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Mosaics of Grecian History by Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

M >> Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson >> Mosaics of Grecian History




"Advance, ye sons of Greece, from thraldom save
Your country--save your wives, your children save,
The temples of your gods, the sacred tomb
Where rest your honor'd ancestors; this day
The common cause of all demands your valor."
Meantime from Persia's hosts the deep'ning shout
Answer'd their shout; no time for cold delay;
But ship 'gainst ship its brazen beak impell'd.

First to the charge a Grecian galley rush'd;
Ill the Phoenician bore the rough attack--
Its sculptured prow all shatter'd. Each advanced,
Daring an opposite. The deep array
Of Persia at the first sustain'd the encounter;
But their throng'd numbers, in the narrow seas
Confined, want room for action; and deprived
Of mutual aid, beaks clash with beaks, and each
Breaks all the other's oars: with skill disposed,
The Grecian navy circled them around
In fierce assault; and, rushing from its height,
The inverted vessel sinks.

The sea no more
Wears its accustomed aspect, with foul wrecks
And blood disfigured; floating carcasses
Roll on the rocky shores; the poor remains
Of the barbaric armament to flight
Ply every oar inglorious: onward rush
The Greeks amid the ruins of the fleet,
As through a shoal of fish caught in the net,
Spreading destruction; the wide ocean o'er
Wailings are heard, and loud laments, till night,
With darkness on her brow, brought grateful truce.
Should I recount each circumstance of woe,
Ten times on my unfinished tale the sun
Would set; for be assured that not one day
Could close the ruin of so vast a host.

After some farther account, by the messenger, of the magnitude
of the ruin that had overwhelmed the Persian host, the mother
of Xerxes thus apostrophizes and laments that "invidious fortune"
which had pulled down this ruin on her son's devoted head:

Invidious fortune, how thy baleful power
Hath sunk the hopes of Persia! Bitter fruit
My son hath tasted from his purposed vengeance
On Athens, famed for arms; the fatal field
Of Marathon, red with barbaric blood,
Sufficed not: that defeat he thought to avenge,
And pulled this hideous ruin on his head!
Ah me! what sorrows for our ruined host
Oppress my soul! Ye visions of the night,
Haunting my dreams, how plainly did you show
These ills! You set them in too fair a light.

In the Epode, or closing portion of the tragedy, the following
"Lament" may be considered as expressing the feelings with which
the Persians bewailed this defeat, with reference to its effects
upon Persian authority over the Asiatic nations:

With sacred awe
The Persian law
No more shall Asia's realm revere:
To their lord's hand,
At his command,
No more the exacted tribute bear.
Who now falls prostrate at the monarch's throne?
His regal greatness is no more.
Now no restraint the wanton tongue shall own,
Free from the golden curb of power;
For on the rocks, washed by the beating flood,
His awe-commanding nobles lie in blood.
--POTTER'S trans.

Among the modern poems on Xerxes and the battle of Salamis, is
one by the Scotch poet and translator, JOHN STUART BLACKIE, from
which we take the following extracts:

Seest thou where, sublimely seated on a silver-footed throne,
With a high tiara crested, belted with a jewelled zone,
Sits the king of kings, and, looking from the rocky mountain-side,
Scans, with masted armies studded far, the fair Saronic tide?
Looks he not with high hope beaming? looks he not with pride elate?
Seems he not a god? The words he speaks are big with instant fate.

He hath come from far Euphrates, and from Tigris' rushing tide,
To subdue the strength of Athens, to chastise the Spartan's pride;
He hath come with countless armies, gathered slowly from afar,
From the plain, and from the mountain, marshalled ranks of
motley war;
From the land and from the ocean, that the burdened billows groan,
That the air is black with banners, which great Xerxes calls his
own.

Soothly he hath nobly ridden o'er the fair fields, o'er the waste,
As the earth might bear the burden, with a weighty-footed haste;
He hath cut in twain the mountain, he hath bridged the rolling
main,
He hath lashed the flood of Hel'le, bound the billow with a
chain;
And the rivers shrink before him, and the sheeted lakes are dry,
From his burden-bearing oxen, and his hordes of cavalry;
And the gates of Greece stand open; Ossa and Olympus fail;
And the mountain-girt AEmo'nia spreads the river and the gale.

Stood nor man nor god before him; he hath scoured the Attic land,
Chased the valiant sons of Athens to a barren island's strand;
He hath hedged them round with triremes, lines on lines of
bristling war;
He hath doomed the prey for capture; he hath spread his
meshes far;
And he sits sublimely seated on a throne with pride elate,
To behold the victim fall beneath the sudden swooping Fate.

Then follows an account of the nations which formed the Persian
hosts, their arrangement to entrap the Greeks, who were thought
to be meditating flight, the patriotic enthusiasm of the latter,
the naval battle which followed, and the disastrous defeat of
the Persians, the poem closing with the following satirical address
to Xerxes:

Wake thee! wake thee! blinded Xerxes! God hath found thee
out at last;
Snaps thy pride beneath his judgment, as the tree before the
blast.
Haste thee! haste thee! speed thy couriers--Persian couriers
travel lightly--
To declare thy stranded navy, that by cruel death unsightly
Dimmed thy glory. Hie thee! hie thee! hence, even by what
way thou camest,
Dwarfed to whoso saw thee mightiest, and where thou wert
fiercest, tamest!

Frost and fire shall league together, angry heaven to earth
respond,
Strong Poseidon with his trident break thy impious-vaunted
bond;
Where thou passed, with mouths uncounted, eating up the
famished land,
With few men a boat shall ferry Xerxes to the Asian strand.
Haste thee! haste thee! they are waiting by the palace gates
for thee;
By the golden gates of Susa eager mourners wait for thee.
Haste thee! where the guardian elders wait, a hoary-bearded
train;
They shall see their king, but never see the sons they loved,
again.

Where thy weeping mother waits thee, Queen Atossa waits to see
Dire fulfilment of her troublous, vision-haunted sleep in thee.
She hath dreamt, and she shall see it, how an eagle, cowed with
awe,
Gave his kingly crest to pluck before a puny falcon's claw.
Haste thee! where the mighty shade of great Darius through
the gloom
Rises dread, to teach thee wisdom, couldst thou learn it, from
the tomb.
There begin the sad rehearsal, and, while streaming tears are
shed,
To the thousand tongues that ask thee, tell the myriads of thy
dead!


THE BATTLE OF PLATAE'A.

When Xerxes returned to his own dominions he left his general,
Mardo'nius, with three hundred thousand men, to complete, if
possible, the conquest of Greece. Mardonius passed the winter
in Thessaly, but in the following summer his army was totally
defeated, and himself slain, in the battle of Plataea. Two hundred
thousand Persians fell here, and only a small remnant escaped
across the Hellespont. We extract from BULWER'S Athens the
following eloquent description of this battle, both for the sake
of its beauty and to show the effect of the religion of the Greeks
upon the military character of the people. Mardonius had advanced
to the neighbor-hood of Plataea, when he encountered that part
of the Grecian army composed mostly of Spartans and Lacedaemonians,
commanded by Pausa'nias, and numbering about fifty thousand men.
The Athenians had previously fallen back to a more secure position,
where the entire army had been ordered to concentrate; and
Pausanias had but just commenced the retrograde movement when
the Persians made their appearance.

BULWER says: "As the troops of Mardonius advanced, the rest of
the Persian armament, deeming the task was now not to fight but
to pursue, raised their standards and poured forward tumultuously,
without discipline or order. Pausanias, pressed by the Persian
line, lost no time in sending to the Athenians for succor. But
when the latter were on their march with the required aid, they
were suddenly intercepted by the Greeks in the Persian service,
and cut off from the rescue of the Spartans.

"The Spartans beheld themselves thus unsupported with considerable
alarm. Committing himself to the gods, Pausanias ordained a
solemn sacrifice, his whole army awaiting the result, while the
shafts of the Persians poured on them near and fast. But the
entrails presented discouraging omens, and the sacrifice was again
renewed. Meanwhile the Spartans evinced their characteristic
fortitude and discipline--not one man stirring from the ranks
until the auguries should assume a more favoring aspect; all
harassed, and some wounded by the Persian arrows, they yet, seeking
protection only beneath their broad bucklers, waited with a stern
patience the time of their leader and of Heaven. Then fell
Callic'rates, the stateliest and strongest soldier in the whole
army, lamenting not death, but that his sword was as yet undrawn
against the invader.

"And still sacrifice after sacrifice seemed to forbid the battle,
when Pausanias, lifting his eyes, that streamed with tears, to
the Temple of Juno, that stood hard by, supplicated the goddess
that, if the fates forbade the Greeks to conquer, they might at
least fall like warriors; and, while uttering this prayer, the
tokens waited for became suddenly visible in the victims, and
the augurs announced the promise of coming victory. Therewith
the order of battle ran instantly through the army, and, to use
the poetical comparison of Plutarch, the Spartan phalanx suddenly
stood forth in its strength like some fierce animal, erecting
its bristles, and preparing its vengeance for the foe. The ground,
broken into many steep and precipitous ridges, and intersected
by the Aso'pus, whose sluggish stream winds over a broad and
rushy bed, was unfavorable to the movements of cavalry, and the
Persian foot advanced therefore on the Greeks.

"Drawn up in their massive phalanx, the Lacedaemonians presented
an almost impenetrable body--sweeping slowly on, compact and
serried--while the hot and undisciplined valor of the Persians,
more fortunate in the skirmish than the battle, broke itself
in a thousand waves upon that moving rock. Pouring on in small
numbers at a time, they fell fast round the progress of the Greeks
--their armor slight against the strong pikes of Sparta--their
courage without skill, their numbers without discipline; still
they fought gallantly, even when on the ground seizing the pikes
with their naked hands, and, with the wonderful agility that
still characterizes the Oriental swordsmen, springing to their
feet and regaining their arms when seemingly overcome, wresting
away their enemies' shields, and grappling with them desperately
hand to hand.

"Foremost of a band of a thousand chosen Persians, conspicuous
by his white charger, and still more by his daring valor, rode
Mardonius, directing the attack--fiercer wherever his armor blazed.
Inspired by his presence the Persians fought worthily of their
warlike fame, and, even in falling, thinned the Spartan ranks.
At length the rash but gallant leader of the Asiatic armies
received a mortal wound--his skull was crushed in by a stone
from the hand of a Spartan. His chosen band, the boast of the
army, fell fighting around him, but his death was the general
signal of defeat and flight. Encumbered by their long robes, and
pressed by the relentless conquerors, the Persians fled in disorder
toward their camp, which was secured by wooden intrenchments, by
gates, and towers, and walls. Here, fortifying themselves as they
best might, they contended successfully, and with advantage,
against the Lacedaemonians, who were ill skilled in assault and
siege.

"Meanwhile the Athenians gained the victory on the plains over
the Greek allies of Mardonius, and now joined the Spartans at
the camp. The Athenians are said to have been better skilled in
the art of siege than the Spartans; yet at that time their
experience could scarcely have been greater. The Athenians were
at all times, however, of a more impetuous temper; and the men
who had 'run to the charge' at Marathon were not to be baffled
by the desperate remnant of their ancient foe. They scaled the
walls; they effected a breach through which the Tege'ans were
the first to rush; the Greeks poured fast and fierce into the
camp. Appalled, dismayed, stupefied by the suddenness and greatness
of their loss, the Persians no longer sustained their fame; they
dispersed in all directions, falling, as they fled, with a
prodigious slaughter, so that out of that mighty armament scarce
three thousand effected an escape."

But the final overthrow of the Persian hosts on the battle-field
of Plataea has an importance far greater than that of the
deliverance of the Greeks from immediate danger. Perhaps no other
event in ancient history has been so momentous in its consequences;
for what would have been the condition of Greece had she then
become a province of the Persian empire? The greatness which she
subsequently attained, and the glory and renown with which she
has filled the earth, would never have had an existence. Little
Greece sat at the gates of a continent, and denied an entrance to
the gorgeous barbarism of Asia. She determined that Europe should
not be Asiatic; that civilization should not sink into the abyss
of unmitigated despotism. She turned the tide of Persian
encroachment back across the Hellespont, and Alexander only
followed the refluent wave to the Indus.

"'Twas then," as SOUTHEY says,

"The fate
Of unborn ages hung upon the fray:
T'was at Plataea, in that awful hour
When Greece united smote the Persian's power.
For, had the Persian triumphed, then the spring
Of knowledge from that living source had ceased;
All would have fallen before the barbarous king--
Art, Science, Freedom: the despotic East,
Setting her mark upon the race subdued,
Had stamped them in the mould of sensual servitude."

Furthermore, on this subject we subjoin the following reflections
from the author previously quoted:

"When the deluge of the Persian arms rolled back to its Eastern
bed, and the world was once more comparatively at rest, the
continent of Greece rose visibly and majestically above the rest
of the civilized earth. Afar in the Latian plains the infant
state of Rome was silently and obscurely struggling into strength
against the neighboring and petty states in which the old Etrurian
civilization was rapidly passing into decay. The genius of Gaul
and Germany, yet unredeemed from barbarism, lay scarce known,
save where colonized by Greeks, in the gloom of its woods and
wastes.

"The ambition of Persia, still the great monarchy of the world,
was permanently checked and crippled; the strength of generations
had been wasted, and the immense extent of the empire only served
yet more to sustain the general peace, from the exhaustion of
its forces. The defeat of Xerxes paralyzed the East. Thus Greece
was left secure, and at liberty to enjoy the tranquillity it had
acquired, and to direct to the arts of peace the novel and amazing
energies which had been prompted by the dangers and exalted by
the victories of war."

On the very day of the battle of Plataea the remains of the Persian
fleet which had escaped at Salamis, and which had been drawn
up on shore at Myc'a-le, on the coast of Ionia, were burned by
the Grecians; and Tigra'nes, the Persian commander of the land
forces, and forty thousand of his men, were slain. This was the
first signal blow struck by the Greek at the power of Persia on
the continent. "Lingering at Sardis," says BULWER, "Xerxes beheld
the scanty and exhausted remnants of his mighty force, the fugitives
of the fatal days of Mycale and Plataea. The army over which he
had wept in the zenith of his power had fulfilled the prediction
of his tears; and the armed might of Media and Egypt, of Lydia
and Assyria, was now no more!"

In one of the comedies of the Greek poet ARISTOPH'ANES, entitled
The Wasps, which is designed principally to satirize the passion
of the Athenians for the excitement of the law courts, there
occurs the following episode, that has for its basis the activity
of the Athenians at the battle of Plataea. We learn from this
episode that the appellation, the "Attic Wasp," had its origin
in the venomous persistence with which the Athenians, swarming
like wasps, stung the Persians in their retreat, after the defeat
of Mardonius. Occurring in a popular satirical comedy, it also
shows how readily any allusion to the famous victories of Greece
could be made to do service on popular occasions--an allusion
that the dramatist knew would awaken in the popular heart great
admiration for him and his work:

With torch and brand the Persian horde swept on from east to
west,
To storm the hives that we had stored, and smoke us from our
nest;
Then we laid our hand to spear and targe, and met him on his
path;
Shoulder to shoulder, close we stood, and bit our lips for wrath.
So fast and thick the arrows flew, that none might see the
heaven,
But the gods were on our side that day, and we bore them back
at even.
High o'er our heads, an omen good, we saw the owlet wheel,
And the Persian trousers in their backs felt the good Attic
steel.
Still as they fled we followed close, a swarm of vengeful foes,
And stung them where we chanced to light, on cheek, and lip,
and nose.
So to this day, barbarians say, when whispered far or near,
More than all else the ATTIC WASP is still a name of fear.
--Trans. by W. LUCAS COLLINS.




CHAPTER X.

THE RISE AND GROWTH OF THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE.

I. THE DISGRACE AND DEATH OF THEMISTOCLES.

Six years after the battle of Plataea the career of Xerxes was
terminated by assassination, and his son, Artaxerxes Longim'anus,
succeeded to the throne. In the mean time Athens had been rebuilt
and fortified by Themistocles, and the Piraeus (the port of Athens)
enclosed within a wall as large in extent as that of Athens, but
of greater height and thickness. But Themistocles, by his selfish
and arbitrary use of power, provoked the enmity of a large body
of his countrymen; and although he was acquitted of the charge
of treasonable inclinations toward Persia, popular feeling soon
after became so strong against him that he was condemned to exile
by the same process of ostracism that he had directed against
Aristides, and he retired to Argos (471 B.C.) Some time before
this a Grecian force, composed of Athenians under Aristides,
and Cimon the son of Miltiades, and Spartans under Pausanias
the victor of Plataea, waged a successful war upon the Persian
dependencies of the AEgean, and the coasts of Asia Minor. The
Ionian cities were aided in a successful revolt, and Cyprus and
Byzantium--the latter now Constantinople--fell into the hands
of the Grecians. Pausanias, who was at the head of the whole
armament, now began to show signs of treasonable conduct, which
was more fully unfolded by a communication that he addressed
to the Persian court, seeking the daughter of Xerxes in marriage,
and promising to bring Sparta and the whole of Greece under
Persian dominion.

When news of the treason of Pausanias reached Sparta, he was
immediately recalled, and, though no definite proof was at first
furnished against him, his guilt was subsequently established,
and he perished from starvation in the Temple of Minerva, whither
he had fled for refuge, and where he was immured by the eph'ors.
The fate of Pausanias involved that of Themistocles. In searching
for farther traces of the former's plot some correspondence was
discovered that furnished sufficient evidence of the complicity
of Themistocles in the crime, and he was immediately accused by
the Spartans, who insisted upon his being punished. The Athenians
sent ambassadors to arrest him and bring him to Athens; but
Themistocles fled from Argos, and finally sought refuge at the
court of Persia. He died at Magne'sia, in Asia Minor, which had
been appointed his place of residence by Artaxerxes, and a splendid
monument was raised to his memory; but in the time of the Roman
empire a tomb was pointed out by the sea-side, within the port
of Piraeus, which was generally believed to contain his remains,
and of which the comic poet PLATO thus wrote:

By the sea's margin, on the watery strand,
Thy monument, Themistocles, shall stand.
By this directed to thy native shore,
The merchant shall convey his freighted store;
And when our fleets are summoned to the fight
Athens shall conquer with thy tomb in sight.
--Trans. by CUMBERLAND.

Although "the genius of Themistocles did not secure him from
the seductions of avarice and pride, which led him to sacrifice
both his honor and his country for the tinsel of Eastern pomp,"
yet, as THIRLWALL says, "No Greek had then rendered services
such as those of Themistocles to the common country; and no
Athenian, except Solon, had conferred equal benefits on Athens.
He had first delivered her from the most imminent danger, and
then raised her to the pre-eminence on which she now stood. He
might claim her greatness; and even her being, as his work."
The following tribute to his memory is from the pen of TULLIUS
GEM'INUS, a Latin poet:

Greece be thy monument; around her throw
The broken trophies of the Persian fleet;
Inscribe the gods that led the insulting foe,
And mighty Xerxes, at the tablet's feet.
There lay Themistocles; to spread his fame
A lasting column Salamis shall be;
Raise not, weak man, to that immortal name
The little records of mortality.
--Trans. by MERIVALE.

* * * * *

II. THE RISE AND FALL OF CIMON.

Foremost among the rivals of Themistocles in ability and influence,
was Cimon, the son of Miltiades. In his youth he was inordinately
fond of pleasure, and revealed none of those characteristics for
which he subsequently became distinguished. But his friends
encouraged him to follow in his father's footsteps, and Aristides
soon discovered in him a capacity and disposition that he could
use to advantage in his own antagonism to Themistocles. To Aristides,
therefore, Cimon was largely indebted for his influence and success,
as well as for his mild temper and gentle manners.

Reared by his care, of softer ray appears
Cimon, sweet-souled; whose genius, rising strong,
Shook off the load of young debauch; abroad
The scourge of Persian pride, at home the friend
Of every worth and every splendid art;
Modest and simple in the pomp of wealth.
--THOMSON.

On the banishment of Themistocles Aristides became the undisputed
leader of the aristocratical party at Athens, and on his death,
four years subsequently, Cimon succeeded him. The later was already
distinguished for his military successes, and was undoubtedly
the greatest commander of his time. He continued the successful
war against Persia for many years, and among his notable victories
was one obtained on both sea and land, in Pamphyl'ia, in Asia
Minor, and called


THE BATTLE OF EURYM'EDON.

After dispersing a fleet of two hundred ships Cimon landed his
troops, flushed with victory, and completely routed a large Persian
army. The poet SIMONIDES praises this double victory in the
following verse:

Ne'er since that olden time, when Asia stood
First torn from Europe by the ocean flood,
Since horrid Mars first poured on either shore
The storm of battle and its wild uproar,
Hath man by land and sea such glory won
As by the mighty deed this day was done.
By land, the Medes in myriads press the ground;
By sea, a hundred Tyrian ships are drowned,
With all their martial host; while Asia stands
Deep groaning by, and wrings her helpless hands.
--Trans. by MERIVALE.

The same poet pays the following tribute to the Greeks who fell
in this conflict:

These, by the streams of famed Eurymedon,
There, envied youth's short brilliant race have run:
In swift-winged ships, and on the embattled field,
Alike they forced the Median bows to yield,
Breaking their foremost ranks. Now here they lie,
Their names inscribed on rolls of victory.
--Trans. by MERIVALE.

On the recall of Pausanias from Asia Minor Sparta lost, and Athens
acquired, the command in the war against Persia. Athens was now
rapidly approaching the summit of her military renown. The war
with Persia did not prevent her from extending her possessions
in Greece by force of arms; and island after island of the AEgean
yielded to her sway, while her colonies peopled the winding shores
of Thrace and Macedon. The other states and cities of Greece could
not behold her rapid, and apparently permanent, growth in power
without great dissatisfaction and anxiety. When the Persian war
was at its height, a sense of common danger had caused many of
them to seek an alliance with Athens, the result of what is known
as the Confederacy of Delos; but, now that the danger was virtually
passed, long existing jealousies broke out, which led to political
dissensions, and, finally, to the civil wars that caused the ruin
of the Grecian republics. Sparta, especially, had long viewed
with indignation the growing resources of Athens and was preparing
to check them by an invasion of Attica, when sudden and complicated
disasters forced her to abandon her designs, and turn her attention
to her own dominions. In 464 B.C. the city was visited by an
earthquake that laid it in ruins and buried not less than twenty
thousand of its chosen citizens; and this calamity was immediately
followed by a general revolt of the Helots. BULWER'S description
of this terrible earthquake, and of the memorable conduct of the
Laconian government in opposing, under such trying circumstances,
the dreadful revolt that occurred, has been greatly admired for
its eloquence and its strict adherence to facts.

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It became one of the most important American novels of the last century and yesterday the original manuscript - a scroll taped together with eight reels of paper - of Jack Kerouac's On The Road was unfurled in the UK for the first time.
Fifty years after the novel which more or less defined the Beat generation, was published in Britain, the Barber Institute in Birmingham is showing what is now one of the most valuable literary manuscripts in existence as part of its exhibition Jack Kerouac: Back On the Road.

The exhibition's curator Professor Dick Ellis said there had been a lot of competition to get the scroll which is itself spending a lot of time on the move, having toured a string of US cities and hitting the road to Rome once this show is over. "We're very excited indeed," he said. "This is an iconic manuscript. It is a record of the huge effort Kerouac put into composing it. It was 20 days of typing 6,500 words a day, flat out, in spontaneous composition. He wanted to record things with the most possible accuracy using the spontaneous technique. His typewriter became a compositional instrument.

"Truman Capote once accused Kerouac of typing rather than writing, I would say he was learning the ability of using the typewriter like a jazz instrument, like a saxophone. He also had an incredible memory. And he had great speed at typing, he became a lightning typist. He came to be able to use a typewriter in a way that has not been seen before or since. Kerouac said he wrote fast because the road was fast."

About 22 of the scroll's 120ft will be on display in a specially built cabinet and while visitors will have to slightly tilt their heads, Ellis believes they will get a much deeper knowledge of what Kerouac was all about. It comes to Birmingham courtesy of Jim Irsay, owner of the Indianapolis Colts, who bought it for $2.4m (£1.6m) in 2001 before agreeing to a tour. Of course, in the published novel, there are paragraph breaks but in the scroll, there are none. Kerouac did not have the time. The exhibition runs until January 28.

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