[34] This gave a great impulse to pottery. It is about now that we begin the black-figured type of vase, in which the figures are painted with a lustrous black glaze on the rich brown of the earthenware.

Peisistratus greatly encouraged the idea of Athens as the leading member of the Ionic States of Greece. Up to this time great Ionian cities like Miletus and Ephesus had been far ahead of Athens in wealth and civilisation. It is hard to say how Peisistratus persuaded them that Athens was in some sort their mother city unless such was the fact. He inaugurated the solemn purification of Delos, by removing the dead from the island. Henceforth the Apollo of Delos was to share with the Poseidon of Mycale the patronage of Ionia. Both at the Panionic festivals of Delos and the Panathenaic festivals at Athens the solemn recitation of Homer formed an important part of the proceedings. It was Peisistratus who caused an authorised version of Homer to be prepared at Athens. Certain portions were selected and edited. Thus at length Homer became a fixed canon.

Another festival instituted by Peisistratus led to important literary results. This was the Great Dionysia. Dionysus was a late-comer in Olympian mythology, probably from Thrace. As the god of wine, his coming had to face some opposition from the temperance party, but like a god he triumphed. It was at the Dionysia that, as we shall see, the Athenian drama took its rise as a service of worship to the god.

Literature found a whole-hearted patron in the great

1. CORINTHIAN VASE. 2. RED-FIGURED VASE. 3. BLACK-FIGURED VASE. 4. WHITE POLYCHROME VASE.]

tyrant’s younger son Hipparchus. At his court were, among others, Simonides, Anacreon, and Onomacritus. Simonides of Ceos is specially associated with the dithyramb, the chorus in honour of Dionysus, which played a great part in the development of the chorus of tragedy. He was also a composer of odes of victory for successful athletes, though here his fame was eclipsed by his younger rival Pindar. But it is chiefly as a writer of elegies and epitaphs and epigrams that his fame survives. Every one knows that epitaph he wrote on Leonidas and his Three Hundred Spartans at Thermopylæ.

“Go tell at Sparta, thou that passest by,
That here, obedient to her word, we lie.”

His fine ode on the same subject is still extant. Anacreon is known even to the “general reader,” through Byron:

“Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
We will not think of themes like these!
It made Anacreon’s song divine,
He served--but served Polycrates--
A tyrant; but our masters then
Were still, at least, our countrymen.”

Anacreon’s main business was, as our poet suggests, the writing of banquet songs on love and wine. It is rather melancholy to reflect that his anacreontics were composed--according to his own prescription--on ten parts of water to five of wine; but all the ancients watered their liquor. How closely tyranny is to be associated with the revival of culture is proved by the careers of these two poets. Anacreon passed from the court of Polycrates, tyrant of Samos, to Hipparchus, one of the tyrants of Athens. When he fell Anacreon went to the still more brilliant court of Hiero, tyrant of Syracuse. Simonides went with him, and there they were joined by Bacchylides, Pindar, and Æschylus.

Onomacritus was a strange person. It seems that Hipparchus had a hobby of collecting oracles, and had commissioned Onomacritus to edit a famous collection of poetical prophecies by Musæus, a half-mythical bard. Onomacritus was detected inserting some of his own compositions, and very properly expelled for a forger. If all the historical forgers of this period had been detected the modern historian’s lot would be a happier one.

One monument of this period is of especial interest, the _stēlē_ or gravestone of Aristion.[35] It is a bas-relief, once adorned with colour, of a warrior in armour with a long spear in his hand. It is not likely that any attempt was made at a portrait of the deceased. As the _stēlē_ was found at Peisistratus’ birthplace it has been suggested that this may be that very Aristion who proposed the decree which gave the tyrant his bodyguard. It certainly belongs to the right period of art, but Aristion was a common name; and is it likely that a record of such a man would have been permitted to survive?

It was the custom after dinner at Athens to pass round the harp, and for each guest as it came to him either to improvise a verse or to cap his neighbour’s impromptu or to sing a stave of some famous song. The most popular of all these “skolia” was “The Myrtle Bough.” One version of it runs:

“I will wear my sword in a myrtle bough,
Like Harmodius and Aristogeiton
When they killed the tyrant
And made Athens free.

“Dearest Harmodius, thou art not yet dead.
They say thou art in the Isles of the Blessed,
Where dwells Achilles swift of foot
And Diomede, Tydeus’ son.

“I will wear my sword in a myrtle bough,
Like Harmodius and Aristogeiton
When at the sacrifice of Athena
They killed Hipparchus the tyrant lord.

“Everlasting shall be your glory upon earth,
Dearest Harmodius and Aristogeiton,
For that ye killed the tyrant
And set Athens free.”

_English Photo Co., Athens_

FIG. 1. STELE OF ARISTION

_Alinari_

FIG. 2. HARMODIUS

PLATE XXIX]

Right down in the days of Demosthenes, nearly two hundred years later, these two men were still mentioned in most of the public decrees, because immunities had been granted to their descendants for ever. They are the only private individuals who had statues erected to them for more than a hundred years. All this extraordinary honour was theirs because they had killed a tyrant.

Although we can see the blessings that the tyrants of Greece had brought to their cities, it is to the credit of the Greeks that they could not. They much preferred to govern themselves badly than to be governed ever so efficiently by some one else. A tyrant might give them wealth, peace, culture, and happiness, but no Greek ever lost sight of the tyrant’s _telos_, or goal. The tyrant governed, as Aristotle says, “for his own advantage, not that of his subjects.” Hence their execration of tyranny and the extraordinary honour they paid to tyrannicides. Such a sentiment has had an enormous influence in history. The Greeks taught it in their schools, their orators embroidered the theme, the Roman schoolboys learnt declamations against tyrants from their Greek teachers of rhetoric, until finally this old legend of Harmodius and Aristogeiton whetted the daggers of Brutus and Cassius against Cæsar.

It was a legend, I am afraid. The Athenian tyranny was put down by a Spartan army persuaded by a bribed oracle at the bidding of the Alcmæonids. All that Harmodius and Aristogeiton had done was to kill Hipparchus, the younger brother of Hippias, by surprise, as he was marshalling the Panathenaic procession. Apparently, too, the motive was merely a love affair of a kind that we consider disreputable; but that only added the necessary touch of romance to the story. No ancient historian supports the belief of the common folk at Athens that Harmodius and Aristogeiton had set Athens free.

This story provided the subject of one of the most famous of archaic statues, the “Harmodius and Aristogeiton” of Antenor. It was carried off by Xerxes to Persia when he sacked Athens in 480, but returned eventually by Antiochus the Great. Meanwhile two other sculptors had been set to reproduce Antenor’s group. It is probably this reproduction from which our many copies have been made. We have them on coins, on vases, on a marble throne, and above all in two separate statues in the Naples Museum, where unfortunately Aristogeiton, who should have been the bearded elder, has been degraded by the addition of one of the pretty curly-haired heads of the fourth or third century. But the Harmodius is a fine type of archaic work, even though it has been freely restored and is of course only a copy. We note how much more successful is the body than the head. But uncouth as the head is it is full of dignity and virility.[36]

From Aristophanes it would appear that it was the mark of a jingo democrat at Athens to sing “the Harmodius” on every possible occasion.

Hippias, as I have said, was expelled by the machinations of the Alcmæonids and the strong arm of Sparta in 510 B.C. It was the Alcmæonid Cleisthenes who was called upon to draw up a new constitution. After emerging from the tyrannical stage all the Greek states developed a republic, either oligarchical or democratic. In the oligarchic type the citizenship was confined to a few hundreds of the richer citizens and the actual government was carried on by a small council of ten or fifteen members. This was the normal type of Greek government. The democracy of Athens was unique. All Greek states had inherited from the earliest times the public meeting in the market-place as one of the rights of citizenship. At Athens eventually all administrative decrees were made at this Assembly, or Ecclesia, without any revision whatsoever, and all adult male citizens could attend and speak if they chose. It amounted to government by mass meeting. It was, of course, an ignorant, fickle, excitable body, especially in conducting a war or a piece of foreign policy. But it was a wonderful instrument of education, and it gave the Athenian citizen that sense of direct participation in the affairs of his state which alone could satisfy the political aspirations of a Greek. Who shall call it a failure because it bungled a war and an empire, if it made Athens the eye of the world for ever and ever? Cleisthenes set up a Council of five hundred members, fifty elected from each of his new ten tribes, but that was only a committee to prepare business for the Assembly. Also there still remained the old patrician council of notables, now chiefly consisting of ex-magistrates, who met upon the Areian Hill and were called the Council of the Areopagus. These had the guardianship of the laws, amounting probably to a veto upon the Assembly’s proceedings, and a general censorship over morals. They were also the highest criminal court for cases of blood-guilt--a solemn and awful tribunal. Consisting of ex-officials, they naturally had great influence over the merely annual magistrates, or _archons_; and, in fact, as we have recently learnt from Aristotle, they managed most things in Athens until after the Persian wars. The chief executive magistrates were still the nine annual _archons_, still chosen by popular election. With his new ten tribes Cleisthenes instituted ten _strategoi_, or generals, to lead them under command of the War Archon. The ten tribes were so grouped as to prevent any recurrence of the local factions which had enabled Peisistratus to rise. And Cleisthenes devised the ingenious system called ostracism, by which any unpopular statesman who had a certain number of votes cast against him was sent into polite and honourable banishment. It was generally the leader of the Opposition who suffered this fate, and such was the intention. Though Greek democracy inevitably developed a party system, it was never recognised. Opposition was considered treachery to the state, as, indeed, it generally was.

Such in general was the constitution under which Athens rose to glory. It was modified, as we shall see, in a democratic direction by Pericles. As yet it can hardly, with its powerful Areopagus and elective magistrates, be called a democracy. But it tends that way, and the course before it is plain. Cleisthenes has lost much of the credit due to him in the process which has assigned superhuman wisdom to Solon. He, with Pericles, is the father of the Athenian democracy.

IONIA

At this time, when the mainland cities of Greece were beginning to revive the old Ægean culture under changed conditions, their kinsmen across the sea on both sides had gone in advance of them in civilisation. Why this was so it is hard to say--impossible, on the old theory that all these great cities from Miletus to Sybaris were merely colonies of Athens or Corinth or poor little Megara. But if it be true that one and the same gifted race had dwelt from Neolithic times on the coasts of the Eastern Mediterranean, then it is quite natural that the cities furthest removed from the main focus of Northern invasion should be the first to recover from the turmoil of the Dark Ages caused by the coming of Achæans and Dorians. The Ionians at any rate bear all the characteristics that we should expect from the kinsfolk of those pre-Achæan peoples without the Northern stiffening. They are intelligent, artistic, commercial, without any military virtues to speak of. They tend towards naturalistic deities like the Diana of Ephesus, and they scoff at the Olympian system. Their patron god is the sea-god. No deep gulf, such as that of race, separates them from the Lydian and Carian peoples behind them. Moreover, we can find the period and the political motive when the legends of their foundation from Athens first came into vogue. In the East “Javan” was the collective name for the Greeks.

In the eighth, seventh, and sixth centuries cities like Miletus, Ephesus, and Mitylene on Lesbos were the greatest cities of the Greek world, in size, riches, and culture. They in their turn were sending colonies into the Black Sea, to tap its rich corn-growing and wool-producing regions. We have seen something of the wisdom of Thales, and we must allow our imaginations to suggest what a vast amount of preliminary knowledge and culture is required before a man can calculate an eclipse. It is likely that this learning came in the merchant ships from Egypt. We have seen also what a great part Ionia played in the development (if not the authorship) of the Homeric epics. It is here too that lyric poetry reaches its apotheosis. We have agreed, I hope, that the epic did not come into being out of the void, but that there must have been songs before there were long poems. Hence we are not driven to the extravagant assumption that Sappho and Alcæus were beginners at their trade.

The great lyric period of the seventh and sixth centuries belongs politically to an era of aristocracies and tyrannies. The aristocracies here were composed, not of farmers, as at Athens, nor of warrior-knights, as at Sparta, but of merchant princes who have always proved lavish patrons of a certain kind of art and literature. Most of the great poets seem to have been members of the aristocracy.

Sappho is a remarkable figure in the history of literature, the only woman who has ever reached the front rank among poets. We have of her only a few score lines of broken fragments, only two poems that exceed ten lines, and not one of thirty. Yet even from these ruined remnants we can feel across the ages the vital throb of her passion, speaking in music of altogether unequalled beauty. It is impossible to describe the emotion which scholars and poets of all ages have felt when they first stumbled upon

“Immortal Aphrodite of the starry throne,
Daughter of God, weaver of guile, I beseech thee
Neither to disgust nor to distress subdue,
Lady, my heart....”

Or the broken marriage chorus:

MAIDENS

“Like the sweet apple blushing on the topmost twig,
Top of the topmost, which the gatherers forgot.
Forgot? Nay, but they could not reach to it.

YOUTHS

“Like the hyacinth on the hills which the shepherd swains
Tread underfoot, and down to the earth the bright flower....”

But translation inevitably spoils the fragrance, as even Rossetti and Swinburne have found. It is of Sappho that Swinburne writes in her own metre:

“Ah the singing, ah the delight, the passion!
All the Loves wept, listening; sick with anguish
Stood the crowned nine Muses about Apollo;
Fear was upon them,
While the tenth sang wonderful things they knew not.
Ah the tenth, the Lesbian! the nine were silent,
None endured the sound of her song for weeping;
Laurel by laurel
Faded all their crowns; but about her forehead,
Round her woven tresses and ashen temples,
White as dead snow, paler than grass in summer,
Ravaged with kisses,
Shone a light of fire as a crown for ever.
Yea, almost the implacable Aphrodite
Paused, and almost wept; such a song was that song....”

The fertile and prurient invention of late Greek scholarship have given this sublime poetess a biography which is as false as it is unpleasant. From her own works, however, we can gather some interesting details. She belonged to the governing aristocracy of Lesbos, and, for a time at least, went into exile with it. The women of Lesbos seem to have formed rival salons of literary culture, and Sappho herself was the head of one. There was a good deal of jealousy between them. Strangely, the most ardent of her verse is addressed to one of her own sex, and since it cannot be true that she is only writing the amatory language of male poets, we must conclude that the women of Ionia imitated the men in that strange passion which ignored sex. To contradict the celebrated fable of her dramatic suicide from a cliff in consequence of an unrequited love, we have a fragment of her message to her daughter from a calm deathbed:

“ ... For it is not right that in a house the Muses haunt
Mourning should dwell: such things befit us not.”

We cannot lightly dismiss as mere gossip the story of tender feeling, or at any rate tender expressions, between Sappho and Alcæus. They were contemporary love-poets of the same city. Sappho sometimes used the alcaic measure, and Alcæus the sapphic. Besides, we have it on the authority of Aristotle. One line of Alcæus to Sappho is preserved:

“Sappho, pure sweet-smiling weaver of violets.”

Alcæus too was a member of the Lesbian aristocracy. He alludes to a short-lived tyranny which was ended by the appointment of a constitutional tyrant or dictator, the wise and generous Pittacus. In the course of these disturbances Alcæus went into exile--among other places, we should note, to Egypt--while his brother took service under the King of Babylon. Such were the cosmopolitan relations of this period. The poet also fought for his country against the Athenians in the struggle for Sigeum, and humorously records the fact that he lost his shield in the rout. Such a loss was the regular mark of defeat, and generally regarded as a brand of ignominy to a soldier. But the Ionians took nothing seriously, not even war. It is strangely illustrative of the prevalence of types in Greek art that many lyric poets lost their shields in battle--Alcæus, Archilochus, and Anacreon--while the Roman Horace was too careful an imitator of the Greek lyric tradition to neglect their example in this respect. The poetry of Alcæus falls into two classes--banquet-songs in praise of love and wine, and political songs attacking his enemies. He too chiefly survives in fragments like

“Wine is the mirror to mortals....”

“Wine, dear child, and Truth....”

Though there is not the fire of Sappho in his work, it is singularly artistic, polished, and rich in the language of pure poetry. For the rest we must be content to admit his great reputation in antiquity and to enjoy him through the medium of Horace’s Latin.

These two great poets, who both flourished about 600 B.C., their predecessors Archilochus, Arion, Callinus, and Terpander, and their successors of the next generation Anacreon and Simonides, are the best representatives of the early culture of Ionia. To complete the picture we must remember her philosophers. Besides Thales and Bias, the two Sages (Bias, by the way, is credited with having proposed that the Ionians should leave their homes _en masse_ and found a united state in the west), there were students of natural philosophy like Anaximander, who made the first map and the first sundial and explained the evolution of life from chaos by the interaction of heat and cold, Heracleitus of Ephesus, “the weeping philosopher,” or Hecatæus of Miletus, the grandfather of history and geography. Hecatæus first explained away the gods as only deified mortals of past ages, a doctrine afterwards called Euhemerism. This was the Ionian attitude of scepticism which doubtless is to be discerned in Homer’s attitude to the gods. Even Sappho, the worshipper of Aphrodite, says in one fragmentary line:

“I know not what the gods are: two notions have I....”

Language is the easiest medium for art. We must not be surprised to find this high poetic and philosophic standard accompanied chronologically by plastic work, still to be called archaic, which shows the artist painfully struggling with his

_Mansell & Co._

Fig. 1. SCULPTURED COLUMN FROM THE OLD TEMPLE OF ARTEMIS AT EPHESUS

_Mansell & Co._

FIG. 2. RELIEF FROM THE HARPY TOMB, NORTH SIDE

PLATE XXX]

material. Though Miletus was already growing rich with commerce the Ionian coin types are still very primitive. It is generally believed that coinage was invented by the Lydians in the seventh century, but for a long time the marks upon their coins were only mechanical impressions. One of the earliest attempts at an artistic motive is the coin found at Halicarnassus bearing a stag and an inscription which seems to mean “I am the mark of Phanes.” We know of a Phanes at Halicarnassus late in the sixth century, but this must be the token of an ancestor of his. Most of these coins are of electrum, a natural mixture of gold and silver.

Of the sculpture of this region we must be content with two examples. One is the so-called Harpy Tomb from Xanthus, in Lycia.[37] It shows us the “harpies” conceived as angels of death--by no means malignant, as the harpies afterwards became--carrying away the dead. Perhaps it would be better to call them Kēres, or Fates. In the centre of this north side is the dead warrior yielding up his helmet to Hades. On the west side the Queen of the Dead (Persephone) sits in majesty. Over the door is the common heraldic motive of the suckling goat, and to the right of her three worshippers bring offerings of poppies and sesame to another seated goddess. Archæologists date this monument in the latter half of the sixth century.

The other is the sculptured column from the temple at Ephesus.[38] Great interest attaches to this work from the inscription, which tells us that it was set up by King Crœsus of Lydia. This famous monarch was in power from 560 to 546 B.C. Himself half a Greek, with strong Hellenic sympathies and in close relation to the Delphic oracle, his growing power was overcoming and absorbing the independent cities of Ionia, who made no very violent resistance. But he himself had to face a still greater power then swallowing up the ancient kingdoms of the East--Cyrus of the Medes and Persians. Crœsus lost a great battle, and died, as ostentatiously as he had lived, on a splendid funeral pyre. The Greeks loved to invent stories about this plutocratic potentate, all illustrating one of their favourite maxims against pride, “Call no man happy until he is dead.” In defiance of chronology edifying interviews were composed between him and Solon. It is clear that the Greeks were tremendously impressed by his magnificent life and dramatic end. The fall of the Lydian power brought the Greeks face to face with Persia, and upon the issue of that momentous conflict hung the destinies of European civilisation.

On purely æsthetic grounds I prefer to illustrate this section with a picture which, one fears, chronologically belongs to a period at least two generations later. But the spirit of Sappho seems to be revealed in it as in no other work of art. These “Reliefs from the Ludovisi Throne”[39] were discovered in Rome with no inscription to tell us whence or when they had been brought there. Decoratively considered, they are superb examples of low relief. Observe how the motives are accommodated to the triangular slabs. On one is a flute-girl playing the double pipe. Feminine nudity is rare indeed in fifth-century work; probably no one but an _auletris_ would have been so represented at that date; but the topic is treated with all possible refinement and reserve. On the other is a hooded worshipper trimming or extinguishing a lamp. And who is the diademed goddess on the central slab? It is not the sea from which she is rising. It can be none other than the maid, Persephone, who spent half the year with her dark lord, Hades, under the earth, and half with her mother, Demeter, above, and when she came brought the spring and the flowers back with her. The rendering of the silken garments half revealing the fine anatomy beneath is so skilful and advanced that we are surprised to notice that the eyes are still archaically rendered.

* * * * *

While these lines were in the press there came news that

_Alinari_]

America had added yet another to her list of trophies captured from Europe. The Boston Museum of Fine Arts has just acquired three more slabs which obviously belong to the same monument, and of which, by the courtesy of the Director, we are enabled to publish one of the earliest photographic representations.[40] It is said that these additional slabs had lain for years unrecognised in the hands of a collector at Lewes, in Sussex. Whether they formed the other half of the same throne, tomb, or altar, or whether they formed the second of a pair, the new slabs correspond precisely in shape, subject, and treatment to the old. The hooded figure of the old “throne” is balanced by the wonderfully realistic old woman of the new. The nude flute-player has her counterpart in the nude male citharist. And the long central slab is matched by the new relief of the winged male god and the two seated females.

As for the style, it is obviously identical; there is the same remarkable mixture of archaic imperfection in the delineation of heads and faces, with finished and confident mastery in the technique of relief. The architectural ornament, the carving of the nude bodies, the treatment of the wings and of the drapery, is as advanced as that of the Parthenon sculptures. Yet the archaic smile of the faces, the carving of the eyes, the imperfect setting of a head in profile upon a body full-face recalls the early Æginetan sculptures and the metopes of Selinus. We must, I suppose, date this work in the period between Marathon and Salamis, or a very little later. Even so, there is nothing even on vase-paintings to match the nude bodies or the winged god for half a century to come.

The subjects are equally puzzling. In the long slab the male god must be Love, or (as I rather think) Death. The holes in the marble indicate where the bronze balances he was holding were attached. The two female figures obviously indicate Joy and Sorrow. The god is smiling and the balance is inclined towards Joy. Close by the knees of the two women are mysterious objects of marble which seemed to hang from the scales and actually supported them. On each is a nude male figure with hands raised above the head as if in act to strike with the sword. The architectural scrolls which support this and the corresponding single figures of the new slabs seem to me to indicate a ship, especially as there is a dolphin, the regular symbol of sea, under one of them. In other corners there are pomegranates, a fruit associated with the underworld.

Mythological interpretation will no doubt attempt to bring these scenes into relation with the famous Homeric simile of the scales in connection with the fate of Hector. But that is highly unsatisfying. To my eyes the whole series bears reference to Death. The Winged God of Death reappears on Athenian funeral lecythi of a later date. The figure of Sorrow may be matched by a marble statue found at Eleusis. The musicians have the sad or pensive faces of dirge-players. The rising Persephone is the heroine of the Eleusinian myth of immortality. The old woman may be Fate, and her younger counterpart is surely trimming the lamp for the journey. In brief, I would hazard the opinion that the whole monument is Eleusinian and funereal in character, symbolical rather than mythological. Such a character is strange indeed for the period to which the art seems to belong, but the art itself is without any close parallel. More it would be unbecoming to say at present; the monument is _sub judice_, and until Professor Studniczka has spoken--“let no dog bark.”

THE WEST

Wheresoever the patron is there will the poets be gathered together. When tyrants like Polycrates and Peisistratus ceased to exist in the East, and when the Ionian cities had fallen under the Lydian and Persian despotisms, the courtly poets migrated with their lyres and other luggage to Sicily and South Italy, where there were aristocracies as elegant and tyrants as bountiful. The centres of commerce in this

period before Athens rose into prominence were Miletus, Corinth, Ægina, and Sybaris, but above all the first and the last. The West was then, as it is now, one of the greatest granaries of the world. Sicily in particular, with its fertile volcanic soil and its equable climate, was regarded as the original home of wheat. Milesian wool and Eastern wares found a ready market among the Etruscans, whose tastes were Greek, as their race originally was. Most of this traffic passed through the hands of Sybaris. As a result Sybaris, on her soft, warm gulf, became proverbial for wealth and effeminacy. In the early sixth century Sybaris seems to have been larger and richer than any other State at any period of Greek history. Her walls had a circumference of over six miles, her population was 100,000, she kept a standing force of 5000 horsemen, and in her last great battle is said to have put 300,000 men into the field. But in the midst of her opulence and luxury she fell--and was destroyed for ever, so that not a vestige was left to mark her site. It was her neighbour and rival Croton that destroyed her. Croton was not nearly so wealthy, but she was better organised for war. She prided herself on the number of prizes her athletes won at Delphi and Olympia, and she was led by the famous strong man Milo, he who

“Could rend an oak
And peg thee in his knotty entrails.”

It is said that in the great battle on the river Traeis in 511 the cavalry of Sybaris were so much better accustomed to musical drill than to fighting that at the sound of the enemy’s fifes the Sybarite horses began to dance! The asceticism which led to Croton’s efficiency was a result of the teaching of Pythagoras of Samos, the great philosopher. A strange person was Pythagoras; his philosophy largely consisted of sound mathematics run mad on metaphysics. He attached mystical meanings to odd and even numbers; harmony was the principle of the universe. The abiding doctrine of his philosophy was that of metempsychosis, or the transmigration of souls:

“CLOWN. What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild-fowl?

“MALVOLIO. That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a
bird.”

These doctrines of the immortality of the soul came, no doubt, from the East, for Pythagoras is reported to have sojourned in Egypt and visited Babylon. He founded a great secret society, which lived on monastic (and of course vegetarian) principles. He had considerable influence on the mind of Plato. His followers, banded together by mystical rites of initiation, took to playing an important part in the politics of their country, and fell into disrepute in consequence.

When Sybaris was destroyed some of the survivors took refuge at Posidonium, her colony. Here, at the modern Pæsto, is one of the most splendid relics of Doric architecture.[41]

Xenophanes of Colophon was another Ionian philosopher of the sixth century who came to instruct the West. He was the founder of the important Eleatic school of philosophy, teaching that God was one, and was one with Nature. Like others of his kind, he devoted a great deal of attention to Nature-study, especially geology. These regions also boasted two of the most celebrated law-givers of antiquity, Zaleucus of Western Locri, said to have been the first to put laws into writing, and Charondas of Catane. We have seen reason to believe that the Law-givers of Greece represent rather a conception of Greek history than a fact. Doubtless these two sages are as historical as Solon, but there is even less doubt that they have both been made the peg for elaborate forgeries of some late Pythagorean philosopher, who succeeded in foisting off a whole series of excellent moral doctrines upon their shoulders, to the great confusion of later writers, such as Cicero and Diodorus, who believed them to be genuine.

Their spuriousness was conclusively demonstrated by the great Richard Bentley.

Lyric poets too arose in Sicily and Asia Minor. Stesichorus of Himera, who was stricken blind because he spoke ill of beautiful Helen of Troy, and Ibycus of Rhegium, who sings with almost Sapphic fire of roses and nightingales and Eros

“Who shooteth his melting glance from under his shadowy eyelids.”

But most remarkable for its volume of talent is the galaxy of poets gathered at Syracuse round the great tyrant Hiero. His wealth is indicated by his frequent victories in the chariot-races of Greece. To these athletic triumphs we owe not only the incomparable coin-types of Syracuse, but the immortal victory-songs of Pindar. The eagle flights of Pindar I have already described as indescribable. We cannot, I think, put ourselves into the attitude of the Greeks with regard to horseraces. Heavily as we may bet about them, we do not associate them with history and religion. Until we do so Pindar must remain largely a stranger to us. He is like some fairy juggler throwing up strings of jewels which vanish when we try to grasp them. Bacchylides is a lesser, more facile Pindar. I have mentioned that his uncle Simonides and Anacreon also migrated to this court. Presently they were joined by a greater than them all--the tragedian Æschylus.

As the East had powerful barbarian kingdoms to withstand, so the West had a terrible enemy always at the gates--the Semites. These Phœnician traders were far more powerful and aggressive in their colony of Carthage than in the mother cities, Tyre and Sidon. Admirably organised as a State, with able generals and highly trained mercenary troops, they coveted the rich island of Sicily. They seem to have effected a lodgment on the west end of the island before the Greeks came to colonise the east and south. Thanks to the great resources of the tyrants of Syracuse, the Greeks here were more successful in resisting the barbarians than were the Ionians of the east. The great conflict came in the battle of Himera, fought, according to tradition, on the same day as Salamis, and won by Gelo, who preceded his brother Hiero on the throne of Syracuse. This victory thrust the Phœnicians back into their corner for nearly a century.

It is to be observed that Himera and Platæa meant far more than physical victories. Neither Persians nor Phœnicians were in our sense barbarians; indeed, so far as political organisation and material comfort are concerned they were far ahead of the Greeks. It was a question which of two civilisations, which of two spiritual and moral standpoints, should prevail. In these victories Europe escaped out of Gomorrah with the smell of the brimstone upon the hair of her head and the skirts of her raiment.

The town nearest to the Carthaginians in Sicily was Selinus. The wealth and piety of this city are indicated by the remains of eight Doric temples, seven of which belong to the sixth and early fifth centuries. From these come the earliest examples of temple sculpture. The earliest is the very archaic metope[42] which shows Perseus cutting off the head of the Gorgon, who is clinging to a small Pegasus, while Athene stands behind to encourage the hero. The heads are full-face, while the legs are in profile. The Gorgon is the happiest effort (she looks the happiest of the three), because this was a recognised art type of ugliness and terror. The other[43] here illustrated is of the early fifth century, a little before the Olympia metopes. It represents with great dignity and beauty the appearance of Hera to Zeus when she came in all her finery, as related in Homer, to beguile his heart. Observe how admirably the scene is designed to fill the space of the panel without overcrowding.

Acragas, too, the home of the tyrant Theron, has left us ruins of a colossal temple of an unusual design. The columns are so huge that a man can stand inside the fluting of them.

_Alinari_

FIG. 1. PERSEUS AND GORGON

_Alinari_

FIG. 2. HERA AND ZEUS]

The most remarkable feature is the row of pillars, carved to represent men, bearing up the heavy entablature, as the caryatids of the Erechtheum carried their portico upon their heads. But the motive at Acragas was to indicate the strength of the bearers and the weight of the burden. The refined Athenian put maidens in their place, with a very light roof to carry. It was not an idea that found much acceptance among the Greeks, though it is rather popular with the modern architect--witness the Hermitage Palace at Petersburg.

Of all the splendours of ancient Syracuse the best memorials are the lofty Doric columns built into the walls of the Christian cathedral. For Syracusan art, however, we prefer to turn to their coins.[44] It is said that Gelo cast these first beautiful silver pieces out of the spoil taken from the Carthaginians at Himera. The reverse always bears the chariot, with four horses for a tetradrachm, two for a didrachm, and one for a drachma. On the obverse is the head of the nymph Arethusa, who presided over the sacred spring on the peninsular citadel of Syracuse which was called Ortygia. The dolphins around the head are held to indicate the salt sea which surrounds this fresh spring of water. If the coin types are any proof, we may suppose that Gelo thought more of his victories at Olympia in the chariot race than of his triumph on the battlefield of Himera.

IV

THE GRAND CENTURY

ὅθι παῖδες Ἀθαναίων ἐβάλοντο φαεννὰν κρηπῖδ’ ἐλευθερίας.
PINDAR.

THE RISE OF ATHENS

Never in all the world’s history was there such a leap of civilisation as in Greece of the fifth century. In one town of about thirty thousand citizens during the lifetime of a man and his father these things occurred: a world-conquering Power was shattered for ever, a naval empire was built up, the drama was developed to full stature, sculpture grew from crude infancy to a height it has never yet surpassed, painting became a fine art, architecture rose from clumsiness to the limit of its possibilities in one direction, history was consummated as a scientific art, the most influential of all philosophies was begotten. And all this under no fostering despot, but in the extreme human limit of liberty, equality, and fraternity. One Athenian family might have known Miltiades, Themistocles, Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Socrates, Pheidias, Pericles, Anaxagoras, Aristophanes, Herodotus, Thucydides, Polygnotus, and Ictinus.

No historical cause will account for genius, no historian can predict its coming. Some say that great literature is produced by outbursts of national emotion, as Shakespeare was “produced” by the defeat of the Spanish Armada (though he

1. NAXOS. 2. TARENTUM. 3. CATANA. 4. SYRACUSE.]

was twenty-four when it happened) and Milton by the Puritan rebellion (though he wrote “Comus” in 1634). Others maintain that art is the blossom of decay. It is vain to look to politics for the real cause of the uprising of genius. But when a whole state rises simultaneously to an intellectual heat, at which masterpieces are thrown off almost daily, in almost every department of human activity, we may, and must, look for some historical and political explanation.

Peisistratus, as I have argued, had laid the foundations of Athenian civilisation, partly by making it into a real city-state, partly by direct encouragement of art and literature, partly by promoting commerce, and thus opening the way to foreign influences. Then in 507 Cleisthenes and the Spartans had given Athens a free republic, with distinctly democratic tendencies. Thus the cold domination of the conservative, uncultured aristocracy, who had mainly been occupied in agricultural pursuits, had lost ground, although, no doubt, the Areopagus, which still “directed most things,” maintained its influence to a considerable extent. What now grew into the most powerful element in the state was the seafaring commercial population, who lived mainly on the sea-coast. These were the restless, eager brains which were beginning to think things out, and to find their bearings in the big world outside Attica. They would be in constant business relations with their Ionian kinsmen across the sea, and thus catch a tincture of their cosmopolitan culture. Accordingly, when at the close of the sixth century the Ionians rose in revolt against their Persian masters, Athens, with Eretria, another commercial city of Eastern connections, alone responded to their cry for help. It was only a raid, but it singed the Great King’s beard by burning one of his capitals, Sardis. For this revenge was promised. The Great King of those days was no effeminate, luxurious Oriental, such as those whom Alexander chased about Asia in later days. The Medes and Persians were then invincible conquerors, who had just devoured all the great empires and ancient civilisations of the East. They were out to conquer the world, and now nothing but a narrow sea lay between them and the presumptuous Greeks. Accordingly, ambassadors were sent in the usual fashion to Greece, to demand earth and water in token of submission. The Athenians are said to have thrown their envoys into the barathron where the bodies of felons were flung for burial, there to collect what earth they could. The Spartans, with whom originality was never a strong point, threw _theirs_ into a well, indicating thereby that the answer was in the negative. So Darius collected a very great host from all his vassals, and sent it round by land, with the ships coasting alongside. Fortunately for Greece, the fleet met with fearful shipwreck off the dangerous Chalcidian promontory of Mount Athos. In 490 Darius tried again. This time it was a much smaller force, designed, not to conquer Greece, but merely to punish Athens and Eretria. It was a naval expedition only, but room was provided in the ships to bring back the Athenians in chains for summary judgment. Datis and Artaphernes were the leaders, but the ex-tyrant Hippias was there to show them the way to the Acropolis, where it seems he already had some friends awaiting his return. But Athens also had an ex-tyrant of the Chersonese among her generals, one who knew the Persian method of fighting and had the strongest motives for resisting them. That tyrant was Miltiades. Hippias’ plan was to cross over the strait from Eubœa, where the Persians had succeeded in enslaving Eretria, land on the north coast of Attica with a large force, and while the land army of Athens was engaged there, slip round with the fleet to Peiræus and catch Athens undefended. His plans miscarried, for the Athenian line swept down the hill at Marathon[45] upon the Persian archers before they were fully deployed, and with their lightning charge hurled them back into the sea with great slaughter, then marched back at full speed to the city, in time.

_English Photo Co., Athens_]

This was the triumph of the Athenian hoplite--his only really great feat in history--led by aristocrats and governed by an aristocratic council. The hoplite himself was a comfortable burgess who could afford a full suit of armour. It was not a victory for democracy, and the clamorous proletariat of the Peiræus had little, if any, share in it. But it was a purely Athenian triumph. Alone--with the help of her little Bœotian friend Platæa--alone she had done it. The great Dorian city had been urgently entreated by the runner Philippides to send aid. But Sparta was busy with a festival and had to wait until the moon came right for marching. Athens now, by virtue of this supreme achievement, stepped up into the second rank of Greek Powers.

A few years later some slaves working in the Athenian silver-mines at Laurium chanced to strike a rich vein of metal. All Athenian citizens were shareholders in all the state’s property, and naturally expected to divide the profits, which would amount to about ten francs a head. Then stood up a certain Themistocles--not an aristocrat, but a persuasive speaker with the supplest brain that Zeus had ever created since Hermes stole the cows--and proposed to spend the whole bonus on ships. This is the turning-point of Athenian history. The stout hoplites who had won the day at Marathon stood aghast at the proposal. They pointed out that the strength of Pallas lay in her spear, that to create a navy would be to encourage those turbulent radicals at the Peiræus. Besides, what was it for? The Persians had gone home again. Themistocles, in reply, drew attention to a little war then on hand with Ægina, an island obviously not to be conquered by hoplites only. Doubtless a Greek neighbour was the more persuasive bogey, but Themistocles must have known that Persia was the enemy. Athens did not require a hundred new ships to fight Ægina, which had not a score for use in battle. No doubt Themistocles had the support of the “nautical rabble,” for he gained a majority for his proposal, and soon afterwards got rid of his chief opponent, Aristeides, by ostracism. Thus Athens acquired a fleet beyond all comparison the most powerful in Greek waters. It was needed.

Persia had spent the interval in suppressing Egypt; Darius was dead, and Xerxes reigned in his stead. But still the slave stood behind the royal chair to whisper every day at dinner, “Master, remember the Athenians.” In 480 he had time to remember them. This time there were to be no miscalculations; no mere raid this time, but the hugest armament in history. No shipwrecks this time: where the army had to cross the sea at the Dardanelles a bridge was constructed; where the fleet had to round the promontory a canal was dug.

The host was on the same scale. Herodotus and Æschylus alike delight to parade the outlandish names of the Oriental leaders, to display the numbers of that mighty host of all the nations of the earth, how they drank the rivers dry as they marched, to dwell on the strange equipment of the remote barbarians of Thrace, India, and the Soudan, the wealth and magnificence of the Great King, how he lashed the sea when it broke his bridge, how he questioned the exiled Spartan king Demaratus, unable to believe that these little people should dare to stand up against him. Even more than the life and death of Crœsus, this immortal story of the Persian monarch’s great Armada and its fall, with the tragic contrast between his glorious setting out and miserable return, stirred the imagination of the Greeks for ever afterwards. Did it not illustrate their favourite philosophy of “No excess” and “Know thyself”? All their art was based on this motive: “Know thyself; practise Reverence, because Wealth and Prosperity lead to Insolence, and that arouses Envy in gods and men. Wrath (Nemesis) follows on the heels of Insolence, beguiling with false Hope, and finally leading into Ruin.” That is the doctrine of all Greek tragedy; both Herodotus and Thucydides illustrated it in history, the former taking Persia and the latter Athens for its examples and victims. But it governed their art also; it is the secret of the self-restraint that characterises all the best of their work. That virtue of Aidôs ruled their spirits. That is why it is so absurd to think of the Greeks as happy pagans. They walked in the fear of the Lord, in the shadow of tragedy.