Mosaics of Grecian History by Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

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The Earthquake at Sparta and the Revolt of the Helots.

"An earthquake, unprecedented in its violence, occurred in Sparta.
In many places throughout Laconia the rocky soil was rent asunder.
From Mount Ta-yg'e-tus, which overhung the city, and on which
the women of Lacedaemon were wont to hold their bacchanalian orgies,
huge fragments rolled into the suburbs. The greater portion of
the city was absolutely overthrown; and it is said, probably
with exaggeration, that only five houses wholly escaped disaster
from the shock. This terrible calamity did not cease suddenly as
it came; its concussions were repeated; it buried alike men and
treasure: could we credit Diodorus, no less than twenty thousand
persons perished in the shock. Thus depopulated, impoverished, and
distressed, the enemies whom the cruelty of Sparta nursed within
her bosom resolved to seize the moment to execute their vengeance
and consummate her destruction. Under Pausanias the Helots were
ready for revolt; and the death of that conspirator checked, but
did not crush, their designs of freedom. Now was the moment,
when Sparta lay in ruins--now was the moment to realize their
dreams. From field to field, from village to village, the news
of the earthquake became the watchword of revolt. Up rose the
Helots--they armed themselves, they poured on--a wild and gathering
and relentless multitude resolved to slay, by the wrath of man,
all whom that of nature had yet spared. The earthquake that leveled
Sparta rent their chains; nor did the shock create one chasm so
dark and wide as that between the master and the slave.

"It is one of the sublimest and most awful spectacles in history
--that city in ruins--the earth still trembling, the grim and
dauntless soldiery collected amid piles of death and ruin; and in
such a time, and such a scene, the multitude sensible not of danger,
but of wrong, and rising not to succor, but to revenge--all that
should have disarmed a feebler enmity giving fire to theirs; the
dreadest calamity their blessing--dismay their hope. It was as if
the Great Mother herself had summoned her children to vindicate
the long-abused, the all-inalienable heritage derived from her;
and the stir of the angry elements was but the announcement of an
armed and solemn union between nature and the oppressed.

"Fortunately for Sparta, the danger was not altogether unforeseen.
After the confusion and the horror of the earthquake, and while
the people, dispersed, were seeking to save their effects,
Archida'mus, who, four years before, had succeeded to the throne
of Lacedaemon, ordered the trumpets to sound as to arms. That
wonderful superiority of man over matter which habit and discipline
can effect, and which was ever so visible among the Spartans,
constituted their safety at that hour. Forsaking the care of
their property, the Spartans seized their arms, flocked around
their king, and drew up in disciplined array. In her most imminent
crisis Sparta was thus saved. The Helots approached, wild,
disorderly, and tumultuous; they came intent only to plunder and
to slay; they expected to find scattered and affrighted foes
--they found a formidable army; their tyrants were still their
lords. They saw, paused, and fled, scattering themselves over
the country, exciting all they met to rebellion, and soon joined
with the Messenians, kindred to them by blood and ancient
reminiscences of heroic struggles; they seized that same Ithome
which their hereditary Aristodemus had before occupied with
unforgotten valor. This they fortified, and, occupying also the
neighboring lands, declared open war upon their lords." [Footnote:
"Athens: Its Rise and Fall," pp. 176, 177.]

"The incident here related of the King of Sparta," says ALISON,
"amid the yawning of the earthquake and the ruin of his capital,
sounding the trumpets to arms, and the Lacedaemonians assembling
in disciplined array around him, is one of the sublimest recorded
in history. We need not wonder that a people capable of such
conduct in such a moment, and trained by discipline and habit to
such docility in danger, should subsequently acquire and maintain
supreme dominion in Greece." The general insurrection of the Helots
is known in history as the THIRD MESSENIAN WAR. After two or three
years had passed in vain attempts to capture Ithome, the Spartans
were obliged to call for aid on the Athenians, with whom they were
still in avowed alliance. The friends of Pericles, the rival of
Cimon and the leader of the democratic party at Athens, opposed
granting the desired relief; but Cimon, after some difficulty,
persuaded his countrymen to assist the Lacedaemonians, and he
himself marched with four thousand men to Ithome. The aid of the
Athenians was solicited on account of their acknowledged skill
in capturing fortified places; but as Cimon did not succeed in
taking Ithome, the Spartans became suspicious of his designs,
and summarily sent him back to Athens.

* * * * *

III. THE ACCESSION OF PERICLES TO POWER.

The ill success of the expedition of Cimon gave Pericles the
opportunity to place himself and the popular party in power at
Athens; for the constitutional reforms that had been gradually
weakening the power of the aristocracy were now made available
to sweep it almost entirely away. The following extract from
BULWER'S Athens briefly yet fully tells what was accomplished
in this direction:

"The Constitution previous to Solon was an oligarchy of birth.
Solon rendered it an aristocracy of property. Clisthenes widened
its basis from property to population; and it was also Clisthenes,
in all probability, who weakened the more illicit and oppressive
influences of wealth by establishing the ballot of secret suffrage,
instead of the open voting which was common in the time of Solon.
The Areop'agus was designed by Solon as the aristocratic balance
to the popular assembly. This constitutional bulwark of the
aristocratic party of Athens became more and more invidious to
the people, and when Cimon resisted every innovation on that
assembly he only insured his own destruction, while he expedited
the policy he denounced. Ephial'tes, the friend and spokesman of
Pericles, directed all the force of the popular opinion against
this venerable senate; and at length, though not openly assisted
by Pericles, who took no prominent part in the contention, that
influential statesman succeeded in crippling its functions and
limiting its authority."

With regard to the nature of the constitutional changes effected,
the same writer adds: "It appears to me most probable that the
Areopagus retained the right of adjudging cases of homicide, and
little besides of its ancient constitutional authority; that it
lost altogether its most dangerous power in the indefinite police
it had formerly exercised over the habits and morals of the people;
that any control of the finances was wisely transferred to the
popular senate; that its irresponsible character was abolished,
and that it was henceforth rendered accountable to the people."
The struggle between the contending parties was long and bitter,
and the fall of Cimon was one of the necessary consequences of
the political change. Charged, among other things, with too great
friendship for Sparta, he was driven into exile. Pericles now
persuaded the Athenians to renounce the alliance with Sparta, and
he increased the power of Athens by alliances with Argos and other
cities. He also continued the construction of the long walls from
Athens to the Piraeus and Phalerum--a project that Themistocles
had advised and that Cimon had commenced.

The long existing jealousy of Sparta at last broke out in open
hostilities. While the siege of Ithome was in progress, Sparta,
still powerful in her alliances, sent her allied forces into
Boeotia to counteract the growing influence of the Athenians in
that quarter. The indignant Athenians, led by Pericles, marched
out to meet them, but were worsted in the battle of Tan'agra.
Before this conflict began, Cimon, the banished commander,
appeared in the Athenian camp and begged permission to enter
the ranks against the enemy. His request being refused, he left
his armor with his friends, of whom there were one hundred among
the Athenians, with the charge to refute, by their valor, the
accusation that he and they were the friends of Sparta. Everyone
of the one hundred fell in the conflict. About two months after,
in the early part of the year 456 B.C., the Athenians wiped off
the stain of their defeat at Tanagra by a victory over the combined
Theban and Boeotian forces, then in alliance with Sparta; whereby
the authority and influence of Sparta were again confined to
the Peloponnesus.

The Athenians were now masters of Greece, from the Gulf of Corinth
to the Pass of Thermopylae, and in the following year they sent an
expedition round the Peloponnesus, which captured, among other
cities, Naupactus, on the Corinthian Gulf. The third and last
Messenian war had just been concluded by the surrender of Ithome,
on terms which permitted the Messenians and their families to
retire from the Peloponnesus, and they joined the colony which
Athens planted at Naupactus. But the successes of Athens in Greece
were counterbalanced, in the same year, by reverses in Egypt, where
the Athenians were fighting Persia in aid of In'arus, a Libyan
prince. These, with some other minor disasters, and the state of
bitter feeling that existed between the two parties at Athens,
induced Pericles to recall Cimon from exile and put him in
command of an expedition against Cyprus and Egypt. In 449, however,
Cimon was taken ill, and he died in the harbor of Ci'tium, to which
place he was laying siege.

Before the death of Cimon, and through his intervention, a five
years' truce had been concluded with Sparta, and soon after his
death peace was made with Persia. From this time the empire of
Athens began to decline. In the year 447 B.C. a revolt in Boeotia
resulted in the overthrow of Athenian supremacy there, while the
expulsion of the Athenians from Pho'cis and Lo'cris, and the
revolt of Euboea and Megara, followed soon after. The revolt of
Euboea was soon quelled, but this was the only success that Athens
achieved. Meanwhile a Spartan army invaded Attica and marched to
the neighborhood of Eleusis. Having lost much of her empire, with
a fair prospect of losing all of it if hostilities continued,
Athens concluded a thirty years' truce with Sparta and her allies,
by the terms of which she abandoned her conquests in the
Peloponnesus, and Megara became an ally of Sparta (445 B.C.)

THE "AGE OF PERICLES."

With the close of the Persian contest, and the beginning of the
Thirty Years' truce, properly begins what has been termed the
"Age of Pericles"--the inauguration of a new and important era
of Athenian greatness and renown. Having won the highest military
honors and political ascendancy, Athens now took the lead in
intellectual progress. Themistocles and Cimon had restored to
Athens all that of which Xerxes had despoiled it--the former
having rebuilt its ruins, and the latter having given to its
public buildings a degree of magnificence previously unknown.
But Pericles surpassed them both:

He was the ruler of the land
When Athens was the land of fame;
He was the light that led the band
When each was like a living flame;
The centre of earth's noblest ring,
Of more than men the more than king.

Yet not by fetter nor by spear
His sovereignty was held or won:
Feared--but alone as freemen fear;
Loved--but as freemen love alone;
He waved the sceptre o'er his kind
By nature's first great title--mind!
--CROLY.

Orator and philosopher, as well as statesman and general, Pericles
had the most lofty views. "Athens," says a modern writer, "was
to become not only the capital of Greece, but the center of art
and refinement, and, at the same time, of those democratical
theories which formed the beau ideal of the Athenian notions
of government." Athens became the center and capital of the most
polished communities of Greece; she drew into a focus all the
Grecian intellect, and she obtained from her dependents the wealth
to administer the arts, which universal traffic and intercourse
taught her to appreciate. The treasury of the state being placed
in the hands of Pericles, he knew no limit to expenditure but
the popular will, which, fortunately for the glories of Grecian
art, kept pace with the vast conceptions of the master designer.
Most of those famous structures that crowned the Athenian Acropolis,
or surrounded its base, were either built or adorned by his
direction, under the superintendence of the great sculptor,
Phidias. The Parthenon, the Ode'um, the gold and ivory statue of
the goddess Minerva, and the Olympian Jupiter--the latter two
the work of the great sculptor himself--were alone sufficient to
immortalize the "Age of Pericles." Of these miracles of sculpture
and of architecture, as well as of the literature of this period,
we shall speak farther in a subsequent place.

Of the general condition and appearance of Athens during the
fourteen years that the Thirty Years' Truce was observed, HAYGARTH
gives us the following poetical description:

All the din of war
Was hushed to rest. Within a city's walls,
Beneath a marble portico, were seen
Statesmen and orators, in robes of peace,
Holding discourse. The assembled multitude
Sat in the crowded theatre, and bent
To hear the voice of gorgeous Tragedy
Breathing, in solemn verse, or ode sublime,
Her noble precepts. The broad city's gates
Poured forth a mingled throng--impatient steeds
Champing their bits, and neighing for the course:
Merchants slow driving to the busy port
Their ponderous wains: Religion's holy priests
Leading her red-robed votaries to the steps
Of some vast temple: young and old, with hands
Crossed on their breasts, hastening to walks and shades
Suburban, where some moralist explained
The laws of mind and virtue. On a rock
A varied group appeared: some dragged along
The rough-hewn block; some shaped it into form;
Some reared the column, or with chisel traced
Forms more than human; while Content sat near,
And cheered with songs the toil of Industry.

But, as the poet adds,

Soon passed this peaceful pageant: War again
Brandished his bloody lance--

and then began that dismal period between the "Age of Pericles"
and the interference of the Romans--embracing the three
Peloponnesian wars, the rising power of Macedonia under Philip
of Macedon, the wars of Alexander and the contentions that
followed--known as the period of the civil convulsions of Greece.

CHAPTER XI.

THE PELOPONNESIAN WARS, AND THE FALL OF ATHENS.

CAUSES OF THE FIRST WAR.

The various successful schemes of Pericles for enriching and
extending the power of Athens were regarded with fear and jealousy
by Sparta and her allies, who were only waiting for a reasonable
excuse to renew hostilities. The opportunity came in 435 B.C.
Corinth, the ally of Sparta, had become involved in a war with
Corcy'ra, one of her colonies, when the latter applied to Athens
for assistance. Pericles persuaded the Athenians to grant the
assistance, and a small fleet was dispatched to Corcyra. The
engagement that ensued, in which the Athenian ships bore a part
--the greatest contest, Thucydides observes, that had taken place
between Greeks to that day--was favorable to the Corinthians;
but the sight of a larger Athenian squadron advancing toward
the scene of action caused the Corinthians to retreat. This first
breach of the truce was soon followed by another. Potidae'a, a
Corinthian colony, but tributary to Athens, revolted, on account
of some unjust demands that the Athenians had enforced against
it, and claimed and obtained the assistance of the Corinthians.
Thus, in two instances, were Athens and Corinth, though nominally
at peace, brought into conflict as open enemies.

THE CONGRESS AT SPARTA.--THE PERSECUTION OF PERICLES.

The Lacedaemonians meanwhile called a meeting of the Peloponnesian
Confederacy at Sparta, at which AEgina, Meg'ara, and other states
made their complaints against Athens. It was also attended by
envoys from Athens, who seriously warned it not to force Athens
into a struggle that would be waged for its very existence. But
a majority of the Confederacy were of the opinion that Athens
had violated her treaties, and the result of the deliberations
was a declaration of war against her. Not with any real desire
for peace, but in order to gain time for her preparations before
the declaration was made public, Sparta opened negotiations with
Athens; but her preliminary demands were of course refused, while
her ultimatum, that Athens should restore to the latter's allies
their independence, was met with a like demand by the Athenians
--that no state in Peloponnesus should be forced to accommodate
itself to the principles in vogue at Sparta, "Let this be our
answer," said Pericles, in closing his speech in the Athenian
assembly: "We have no wish to begin war, but whosoever attacks
us, him we mean to repel; for our guiding principle ought to be
no other than this: that the power of that state which our fathers
made great we will hand down undiminished to our posterity." The
advice of Pericles was adopted, all farther negotiations were
thereupon concluded, and Athens prepared for war.

Although the political authority of Pericles was now at its height,
and his services were receiving unwonted public recognition, he
had many enemies among all classes of citizens, who made his
position for a time extremely hazardous. These at first attacked
his friends--Phidias, Anaxagoras, Aspasia, and others--who were
prominent representatives of his opinions and designs. The former
was falsely accused of theft, in having retained for himself a
part of the gold furnished to him for the golden robe of Athene
Par'thenos, and of impiety for having reproduced his own features
in one of the numerous figures on the shield of the goddess. He
was cast into prison, where he died before his trial was concluded.
Anaxagoras, having exposed himself to the penalties of a decree
by which all who abjured the current religious views were to be
indicted and tried as state criminals, barely escaped with his
life; while Aspasia, the mistress of Pericles, charged with impiety
and base immorality, was only saved by the eloquence and tears
of the great statesman, which flowed freely and successfully
in her behalf before the jury. Finally, Pericles was attacked
in person. He was accused of a waste of the public moneys, and
was commanded to render an exact account of his expenditures.
Although he came forth victorious from this and all other attacks,
it is evident, as one historian observes, that "the endeavors of
his enemies did not fail to exercise a certain influence upon
the masses; and this led Pericles, who believed that war was
in any case inevitable, to welcome its speedy commencement, as
he hoped that the common danger would divert public attention
from home affairs, render harmless the power of his adversaries,
strengthen patriotic feeling, and make manifest to the Athenians
their need of his services."

* * * * *

THE FIRST PELOPONNESIAN WAR.

On the side of Sparta was arrayed the whole of Peloponnesus,
except Argos and Acha'ia, together with the Megarians, Phocians,
Locrians, Thebans, and some others; while the allies of Athens
were the Thessalians, Acarnanians, Messenians, Plataeans, Chi'ans,
Lesbians, her tributary towns in Thrace and Asia Minor, and all
the islands north of Crete with two exceptions--Me'los and The'ra.
Hostilities were precipitated by a treacherous attack of the
Thebans upon Plataea in 431 B.C.; and before the close of the
same year a Spartan army of sixty thousand ravaged Attica, and
sat down before the very gates of Athens, while the naval forces
of the Athenians desolated the coasts of the Peloponnesus. The
Spartans were soon called from Attica to protect their homes,
and Pericles himself, at the lead of a large force, spread
desolation over the little territory of Megaris. This expedition
closed the hostilities for the year, and, on his return to Athens,
Pericles was intrusted with the duty of pronouncing the oration
at the public funeral which, in accordance with the custom of the
country, was solemnized for those who had fallen in the war.

This occasion afforded Pericles an opportunity to animate the
courage and the hopes of his countrymen, by such a description
of the glories and the possibilities of Athens as he alone could
give. Commencing his address with a eulogy on the ancestors and
immediate forefathers of the Athenians, he proceeds to show the
latter "by what form of civil polity, what dispositions and habits
of life," they have attained their greatness; graphically
contrasting their institutions with those of other states, and
especially with those of the Spartans, their present enemies.

The Oration of Pericles.
[Footnote: From "History of Thucydides," translated by S. T.
Bloomfield, D. D., vol. I., p. 366.]

"We enjoy a form of government not framed on an imitation of the
institutions of neighboring states, but, are ourselves rather a
model to, than imitative of, others; and which, from the government
being administered not for the few but for the many, is denominated
a democracy. According to its laws, all participate in an equality
of rights as to the determination of private suits, and everyone is
preferred to public offices with a regard to the reputation he
holds, and according as each is in estimation for anything; not
so much for being of a particular class as for his personal merit.
Nor is any person who can, in whatever way, render service to the
state kept back on account of poverty or obscurity of station.
Thus liberally are our public affairs administered, and thus
liberally, too, do we conduct ourselves as to mutual suspicions
in our private and every-day intercourse; not bearing animosity
toward our neighbor for following his own humor, nor darkening
our countenance with the scowl of censure, which pains though
it cannot punish. While, too, we thus mix together in private
intercourse without irascibility or moroseness, we are, in our
public and political capacity, cautiously studious not to offend;
yielding a prompt obedience to the authorities for the time being,
and to the established laws; especially those which are enacted
for the benefit of the injured, and such as, though unwritten,
reflect a confessed disgrace on the transgressors."

Having referred to the recreation provided for the public mind
by the exhibition of games and sacrifices throughout the whole
year, as well as to some points in military matters in which
the Athenians excel, Pericles proceeds as follows: "In these
respects, then, is our city worthy of admiration, and in others
also; for we study elegance combined with frugality, and cultivate
philosophy without effeminacy. Riches we employ at opportunities
for action, rather than as a subject of wordy boast. To confess
poverty with us brings no disgrace; not to endeavor to escape
it by exertion is disgrace indeed. There exists, moreover, in
the same persons an attention both to their domestic concerns
and to public affairs; and even among such others as are engaged
in agricultural occupations or handicraft labor there is found
a tolerable portion of political knowledge. We are the only people
who account him that takes no share in politics, not as an
intermeddler in nothing, but one who is good for nothing. We
are, too, persons who examine aright, or, at least, fully revolve
in mind our measures, not thinking that words are any hindrance
to deeds, but that the hindrance rather consists in the not being
informed by words previously to setting about in deed what is to
be done. For we possess this point of superiority over others,
that we execute a bold promptitude in what we undertake, and yet
a cautious prudence in taking forethought; whereas with others
it is ignorance alone that makes them daring, while reflection
makes them dastardly.

"In short, I may affirm that the city at large is the instructress
of Greece, and that individually each person among us seems to
possess the most ready versatility in adapting himself, and that
not ungracefully, to the greatest variety of circumstances and
situations that diversify human life. That all this is not a
mere boast of words for the present purpose, but rather the actual
truth, this very power of the state, unto which by these habits
and dispositions we have attained, clearly attests; for ours
is the only one of the states now existing which, on trial,
approves itself greater than report; it alone occasions neither
to an invading enemy ground for chagrin at being worsted by such,
nor to a subject state aught of self-reproach, as being under
the power of those unworthy of empire. A power do we display
not unwitnessed, but attested by signs illustrious, which will
make us the theme of admiration both to the present and future
ages; nor need we either a Homer, or any such panegyrist, who
might, indeed, for the present delight with his verses, but any
idea of our actions thence formed the actual truth of them might
destroy: nay, every sea and every land have we compelled to become
accessible to our adventurous courage; and everywhere have we
planted eternal monuments both of good and of evil. For such a
state, then, these our departed heroes (unwilling to be deprived
of it) magnanimously fought and fell; and in such a cause it is
right that everyone of us, the survivors, should readily encounter
toils and dangers."

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