Ancient States and Empires

The old Achæan population.

Besides these Spartan citizens were the Periœci—remnants of the old Achæan population, but mixed with an inferior class of Dorians. They had no political power, but possessed personal freedom. They were landed proprietors, and engaged in commerce and manufactures.

The Helots.

Below this class were the Helots—pure Greeks, but reduced to dependence by conquest. They were bound to the soil, like serfs, but dwelt with their families on the farms they tilled. They were not bought and sold as slaves. They were the body servants of the Spartan citizens, and were regarded as the property of the State. They were treated with great haughtiness and injustice by their masters, which bred at last an intense hatred.

The Ecclesia.

All political power was in the hands of the citizen warriors, only about nine thousand in number in the time of Lycurgus. From them emanated all delegated authority, except that of kings. This assembly, or ecclesia, of Spartans over thirty years of age, met at stated intervals to decide on all important matters submitted to them, but they had no right of amendment—only a simple approval or rejection.

The Senate.

The body to which the people, it would seem, delegated considerable power, was the Senate, composed of thirty members, not under sixty years of age, and elected for life. They were a deliberative body, and judges in all capital charges against Spartans. They were not chosen for noble birth or property qualifications, but for merit and wisdom.

The kings.

At the head of the State, at least nominally, were two kings, who were numbered with the thirty senators. They had scarcely more power than the Roman consuls; they commanded the armies, and offered the public sacrifices, and were revered as the descendants of Hercules.

The Ephors.

The persons of most importance were the ephors, chosen annually by the people, who exercised the chief executive power, and without responsibility. They could even arrest kings, and bring them to trial before the Senate. Two of the five ephors accompanied the king in war, and were a check on his authority.

Aristocratic form of government. The citizen lost in the State.

It would thus seem that the government of Sparta was a republic of an aristocratic type. There were no others nobler than citizens, but these citizens composed but a small part of the population. They were Spartans—a handful of conquerors, in the midst of hostile people—a body of lords among slaves and subjects. They sympathized with law and order, and detested the democratical turbulence of Athens. They were trained, by their military education, to subordination, obedience, and self-sacrifice. They, as citizens or as soldiers, existed only for the State, and to the State every thing was subordinate. In our times, the State is made for the people; in Sparta, the people for the State. This generated an intense patriotism and self-denial. It also permitted a greater interference of the State in personal matters than would now be tolerated in any despotism in Europe. It made the citizens submissive to a division of property, which if not a perfect community of goods, was fatal to all private fortunes. But the property which the citizens thus shared was virtually created by the Helots, who alone tilled the ground. The wealth of nations is in the earth, and it is its cultivation which is the ordinary source of property. The State, not individual masters, owned the Helots; and they toiled for the citizens. In the modern sense of liberty, there was very little in Sparta, except that which was possessed by the aristocratic citizens—the conquerors of the country—men, whose very occupation was war and government, and whose very amusement were those which fostered warlike habits. The Roman citizens did not disdain husbandry, nor the Puritan settlers of New England, but the Spartan citizens despised both this and all trade and manufacture. Never was a haughtier class of men than these Spartan soldiers. They exceeded in pride the feudal chieftain.

Number of citizens.

Such an exclusive body of citizens, however, jealous of their political privileges, constantly declined in numbers, so that, in the time of Aristotle, there were only one thousand Spartan citizens; and this decline continued in spite of all the laws by which the citizens were compelled to marry, and those customs, so abhorrent to our Christian notions, which permitted the invasion of marital rights for the sake of healthy children.

Spartan armies.

As it was to war that the best energies of the Spartans were directed, so their armies were the admiration of the ancient world for discipline and effectiveness. They were the first who reduced war to a science. The general type of their military organization was the phalanx, a body of troops in close array, armed with a long spear and short sword. The strength of an army was in the heavy armed infantry; and this body was composed almost entirely of citizens, with a small mixture of Periœci. From the age of twenty to sixty, every Spartan was liable to military service; and all the citizens formed an army, whether congregated at Sparta, or absent on foreign service.

Such, in general, were the social, civil, and military institutions of Sparta, and not peculiar to her alone, but to all the Dorians, even in Crete; from which we infer that it was not Lycurgus who shaped them, but that they existed independent of his authority. He may have re-established the old regulations, and gave his aid to preserve the State from corruption and decay. And when we remember that the constitution which he re-established resisted both the usurpations of tyrants and the advances of democracy, by which other States were revolutionized, we can not sufficiently admire the wisdom which so early animated the Dorian legislators.

The Spartans obtain the ascendency on the Peninsula.

The Spartans became masters of the country after a long struggle, and it was henceforth called Laconia. The more obstinate Achæans became Helots. After the conquest, the first memorable event in Spartan history was the reduction of Messenia, for which it took two great wars.

Messenia. The war with Sparta.

Messenia has already been mentioned as the southwestern part of the Peloponnesus, and resembling Laconia in its general aspects. The river Parnisus flows through its entire length, as Eurotas does in Laconia, forming fertile valleys and plains, and producing various kinds of cereals and fruits, even as it now produces oil, silk, figs, wheat, maize, cotton, wine, and honey. The area of Messenia is one thousand one hundred and ninety-two square miles, not so large as one of our counties. The early inhabitants had been conquered by the Dorians, and it was against the descendants of these conquerors that the Spartans made war. The murder of a Spartan king, Teleclus, at a temple on the confines of Laconia and Messenia, where sacrifices were offered in common, gave occasion for the first war, which lasted nineteen years, B.C. 743. Other States were involved in the quarrel—Corinth on the side of Sparta, and Sicyon and Arcadia on the part of the Messenians. The Spartans having the superiority in the field, the Messenians retreated to their stronghold of Ithome, where they defended themselves fifteen years. But at last they were compelled to abandon it, and the fortress was razed to the ground. The conquered were reduced to the condition of Helots—compelled to cultivate the land and pay half of its produce to their new masters. The Spartan citizens became the absolute owners of the whole soil of Messenia.

Aristomenes. Conquest of Messenia.

After thirty-nine years of servitude, a hero arose among the conquered Messenians, Aristomenes, like Judas Maccabeus, or William Wallace, who incited his countrymen to revolt. The whole of the Peloponnesus became involved in the new war, and only Corinth became the ally of Sparta; the remaining States of Argos, Sicyon, Arcadia, and Pisa, sided with the Messenians. The Athenian poet, Tyrtæus, stimulated the Spartans by his war-songs. In the first great battle, the Spartans were worsted; in the second, they gained a signal victory, so that the Messenians were obliged to leave the open country and retire to the fortress on Mount Ira. Here they maintained themselves eleven years, the Spartans being unused to sieges, and trained only to conflict in the open field. The fortress was finally taken by treachery, and the hero who sought to revive the martial glories of his State fled to Rhodes. Messenia became now, B.C. 668, a part of Laconia, and it was three hundred years before it appeared again in history.

Aggrandizement of Sparta.

The Spartans, after the conquest of Messenia, turned their eyes upon Arcadia—that land of shepherds, free and simple and brave like themselves. The city of Tegea long withstood the arms of the Spartans, but finally yielded to superior strength, and became a subject ally, B.C. 560. Sparta was further increased by a part of Argos, and a great battle, B.C. 547, between the Argives and Spartans, resulted in the complete ascendency of Sparta in the southern part of the Peloponnesus, about the time that Cyrus overthrew the Lydian empire. The Ionian Greeks of Asia Minor invoked their aid against the Persian power, and Sparta proudly rallied in their defense.

Political changes. The age of Tyrants.

Meanwhile, a great political revolution was going on in the other States of Greece, in no condition to resist the pre-eminence of Sparta, The patriarchal monarchies of the heroic ages had gradually been subverted by the rising importance of the nobility, enriched by conquered lands. Every conquest, every step to national advancement, brought the nobles nearer to the crown, and the government passed into the hands of those nobles who had formerly composed the council of the king. With the growing power of nobles was a corresponding growth of the political power of the people or citizens, in consequence of increased wealth and intelligence. The political changes were rapid. As the nobles had usurped the power of the kings, so the citizens usurped the power of the nobles. The everlasting war of classes, where the people are intelligent and free, was signally illustrated in the Grecian States, and democracy succeeded to the oligarchy which had prostrated kings. Then, when the people had gained the ascendency, ambitious and factious demagogues in turn, got the control, and these adventurers, now called Tyrants, assumed arbitrary powers. Their power was only maintained by cruelty, injustice, and unscrupulous means, which caused them finally to be so detested that they were removed by assassination. These natural changes, from a monarchy, primitive and just and limited, to an oligarchy of nobles, and the gradual subversion of their power by wealthy and enlightened citizens, and then the rise of demagogues, who became tyrants, have been illustrated in all ages of the world. But the rapidity of these changes in the Grecian States, with the progress of wealth and corruption, make their history impressive on all generations. It is these rapid and natural revolutions which give to the political history of Greece its permanent interest and value. The age of the Tyrants is generally fixed from B.C. 650 to B.C. 500—about one hundred and fifty years.

Corinthia.

No State passed through these changes of government more signally than Corinthia, which, with Megaris, formed the isthmus which connected the Peloponnesus with Greece Proper. It was a small territory, covered with the ridges and the spurs of the Geranean and and Oneian mountains, and useless for purposes of agriculture. Its principal city was Corinth; was favorably situated for commerce, and rapidly grew in population and wealth. It also commanded the great roads which led from Greece Proper through the defiles of the mountains into the Peloponnesus. It rapidly monopolized the commerce of the Ægean Sea, and the East through the Saronic Gulf; and through the Corinthian Gulf it commanded the trade of the Ionian and Sicilian seas.

Changes in Corinth.

Corinth, by some, is supposed have been a Phœnician colony. Before authentic history begins, it was inhabited by a mixed population of Æolians and Ionians, the former of whom were dominant. Over them reigned Sisyphus, according to tradition, the grandfather of Bellerophon who laid the foundation of mercantile prosperity. The first historical king was Aletes, B.C. 1074, the leader of Dorian invaders, who subdued the Æolians, and incorporated them with their own citizens. The descendants of Aletes reigned twelve generations, when the nobles converted the government into an oligarchy, under Bacchis, who greatly increased the commercial importance of the city. In 754, B.C., Corinth began to colonize, and fitted out a war fleet for the protection of commerce. The oligarchy was supplanted by Cypselus, B.C. 655, a man of the people, whose mother was of noble birth, but rejected by her family, of the ruling house of the Bacchiadæ, on account of lameness. His son Periander reigned forty years with cruel despotism, but made Corinth the leading commercial city of Greece, and he subjected to her sway the colonies planted on the islands of the Ionian Sea, one of which was Corcyra (Corfu), which gained a great mercantile fame. It was under his reign that the poet Arion, or Lesbos, flourished, to whom he gave his patronage. In three years after the death of Periander, 585 B.C., the oligarchal power was restored, and Corinth allied herself with Sparta in her schemes of aggrandizement.

Changes in Megara.

The same change of government was seen in Megara, a neighboring State, situated on the isthmus, between Corinth and Attica, and which attained great commercial distinction. As a result of commercial opulence, the people succeeded in overthrowing the government, an oligarchy of Dorian conquerors, and elevating a demagogue, Theagenes, to the supreme power, B.C. 630. He ruled tyrannically, in the name of the people, for thirty years, but was expelled by the oligarchy, which regained power. During his reign all kinds of popular excesses were perpetrated, especially the confiscation of the property of the rich.

Changes in other States.

Other States are also illustrations of this change of government from kings to oligarchies, and oligarchies to demagogues and tyrants, as on the isle of Lesbos, where Pittacus reigned dictator, but with wisdom and virtue—one of the seven wise men of Greece—and in Samos, where Polycrates rivaled the fame of Periander, and adorned his capital with beautiful buildings, and patronized literature and art. One of his friends was Anacreon, the poet. He was murdered by the Persians, B.C. 522.

But the State which most signally illustrates the revolutions in government was Athens.

“Where on the Ægean shore a city stands,—Built nobly; pure the air, and light the soil:Athena, the eye of Greece, mother of artsAnd eloquence, native to famous wits.”

Early history of Athens. Theseus. Codrus.

Every thing interesting or impressive in the history of classical antiquity clusters round this famous city, so that without Athens there could be no Greece. Attica, the little State of which it was the capital, formed a triangular peninsula, of about seven hundred square miles. The country is hilly and rocky, and unfavorable to agriculture; but such was the salubrity of the climate, and the industry of the people, all kinds of plants and animals flourished. The history of the country, like that of the other States, is mythical, to the period of the first Olympiad. Ogyges has the reputation of being the first king of a people who claimed to be indigenous, about one hundred and fifty years before the arrival of Cecrops, who came, it is supposed, from Egypt, and founded Athens, and taught the simple but savage natives a new religion, and the elements of civilized life, 1556 B.C. It received its name from the goddess Neith, introduced by him from Egypt, under the name of Athena, or Minerva. It was also called Cecropia, from its founder. Until the time of Theseus it was a small town, confined to the Acropolis and Mars Hill. This hero is the great name of ancient Athenian legend, as Hercules is to Greece generally. He cleared the roads of robbers, and formed an aristocratical constitution, with a king, who was only the first of his nobles. But he himself, after having given political unity, was driven away by a conspiracy of nobles, leaving the throne to Menesthius, a descendant of the ancient kings. This monarch reigned twenty-four years, and lost his life at the siege of Troy. The whole period of the monarchy lies within the mythical age. Tradition makes Codrus the last king, who was slain during an invasion of the Dorians, B.C. 1045. Resolving to have no future king, the Athenians substituted the office of archon, or ruler, and made his son, Medus, the superior magistrate. This office remained hereditary in the family of Codrus for thirteen generations. In B.C. 752, the duration of the office was fixed for ten years. It remained in the family of Codrus thirty-eight years longer, when it was left open for all the nobles. In 683 B.C. nine archons were annually elected from the nobles, the first having superior dignity.

Draco.

The first of these archons, of whom any thing of importance is recorded, was Draco, who governed Athens in the year 624 B.C., who promulgated written laws, exceedingly severe, inflicting capital punishment for slight offenses. The people grew weary of him and his laws, and he was banished to Ægina, where he died, from a conspiracy headed by Cylon, one of the nobles, who seized the Acropolis, B.C. 612. His insurrection, however, failed, and he was treacherously put to death by one of the archons, which led to the expulsion of the whole body, and a change in the constitution.

Solon.

This was effected by Solon, the Athenian sage and law-giver—himself of the race of Codrus, whom the Athenians chose as archon, with full power to make new laws. Intrusted with absolute power, he abstained from abusing it—a patriot in the most exalted sense, as well as a poet and philosopher. Urged by his friends to make himself tyrant, he replied that tyranny might be a fair country, only there was no way out of it.

His institutions.

When he commenced his reforms, the nobles, or Eupatridæ, were in possession of most of the fertile land of Attica, while the poorer citizens possessed only the sterile highlands. This created an unhappy jealousy between the rich and poor. Besides, there was another class that had grown rich by commerce, animated by the spirit of freedom. But their influence tended to widen the gulf between the rich and poor. The poor got into debt, and fell in the power of creditors, and sunk to the condition of serfs, and many were even sold in slavery, for the laws were severe against debtors, as in ancient Rome. Solon, like Moses in his institution of the Year of Jubilee, set free all the estates and persons that had fallen in the power of creditors, and ransomed such as were sold in slavery.

Loss of aristocratic power. Different classes.

Having removed the chief source of enmity between the rich and poor, he repealed the bloody laws of Draco, and commenced to remodel the political constitution. The fundamental principles which he adopted was a distribution of power to all citizens according to their wealth. But the nobles were not deprived of their ascendency, only the way was opened to all citizens to reach political distinction, especially those who were enriched by commerce. He made an assessment of the landed property of all the citizens, taking as the medium a standard of value which was equivalent to a drachma of annual produce. The first class, who had no aristocratic titles, were called Pentacosio medimni, from possessing five hundred medimni or upward. They alone were eligible to the archonship and other high offices, and bore the largest share of the public burdens. The second class was called Knights, because they were bound to serve as cavalry. They filled the inferior offices, farmed the revenue, and had the commerce of the country in their hands.

Other political changes.

The third class was called Zeugitæ (yokesmen), from their ability to keep a yoke of oxen. They were small farmers, and served in the heavy-armed infantry, and were subject to a property-tax. All those whose incomes fell short of two hundred medimni formed the fourth class, and served in the light-armed troops, and were exempt from property-tax, but disqualified for public office, and yet they had a vote in popular elections, and in the judgment passed upon archons at the expiration of office. “The direct responsibility of all the magistrates to the popular assembly, was the most democratic of all the institutions of Solon; and though the government was still in the hands of the oligarchy, Solon clearly foresaw, if he did not purposely prepare for, the preponderance of the popular element.” “To guard against hasty measures, he also instituted the Senate of four hundred, chosen year by year, from the four Ionic tribes, whose office was to prepare all business for the popular assembly, and regulate its meetings. The Areopagus retained its ancient functions, to which Solon added a general oversight over all the public institutions, and over the private life of the citizens. He also enacted many other laws for the administration of justice, the regulation of social life, the encouragement of commerce, and the general prosperity of the State.” His whole legislation is marked by wisdom and patriotism, and adaptation to the circumstances of the people who intrusted to him so much power and dignity. The laws were, however, better than the people, and his legislative wisdom and justice place him among the great benefactors of mankind, for who can tell the ultimate influence of his legislation on Rome and on other nations. The most beautiful feature was the responsibility of the chief magistrates to the people who elected them, and from the fact that they could subsequently be punished for bad conduct was the greatest security against tyranny and peculation.

Departure of Solon from Athens. Pisistratus. His reign. Hippias.

After having given this constitution to his countrymen, the lawgiver took his departure from Athens, for ten years, binding the people by a solemn oath to make no alteration in his laws. He visited Egypt, Cyprus, and Asia Minor, and returned to Athens to find his work nearly subverted by one of his own kinsmen. Pisistratus, of noble origin, but a demagogue, contrived, by his arts and prodigality, to secure a guard, which he increased, and succeeded in seizing the Acropolis, B.C. 560, and in usurping the supreme authority—so soon are good laws perverted, so easily are constitutions overthrown, when demagogues and usurpers are sustained by the people. A combination of the rich and poor drove him into exile; but their divisions and hatreds favored his return. Again he was exiled by popular dissension, and a third time he regained his power, but only by a battle. He sustained his usurpation by means of Thracian mercenaries, and sent the children of all he suspected as hostages to Naxos. He veiled his despotic power under the forms of the constitution, and even submitted himself to the judgment of the Areopagus on the charge of murder. He kept up his popularity by generosity and affability, by mingling freely with the citizens, by opening to them his gardens, by adorning the city with beautiful edifices, and by a liberal patronage of arts and letters. He founded a public library, and collected the Homeric poems in a single volume. He ruled beneficently, as tyrants often have,—like Cæsar, like Richelieu, like Napoleon,—identifying his own glory with the welfare of the State. He died after a successful reign of thirty-three years, B.C. 527, and his two sons, Hippias and Hipparchus, succeeded him in the government, ruling, like their father, at first wisely but despotically, cultivating art and letters and friendship of great men. But sensual passions led to outrages which resulted in the assassination of Hipparchus. Hippias, having punished the conspirators, changed the spirit of the government, imposed arbitrary taxes, surrounded himself with an armed guard, and ruled tyrannically and cruelly. After four years of despotic government, Athens was liberated, chiefly by aid of the Lacedæmonians, now at the highest of their power. Hippias retired to the court of Persia, and planned and guided the attack of Darius on Greece—a traitor of the most infamous kind, since he combined tyranny at home with the coldest treachery to his country. His accursed family were doomed to perpetual banishment, and never succeeded in securing a pardon. Their power had lasted fifty years, and had been fatal to the liberties of Athens.