4. The Growth of the Greek States—The
Greek world at the beginning of the 6th century b.c.
presents a picture in many respects different from that of the Homeric
Age. The Greek race is no longer confined to the Greek peninsula. It
occupied the islands of the Aegean, the western seaboard of Asia Minor the
coasts of Macedonia and Thrace, of southern Italy and Sicily. Scattered
settlements are found as far apart as the mouth of the Rhone, the north of
Africa, the Crimea and the eastern end of the Black Sea. The Greeks are
called by a national name Hellenes, the
symbol of a fully‑developed national self-consciousness. They
are divided into three great branches, the Dorian, the Ionian and the
Aeolian, names almost, or entirely unknown to Homer. The heroic monarchy
has nearly everywhere appeared. In Greece proper, south of Thermopylae,
it survives but in a peculiar form, in the Spartan state alone. What is
the significance and the explanation of contrasts so profound?
It
is probable that the explanation is to be found, directly or indirectly,
in a single cause, the Dorian invasion. In Home the Dorians are mentioned
in one passage only (Odyssey xix.
177). They there appear as one
of the races which inhabit Crete. In the historical period the whole
Peloponnese, with the exception of Arcadia, Elis and Achaea is
Dorian. In northern Greece the Dorians occupy the little state of Doris,
and in the Aegean they form the population of Crete, Rhodes and some
smaller islands. Thus the chief centres of Minoan and Mycenaean culture
have passed into Dorian hands, and the chief seats of Achaean power are
included in Dorian states. Greek tradition explained the overthrow of the
Achaean system by an invasion of the Peloponnese by the Dorians, a
northern tribe, which had found a temporary home in Doris. The story ran
that after an unsuccessful attempt, to force an entrance by the Isthmus of
Corinth, they had crossed from Naupactus, at the mouth of the Corinthian
Gulf, landed on the opposite shore, and made their way into the heart of
the Peloponnese, where a single victory gave them possession of the
Achaean states. Their conquests were divided among the invaders into three
shares, for which lots were cast, and thus the three states of Argos,
Sparta and Messenia were created There is much in this tradition that is
impossible or improbable It is impossible, e.g.
for the tiny state of Doris, with its three or four “small, sad
villages” (moleus mikrai kai lumrocopoi,
Strabo, p. 427), to have furnished a force of invaders sufficient to
conquer and re-people the greater part of the Peloponnese. It is
improbable that the conquest should have been either as sudden, or as
complete, as the legend represents. On the contrary, there are indications
that the conquest was gradual, and that the displacement of the older
population was incomplete The improbability of the details affords,
however, no ground for questioning the reality of the invasion. The
tradition can be traced back at Sparta to the 7th century b.c.
(Tyrtaeus quoted by Strabo, p. 362), and there is abundant evidence, other
than that of legend, to corroborate it. There is the Dorian name, to begin
with. If, as Beloch supposes, it originated on the coast of Asia Minor,
where it served to distinguish the settlers in Rhodes and the neighbouring
islands from the Ionians and Aeolians to the north of them, how came the
great and famous states of the Peloponnese to adopt a name in use among
the petty colonies planted by their kinsmen across the sea? Or, if Dorian
is simply Old Peloponnesian, how are we to account for the Doric dialect
or the Dorian pride of race?
It
is true that there are great differences between the literary Doric, the
dialect of Corinth and Argos, and the dialects of Laconia and Crete, and
that there are affinities between the dialect of Laconia and the
non‑Dorian dialects of Arcadia and Elis. It is equally true,
however, and of far more consequence that all the Doric dialects are
distinguished from all other Greek dialects by certain common
characteristics. Perhaps the strongest sentiment in the Dorian nature is
the pride of race Indeed, it looks as if the Dorians claimed to be the
sole genuine Hellenes. How can we account for an indigenous population,
first imagining itself to be immigrant, and then developing a contempt for
the rest of the race, equally indigenous with itself, on account of a
fictitious difference in origin? Finally, there is the archaeological
evidence. The older civilization comes to an abrupt end, and it does so,
on the mainland at least, at the very period to which tradition assigns
the Dorian migration. Its development is greatest, and its overthrow most
complete, precisely in the regions occupied by the Dorians and the other
tribes, whose migrations were traditionally connected with theirs. It is
hardly too much to say that the archaeologist would have been compelled to
postulate an inroad into central and southern Greece of tribes from the
north, at a lower level of culture,
in the course of the 12th and 11th centuries b.c.,
if the historian had not been able to direct him to the traditions of the
great migrations . . ., of which
the Dorian invasion was the chief. With the Dorian migration Greek
tradition connected the expansion of the Greek race eastwards across the
Aegean. In the historical period the Greek settlements on the western
coast of Asia Minor fall into three clearly defined groups. To the north
is the Aeolic group, consisting of the island of Lesbos and twelve towns,
mostly insignificant, on the opposite mainland. To the south is the Dorian
hexapolis, consisting of Cnidus
and Halicarnassus on the mainland, and the islands of Rhodes and Cos. In
the centre comes the Ionian dodecapolis,
a group consisting of ten towns on the mainland, together with; the
islands of Samos and Chios. Of these three groups, the Ionian is
incomparably the most important. The Ionians also occupy Euboea and the
Cyclades. Although it would appear that Cyprus (and possibly Pamphylia)
had been occupied by settlers from Greece in the Mycenaean age, Greek
tradition is probably correct in putting the colonization of Asia Minor
and the islands of the Aegean after the Dorian migration. Both the Homeric
and the archaeological evidence seem to point to the same conclusion.
Between Rhodes on the south and the Troad on the north scarcely any
Mycenaean remains have been found. Homer is ignorant of any Greeks east of
Euboea. If the poems are earlier than the Dorian Invasion, his silence is
conclusive. If the poems are some centuries later than the Invasion, they
at least prove that, within a few generations of that event, it was the
belief of the Greeks of Asia Minor that their ancestors had crossed the
seas after the close of the Heroic Age. It is probable, too, that the
names Ionian and Aeolian, the former of which is found once in Homer, and
the latter not at all, originated among the colonists in Asia Minor, and
served to designate, in the first instance, the members of the Ionic and
Aeolic dodecapoleis. As Curtius pointed out, the only Ionia known to
history is in Asia Minor. It
does not follow that Ionia is the original home of the Ionian race, as
Curtius argued. It almost certainly follows, however, that it is the
original home of the Ionian name.
It
is less easy to account for the name Hellenes.
The Greeks were profoundly conscious of their common nationality, and
of the gulf that separated them from the rest of mankind. They themselves
recognized a common race and language, and a common type of religion and
culture, as the chief factors in this sentiment of nationality (see Herod.
viii. 144ff.). “Hellenes”
was the name of their common race, and “Hellas” of their common
country. In Homer there is no distinct consciousness of a common nationality,
and consequently no antithesis of Greek and Barbarian (see Thuc. i. 3).
Nor is there a true collective name. There are indeed Hellenes (though the
name occurs in one passage only, Iliad
ii. 684), and there is a Hellas; but his Hellas, whatever its precise
signification may be, is, at any rate, not equivalent either to Greece
proper or to the land of the Greeks, and his Hellenes are the inhabitants
of a small district to the south of Thessaly. It is possible that the
diffusion of the Hellenic name was due to the Dorian invaders. Its use can
be traced back to the first half of the 7th century. Not less obscure are
the causes of the fall of monarchy. It cannot have been the immediate
effect of the Dorian conquest, for the states founded by the Dorians were
at first monarchically governed. It may, however, have been an indirect
effect of it. We have already seen that the power of the Homeric king is
more limited than that of the rulers of Cnossus, Tiryns or Mycenae. In
other words, monarchy is already in decay at the epoch of the Invasion.
The invasion, in its effects on wealth, commerce and civilization, is
almost comparable to the irruption of the barbarians into the Roman
empire. The monarch of the Minoan and Mycenaean age has extensive revenues
at his command; the monarch of the early Dorian states is little better
than a petty chief. Thus the interval, once a wide one, that separates him
from the nobles tends to disappear. The decay of monarchy was gradual;
much more gradual than is generally recognized. There were parts of the
Greek world in which it still survived in the 6th century, e.g. Sparta, Cyrene, Cyprus, and possibly Argos and Tarentum. Both
Herodotus and Thucydides apply the title “king” (Basileus) to the
rulers of Thessaly in the 5th century. The date at which monarchy gave
place to a republican form of government must have differed, and differed
widely, in different cases. The traditions relating to the foundation of
Cyrene assume the existence of monarchy in Thera and in Crete in the
middle of the 7th century (Herodotus iv. 150 and 154),
and the reign of Amphicrates at Samos (Herod. iii. 59) can hardly be placed more than a generation earlier. In view of
our general ignorance of the history of the 7th and 8th centuries, it is
hazardous to pronounce these instances exceptional. On the other hand, the
change from monarchy to oligarchy was completed at Athens before the end
of the 8th century, and at a still earlier date in some of the other
states. The process, again, by which the change was effected was, in all
probability, less uniform than is generally assumed. There are extremely
few cases in which we have any trustworthy evidence, and the instances
about which we are informed refuse to be reduced to any common type. In
Greece proper our information is fullest in the case of Athens and Argos.
In the former case, the king is gradually stripped of his powers by a
process of devolution. An hereditary king, ruling for life, is replaced by
three annual and elective magistrates, between whom are divided the
executive, military and religious functions of the monarch (see archon).
At Argos the fall of the monarchy is preceded by an aggrandisement of the
royal prerogatives. There is nothing in common between these two cases,
and there is no reason to suppose that the process elsewhere was analogous
to that at Athens. Everywhere, however, oligarchy is the form of
government which succeeds to monarchy. Political power is monopolized by a
class of nobles, whose claim to govern is based upon birth and the
possession of land, the most valuable form of property in an early
society. Sometimes power is confined to a single clan (e.g.
the Bacchiadae at Corinth); more commonly, as at Athens, all houses that
are noble are equally privileged. In every case there is found, as the
adviser of the executive, a Boule, or council, representative of the
privileged class. Without such a council a Greek oligarchy is
inconceivable. The relations of the executive to the council doubtless
varied. At Athens it is clear that the real authority was exercised by the
archons; in many states the magistrates were probably subordinate to the
council (cf. the relation of the
consuls to the senate at Rome). And it is clear that the way in which the
oligarchies used their power varied also. The cases in which the power was
abused are naturally the ones of which we hear; for an abuse of power gave
rise to discontent and was the ultimate cause of revolution. We hear
little or nothing of the cases in which power was exercised wisely. Happy
is the constitution which has no annals! We know, however, that oligarchy
held its ground for generations, or even for centuries, in a large proportion
of the Greek states; and a government which, like the oligarchies of Elis,
Thebes or Aegina, could maintain itself for three or four centuries cannot
have been merely oppressive.
The
period of the transition from monarchy to oligarchy is the period in which
commerce begins to develop, and trade‑routes to be organised. Greece
had been the centre of an active trade in the Minoan and Mycenaean epochs.
The products of Crete and of the Peloponnese had found their way to Egypt
and Asia Minor. The overthrow of the older civilization put an end to
commerce. The seas became insecure and intercourse with the East was
interrupted. Our earliest glimpses of the Aegean after the period of the
migrations disclose the raids of the pirate and the activity of the
Phoenician trader. It is not till the 8th century has dawned that trade
begins to thrive, and the Phoenician has to retire before his Greek competitor.
For some time to come, however, no clear distinction is drawn between the
trader and the pirate. The pioneers of Greek trade in the West are the
pirates of Cumae (Thucyd. vi. 4). The expansion of Greek commerce, unlike
that of the commerce of the modern world, was not connected with any great
scientific discoveries. There is nothing in the history of ancient
navigation that is analogous to the invention of the mariner’s compass
or of the steam‑engine. In spite of this, the development of Greek
commerce in the 7th and 6th centuries was rapid. It must have been
assisted by the great discovery of the early part of the former century,
the invention of coined money. To the Lydians, rather than the Greeks,
belongs the credit of the discovery; but it was the genius of the latter
race that divined the importance of the invention and spread its use.
The coinage of the Ionian towns goes back to the reign of Gyges (c.
675 b.c.).
And it is in Ionia that commercial development is earliest and greatest.
In the most distant regions the Ionian is first in the field. Egypt and
the Black Sea are both opened up to Greek trade by Miletus, the Adriatic
and the Western Mediterranean by Phocaea and Samos. It is significant that
of the twelve states engaged in the Egyptian trade in the 6th century all,
with the exception of Aegina, are from the eastern side of the Aegean
(Herod. ii. 178). On the western side the chief centres of trade during
these centuries were the islands of Euboea and Aegina and the town of
Corinth. The Aeginetan are the earliest coins of Greece proper (c.
650 b.c.);
and the two rival scales of weights and measures, in use amongst the
Greeks of every age, are the Aeginetan and the Euboic. Commerce naturally
gave rise to commercial leagues, and commercial relations tended to bring
about political alliances. Foreign policy even at this early epoch seems
to have been largely determined by considerations of commerce. Two
leagues, the members of which were connected by political as well as
commercial ties, can be recognized. At the head of each stood one of the
two rival powers in the island of Euboea, Chalcis and Eretria. Their
primary object was doubtless protection from the pirate and the foreigner.
Competing routes were organized at an early date under their influence,
and their trading connections can be traced from the heart of Asia Minor
to the north of Italy. Miletus, Sybaris and Etruria were members of the
Eretrian league; Samos, Corinth, Rhegium and Zancle (commanding the
Straits of Messina), and Cumae, on the Bay of Naples, of the Chalcidian.
The wool of the Phrygian uplands, woven in the looms of Miletus, reached
the Etruscan markets by way of Sybaris; through Cumae, Rome and the rest
of Latium obtained the elements of Greek culture. Greek trade, however,
was confined to the Mediterranean area. The Phoenician and the
Carthaginian navigators penetrated to Britain; they discovered the passage
round the Cape two thousand years before Vasco da Gama’s time. The Greek
sailor dared not adventure himself outside the Black Sea, the Adriatic and
the Mediterranean. Greek trade, too, was essentially maritime. Ports
visited by Greek vessels were often the starting points of
trade‑routes into the interior; the traffic along those mutes was
left in the hands of the natives (see e.g. Herod. iv. 24). One service,
the importance of which can hardly be overestimated, is rendered to
civilization by the Greek traders—the invention of geography. The
science of geography is the invention of the Greeks. The first maps were
made by them (in the 6th century); and it was the discoveries and surveys
of their sailors that made map-making possible.
Closely
connected with the history of Greek trade is the history of Greek
colonization. The period of colonization, in its narrower sense, extends
from the middle of the 8th to the middle of the 6th century. Greek
colonization is, however, merely a continuation of the process which at an
earlier epoch had led to the settlement, first of Cyprus, and then of the
islands and coasts of the Aegean. From the earlier settlements the
colonization of the historical period is distinguished by three
characteristics. The later colony acknowledges a definite metropolis
(“mother-city”); it is planted by a definite oecist
. . .; it has a definite date
assigned to its foundation. It would be a mistake to regard
Greek colonization as commercial in origin, in the sense that the
colonies were in all cases established as trading-posts. This was the case
with the Phoenician and Carthaginian settlements, most of which remained
mere factories; and some of the Greek colonies (e.g.
many of those planted by Miletus on the shores of the Black Sea) bore
this character. The typical Greek colony, however, was neither in origin
nor in development a mere trading‑post. It was, or it became, a polis, a city‑state, in which was reproduced the life of the
parent state. Nor was Greek colonization, like the emigration from Europe
to America and Australia in the 19th century, simply the result of
over‑population. The causes were as various as those which can be
traced in the history of modern colonization. Those which were established
for the purposes of trade may be compared to the factories of the
Portuguese and Dutch in Africa and the Far East. Others were the result of
political discontent, in some form or shape; these may be compared to the
Puritan settlements in New England. Others again were due to ambition or
the mere love of adventure (see Herod. v. 42 ff., the career of Dorieus).
But however various the causes, two conditions must always be
presupposed—an expansion of commerce and a growth of population. Within
the narrow limits of the citystate there was a constant tendency for
population to become redundant, until, as in the later centuries of Greek
life, its growth was artificially restricted. Alike from the Roman
colonies, and from those founded by the European nations in the course of
the last few centuries, the Greek colonies are distinguished by a
fundamental contrast. It is significant that the contrast is a political
one. The Roman colony was in a position of entire subordination to the
Roman state, of which it formed a part. The modern colony was, in varying
degrees, in political subjection to the home government. The Greek colony
was completely independent; and it was independent from the first. The
ties that united a colony to its metropolis were those of sentiment and
interest; the political tie did not exist. There were, it is true,
exceptions. The colonies established by imperial Athens closely
resembled the colonies of imperial Rome. The cleruchy (q.v.) formed part
of the Athenian state, the cleruchs kept their status as citizens of
Athens and acted as a military garrison. And if the political tie, in the
proper sense, was wanting, it was inevitable that political relations
should spring out of commercial or sentimental ones. Thus we find Corinth
interfering twice to save her colony Syracuse from destruction, and Megara
bringing about the revolt of Byzantium, her colony, from Athens. Sometimes
it is not easy to distinguish political relations from a political tie (e.g.
the relations of Corinth, both in the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars, to
Ambracia and the neighbouring group of colonies). When we compare the
development of the Greek and the modern colonies we shall find that the
development of the former was even more rapid than that of the latter. In
at least three respects the Greek settler was at an advantage as compared
with the colonist of modern times. The differences of race, of colour and
of climate, with which the chief problems of modern colonization are
connected, played no part in the history of the Greek settlements. The
races amongst whom the Greeks planted themselves were in some cases on a.
similar level of culture. Where the natives were still backward or
barbarous, they came of a stock either closely related to the Greek, or at
least separated from it by no great physical differences. We need only
contrast the Carian, the Sicel, the Thracian or even the Scythian, with
the native Australian, the Hottentot, the Red Indian or the Maori, to
apprehend the advantage of the Greek. Amalgamation with the native races
was easy, and it involved neither physical nor intellectual degeneracy as
its consequence. Of the races with which the Greeks came in contact the
Thracian was far from the highest in the scale of culture; yet three of
the greatest names in the Great Age of Athens are those of men who had
Thracian blood in their veins, viz. Themistocles, Cimon and the historian
Thucydides. In the absence of any distinction of colour, no insuperable
barrier existed between the Greek and the hellenized native. The demos of
the colonial cities was largely recruited from the native population, nor
was there anything in the Greek world analogous to the “mean whites”
or the “black belt.” Of hardly less importance were the climatic
conditions. In this respect the Mediterranean area is unique. There is no
other region of the world of equal extent in which these conditions are at
once so uniform and so favourable. Nowhere had the Greek settler to
encounter a climate which was either unsuited to his labour or subversive
of his vigour. That in spite of these advantages so little, comparatively
speaking, was effected in the work of Hellenization before the epoch of
Alexander and the Diadochi, was the effect of a single counteracting
cause. The Greek colonist, like the Greek trader, clung to the shore. He
penetrated no farther inland than the sea‑breeze. Hence it was only
in islands, such as Sicily or Cyprus, that the process of Hellenization
was complete. Elsewhere the Greek settlements formed a mere fringe along
the coast.
To
the 7th century there belongs another movement of high importance in its
bearing upon the economic, religious and literary development of Greece,
as well as upon its constitutional history. This movement is the rise of
the tyrannts. In the political writers of a later age the word possesses a
clear-cut connotation. From other forms of monarchy: it is distinguished
by a twofold differentiation. The tyrannus
is an unconstitutional ruler, and his authority is exercised over
unwilling subjects. In the 7th and 6th centuries the line was not drawn so
distinctly between the tyrant and the legitimate monarch. Even Herodotus
uses the words “tyrant” and “king” interchangeably (e.g. the
princes of Cyprus are called “kings” in v. 110
and “tyrants” in v. 109), so
that it is sometimes difficult to decide whether a legitimate monarch
or a tyrant is meant (e.g. Aristophilides of Tarentum, iii I36, or Telys of Sybaris, v. 44). But the distinction between the tyrant
and the king of the Heroic Age is a valid one. It is not true that his
rule was always exercised over unwilling subjects; it is true that his
position was always unconstitutional. The Homeric king is a legitimate
monarch; his authority is invested with the sanctions of religion and
immemorial custom. The tyrant Ss an illegitimate ruler; his authority is
not recognized, either by customary usage or by express enactment. But the
word “tyrant” was originally a neutral term; it did not necessarily
imply a misuse of power. The origin of the tyrannis
is obscure. The word tyrannus
has been thought, with some reason, to be a Lydian one. Probably both the
name and the thing originated in the Greek colonies of Asia Minor, though
the earliest tyrants of whom we hear in Asia Minor (at Ephesus and Miletus)
are a generation later than the earliest in Greece itself, where, both at
Sicyon and at Corinth, tyranny appears to date back to the second quarter
of the 7th century. It is not unusual to regard tyranny as a universal
stage in the constitutional development of the Greek states, and as a
stage that occurs everywhere at one and the same period.; In reality,
tyranny is confined to certain regions, and it is a phenomenon that is
peculiar to no one age or century. In Greece proper, before the 4th
century bc, it is confined
to a small group of states round the Corinthian and Saronic Gulfs. The
greater part of the Peloponnese was exempt from it, and there is no good
evidence for its existence north of the Isthmus, except at Megara and
Athens. It plays no part in the history of the Greek cities in Chalcidice
and Thrace. It appears to have been rare in the Cyclades. The regions in
which it finds a congenial soil are two, Asia Minor and Sicily. Thus it is
incorrect to say that most Greek states passed through this stage. It is
still wider of the mark to assume that they passed through it at the same
time. There is no “Age of the Tyrants.” Tyranny began in the
Peloponnese a hundred years before it appears in Sicily, and it has
disappeared in the Peloponnese almost before it begins in Sicily. In the
latter the great age of tyranny comes at the beginning of the 5th century;
in the former it is at the end of the 7th and the beginning of the 6th. At
Athens the history of tyranny begins after it has ended both at Sicyon and
Corinth. There is, indeed, a period in which tyranny is non‑existent
in the Greek states; roughly speaking, the last sixty years of the 5th
century. But with this exception, there is no period in which the tyrant
is not to be‑found. The greatest of all the tyrannies, that of
Dionysius at Syracuse, belongs to the 4th century. Nor must it be assumed
that tyranny always comes at the same stage in the history of a
constitution; that it is always a stage between oligarchy and democracy.
At Corinth it is followed, not by democracy but by oligarchy, and it is an
oligarchy that lasts, with a brief interruption, for two hundred and fifty
years. At Athens it is not immediately preceded by oligarchy. Between the
Eupatrid oligarchy and the rule of Peisistratus there comes the timocracy
of Solon. These exceptions do not stand alone. The cause of tyranny is, in
one sense, uniform. In the earlier centuries, at any rate, tyranny is
always the expression of discontent; the tyrant is always the champion of
a cause. But it would be a mistake to suppose that the discontent is
necessarily political, or that the cause which he champions is always a
constitutional one. At Sicyon it is a racial one; Cleisthenes is the
champion of the older population against their Dorian oppressors (see
Herod. v. 67, 68). At Athens the discontent is economic rather than
political; Peisistratus is the champion of the Diacrii, the inhabitants of
the poorest region of Attica. The party-strifes of which we hear in the
early history of Miletus, which doubtless gave the tyrant his opportunity,
are concerned with the claims of rival industrial classes. In Sicily the
tyrant is the ally of the rich and the foe of the demos,
and the cause which he champions, both in the 5th century and the 4th,
is a national one, that of the Greek against the Carthaginian. We may
suspect that in Greece itself the tyrannies of the 7th century are the
expression of an anti‑Dorian reaction. It can hardly be an accident
that the states in which the tyrannis
is found at this epoch, Corinth, Megara, Sicyon, Epidaurus, are all of
them states in which a Dorian upper class ruled over a subject population.
In Asia Minor the tyrannis assumes
a peculiar character after the Persian conquest. The tyrant rules as the
deputy of the Persian satrap. Thus in the East the tyrant is the enemy of
the national cause; in the West, in Sicily, he is its champion.
Tyranny
is not a phenomenon peculiar to Greek history. It is possible to find
analogies to it in Roman history, in the power of Caesar, or of the
Caesars; in the despotisms of medieval Italy; or even in the Napoleonic
empire. Between the tyrant and the Italian despot there is indeed a real
analogy; but between the Roman principate and the Greek tyrannis
there are two essential differences. In the first place, the
principate was expressed in constitutional forms, or veiled under
constitutional fictions; the tyrant stood altogether outside the
constitution. And, secondly, at Rome both Julius and Augustus owed their
position to the power of the sword. The power of the sword, it is true,
plays a large part in the history of the later tyrants (e.g.
Dionysius of Syracuse); the earlier ones, however, had no mercenary armies
at their command. We can hardly compare the bodyguard of Peisistratus to
the legions of the first or the second Caesar.
The
view taken of the tyrannis in
Greek literature is almost uniformly unfavourable. In this respect there
is no difference between Plato and Aristotle, or between Herodotus and the
later historians. His policy is represented as purely selfish, and his
rule as oppressive. Herodotus is influenced partly by the traditions
current among the oligarchs, who had been the chief sufferers, and partly
by the odious associations which had
gathered round tyranny in Asia Minor. The philosophes write under
their impressions of the later tyrannis,
and their account is largely an a priori one. It is seldom that we
find any attempt, either in the philosophers or the historians, to do
justice to the real services rendered by the tyrants. Their first service
was a constitutional one. They helped to break down the power of the old
aristocratic houses, and thus to create the social and political
conditions indispensable to democracy. The tyrannis
involved the sacrifice of liberty in the cause of equality. When
tyranny falls, it is never succeeded by the aristocracies which it had
overthrown. It is frequently succeeded by an oligarchy, but it is an
oligarchy in which the claim to exclusive power is based, not upon mere
birth, but upon wealth, or the possession of land. It would be unfair to
treat this service as one that was rendered unconsciously and unwillingly.
Where the tyrant asserted the claims of an oppressed class, he consciously
aimed at the destruction of privilege and the effacement of class distinctions.
Hence it is unjust to treat his power as resting upon mere force. A
government which can last eighty or a hundred years, as was the case with
the tyrannies at Corinth and Sicyon, must have a moral force behind it. It
must rest upon the consent of its subjects. The second service which the
tyrants rendered to Greece was a political one. Their policy tended to
break down the barriers which isolated each petty state from its
neighbours. In their history we can trace a system of widespread
alliances, which are often cemented by matrimonial connexions. The
Cypselid tyrants of Corinth appear to have been allied with the royal
families of Egypt, Lydia and Phrygia, as well as with the tyrants of
Miletus and Epidaurus, and with some of the great Athenian families. In
Sicily we find a league of the northern tyrants opposed to a league of the
southern; and in each case there is a corresponding matrimonial alliance.
Anaxilaus of Rhegium is the son‑in‑law and ally of Terillus of
Himera; Gelo of Syracuse stands in the same relation to Theron of
Agrigentum. Royal marriages have played a great part in the politics of
Europe. In the comparison of Greek and modern history it has been too
often forgotten how great a difference it makes, and how great a
disadvantage it involves, to a republic that it has neither sons nor
daughters to give in marriage. In commerce and colonization the tyrants
were only continuing the work of the oligarchies to which they succeeded.
Greek trade owed its expansion to the intelligent efforts of the oligarchs
who ruled at Miletus and Corinth, in Samos, Aegina and Euboea; but in
particular cases, such as Miletus, Corinth, Sicyon and Athens, there was a
further development, and a still more rapid growth, under the tyrants. In
the same way, the foundation of the colonies was in most cases due to the
policy of the oligarchical governments. They can claim credit for the
colonies of Chalcis and Eretria, of Megara, Phocaea and Samos, as well as
for the great Achaean settlements in southern Italy. The Cypselids at
Corinth, and Thrasybulus at Miletus, are instances of tyrants who
colonized on a great scale.
In
their religious policy the tyrants went far to democratize Greek religion.
The functions of monarchy had been largely religious, but, while the king
was necessarily a priest, he was not the only priest in the community.
There were special priesthoods, hereditary in particular families, even in
the monarchical period; and upon the fall of the monarchy, while the
priestly functions of the kings passed to republican magistrates, the
priesthoods which were in the exclusive possession of the great families
tended to become the important ones. Thus, before the rise of tyranny,
Greek religion is aristocratic. The cults recognized by the state are the sacra
of noble clans. The religious prerogatives of the nobles helped to
confirm their political ones and, as long as religion retained its
aristocratic character, it was impossible for democracy to take root. The
policy of the tyrants aimed at fostering popular cults which had no
associations with the old families, and at establishing new festivals. The
cult of the wine-god, Dionysus, was thus fostered at Sicyon by Cleisthenes,
and at Corinth by the Cypselids; while at Athens a‑new festival of
this deity, which so completely overshadowed the older festival that it
became known as the Great Dionysia probably owed its institution to
Peisistratus. Another festival, the Panathenaea, which had been instituted
only a few years before his rise to power, became under his rule, and
thanks to his policy, the chief national festival of the Athenian state
Everywhere, again, we find the tyrants the patrons of literature. Pindar
and Bacchylides, Aeschylus and Simonides found a welcome at the court of
Hiero. Polycrates was the patron of Anacreon, Periander of Arion. To
Peisistratus has been attributed, possibly not without reason, the first
critical edition of the text of Homer, a work as important in the literary
history of Greece as was the issue of the Authorized Version of the Bible
in English history. It we would judge fairly of tyranny, and of what it
contributed to the development of Greece, we must remember how many states
there were in whose history the period of greatest power coincides with
the rule of a tyrant. This is unquestionably true of Corinth and Sicyon,
as well as of Syracuse in the 5th, and again in the 4th century; it is
probably true of Samos and Miletus. In the case of Athens it is only the
splendour of the Great Age that blinds us to the greatness of the results
achieved by the policy of the Peisistratids.
With
the overthrow of this dynasty tyranny disappears from Greece proper for
more than a century During the century and a half which had elapsed since
its first appearance the whole aspect of Greek life, and of the Greek
world, had changed. The development was as yet incomplete, but the lines
on which it was to proceed had been clearly marked out. Political power
was no longer the monopoly of a class. The struggle between the “few”
and the “many” had begun; in one state at least (Athens) the victory
of the “many” was assured. The first chapter in the history of
democracy was already written. In the art of war the two innovations which
were ultimately to establish the military supremacy of Greece, hoplite
tactics and the trireme, had already been introduced. Greek literature was
no longer synonymous with epic poetry. Some of its most distinctive forms
had not yet been evolved; indeed, it is only quite at the end of the
period that prose-writing begins; but both lyric and elegiac poetry had
been brought to perfection. In art, statuary was still comparatively stiff
and crude; but in other branches, in architecture, in vase painting and
in coin‑types, the aesthetic genius of the race had asserted its
pre‑eminence. Philosophy, the supreme gift of Greece to the modern
world, had become a living power. Some of her most original thinkers
belong to the 6th century. Criticism had been applied to everything in
turn: to the gods, to conduct, and to the conception of the universe.
Before the Great Age begins, the claims of intellectual as well as of
political freedom had been vindicated. It was not, however, in Greece
proper that progress had been greatest. In the next century the centre of
gravity of Greek civilization shifts to the western side of the Aegean; in
the 6th century it must be looked for at Miletus, rather than at Athens.
In order to estimate how far the development of Greece had advanced, or
to appreciate the distinctive features of Greek life at this period, we
must study Ionia, rather than Attica or the Peloponnese. Almost all that
is greatest and most characteristic is to be found on the eastern side of
the Aegean. The great names in the history of science and philosophy
before the beginning of the 5th century Thales, Pythagoras, Xenophanes,
Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaximander, Hecataeus; names which are
representative of mathematics, astronomy, geography and metaphysics, are
all, without exception, Ionian. In poetry, too, the most famous names, if
not so exclusively Ionian, are connected either with the Asiatic coast or
with the Cyclades. Against Archilochus and Anacreon, Sappho and Alcaeus,
Greece has nothing better to set, after the age of Hesiod, than Tyrtaeus
and Theognis. Reference has already been made to the greatness of the
Ionians as navigators, as colonizers and as traders. In wealth and in
population, Miletus, at the epoch of the Persian conquest, must have been
far ahead of any city of European Greece. Sybaris, in Magna Graecia, can
have been its only rival outside Ionia. There were two respects, however,
in which the comparison was in favour of the mother-country. In warfare,
the superiority of the Spartan infantry was unquestioned; in politics,
the Greek states showed a greater power of combination than the Ionian.
Finally,
Ionia was the scene of the first conflicts with the Persian. Here were
decided the first stages of a struggle which was to determine the place of
Greece in the history of the world. The rise of Persia under Cyrus was, as
Herodotus saw, the turning-point of Greek history. Hitherto the Greek had
proved himself indispensable to the oriental monarchies with which he had
been brought into contact. In Egypt the power of the Saite kings rested
upon the support of their Greek mercenaries. Amasis (569–525 bc)
who is raised to the throne as the leader of a reaction against the
influence of the foreign garrison, ends by showing greater favour to the
Greek soldiery and the Greek traders than all that were before him. With
Lydia the relations were originally hostile; the conquest of the Greek
fringe is the constant aim of Lydian policy. Greek influences, however,
seem to have quickly permeated Lydia, and to have penetrated to the
court. Alyattes (610–560 bc)
marries an Ionian wife, and the succession is disputed between the son of
this marriage and Croesus, whose mother was a Carian. Croesus (560–546 bc)
secures the throne, only to become the lavish patron of Greek sanctuaries
and the ally of a Greek state. The history of Hellenism had begun. It was
the rise of Cyrus that closed the East to Greek enterprise and Greek
influences. In Persia we find the antithesis of all that is characteristic
of Greece—autocracy as opposed to liberty; a military society organized
on an aristocratic basis, to an industrial society, animated by a
democratic spirit; an army, whose strength lay in its cavalry, to an army,
in which the foot-soldier alone counted; a morality, which assigned the
chief place to veracity, to a morality which subordinated it to other
virtues; a religion, which ranks among the great religions of the world,
to a religion, which appeared to the most spiritual minds among the Greeks
themselves both immoral and absurd. Between two such races there could be
neither sympathy nor mutual understanding. In the Great Age the Greek had
learned to despise the Persian, and the Persian to fear the Greek. In the
6th century it was the Persian who despised, and the Greek who feared. The
history of the conflicts between the Ionian Greeks and the Persian empire
affords a striking example of the combination of intellectual strength and
political weakness in the character of a people. The causes of the failure
of the Ionians to offer a successful resistance to Persia, both at the
time of the conquest by Harpagus (546–545 bc)
and in the Ionic revolt (499–494 bc),
are not far to seek. The centrifugal forces always tended to prove the
stronger in the Greek system, and nowhere
were they stronger than in Ionia. The tie of their tribal union proved
weaker, every time it was put to the test, than the political and
commercial interests of the individual states. A league of jealous
commercial rivals is certain not to stand the strain of a protracted
struggle against great odds. Against the advancing power of Lydia a common
resistance had not so much as been attempted. Miletus, the greatest of the
Ionian towns, had received aid from Chios alone. Against Persia a common
resistance was attempted. The Paniorlium, the centre of a religious
amphictyony, became for the moment the centre of a political league. At
the time of the Persian conquest Miletus held aloof. She secured
favourable terms for herself, and left the rest of Ionia to its fate. In
the later conflict, on the contrary, Miletus is the leader in the revolt.
The issue was determined, not as Herodotus represents it, by policy of the
leading states. In the sea‑fight at Lade (494 bc)
the decisive battle of the war, the Milesians and Chians fought with
desperate courage. The day was lost thanks to the treachery of the Samian
and Lesbian contingents.
The
causes of the successful resistance of the Greeks to the invasions of
their country, first by Datis and Artaphernes (490 bc)
in the reign of Darius, and then by Xerxes in person (480–479 bc)
are more complex. Their success was partly due to a moral cause. And this
was realized by the Greeks themselves. They felt (see Herod. vii. 104)
that the subjects of a despot are no match for the citizens of a free
state, who yield obedience to a law which is self‑imposed. But the
cause was not solely a moral one. Nor was the result due to the numbers
and efficiency of the Athenian fleet, in the degree that the Athenians
claimed (see Herod. vii. 139). The truth is that the conditions, both
political and military, were far more favourable to the Greek defence in
Europe than they had been in Asia. At this crisis the centripetal forces
proved stronger than the centrifugal. The moral ascendancy of Sparta was
the determining factor. In Sparta the Greeks had a leader whom all were
ready to obey (Herod. viii. 2). But for her influence the forces of
disintegration would have made themselves felt as quickly as in Ionia.
Sparta was confronted with immense difficulties in conducting the defence
against Xerxes. The two chief naval powers, Athens and Aegina, had to be
reconciled after a long and exasperating warfare (see aegina).
After Thermopylae, the whole of northern Greece, with the exception of
Athens and a few minor states, was lost to the Greek cause. The supposed
interests of the Peloponnesians, who formed the greater part of the
national forces, conflicted with the supposed interests of the Athenians.
A more impartial view than was possible to the generation for which
Herodotus wrote suggests that Sparta performed her task with intelligence
and patriotism. The claims of Athens and Sparta were about equally
balanced. And in spite of her great superiority in numbers, the military
conditions were far from favourable to Persia. A land so rnountainous as
Greece is was unsuited to the operations of cavalry, the most efficient
arm of the service in the Persian Army, as in most oriental ones.
Ignorance of local conditions, combined with the dangerous nature of the
Greek coast, exposed their ships to the risk of destruction; while the
composite character of the fleet, and the jealousies of its various
contingents, tended to neutralize the advantage of numbers. In courage and
discipline, the flower of the Persian infantry was probably little
inferior to the Greek; in equipment, they were no match for the Greek
panopty. Lastly, Xerxes laboured under a disadvantage, which may be
illustrated by the experience of the British army in the South African
War—distance from his base.
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