Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete

63 (return)

[ It is impossible by any calculations to render this amount more credible to modern skepticism. It is extremely likely that Herodotus is mistaken in his calculation; but who shall correct him?

64 (return)

[ The Cissii, or Cissians, inhabited the then fertile province of Susiana, in which was situated the capital of Susa. They resembled the Persians in dress and manners.

65 (return)

[ So Herodotus (lib. vii., c. 218); but, as it was summer, the noise was probably made rather by the boughs that obstructed the path of the barbarians, than by leaves on the ground.

66

[ Diod. Sic., xi., viii.

67 (return)

[ Justin, ii., ix.

68 (return)

[ Another Spartan, who had been sent into Thessaly, and was therefore absent from the slaughter of Thermopylae, destroyed himself.

69 (return)

[ The cross was the usual punishment in Persia for offences against the king’s majesty or rights. Perhaps, therefore, Xerxes, by the outrage, only desired to signify that he considered the Spartan as a rebel.

70 (return)

[ “Thus fought the Greeks at Thermopylae,” are the simple expressions of Herodotus, lib. vii., c. 234.

71 (return)

[ Thus the command of the Athenian forces was at one time likely to fall upon Epicydes, a man whose superior eloquence had gained an ascendency with the people, which was neither due to his integrity nor to his military skill. Themistocles is said to have bribed him to forego his pretensions. Themistocles could be as severe as crafty when occasion demanded: he put to death an interpreter who accompanied the Persian envoys, probably to the congress at the Isthmus [Footnote Plutarch implies that these envoys came to Athens, but Xerxes sent none to that city.:, for debasing the language of free Greeks to express the demands of the barbarian enemy.

72 (return)

[ Plutarch rejects this story, very circumstantially told by Herodotus, without adducing a single satisfactory argument for the rejection. The skepticism of Plutarch is more frivolous even than his credulity.

73 (return)

[ Demost., Philip. 3. See also Aeschines contra Ctesiphon.

74 (return)

[ I have said that it might be doubted whether the death of Leonidas was as serviceable to Greece as his life might have been; its immediate consequences were certainly discouraging. If his valour was an example, his defeat was a warning.

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[ There were [Footnote three hundred, for the sake of round numbers—but one of the three hundred—perhaps two—survived the general massacre.: three hundred Spartans and four hundred Thespians; supposing that (as it has been asserted) the eighty warriors of Mycenae also remained with Leonidas, and that one hundred, or a fourth of the Thebans fell ere their submission was received, this makes a total of eight hundred and eighty. If we take now what at Plataea was the actual ratio of the helots as compared with the Spartans, i. e, seven to one, we shall add two thousand one hundred helots, which make two thousand nine hundred and ninety; to which must be added such of the Greeks as fell in the attacks prior to the slaughter of Thermopylae; so that, in order to make out the total of the slain given by Herodotus, more than eleven hundred must have perished before the last action, in which Leonidas fell.

76 (return)

[ Plut. in vit. Them.

77 (return)

[ Ibid.

78 (return)

[ It is differently stated; by Aeschylus and Nepos at three hundred, by Thucydides at four hundred.

79 (return)

[ Plut. in vit. Them.

80 (return)

[ Here we see additional reason for admiring the sagacity of Themistocles.

81 (return)

[ Her., lib. viii., c. 74.

82 (return)

[ The tutor of his children, Sicinnus, who had experience of the Eastern manners, and spoke the Persian language.

83 (return)

[ The number of the Persian galleys, at the lowest computation, was a thousand [Footnote Nepos, Herodotus, and Isocrates compute the total at about twelve hundred; the estimate of one thousand is taken from a dubious and disputed passage in Aeschylus, which may be so construed as to signify one thousand, including two hundred and seven vessels, or besides two hundred and seven vessels; viz., twelve hundred and seven in all, which is the precise number given by Herodotus. Ctesias says there were more than one thousand.:; that of the Greeks, as we have seen, three hundred and eighty. But the Persians were infinitely more numerously manned, having on board of each vessel thirty men-at-arms, in addition to the usual number of two hundred. Plutarch seems to state the whole number in each Athenian vessel to be fourteen heavy armed and four bowmen. But this would make the whole Athenian force only three thousand two hundred and forty men, including the bowmen, who were probably not Athenian citizens. It must therefore be supposed, with Mr. Thirlwall, that the eighteen men thus specified were an addition to the ordinary company.

84 (return)

[ Aeschylus. Persae. 397.

85 (return)

[ The Persian admiral at Salamis is asserted by Ctesias to have been Onaphas, father-in-law to Xerxes. According to Herodotus, it was Ariabignes, the king’s brother, who seems the same as Artabazanes, with whom he had disputed the throne.—Comp. Herod., lib. vii., c. 2, and lib. viii., c. 89.

86 (return)

[ Plut in vit. Them.

87 (return)

[ Plut. in vit. Them. The Ariamenes of Plutarch is the Ariabignes of Herodotus.

88 (return)

[ Mr. Mitford, neglecting to observe this error of Xerxes, especially noted by Herodotus, merely observes—“According to Herodotus, though in this instance we may have difficulty to give him entire credit, Xerxes, from the shore where he sat, saw, admired, and applauded the exploit.” From this passage one would suppose that Xerxes knew it was a friend who had been attacked, and then, indeed, we could not have credited the account; but if he and those about him supposed it, as Herodotus states, a foe, what is there incredible? This is one instance in ten thousand more important ones, of Mr. Mitford’s habit of arguing upon one sentence by omitting those that follow and precede it.

89 (return)

[ Diod., lib xi., c. 5. Herod., lib. viii., c. 110. Nepos, et Plut, in vit. Them.

90 (return)

[ Plut. in vit. Them.

91 (return)

[ Ibid. These anecdotes have the stamp of authenticity.

92 (return)

[ Herod., lib. viii., c. 125. See Wesseling’s Comment on Timodemus. Plutarch tells the same anecdote, but makes the baffled rebuker of Themistocles a citizen of Seriphus, an island in which, according to Aelian, the frogs never croaked; the men seem to have made up for the silence of the frogs!

93 (return)

[ See Fast. Hell., vol. ii., page 26.

94 (return)

[ Plut. in vit. Arist.

95 (return)

[ Ibid.

96 (return)

[ The custom of lapidation was common to the earlier ages; it had a kind of sanction, too, in particular offences; and no crime could be considered by a brave and inflamed people equal to that of advice against their honour and their liberties.

97 (return)

[ See Herod., lib. ix., c. 10. Also Mr. Clinton on the Kings of Sparta. Fast. Hell., vol. ii., p. 187.

98 (return)

[ See Herod., lib, vi., c. 58. After the burial of a Spartan king, ten days were devoted to mourning; nor was any public business transacted in that interval.

99 (return)

[ “According to Aristides’ decree,” says Plutarch, “the Athenian envoys were Aristides, Xanthippus, Myronides, and Cimon.”

100 (return)

[ Herodotus speaks of the devastation and ruin as complete. But how many ages did the monuments of Pisistratus survive the ravage of the Persian sword!

101 (return)

[ Plut. in vit. Arist.

102 (return)

[ This, among a thousand anecdotes, proves how salutary and inevitable was the popular distrust of the aristocracy. When we read of the process of bribing the principal men, and of the conspiracy entered into by others, we must treat with contempt those accusations of the jealousy of the Grecian people towards their superiors which form the staple declamations of commonplace historians.

103 (return)

[ Gargaphia is one mile and a half from the town of Plataea. Gell’s Itin. 112.

104 (return)

[ Plut. in vit. Arist.

105 (return)

[ A strange fall from the ancient splendour of Mycenae, to furnish only four hundred men, conjointly with Tiryns, to the cause of Greece!

106 (return)

[ Her., lib. ix., c. 45.

107 (return)

[ Plutarch in vit. Arist.

108 (return)

[ This account, by Herodotus, of the contrast between the Spartan and the Athenian leaders, which is amply supported elsewhere, is, as I have before hinted, a proof of the little effect upon Spartan emulation produced by the martyrdom of Leonidas. Undoubtedly the Spartans were more terrified by the slaughter of Thermopylae than fired by the desire of revenge.

109 (return)

[ “Here seem to be several islands, formed by a sluggish stream in a flat meadow. (Oeroe?) must have been of that description.– “Gell’s Itin, 109.

110 (return)

[ Herod., lib. ix., c. 54.

111 (return)

[ Plut. in vit. Arist.

112 (return)

[ Sir W. Gell’s Itin. of Greece.

113 (return)

[ Herod. lib. ix., c. 62.

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[ The Tegeans had already seized the tent of Mardonius, possessing themselves especially of a curious brazen manger, from which the Persian’s horse was fed, and afterward dedicated to the Alean Minerva.

115 (return)

[ I adopt the reading of Valcknaer, “tous hippeas.” The Spartan knights, in number three hundred, had nothing to do with the cavalry, but fought on foot or on horseback, as required. (Dionys. Hal., xi., 13.) They formed the royal bodyguard.

116 (return)

[ Mr. Mitford attributes his absence from the scene to some jealousy of the honours he received at Sparta, and the vain glory with which he bore them. But the vague observations in the authors he refers to by no means bear out this conjecture, nor does it seem probable that the jealousy was either general or keen enough to effect so severe a loss to the public cause. Menaced with grave and imminent peril, it was not while the Athenians were still in the camp that they would have conceived all the petty envies of the forum. The jealousies Themistocles excited were of much later date. It is probable that at this period he was intrusted with the very important charge of watching over and keeping together that considerable but scattered part of the Athenian population which was not engaged either at Mycale or Plataea.

117 (return)

[ Thucyd., lib. i., c. 89.

118 (return)

[ Ibid., lib. i., c. 90.

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[ Diod. Sic., lib. xi.; Thucyd., lib. i., c. 90.

120 (return)

[ Ap. Plut. in vit. Them.

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[ Diodorus (lib. xi.) tells us that the Spartan ambassadors, indulging in threatening and violent language at perceiving the walls so far advanced, were arrested by the Athenians, who declared they would only release them on receiving hack safe and uninjured their own ambassadors.

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[ Thucyd., lib. i., c. 91.

123 (return)

[ Ibid., lib. i., c. 92.

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[ Schol. ad Thucyd., lib. i., c. 93. See Clinton, Fasti Hell., vol. i., Introduction, p. 13 and 14. Mr. Thirlwall, vol. ii., p. 401, disputes the date for the archonship of Themistocles given by Mr. Clinton and confirmed by the scholiast on Thucydides. He adopts (page 366) the date which M. Boeckh founds upon Philochorus, viz., B. C. 493. But the Themistocles who was archon in that year is evidently another person from the Themistocles of Salamis; for in 493 that hero was about twenty-one, an age at which the bastard of Neocles might be driving courtesans in a chariot (as is recorded in Athenaeus), but was certainly not archon of Athens. As for M. Boeckh’s proposed emendation, quoted so respectfully by Mr. Thirlwall, by which we are to read Hybrilidon for Kebridos, it is an assumption so purely fanciful as to require no argument for refusing it belief. Mr. Clinton’s date for the archonship of the great Themistocles is the one most supported by internal evidence—1st, by the blanks of the years 481-482 in the list of archons; 2dly, by the age, the position, and repute of Themistocles in B. C. 481, two years after the ostracism of his rival Aristides. If it were reduced to a mere contest of probabilities between Mr. Clinton on one side and Mr. Boeckh and Mr. Thirlwall on the other, which is the more likely, that Themistocles should have been chief archon of Athens at twenty-one or at thirty-three—before the battle of Marathon or after his triumph over Aristides? In fact, a schoolboy knows that at twenty-one (and Themistocles was certainly not older in 493) no Athenian could have been archon. In all probability Kebridos is the right reading in Philochorus, and furnishes us with the name of the archon in B. C. 487 or 486, which years have hitherto been chronological blanks, so far as the Athenian archons are concerned.

125 (return)

[ Pausan., lib. i., c. 1.

126 (return)

[ Diod., lib. xi.

127 (return)

[ Diod., lib. xi.

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[ Diod., lib. xi. The reader will perceive that I do not agree with Mr. Thirlwall and some other scholars, for whose general opinion I have the highest respect, in rejecting altogether, and with contempt, the account of Diodorus as to the precautions of Themistocles. It seems to me highly probable that the main features of the story are presented to us faithfully; 1st, that it was not deemed expedient to detail to the popular assembly all the objects and motives of the proposed construction of the new port; and, 2dly, that Themistocles did not neglect to send ambassadors to Sparta, though certainly not with the intention of dealing more frankly with the Spartans than he had done with the Athenians.

129 (return)

[ Thucyd., lib. i.

130 (return)

[ Aristot. Pol., lib. ii. Aristotle deems the speculations of the philosophical architect worthy of a severe and searching criticism.

131 (return)

[ Of all the temples, those of Minerva and Jupiter were the most remarkable in the time of Pausanias. There were then two market-places. See Pausanias, lib. i., c. i.

132 (return)

[ Yet at this time the Amphictyonic Council was so feeble that, had the Spartans succeeded, they would have made but a hollow acquisition of authority; unless, indeed, with the project of gaining a majority of votes, they united another for reforming or reinvigorating the institution.

133 (return)

[ Thucyd., lib. i., c. 96.

134 (return)

[ Heeren, Pol. Hist. of Greece.

135 (return)

[ Corn. Nep. in vit. Paus.

136 (return)

[ Thucyd., lib. i., c. 129.

137 (return)

[ Plut. in vit. Arist.

138 (return)

[ Ibid.

139 (return)

[ Thucyd., lib. i.

140 (return)

[ Plut. in vit. Cimon. Before this period, Cimon, though rising into celebrity, could scarcely have been an adequate rival to Themistocles.

141 (return)

[ Corn. Nep. in vit. Cim.

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[ According to Diodorus, Cimon early in life made a very wealthy marriage; Themistocles recommended him to a rich father-in-law, in a witticism, which, with a slight variation, Plutarch has also recorded, though he does not give its application to Cimon.

143 (return)

[ Corn. Nep. in vit. Cim.

144 (return)

[ Thucyd., lib. i.

145 (return)

[ Ibid., lib. i. Plut. in vit. Cim. Diod. Sic., lib. xi.

146 (return)

[ See Clinton, Fast. Hell., vol. ii., p. 34, in comment upon Bentley.

147 (return)

[ Athenaeus, lib. xii.

148 (return)

[ Plut. in vit. Them.

149 (return)

[ Plut. in vit. Aristid.

150 (return)

[ About twenty-three English acres. This was by no means a despicable estate in the confined soil of Attica.

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[ Aristot. apud Plat. vit. Cim.

152 (return)

[ Produced equally by the anti-popular party on popular pretexts. It was under the sanction of Mr. Pitt that the prostitution of charity to the able-bodied was effected in England.

153 (return)

[ Plut. in vit. Cim.

154 (return)

[ His father’s brother, Cleomenes, died raving mad, as we have already seen. There was therefore insanity in the family.

155 (return)

[ Plut. in vit. Cim. Pausanias, lib. iii., c. 17.

156 (return)

[ Pausarias, lib. iii., c. 17.

157 (return)

[ Phigalea, according to Pausanias.

158 (return)

[ Plut. in vit. Cim.

159 (return)

[ Thucyd., lib. i.

160 (return)

[ Plato, leg. vi.

161 (return)

[ Nep. in vit. Paus.

162 (return)

[ Pausanias observes that his renowned namesake was the only suppliant taking refuge at the sanctuary of Minerva Chalcioecus who did not obtain the divine protection, and this because he could never purify himself of the murder of Cleonice.

163 (return)

[ Thucyd., lib. i., 136.

164 (return)

[ Plut. in vit. Them.

165 (return)

[ Thucyd., lib. i., 137.

166 (return)

[ Mr. Mitford, while doubting the fact, attempts, with his usual disingenuousness, to raise upon the very fact that he doubts, reproaches against the horrors of democratical despotism. A strange practice for an historian to allow the premises to be false, and then to argue upon them as true!

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[ The brief letter to Artaxerxes, given by Thucydides (lib i., 137), is as evidently the composition of Thucydides himself as is the celebrated oration which he puts into the mouth of Pericles. Each has the hard, rigid, and grasping style so peculiar to the historian, and to which no other Greek writer bears the slightest resemblance. But the matter may be more genuine than the diction.

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[ At the time of his arrival in Asia, Xerxes seems to have been still living. But he appeared at Susa during the short interval between the death of Xerxes and the formal accession of his son, when, by a sanguinary revolution, yet to be narrated, Artabanus was raised to the head of the Persian empire: ere the year expired Artaxerxes was on the throne.

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[ I relate this latter account of the death of Themistocles, not only because Thucydides (though preferring the former) does not disdain to cite it, but also because it is evident, from the speech of Nicias, in the Knights of Aristophanes, i. 83, 84, that in the time of Pericles it was popularly believed by the Athenians that Themistocles died by poison; and from motives that rendered allusion to his death a popular claptrap. It is also clear that the death of Themistocles appears to have reconciled him at once to the Athenians. The previous suspicions of his fidelity to Greece do not seem to have been kept alive even by the virulence of party; and it is natural to suppose that it must have been some act of his own, real or imagined, which tended to disprove the plausible accusations against him, and revive the general enthusiasm in his favour. What could that act have been but the last of his life, which, in the lines of Aristophanes referred to above, is cited as the ideal of a glorious death! But if he died by poison, the draught was not bullock’s blood—the deadly nature of which was one of the vulgar fables of the ancients. In some parts of the continent it is, in this day, even used as medicine.

170 (return)

[ Plut. in vit. Them.

171 (return)

[ Plut. in vit. Them.

172 (return)

[ Thucyd., lib. i.

173 (return)

[ Diod., lib. xi.

174 (return)

[ Plut. in vit. Cim.

175 (return)

[ Diod. (lib. xi.) reckons the number of prisoners at twenty thousand! These exaggerations sink glory into burlesque.

176 (return)

[ The Cyaneae. Plin. vi., c. 12. Herod. iv., c. 85, etc. etc.

177 (return)

[ Thucyd., lib.., 99.

178 (return)

[ Plut. in vit. Cim.

179 (return)

[ For the siege of Thasos lasted three years; in the second year we find Cimon marching to the relief of the Spartans; in fact, the siege of Thasos was not of sufficient importance to justify Cimon in a very prolonged absence from Athens.

180 (return)

[ Plut. in vit. Cim.

181 (return)

[ Plut. in vit. Cim.

182 (return)

[ Those historians who presume upon the slovenly sentences of Plutarch, that Pericles made “an instrument” of Ephialtes in assaults on the Areopagus, seem strangely to mistake both the character of Pericles, which was dictatorial, not crafty, and the position of Ephialtes, who at that time was the leader of his party, and far more influential than Pericles himself. Plato (ap. Plut. in vit. Peric.) rightly considers Ephialtes the true overthrower of the Areopagus; and although Pericles assisted him (Aristot., l. ii., c. 9), it was against Ephialtes as the chief, not “the instrument,” that the wrath of the aristocracy was directed.

183 (return)

[ See Demosth. adv. Aristocr., p. 642. ed. Reisk. Herman ap. Heidelb. Jahrb., 1830, No. 44. Forckhammer de Areopago, etc. against Boeckh. I cannot agree with those who attach so much importance to Aeschylus, in the tragedy of “The Furies,” as an authority in favour of the opinion that the innovations of Ephialtes deprived the Areopagus of jurisdiction in cases of homicide. It is true that the play turns upon the origin of the tribunal—it is true that it celebrates its immemorial right of adjudication of murder, and that Minerva declares this court of judges shall remain for ever. But would this prophecy be risked at the very time when this court was about to be abolished? In the same speech of Minerva, far more direct allusion is made to the police of the court in the fear and reverence due to it; and strong exhortations follow, not to venerate anarchy or tyranny, or banish “all fear from the city,” which apply much more forcibly to the council than to the court of the Areopagus.

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[ That the Areopagus did, prior to the decree of Ephialtes, possess a power over the finances, appears from a passage in Aristotle (ap. Plut. in vit. Them.), in which it is said that, in the expedition to Salamis, the Areopagus awarded to each man eight drachmae.

185 (return)

[ Plutarch attributes his ostracism to the resentment of the Athenians on his return from Ithome; but this is erroneous. He was not ostracised till two years after his return.

186 (return)

[ Mikaeas epilabomenoi prophaseos.—Plut. in vit. Cim. 17.

187 (return)

[ Neither Aristotle (Polit., lib. v., c. 10), nor Justin, nor Ctesias nor Moderns speak of the assassin as kinsman to Xerxes. In Plutarch (Vit. Them.) he is Artabanus the Chiliarch.

188 (return)

[ Ctesias, 30; Diod, 11; Justin, lib. iii., c. 1. According to Aristotle, Artabanus, as captain of the king’s guard, received an order to make away with Darius, neglected the command, and murdered Xerxes from fears for his own safety.

189 (return)

[ Thucyd., lib. i., 107. The three towns of Doris were, according to Thucydides, Baeum, Cytenium, and Erineus. The scholiast on Pindar (Pyth. i., 121) speaks of six towns.

190 (return)

[ Thucyd., lib. i.

191 (return)

[ Thucydides, in mentioning these operations of the Athenians, and the consequent fears of the Spartans, proves to what a length hostilities had gone, though war was not openly declared.

192 (return)

[ Diod. Sic.. lib. xi.

193 (return)

[ Thucyd., lib, i.

194 (return)

[ Diod., lib. xi.

195 (return)

[ Certain German historians, Mueller among others, have built enormous conclusions upon the smallest data, when they suppose Cimon was implicated in this conspiracy. Meirs (Historia Juris de bonis Damnatis, p. 4, note 11) is singularly unsuccessful in connecting the supposed fine of fifty talents incurred by Cimon with the civil commotions of this period. In fact, that Cimon was ever fined at all is very improbable; the supposition rests upon most equivocal ground: if adopted, it is more likely, perhaps, that the fine was inflicted after his return from Thasos, when he was accused of neglecting the honour of the Athenian arms, and being seduced by Macedonian gold (a charge precisely of a nature for which a fine would have been incurred). But the whole tale of this imaginary fine, founded upon a sentence in Demosthenes, who, like many orators, was by no means minutely accurate in historical facts, is possibly nothing more than a confused repetition of the old story of the fine of fifty talents (the same amount) imposed upon Miltiades, and really paid by Cimon. This is doubly, and, indeed, indisputably clear, if we accept Becker’s reading of Parion for patrion in the sentence of Demosthenes referred to.