Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete

196 (return)

[ If we can attach any credit to the Oration on Peace ascribed to Andocides, Cimon was residing on his patrimonial estates in the Chersonese at the time of his recall. As Athens retained its right to the sovereignty of this colony, and as it was a most important position as respected the recent Athenian conquests under Cimon himself, the assertion, if true, will show that Cimon’s ostracism was attended with no undue persecution. Had the government seriously suspected him of any guilty connivance with the oligarchic conspirators, it could scarcely have permitted him to remain in a colony, the localities of which were peculiarly favourable to any treasonable designs he might have formed.

197 (return)

[ In the recall of Cimon, Plutarch tells us, some historians asserted that it was arranged between the two parties that the administration of the state should be divided; that Cimon should be invested with the foreign command of Cyprus, and Pericles remain the head of the domestic government. But it was not until the sixth year after his recall (viz., in the archonship of Euthydemus, see Diodorus xii.) that Cimon went to Cyprus; and before that event Pericles himself was absent on foreign expeditions.

198 (return)

[ Plutarch, by a confusion of dates, blends this short armistice with the five years’ truce some time afterward concluded. Mitford and others have followed him in his error. That the recall of Cimon was followed by no peace, not only with the Spartans, but the Peloponnesians generally, is evident from the incursions of Tolmides presently to be related.

199 (return)

[ Diod lib. xi.

200 (return)

[ See Mueller’s Dorians, and the authorities he quotes. Vol. i., b. I.

201 (return)

[ For so I interpret Diodorus.

202 (return)

[ Diod. Sic., lib. xi.

203 (return)

[ There was a democratic party in Thessaly always favourable to Athens. See Thucyd., iv., c. 88.

204 (return)

[ Now Lepanto.

205 (return)

[ Paus., lib. ii., c. 25.

206 (return)

[ Plut. in vit. Peric.

207 (return)

[ Thucyd., lib. i., 112.

208 (return)

[ Diod., lib. xi. Plut. in vit. Cim. Heeren, Manual of Ancient History; but Mr. Mitford and Mr. Thirlwall properly reject this spurious treaty.

209 (return)

[ Plut. in Cim.

210 (return)

[ The Clouds.

211 (return)

[ Isoc. Areop., 38.

212 (return)

[ Idomen. ap. Athen., lib. xii.

213 (return)

[ Thucyd., lib. ii., 16; Isoc. Areopag., e. xx., p. 234.

214 (return)

[ If we believe with Plutarch that wives accompanied their husbands to the house of Aspasia (and it was certainly a popular charge against Pericles that Aspasia served to corrupt the Athenian matrons), they could not have been so jealously confined as writers, judging from passages in the Greek writers that describe not what women were, but what women ought to be, desire us to imagine. And it may be also observed, that the popular anecdotes represent Elpinice as a female intriguante, busying herself in politics, and mediating between Cimon and Pericles; anecdotes, whether or not they be strictly faithful, that at least tend to illustrate the state of society.

215 (return)

[ As I propose, in a subsequent part of this work, to enter at considerable length into the social life and habits of the Athenians, I shall have full opportunity for a more detailed account of these singular heroines of Alciphron and the later comedians.

216 (return)

[ It was about five years after the death of Cimon that Pericles obtained that supreme power which resembled a tyranny, but was only the expression and concentration of the democratic will.

217 (return)

[ Theophrast. ap. Plut. in vit. Per.

218 (return)

[ Justin, lib. iii., c. 6.

219 (return)

[ For the transfer itself there were excuses yet more plausible than that assigned by Justin. First, in the year following the breach between the Spartans and Athenians (B. C. 460), probably the same year in which the transfer was effected, the Athenians were again at war with the great king in Egypt; and there was therefore a show of justice in the argument noticed by Boeckh (though in the source whence he derives it the argument applies to the earlier time of Aristides), that the transfer provided a place of greater security against the barbarians. Secondly, Delos itself was already and had long been under Athenian influence. Pisistratus had made a purification of the island [Footnote Herod., lib. i., c. 64:, Delian soothsayers had predicted to Athens the sovereignty of the seas [Footnote Semius Delius, ap. Athen., viii.:, and the Athenians seem to have arrogated a right of interference with the temple. The transfer was probably, therefore, in appearance, little more than a transfer from a place under the power of Athens to Athens itself. Thirdly, it seems that when the question was first agitated, during the life of Aristides, it was at the desire of one of the allies themselves (the Samians). [Footnote Plut. in vit. Aristid. Boeckh (vol. i., 135, translation) has no warrant for supposing that Pericles influenced the Samians in the expression of this wish, because Plutarch refers the story to the time of Aristides, during whose life Pericles possessed no influence in public affairs.:

220 (return)

[ The assertion of Diodorus (lib. xii., 38), that to Pericles was confided the superintendence and management of the treasure, is corroborated by the anecdotes in Plutarch and elsewhere, which represent Pericles as the principal administrator of the funds.

221 (return)

[ The political nature and bias of the Heliaea is apparent in the very oath, preserved in Demost. con. Tim., p. 746, ed. Reiske. In this the heliast is sworn never to vote for the establishment of tyranny or oligarchy in Athens, and never to listen to any proposition tending to destroy the democratic constitution. That is, a man entered upon a judicial tribunal by taking a political oath!

222 (return)

[ These courts have been likened to modern juries; but they were very little bound by the forms and precedents which shackled the latter. What a jury, even nowadays, a jury of only twelve persons, would be if left entirely to impulse and party feeling, any lawyer will readily conceive. How much more capricious, uncertain, and prejudiced a jury of five hundred, and, in some instances, of one thousand or fifteen hundred! [Footnote By the junction of two or more divisions, as in cases of Eisangelia. Poll. viii., 53 and 123; also Tittman.:

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[ “Designed by our ancestors,” says Aristotle (Pol., lib. viii, c. 3) not, as many now consider it, merely for delight, but for discipline that so the mind might be taught not only how honourably to pursue business, but how creditably to enjoy leisure; for such enjoyment is, after all, the end of business and the boundary of active life.

224 (return)

[ See Aristot. (Pol., lib. viii., c. 6.)

225 (return)

[ An anecdote in Gellius, lib. xv., c. 17, refers the date of the disuse of this instrument to the age of Pericles and during the boyhood of Alcibiades.

226 (return)

[ Drawing was subsequently studied as a branch of education essential to many of the common occupations of life.

227 (return)

[ Suid.

228 (return)

[ Hecataeus was also of Miletus.

229 (return)

[ Pausan., ii., c. 3: Cic. de Orat., ii., c. 53; Aulus Gellius, xv., c. 23.

230 (return)

[ Fast. Hell., vol. i.

231 (return)

[ A brilliant writer in the Edinburgh Review (Mr. Macauley) would account for the use of dialogue in Herodotus by the childish simplicity common to an early and artless age—as the boor always unconsciously resorts to the dramatic form of narration, and relates his story by a series of “says he’s” and “says I’s.” But does not Mr. Macauley, in common with many others, insist far too much on the artlessness of the age and the unstudied simplicity of the writer? Though history itself was young, art was already at its zenith. It was the age of Sophocles, Phidias, and Pericles. It was from the Athenians, in their most polished period, that Herodotus received the most rapturous applause. Do not all accounts of Herodotus, as a writer, assure us that he spent the greater part of a long life in composing, polishing, and perfecting his history; and is it not more in conformity with the characteristic spirit of the times, and the masterly effects which Herodotus produces, to conclude, that what we suppose to be artlessness was, in reality, the premeditated elaboration of art?

232 (return)

[ Esther iii., 12; viii., 9: Ezra vi., 1.

233 (return)

[ Herod., vii., 100.

234 (return)

[ About twenty-nine years younger.—Fast. Hell., vol. ii., p. 7.

235 (return)

[ Cic. Acad. Quaest., 4, Abbe de Canaye, Mem. de l’Acad. d’l* *crip., tom. x. etc. (*illegible letters)

236 (return)

[ Diog. Laert., cap. 6. Cic. Acad. Quaest. 4, etc.

237 (return)

[ Arist. Metap. Diog. Laert. Cic. Quaest. 4. etc.

238 (return)

[ It must ever remain a disputable matter how far the Ionian Pythagoras was influenced by affection for Dorian policy and customs, and how far he designed to create a state upon the old Dorian model. On the one hand, it is certain that he paid especial attention to the rites and institutions most connected with the Dorian deity, Apollo— that, according to his followers, it was from that god that he derived his birth, a fiction that might be interpreted into a Dorian origin; he selected Croton as his residence, because it was under the protection of “his household god;” his doctrines are said to have been delivered in the Dorian dialect; and much of his educational discipline, much of his political system, bear an evident affinity to the old Cretan and Spartan institutions. But, on the other hand, it is probable, that Pythagoras favoured the god of Delphi, partly from the close connexion which many of his symbols bore to the metaphysical speculations the philosopher had learned to cultivate in the schools of oriental mysticism, and partly from the fact that Apollo was the patron of the medical art, in which Pythagoras was an eminent professor. And in studying the institutions of Crete and Sparta, he might rather have designed to strengthen by examples the system he had already adopted, than have taken from those Dorian cities the primitive and guiding notions of the constitution he afterward established. And in this Pythagoras might have resembled most reformers, not only of his own, but of all ages, who desire to go back to the earliest principles of the past as the sources of experience to the future. In the Dorian institutions was preserved the original character of the Hellenic nation; and Pythagoras, perhaps, valued or consulted them less because they were Dorian than because they were ancient. It seems, however, pretty clear, that in the character of his laws he sought to conform to the spirit and mode of legislation already familiar in Italy, since Charondas and Zaleucus, who flourished before him, are ranked by Diodorus and others among his disciples.

239 (return)

[ Livy dates it in the reign of Servius Tullus.

240 (return)

[ Strabo.

241 (return)

[ Iamblichus, c. viii., ix. See also Plato de Repub., lib. x.

242 (return)

[ That the Achaean governments were democracies appears sufficiently evident; nor is this at variance with the remark of Xenophon, that timocracies were “according to the laws of the Achaeans;” since timocracies were but modified democracies.

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[ The Pythagoreans assembled at the house of Milo, the wrestler, who was an eminent general, and the most illustrious of the disciples were stoned to death, the house being fired. Lapidation was essentially the capital punishment of mobs—the mode of inflicting death that invariably stamps the offender as an enemy to the populace.

244 (return)

[ Arist. Metaph., i., 3.

245 (return)

[ Diog. Laert., viii., 28.

246 (return)

[ Plut. in vit. Them. The Sophists were not, therefore, as is commonly asserted, the first who brought philosophy to bear upon politics.

247 (return)

[ See, for evidence of the great gifts and real philosophy of Anaxagoras, Brucker de Sect. Ion., xix.

248 (return)

[ Arist. Eth. Eu., i., 5.

249 (return)

[ Archelaus began to teach during the interval between the first and second visit of Anaxagoras. See Fast. Hell., vol. ii., B. C. 450.

250 (return)

[ See the evidence of this in the Clouds of Aristophanes.

251 (return)

[ Plut. in vit. Per.

252 (return)

[ See Thucyd., lib. v., c. 18, in which the articles of peace state that the temple and fane of Delphi should be independent, and that the citizens should settle their own taxes, receive their own revenues, and manage their own affairs as a sovereign nation (autoteleis kai autodikois [Footnote consult on these words Arnold’s Thucydides, vol. ii., p. 256, note 4:), according to the ancient laws of their country.

253 (return)

[ Mueller’s Dorians, vol. ii., p. 422. Athen., iv.

254 (return)

[ A short change of administration, perhaps, accompanied the defeat of Pericles in the debate on the Boeotian expedition. He was evidently in power, since he had managed the public funds during the opposition of Thucydides; but when beaten, as we should say, “on the Boeotian question,” the victorious party probably came into office.

255 (return)

[ An ambush, according to Diodorus, lib. xii.

256 (return)

[ Twenty talents, according to the scholiast of Aristophanes. Suidas states the amount variously at fifteen and fifty.

257 (return)

[ Who fled into Macedonia.—Theopomp. ap. Strab. The number of Athenian colonists was one thousand, according to Diodorus—two thousand, according to Theopompus.

258 (return)

[ Aristoph. Nub., 213.

259 (return)

[ Thucyd., i., 111.

260 (return)

[ ibid., i., 115.

261 (return)

[ As is evident, among other proofs, from the story before narrated, of his passing his accounts to the Athenians with the item of ten talents employed as secret service money.

262 (return)

[ The Propylaea alone (not then built) cost two thousand and twelve talents (Harpocrat. in propylaia tauta), and some temples cost a thousand talents each. [Footnote Plut. in vit. Per.: If the speech of Pericles referred to such works as these, the offer to transfer the account to his own charge was indeed but a figure of eloquence. But, possibly, the accusation to which this offer was intended as a reply was applicable only to some individual edifice or some of the minor works, the cost of which his fortune might have defrayed. We can scarcely indeed suppose, that if the affected generosity were but a bombastic flourish, it could have excited any feeling but laughter among an audience so acute.

263 (return)

[ The testimony of Thucydides (lib. ii., c. 5) alone suffices to destroy all the ridiculous imputations against the honesty of Pericles which arose from the malice of contemporaries, and are yet perpetuated only by such writers as cannot weigh authorities. Thucydides does not only call him incorrupt, but “clearly or notoriously honest.” [Footnote Chraematon te diaphanos adorotatos.: Plutarch and Isocrates serve to corroborate this testimony.

264 (return)

[ Plut. in vit. Per.

265 (return)

[ Thucyd., lib. ii., c. 65.

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[ “The model of this regulation, by which Athens obtained the most extensive influence, and an almost absolute dominion over the allies, was possibly found in other Grecian states which had subject confederates, such as Thebes, Elis, and Argos. But on account of the remoteness of many countries, it is impossible that every trifle could have been brought before the court at Athens; we must therefore suppose that each subject state had an inferior jurisdiction of its own, and that the supreme jurisdiction alone belonged to Athens. Can it, indeed, be supposed that persons would have travelled from Rhodes or Byzantium, for the sake of a lawsuit of fifty or a hundred drachmas? In private suits a sum of money was probably fixed, above which the inferior court of the allies had no jurisdiction, while cases relating to higher sums were referred to Athens. There can be no doubt that public and penal causes were to a great extent decided in Athens, and the few definite statements which are extant refer to lawsuits of this nature.”—Boeckh, Pol. Econ. of Athens, vol. ii., p. 142, 143, translation.

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[ In calculating the amount of the treasure when transferred to Athens, Boeckh (Pol. Econ. of Athens, vol. i., p. 193, translation) is greatly misled by an error of dates. He assumes that the fund had only existed ten years when brought to Athens: whereas it had existed about seventeen, viz., from B. C. 477 to B. C. 461, or rather B. C. 460. And this would give about the amount affirmed by Diodorus, xii., p. 38 (viz., nearly 8000 talents), though he afterward raises it to 10,000. But a large portion of it must have been consumed in war before the transfer. Still Boeckh rates the total of the sum transferred far too low, when he says it cannot have exceeded 1800 talents. It more probably doubled that sum.

268 (return)

[ Such as Euboea, see p. 212.

269 (return)

[ Vesp. Aristoph. 795.

270 (return)

[ Knight’s Prolegomena to Homer; see also Boeckh (translation), vol. i., p. 25.

271 (return)

[ Viz., B. C. 424; Ol. 89.

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[ Thucyd., iv., 57.

273 (return)

[ See Chandler’s Inscript.

274 (return)

[ In the time of Alcibiades the tribute was raised to one thousand three hundred talents, and even this must have been most unequally assessed, if it were really the pecuniary hardship the allies insisted upon and complained of. But the resistance made to imposts upon matters of feeling or principle in our own country, as, at this day, in the case of church-rates, may show the real nature of the grievance. It was not the amount paid, but partly the degradation of paying it, and partly, perhaps, resentment in many places at some unfair assessment. Discontent exaggerates every burden, and a feather is as heavy as a mountain when laid on unwilling shoulders. When the new arrangement was made by Alcibiades or the later demagogues, Andocides asserts that some of the allies left their native countries and emigrated to Thurii. But how many Englishmen have emigrated to America from objections to a peculiar law or a peculiar impost, which state policy still vindicates, or state necessity still maintains! The Irish Catholic peasant, in reality, would not, perhaps, be much better off, in a pecuniary point of view, if the tithes were transferred to the rental of the landlord, yet Irish Catholics have emigrated in hundreds from the oppression, real or imaginary, of Protestant tithe-owners. Whether in ancient times or modern, it is not the amount of taxation that makes the grievance. People will pay a pound for what they like, and grudge a farthing for what they hate. I have myself known men quit England because of the stamp duty on newspapers!

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[ Thucyd., lib. i., c. 75; Bloomfield’s translation.

276 (return)

[ A sentiment thus implied by the Athenian ambassadors: “We are not the first who began the custom which has ever been an established one, that the weaker should be kept under by the stronger.” The Athenians had, however, an excuse more powerful than that of the ancient Rob Roys. It was the general opinion of the time that the revolt of dependant allies might be fairly punished by one that could punish them—(so the Corinthians take care to observe). And it does not appear that the Athenian empire at this period was more harsh than that of other states to their dependants. The Athenian ambassadors (Thucyd., i., 78) not only quote the far more galling oppressions the Ionians and the isles had undergone from the Mede, but hint that the Spartans had been found much harder masters than the Athenians.

277 (return)

[ Only twelve drachma each yearly: the total, therefore, is calculated by the inestimable learning of Boeckh not to have exceeded twenty-one talents.

278 (return)

[ Total estimated at thirty-three talents.

279 (return)

[ The state itself contributed largely to the plays, and the lessee of the theatre was also bound to provide for several expenses, in consideration of which he received the entrance money.

280 (return)

[ On the authority of Pseud. Arist. Oecon., 2-4.

281 (return)

[ In the expedition against Sicily the state supplied the vessel and paid the crew. The trierarchs equipped the ship and gave voluntary contributions besides.—Thucyd., vi., 31.

282 (return)

[ Liturgies, with most of the Athenian laws that seemed to harass the rich personally, enhanced their station and authority politically. It is clear that wherever wealth is made most obviously available to the state, there it will be most universally respected. Thus is it ever in commercial countries. In Carthage of old, where, according to Aristotle, wealth was considered virtue, and in England at this day, where wealth, if not virtue, is certainly respectability,

283 (return)

[ And so well aware of the uncertain and artificial tenure of the Athenian power were the Greek statesmen, that we find it among the arguments with which the Corinthian some time after supported the Peloponnesian war, “that the Athenians, if they lost one sea-fight, would be utterly subdued;”—nor, even without such a mischance, could the flames of a war be kindled, but what the obvious expedient [Footnote Thucyd., lib. i., c. 121. As the Corinthians indeed suggested, Thucyd., lib. i., c. 122: of the enemy would be to excite the Athenian allies to revolt, and the stoppage or diminution of the tribute would be the necessary consequence.

284 (return)

[ If the courts of law among the allies were not removed to Athens till after the truce with Peloponnesus, and indeed till after the ostracism of Thucydides, the rival of Pericles, the value of the judicial fees did not, of course, make one of the considerations for peace; but there would then have been the mightier consideration of the design of that transfer which peace only could effect.

285 (return)

[ Plut. in vit. Per.

286 (return)

[ “As a vain woman decked out with jewels,” was the sarcastic reproach of the allies.—Plut. in vit. Per.

287 (return)

[ The Propylaea was built under the direction of Mnesicles. It was begun 437 B. C., in the archonship of Euthymenes, three years after the Samian war, and completed in five years. Harpocrat. in propylaia tauta.

288 (return)

[ Plut. in vit. Per.

289 (return)

[ See Arnold’s Thucydides, ii., 13, note 12.

290 (return)

[ “Their bodies, too, they employ for the state as if they were any one’s else but their own; but with minds completely their own, they are ever ready to render it service.”—Thucyd., i., 70, Bloomfield’s translation.

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[ With us, Juries as well as judges are paid, and, in ordinary cases, at as low a rate as the Athenian dicasts (the different value of money being considered), viz., common jurymen one shilling for each trial, and, in the sheriffs’ court, fourpence. What was so pernicious in Athens is perfectly harmless in England; it was the large member of the dicasts which made the mischief, and not the system of payment itself, as unreflecting writers have so often asserted.

292 (return)

[ See Book IV., Chapter V. VII. of this volume.

293 (return)

[ At first the payment of the dicasts was one obolus.—(Aristoph. Nubes, 861.) Afterward, under Cleon, it seems to have been increased to three; it is doubtful whether it was in the interval ever two obols. Constant mistakes are made between the pay, and even the constitution, of the ecclesiasts and the dicasts. But the reader must carefully remember that the former were the popular legislators, the latter, the popular judges or jurors—their functions were a mixture of both.

294 (return)

[ Misthos ekklaesiastikos—the pay of the ecclesiasts, or popular assembly.

295 (return)

[ We know not how far the paying of the ecclesiasts was the work of Pericles: if it were, it must have been at, or after, the time we now enter upon, as, according to Aristophanes (Eccles., 302), the people were not paid during the power of Myronides, who flourished, and must have fallen with Thucydides, the defeated rival of Pericles.