5. The Great Age (480–338 bc)—The
effects of the repulse of Persia were momentous in their influence upon
Greece. The effects upon Elizabethan England of the defeat of the Spanish
armada would afford quite an inadequate parallel. It gave the Greeks a
heightened sense, both of their own national unity and of their
superiority to the barbarian, while at the same time it helped to create
the material conditions requisite alike for the artistic and political
development of the 5th century. Other cities besides Athens were adorned
with the proceeds of the spoils won from Persia, and Greek trade benefited
both from the reunion of Ionia with Greece, and from the suppression of
piracy in the Aegean and the Hellespont. Do these developments justify us
in giving to the period, which begins with the repulse of Xerxes, and ends
with the victory of Philip, the title of “the Great Age”? If the title
is justified in the case of the 5th century, should the 4th century be
excluded from the period? At first sight, the difference between the 4th
century and the 5th may seem greater than that which exists between the
5th and the 6th. On the political side, the 5th century is an age of
growth, the 4th an age of decay; on the literary side, the former is an
age of poetry, the latter an age of prose. In spite of these contrasts,
there is a real unity in the period which begins with the repulse of
Xerxes and ends with the death of Atexander, as compared with any
preceding one. It is an age of maturity in politics, in literature, and in
art; and this is true of no earlier age. Nor can we say that the 5th
century is, in alt these aspects of Greek life, immature as compared with
the 4th, or, on the other hand, that the 4th is decadent as compared with
the 5th. On the political side, maturity is, in one sense, reached in the
earlier century. There is nothing in the later century so great as the
Athenian empire. In another sense, maturity is not reached till the 4th
century. It is only in the later century that the tendency of the Greek
constitutions to conform to a common type, democracy, is (at least
approximately) realized, and it is only in this century that the
principles upon which democracy is based are carried to their logical
conclusion. In literature, if we confine our attention to poetry, we must
pronounce the 5th century the age of completed development; but in prose
the case is different. The style even of Thucydides is immature, as
compared with that of Isocrates and Plato. In philosophy, however high may
be the estimate that is formed of the genius of the earlier thinkers, it
cannot be disputed that in Plato and Aristotle we find a more mature stage
of thought. In art, architecture may perhaps be said to reach its zenith
in the 5th, sculpture in the 4th century. In its political aspect, the
history of the Great Age resolves itself into the history of two
movements, the imperial and the democratic. Hitherto Greece had meant,
politically, an aggregate of independent states, very numerous, and, as a
rule, very small. The principle of autonomy was to the Greek the most
sacred of all political principles; the passion for autonomy the most
potent of political factors. In the latter half of the 6th century Sparta
had succeeded in combining the majority of the Peloponnesian states into a
loose federal union; so loose, however, that it appears to have been
dormant in the intervals of peace. In the crisis of the Persian invasion
the Peloponnesian League was extended so as to include all the states
which had espoused the national cause. It looked on the morrow of Plataea
and Mycale (the two victories, won simultaneously, in 479 bc
by Spartan commanders, by which the danger from Persia was finally
averted) as if a permanent basis for union might be found in the hegemony
of Sparta. The sense of a common peril and a common triumph brought with
it the need of a common union; it was Athens, however, instead of Sparta,
by whom the first conscious effort was made to transcend the isolation of
the Greek political system and to bring the units into combination. The
league thus founded (the Delian League, established in 477 bc
was under the presidency of Athens, but it included hardly any other state
besides those that had conducted the defence of Greece. It was formed,
almost entirely, of the states which had been liberated from Persian rule
by the great victories of the war. The Delian League, even in the form in
which it was first established, as a confederation of autonomous allies,
marks an advance in political conceptions upon the Peloponnesian League.
Provision is made for an annual revenue, for periodical meetings of the
council, and for a permanent executive. It is a real federation, though an
imperfect one. There were defects in its constitution which rendered it
inevitable that it should be transformed into an empire. Athens was from
the first “the predominant partner.” The fleet was mainly Athenian,
the commanders entirely so; the assessment of the tribute was in Athenian
hands; there was no federal court appointed to determine questions at
issue between Athens and the other members; and, worst omission of all,
the right of secession was left undecided. By the middle of the century
the Delian League has become the Athenian empire. Henceforward the
imperial idea, in one form or another, dominates Greek politics. Athens
failed to extend her authority over the whole of Greece. Her empire was
overthrown; but the triumph of autonomy proved the triumph of imperialism.
The Spartan empire succeeds to the Athenian, and, when it is finally
shattered at Leuctra (37 bc),
the hegemony of Thebes, which is established on its ruins, is an
empire in all but name. The decay of Theban power paves the way for
the rise of Macedon.
Thus
throughout this period we can trace two forces contending for mastery in
the Greek political system. Two causes divide the allegiance of the Greek
world, the cause of empire and the cause of autonomy. The formation of the
confederacy of Delos did not involve the dissolution of the alliance
between Athens and Sparta. or seventeen years more Athens retained her
place in the league, “which had been established against the Mede”
under the presidency of Sparta in 480 bc
(Thuc. i. 102) The
ascendancy of Cimon and the Philolaconian party at Athens was favourable
to a good understanding between the two states, and at Sparta in normal
times the balance inclined in favour of the party whose policy is best
described by the motto “quieta non
movere.”
In
the end, however, the opposition of the two contending forces proved too
strong for Spartan neutrality. The fall of Cimon (461 bc)
was followed by the so-called “First Peloponnesian War,” a
conflict between Athens and her maritime rivals, Corinth and Aegina, into
which wars Sparta was ultimately drawn. Thucydides regards the hostilities
of these years (460–454 bc),
which were resumed for a few months in 446 bc, on the expiration of the Five Years’ Truce, as preliminary to
those of the great Peloponnesian War (431–404 bc).
The real question at issue was in both cases the same. The tie that
united the opponents of Athens was found in a common hostility to the
imperial idea. It is a complete misapprehension to regard the
Peloponnesian War as a mere duel between two rival claimants for empire.
The ultimatum presented by Sparta on the eve of the war demandedthe
restoratiorl of autonomy to the subjects of Athens. There is no reason
for doubting her sincerity in presenting it in this form. It would,
however, be an equal misapprehension to regard the war as merely a
struggle between the cause of empire and the cause of autonomy.
Corresponding to this fundamental contrast there are other contrasts,
constitutional, racial and military. The military interest of the war is
largely due to the fact that Athens was a sea power and Sparta a land one.
As the war went on, the constitutional aspect tended to become more
marked. At first there were democracies on the side of Sparta, and
oligarchies on the side of Athens. In the last stage of the war, when
Lysander’s influence was supreme, we see the forces of oligarchy
everywhere united and organized for the destruction of democracy. In its
origin the war was certainly not due to the rivalry of Dorian and Ionian.
This racial, or tribal, contrast counted for more in the politics of
Sicily than of Greece; and, though the two great branches of the Greek
race were represented respectively by the leaders of the two sides, the
allies on neither side belonged exclusively to the one branch or the
other. Still, it remains true that the Dorian states were, as a rule, on the
Spartan side, and the Ionian states, as a rule, on the Athenian—a
division of sentiment which must have helped to widen the breach, and to
intensify the animosities.
As
a political experiment the Athenian empire possesses a unique interest. It
represents the first attempt to fuse the principles of imperialism and
democracy. It is at
once the first empire in history possessed and administered by a
sovereign people, and the first which sought to establish a common system
of democratic institutions amongst its subjects. It was an experiment that
failed, partly owing to the inherent strength of the oligarchic cause,
partly owing to the exclusive character of ancient citizenship. The
Athenians themselves recognized that their empire depended for its
existence upon the solidarity of democratic interests (see Thuc. iii. 47;
Pseudo‑Xenophon, de Rep.
Ath. i. I4, iii. 10). An
understanding existed between the democratic leaders in the subject-states
and the democratic party at Athens. Charges were easily trumped up against
obnoxious oligarchs, and conviction as easily obtained in the Athenian
courts of law. Such a system forced the oligarchs into an attitude of
opposition. How much this opposition counted for was realized when the
Sicilian disaster (413 bc)
gave the subjects their chance to revolt. The organization of the
oligarchical party throughout the empire, which was effected by Lysander
in the last stage of the war, contributed to the overthrow of Athenian
ascendancy hardly less than the subsidies of Persia. Had Athens aimed at
establishing a community of interest between herself and her subjects,
based upon a common citizenship, her empire might have endured. It would
have been a policy akin to that which secured the permanence of the Roman
empire. And it was a policy which found advocates when the day for it was
past (see Aristophanes, Lysistrata, 514
ff.; cf. the grant of
citizenship to the Samians after Aegospotami, C.I.A. iv. 2. 1b). But the policy pursued by Athens in the plenitude
of her power was the reverse of the policy pursued by Rome in her
treatment of the franchise. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the
fate of the empire was sealed by the law of Pericles (451 bc),
by which the franchise was restricted to those who could establish
Athenian descent on both sides. It was not merely that the process of
amalgamation through intermarriage was abruptly checked; what was more
serious was that a hard and fast line was drawn, once and for all, between
the small body of privileged rulers and the great mass of unprivileged
subjects. Maine (Early Institutions,
lecture 13) has classed the
Athenian empire with those of the familiar Oriental type, which attempt
nothing beyond the raising of taxes and the levying of troops. The
Athenian empire cannot, indeed, be classed with the Roman, or with the
British rule in India; it does not, therefore, deserve to be classed with
the empires of Cyrus or of Jenghiz Khan. Though the basis of its
organization, like that of the Persian empire under Darius, was financial,
it attempted, and secured, objects beyond the mere payment of tribute and
the supply of ships. If Athens did not introduce a common religion, or a
common system of education, or a common citizenship, she did introduce a
common type of political institutions, and a common jurisdiction. She went
some way, too, in the direction of establishing a common system of coins,
and of weights and measures. A common language was there already. In a
word, the Athenian empire marks a definite stage of political evolution.
The
other great political movement of the age was the progress of democracy.
Before the Persian invasion democracy was a rare phenomenon in Greek
politics. Where it was found it existed in an undeveloped form, and its
tenure of power was precarious. By the beginning of the Peloponnesian War
it had become the prevalent form of government. The great majority of
Greek states had adopted democratic constitutions. Both in the Athenian
sphere of influence and in the colonial world outside that sphere, democracy
was all but the only form of constitution known. It was only in Greece
proper that oligarchy held its own. In the Peloponnese it could count a
majority of the states; in northern Greece at least a half of them. The
spread of democratic institutions was arrested by the victory of Sparta
in the East, and the rise of Dionysius in the West. There was a moment at
the end of the 5th century when it looked as if democracy was a lost
cause. Even Athens was for a brief period under the rule of the Thirty
(404–403 bc). In the
regions which had formed the empire of Athens the decarchies set up by
Lysander were soon overthrown, and democracies restored in most cases, but
oligarchy continued to be the prevent form in Greece proper until Leuctra
(371 bc), and in Sicily
tyranny had a still longer tenure of power. By the end of the Great Age
oligarchy has almost disappeared from the Greek world, except in the
sphere of Persian influence. The Spartan monarchy still survives; a few
Peloponnesian states still maintain the rule of the few; here and there in
Greece itself we meet with a revival of the tyrannts;
but, with these exceptions, democracy is everywhere the only type of
constitution. And democracy has developed as well as spread. At the end of
the 5th century the constitution of Cleisthenes, which was a democracy in
the view of his contemporaries, had come to be regarded as an aristocracy
(Aristot. Ath. Pol.
29. 3). We can trace a similar change of sentiment in Sicily. As
compared with the extreme form of constitution adopted at Syracuse after
the defeat of the Athenian expedition, the democracies established two
generations earlier, on the fall of the tyranis,
appeared oligarchical. The changes by which the character of the Greek
democracies was revolutionized were four in number: the substitution of
sortition for election, the abolition of a property qualification, the
payment of officials and the rise of a class of professional politicians.
In the democracy of Cleisthenes no payment was given for service, whether
as a magistrate, a juror or a member of the Boule. The higher magistracies
were filled by election, and they were held almost exclusively by the
members of the great Athenian families. For the highest office of all, the
archonship, none but Pentacosiomedimni (the first of the four Solonian classes) were
eligible. The introduction of pay and the removal of the property
qualification formed part of the reforms of Pericles. Sortition had been
instituted for election a generation earlier (487 bc).
What is perhaps the most important of all these changes, the rise of the
demagogues, belongs to the era of the Peloponnesian War. From the time of
Cleisthenes to the outbreak of the war every statesman of note at Athens,
with the exception of Themistocles (and, perhaps, of Ephialtes), is of
aristocratic birth. Down to the fall of Cimon the course of Athenian
politics is to a great extent determined by the alliances and antipathies
of the great clans. With the Peloponnesian War a new epoch begins. The
chief office, the strategia, is still,
as a rule, held by men of rank. But leadership in the Ecclesia has passed
to men of a different class. The demagogues were not necessarily poor men.
Cleon was a wealthy man; Eucrates, Lysicles and Hyperbolus were, at any
rate, tradesmen rather than artisans. The first “labour member” proper
is Cleophon (411–404 bc),
a lyre-maker. They belonged, however, not to the land‑owning, but to
the industrial classes; they were distinguished from the older race of
party‑leaders by a vulgar accent, and by a violence of gesture in
public speaking, and they found their supporters among the population of
the city and its port, the Peiraeus, rather than among the farmers of the
country districts. In the 4th century the demagogues, though under another
name, that of orators, have acquired entire control of the Ecclesia. It is
an age of professionalism, and the professional soldier has his
counterpart in the professional politician. Down to the death of Pericles
the party‑leader had always held office as Strategus. His rival,
Thucydides, son of Melesias, forms a solitary exception to this statement.
In the 4th century the divorce between the general and the statesman is
complete. The generals are professional soldiers, who aspire to no
political influence in the state, and the statesmen devote themselves
exclusively to politics, a career for which they have prepared themselves
by a professional training in oratory or administrative work. The ruin of
agriculture during the war had reduced the old families to insignificance.
Birth counts for less than nothing as a political asset in the age of
Demosthenes.
But
great as are the contrasts which have been pointed out between the earlier
and the later democracy, those that distinguish the ancient conception of
democracy from the modern are of a still more essential nature. The
differences that distinguish the democracies of ancient Greece from those
of the modern world have their origin, to a
great extent, in the difference between a city-‑state and a
nation-state. Many of the most famous Greek states had an area of a few
square miles; the largest of them was no larger than an English county.
Political theory put the limit of the citizen‑body at 10,000. Though
this number was exceeded in a few cases, it is doubtful if any state,
except Athens, ever counted more than 20,000 citizens. In the nation-states
of modern times, democratic government is possible only under the form of
a representative system; in the city‑state representative government
was unnecessary, and therefore unknown. In the ancient type of democracy a
popular chamber has no existence. The Ecclesia is not a chamber in any
sense of the term; it is an assembly of the whole people, which every
citizen is entitled to attend, and in which every one is equally entitled
to vote and speak. The question raised in modern political science, as to
whether sovereignty resides in the electors or their representatives, has
thus neither place nor meaning in ancient theory. In the same way, one of
the most familiar results of modern analysis, the distinction between the
executive and the legislative, finds no recognition in the Greek writers.
In a direct system of government there can be no executive in the proper
sense. Executive functions are discharged by the ecclesia, to whose
decision the details of administration may be referred. The position of
the strategi, the chief officials in the Athenian democracy of the 5th
century, was in no sense comparable to that of a modern cabinet. Hence the
individual citizen in an ancient democracy was concerned in, and
responsible for, the actual work of government to a degree that is
inconceivable in a modern state. Thus participation in the administrative
and judicial business of the state is made by Aristotle the differentia of
the citizen (. . . Aristot. Politics,
p. 1275 a 20). A large proportion of the citizens of Athens, in addition to
frequent service in the courts of law, must in the course of their lives
have held a magistracy, great or small, or have acted for a year or two as
members of the Boule. It must be remembered that there was nothing corresponding
to a permanent civil service in the ancient state. Much of the work of a
government office would have been transacted by the Athenian Boule. It
must be remembered, too, that political and administrative questions of
great importance came before the popular courts of law. Hence it follows
that the ordinary citizen of an ancient democracy, in the course of his
service in the Boule or the law-courts, acquired an interest in political
questions, and a grasp of administrative work, which none but a select few
can hope to acquire under the conditions of the modern system. Where there
existed neither a popular chamber nor a distinct executive, there was no
opportunity for the growth of a party‑system. There were, of course,
political parties at Athens and elsewhere—oligarchs and democrats,
conservatives and radicals, a peace-party and a war‑party, according
to the burning question of the day. There was, however, nothing equivalent
to a general election, to a cabinet (or to that collective responsibility
which is of the essence of a cabinet), or to the government and the
opposition. Party organization, therefore, and a party system, in the
proper sense, were never developed. Whatever may have been the evils
incident to the ancient form of democracy, the “boss,” the caucus and
the spoils-system were not among them.
Besides
these differences, which, directly or indirectly, result from the
difference of scale, there are others, hardly less profound, which are not
connected with the size of the city-state. Perhaps the most striking
contrast between the democracies of ancient and of modern times is to be
found in their attitude towards privilege. Ancient democracy implies
privilege; modern democracy implies its destruction. In the more fully
developed democracies of the modern world (e.g.
in the United States, or in Australia), the privilege of class is
unknown; in some of them (e.g.
New Zealand, Australia, Norway) even the privilege o f sex has been
abolished. Ancient democracy was bound up with privilege as much as
oligarchy was. The transition from the latter to the former was effected
by enlarging the area of privilege and by altering its basis. In an
oligarchical state citizenship might be confined to 10% of the free
population; under a democracy 50% might enjoy it. In the former case the
qualification might be wealth or land; in the latter case it might be,
as it was at Athens, birth, i.e. descent,
on both sides, from a citizen family. But, in both cases alike, the
distinction between a privileged and an unprivileged body of
free‑born residents is fundamental. To the unprivileged class
belonged, not only foreigners temporarily resident (xenoi)
and aliens permanently domiciled
(metoikoi),
but also those native-born inhabitants of the state who were of foreign
extraction, on one side or the other. The privileges attaching to
citizenship included, in addition to eligibility for office and a vote in
the assembly, such private rights as that of owning land or a house, or of
contracting a marriage with one of citizen status. The citizen, too, was
alone the recipient of all the various forms of pay (e.g.
for attendance in the assembly, for service in the Boule or the law-courts,
or for the celebration of the great festivals) which are so conspicuous
a feature in the developed democracy of the 4th century. The metoeci could not even plead in a court of law in person, but only
through a patron . . . . It is
intelligible that privileges so great should be jealously guarded. In the
democracies of the modern world naturalization is easy; in those of
ancient Greece admission to the franchise was rarely accorded. In modern
times, again, we are accustomed to connect democracy with the emancipation
of women. It is true that only a few democratic constitutions grant them
the suffrage; but though, as a rule, they are denied public rights, the
growth of popular government has been almost everywhere accompanied by an
extension of their private rights, and
by the removal of the restrictions imposed by law, custom or public
opinion upon their freedom of action. In ancient Greece the democracies
were as illiberal in their policy as the oligarchies. Women of the
respectable class were condemned to comparative seclusion. They enjoyed
far less freedom in 4th-century Athens than in the Homeric Age. It is not
in any of the democracies, but in conservative Sparta,
that they possess privilege and exercise influence.
The
most fundamental of all the contrasts between democracy in its ancient and in its modern form remains to be stated. The
ancient state was inseparable from slavery. In this respect there was no
difference between democracy and the other forms of government. No
inconsistency was felt, therefore, between this institution and the
democratic principle. Modern political theory has been profoundly affected
by the conception of the dignity of labour; ancient political theory
tended to regard labour as a disqualification for the exercise of
political rights. Where slavery exists, the taint of it will inevitably
cling to all labour that can be performed by the slave. In ancient Athens
(which may be taken as typical of the Greek democracies) unskilled labour
was almost entirely slave‑labour, and skilled labour was largely so.
The arts and crafts were, to some extent, exercised by citizens, but to a
lesser extent in the 4th than in the 6th century. They were, however,
chiefly left to aliens or slaves. The citizen-body of Athens in the age of
Demosthenes has been stigmatized as consisting in great measure of
salaried paupers. There is, doubtless, an exaggeration in this. It is,
however, true, both that the system of state-pay went a long way towards
supplying the simple wants of a southern population, and that a large
proportion of the citizens had time to spare for the service of the state.
Had the life of the lower class of citizens been absorbed in a round of
mechanical labours, as fully as is the life of our industrial classes, the
working of an ancient democracy would have been impossible. In justice to
the ancient democracies it must be conceded that, while popular government
carried with it neither the enfranchisement of the alien nor the
emancipation of the slaves, the rights secured to both classes were more
considerable in the democratic states than elsewhere. The lot of the
slave, as well as that of the alien, was a peculiarly favourable one at
Athens. The pseudo-Xenophon in the 5th century (De
rep. Ath. I. 10–12) and Plato in the 4th (Republic,
p. 563 b),
prove that the spirit of liberty
with which Athenian life was permeated, was not without its influence
upon the position of these classes. When we read that critics complained
of the opulence of slaves, and of the liberties they took, and when we are
told that the slave could not be distinguished from the poorer class of
citizens either by his dress or his look, we begin to realize the
difference between the slavery of ancient Athens and the system as it was
worked on the Roman latifundia or
the plantations of the New World.
It
had been anticipated that the fall of Athens would mean the triumph of the
principle of autonomy. If Athens had surrendered within a year or so of
the Sicilian catastrophe, this anticipation would probably have been
fulfilled. It was the last phase of the struggle (412–404 bc)
that rendered a Spartan empire inevitable. The oligarchical
governments established by Lysander recognized that their tenure of power
was dependent upon Spartan support, while Lysander himself, to whose
genius, as a political organizer not less than as a commander, the triumph
of Sparta was due, was unwilling to see his work undone. The Athenian
empire had never included the greater part of Greece proper; since the
Thirty Years’ Peace its possessions on the mainland, outside the
boundaries of Attica, were limited to Naupactus and Plataea. Sparta, on
the other hand, attempted the control of the entire Greek world east of
the Adriatic. Athens had been compelled to acknowledge a dual system;
Sparta sought to establish uniformity. The attempt failed from the first.
Within a year of the surrender of Athens, Thebes and Corinth had drifted
into an attitude of opposition, while Argos remained hostile. It was not
long before the policy of Lysander succeeded in uniting against Sparta the
very forces upon which she had relied when she entered on the
Peloponnesian War. The Corinthian War (394–387 bc)
was brought about by the alliance of all the second-class
powers—Thebes, Athens, Corinth, Argos—against the one first-class
power, Sparta. Though Sparta emerged successful from the war, it was with
the loss of her maritime empire, and at the cost of recognizing the
principle of autonomy as the basis of the Greek political system. It was
already evident, thus early in the century, that the centrifugal forces
were to prove stronger than the centripetal. Two further causes may be
indicated which help to explain the failure of the Spartan empire. In the
first place Spartan sea-power was an artificial creation. History seems to
show that it is idle for a state to aspire to naval supremacy unless it
possesses a great commercial marine. Athens had possessed such a marine;
her naval supremacy was due not to the mere size of her fleet, but to the
numbers and skill of her seafaring population. Sparta had no commerce. She
could build fleets more easily than she could man them. A single defeat
(at Cnidus, 391 bc)
sufficed for the ruin of her sea-power. The second cause is to be
found in the financial weakness of the Spartan state. The Spartan treasury
had been temporarily enriched by the spoils of the Peloponnesian War, but
neither during that war, nor afterwards, did Sparta succeed in developing
any scientific financial system, Athens was the only state which either
possessed a large annual revenue or accumulated a considerable reserve.
Under the conditions of Greek warfare, fleets were more expensive than
armies. Not only was money needed for the building and maintenance of the
ships, but the sailor must be paid, while the soldier served for nothing.
Hence the power with the longest purse could both build the largest fleet
and attract the most skillful seamen.
The
battle of Leuctra transferred the hegemony from Sparta to Thebes, but the
attempt to unite Greece under the leadership of Thebes was from the first
doomed to failure. The conditions were less favourable to Thebes than they
had been to Athens or Sparta. Thebes was even more exclusively a land-power
than Sparta. She had no revenue comparable to that of Athens in the
preceding century. Unlike Athens and Sparta, she had not the advantage of
being identified with a political cause. As the enemy of Athens in the 5th
century, she was on the side of oligarchy; as the rival of Sparta in the
4th, she was on the side of democracy; but in her bid for primacy she
could not appeal, as Athens and Sparta could, to a great political
tradition, nor had she behind her, as they had, the moral force of a great
political principle. Her position, too, in Boeotia itself was insecure.
The rise of Athens was in great measure the result of the synoecism
. . . of Attica. All
inhabitants of Attica were Athenians. But “Boeotian” and “Theban”
were not synonymous terms. The Boeotian league was an imperfect form of
union, as compared with the Athenian state, and the claim of Thebes to the
presidency of the league was, at best, sullenly acquiesced in by the
other towns. The destruction of some of the most famous of the Boeotian
cities, however necessary it may have been in order to unite the country,
was a measure which at once impaired the resources of Thebes and outraged
Greek sentiment. It has been often held that the failure of Theban policy
was due to the death of Epaminondas (at the battle of Mantinea, 362 bc).
For this view there is no justification. His policy had proved a failure
before his death. Where it harmonized with the spirit of the age, the
spirit of dissidence, it succeeded; where it attempted to run counter to
it, it failed. It succeeded in destroying the supremacy of Sparta in the
Peloponnese; it failed to unite the Peloponnese on a new basis. It failed
still more signally to unite Greece north of the Isthmus. It left Greece
weaker and more divided than it found it (see the concluding words of
Xenophon’s Hellenics).
It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of his policy as
a destructive force; as a constructive force it effected nothing. The
Peloponnesian system which Epaminondas overthrew had lasted two hundred
years. Under Spartan leadership the Peloponnese had enjoyed almost
complete immunity from invasion and comparative immunity from stasis
(faction). The claim that Isocrates makes for Sparta is probably
well‑founded (Archidamus, 64–69; during the period of Spartan ascendency the
Peloponnesians were omalismenoi
ton Ellhnon). Peloponnesian sentiment had been one of the
chief factors in Greek politics; to it, indeed, in no small degree was due
the victory over Persia. The Theban victory at Leuctra destroyed the
unity, and with it the peace and the prosperity, of the Peloponnese. It
inaugurated a period of misery, the natural result of stasis
and invasion, to which no parallel can be found in the earlier history
(See Isocrates, Archidamus, 65,
66; the Peloponnesians were omalismenoi
sumtorais). It
destroyed, too, the Peloponnesian sentiment of hostility to the invader.
The bulk of the army that defeated Mardonius at Plataea came from the
Peloponnese; at Chaeronea no Peloponnesian state was represented.
The
question remains, Why did the city-state fail to save Greece from conquest
by Macedon? Was this result due to the inherent weakness either of the
city-state itself, or of one particular form of it, democracy? It is
clear, in any case, that the triumph of Macedon was the effect of causes
which had long been at work. If neither Philip nor Alexander had appeared
on the scene, Greece might have maintained her independence for another
generation or two; but, when invasion came, it would have found her weaker
and more distracted, and the conquerors might easily have been less imbued
with the Greek spirit, and less sympathetic towards Greek ideals, than the
great Macedonian and his son. These causes are to be found in the
tendencies of the age, political, economic and moral. Of the two movements
which characterized the Great Age in its political aspect, the imperial
and the democratic, the one failed and the other succeeded. The failure
and the success were equally fatal to the chances of Greece in the
conflict with Macedon. By the middle of the 4th century Greek politics had
come to be dominated by the theory of the balance of power. This theory,
enunciated in its coarsest form by Demosthenes (Pro Megalopolit. 4 . . .; cf. in Aristocrat. 102, 103), had shaped the foreign policy of Athens since
the end of the Peloponnesian War. As long as Sparta was the stronger,
Athens inclined to a Theban alliance; after Leuctra she tended in the
direction of a Spartan one. At the epoch of Philip’s accession the
forces were everywhere nicely balanced. The Peloponnese was fairly equally
divided between the Theban and the Spartan interests, and‑central
Greece was similarly divided between the Theban and the Athenian. Farther
north we get an Athenian party opposed to an Olynthian in Chalcidice, and
a republican party, dependent upon the support of Thebes, opposed to that
of the tyrants in Thessaly. It is easy to see that the political
conditions of Greece, both in the north and in the south, invited
interference from without. And the triumph of democracy in its extreme
form was ruinous to the military efficiency of Greece. On the one side
there was a monarchical state, in which all powers, civil as well as
military, were concentrated in the hands of a single ruler; on the other,
a constitutional system, in which a complete separation had been effected
between the responsibility of the statesman and that of the commander.
It
could not be doubtful with which side victory would rest. Meanwhile, the
economic conditions were steadily growing worse. The cause which Aristotle
assigns for the decay of the Spartan state—a declining population (see Politics,
p. 1270. . .)—might be
extended to the Greek world generally. The loss of population was partly
the result of war and stasis—Isocrates
speaks of the number of political exiles from the various states as
enormous—but it was also due to a declining birth‑rate, and to the
exposure of infants. Aristotle, while condemning exposure, sanctions the
procuring of abortion (Politics, 1335 b). It is probable that both ante‑natal and
post‑natal infanticide were rife everywhere, except among the more
backward communities. A people which has condemned itself to racial
suicide can have little chance when pitted against a nation in which
healthier instincts prevail. The materials for forming a trustworthy
estimate of the population of Greece at any given epoch are not available;
there is enough evidence, however, to prove that the military population
of the leading Greek states at the era of the battle of Chaeronea (338 bc)
fell far short of what it had been at the beginning of the Peloponnesian
War. The decline in population had been accompanied by a decline in
wealth, both public and private; and while revenues had shrunk,
expenditure had grown. It was a century of warfare; and warfare had become
enormously more expensive, partly through the increased employment of
mercenaries, partly through the enhanced cost of material. The power of
the purse had made itself felt even in the 5th century; Persian gold had
helped to decide the issue of the great war. In the politics of the 4th
century the power of the purse becomes the determining factor. The public
finance of the ancient world was singularly simple in character, and the
expedients for raising a revenue were comparatively few. The distinction
between direct and indirect taxation was recognized in practice, but
states as a rule were reluctant to submit to the former system. The
revenue of Athens in the 5th century was mainly derived from the tribute
paid by her subjects; it was only in time of war that a direct tax was
levied upon the citizen-body. In the age of Demosthenes the revenue
derived from the Athenian Confederacy was insignificant. The whole burden
of the expenses of a war fell upon the 1200
richest citizens, who were subject to direct taxation in the dual form
of the Trieratchy and the Eisphora (property-tax). The revenue thus raised was wholly
insufficient for an effort on a great scale; yet the revenues of Athens at
this period must have exceeded those of any other state. It is to moral
causes, however, rather than to political or economic ones, that the
failure of Greece in the conflict with Macedon is attributed by the most
famous Greek statesmen of that age. Demosthenes is never weary of
insisting upon the decay of patriotism among the citizens and upon the
decay of probity among their leaders. Venality had always been the
besetting sin of Greek statesmen. Pericles’ boast as to his own
incorruptibility (Thuc. ii. 60) is significant as to the reputation of his
contemporaries. In the age of Demosthenes the level of public life in this
respect had sunk at least as low as that which prevails in many states of
the modern world (see Demosthenes. On the Crown, 61 . . .). Corruption was certainly not confined to
the Macedonian party. The best that can be said in defence of the
patriots, as well as of their opponents, is that they honestly believed
that the policy which they were bribed to advocate was the best for their
country’s interests. The evidence for the general decay of patriotism
among the mass, of the citizens is less conclusive. The battle of
Megalopolis (331 bc), in
which the Spartan soldiery “went down in a blaze of glory,” proves
that the spirit of the Lacedemonian state remained unchanged. But at
Athens it seemed to contemporary observers—to Isocrates equally with
Demosthenes—that the spirit of the great days was extinct (see Isocr. On
the Peace, 47, 48). It cannot, of course, be denied that public
opinion was obstinately opposed to the diversion of the Theoric Fund to
the purposes of the war with Philip. It was not till the year before
Chaeronea that Demosthenes succeeded in persuading the assembly to devote
the entire surplus to the expenses of the war. Nor can it be denied that
mercenaries were far more largely employed in the 4th century than in the
5th. In justice, however, to the Athenians of the Demosthenic era, it
should be remembered that the burden of direct taxation was rarely
imposed, and was reluctantly endured, in the previous century. It must
also be remembered that, even in the 4h century, the Athenian citizen was
ready to take the field, provided that it was not a question of a distant
expedition or of prolonged service. For distant expeditions, or for
prolonged service, a citizen-militia is unsuited. The substitution of a
professional force for an unprofessional one is to be explained, partly by
the change in the character of Greek warfare, and partly by the operation
of the laws of supply and demand. There had been a time when warfare meant
a brief campaign in the summer months against a neighbouring state. It had
come to mean prolonged operations against a distant enemy. Athens was at
war, e.g. with Philip, for
eleven years continuously (357-346 bc).
If winter campaigns in Thrace were unpopular at this epoch, they had been
hardly less unpopular in the epoch of the Peloponnesian War. In the days
of her greatness, too, Athens had freely employed mercenaries, but it
was in the navy rather than the army. In the age of Pericles the supply of
mercenary rowers was abundant, the supply of mercenary troops
inconsiderable. In the age of Demosthenes incessant warfare and ceaseless
revolution had filled Greece with crowds of homeless adventurers. The
supply helped to create the demand. The mercenary was as cheap as the
citizen‑soldier, and much more effective. On the whole, then, it may
be inferred that it is a mistake to regard the prevalence of the
mercenary system as the expression of a declining patriotism. It would be
nearer the mark to treat the transition from the voluntary to the
professional system as cause rather than effect: as one among the causes
which contributed to the decay of public spirit in the Greek world.
|