Mosaics of Grecian History by Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

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"As the narrative approached their own times the interest became
still more absorbing. The chronicler had now to tell the story
of that great conflict from which Europe dates its intellectual
and political supremacy--a story which, even at this distance
of time, is the most marvelous and the most touching in the annals
of the human race--a story abounding with all that is wild and
wonderful; with all that is pathetic and animating; with the
gigantic caprices of infinite wealth and despotic power; with
the mightier miracles of wisdom, of virtue, and of courage. He
told them of rivers dried up in a day, of provinces famished for
a meal; of a passage for ships hewn through the mountains; of
a road for armies spread upon the waves; of monarchies and
commonwealths swept away; of anxiety, of terror, of confusion,
of despair! and then of proud and stubborn hearts tried in that
extremity of evil and not found wanting; of resistance long
maintained against desperate odds; of lives dearly sold when
resistance could be maintained no more; of signal deliverance,
and of unsparing revenge. Whatever gave a stronger air of reality
to a narrative so well calculated to inflame the passions and
to flatter national pride, was certain to be favorably received."

THUCYDIDES.

Greater even than Herodotus, in some respects, but entirely
different in his style of composition, was the historian Thucydides,
who was born in Athens about 471 B.C. In early life he studied
in the rhetorical and sophistical schools of his native city;
and he seems to have taken some part in the political agitations
of the period. In his forty-seventh year he commanded an Athenian
fleet that was sent to the relief of Amphip'olis, then besieged
by Bras'idas the Spartan. But Thucydides was too late; on his
arrival the city had surrendered. His failure to reach there
sooner appears to have been caused by circumstances entirely
beyond his control, although some English scholars, including
GROTE, declare that he was remiss and dilatory, and therefore
Deserving of the punishment he received--banishment from Athens.
He retired to Scaptes'y-le, a small town in Thrace; and in this
secluded spot, removed from the shifting scenes of Grecian life,
he devoted himself to the composition of his great work. Tradition
asserts that he was assassinated when about eighty years of age,
either at Athens or in Thrace.

The history of Thucydides, unfinished at his death, gives an
account of nearly twenty-one years of the Peloponnesian war.
The author's style is polished, vigorous, philosophical, and
sometimes so concise as to be obscure. We are told that even
Cicero found some of his sentences almost unintelligible. But,
as MAHAFFY says: "Whatever faults of style, whatever transient
fashion of involving his thoughts, may be due to a Sophistic
education and to the desire of exhibiting depth and acuteness,
there cannot be the smallest doubt that in the hands of Thucydides
the art of writing history made an extraordinary stride, and
attained a degree of perfection which no subsequent Hellenic
(and few modern) writers have equaled. If the subject which he
selected was really a narrow one, and many of the details trivial,
it was nevertheless compassed with extreme difficulty, for it
is at all times a hard task to write contemporary history, and
more especially so in an age when published documents were scarce,
and the art of printing unknown. Moreover, however trivial may
be the details of petty military raids, of which an account was
yet necessary to the completeness of his record, we cannot but
wonder at the lofty dignity with which he has handled every part
of the subject. There is not a touch of comedy, not a point
of satire, not a word of familiarity throughout the whole book,
and we stand face to face with a man who strikes us as strangely
un-Attic in his solemn and severe temper." [Footnote: "History
of Greek Literature," vol. ii., p. 117.]

The following comparison, evidently a just one, has been made
between Thucydides and Herodotus:

Thucydides and Herodotus.

"In comparing the two great historians, it is plain that the
mind and talents of each were admirably suited to the work which
he took in hand. The extensive field in which Herodotus labored
afforded an opportunity for embellishing and illustrating his
history with the marvels of foreign lands; while the glorious
exploits of a great and free people stemming a tide of barbarian
invaders and finally triumphing over them, and the customs and
histories of the barbarians with whom they had been at war, and
of all other nations whose names were connected with Persia,
either by lineage or conquest, were subjects which required the
talents of a simple narrator who had such love of truth as not
willfully to exaggerate, and such judgment as to select what
was best worthy of attention. But Thucydides had a narrower field.
The mind of Greece was the subject of his study, as displayed
in a single war which was, in its rise, progress, and consequences,
the most important which Greece had ever seen. It did not in
itself possess that heart-stirring interest which characterizes
the Persian war. In it united Greece was not struggling for her
liberties against a foreign foe, animated by one common patriotism,
inspired by an enthusiastic Jove of liberty; but it presented
the sad spectacle of Greece divided against herself, torn by
the jealousies of race, and distracted by the animosities of
faction.

"The task of Thucydides, therefore, was that of studying the
warring passions and antagonistic workings of one mind; and it
was one which, in order to become interesting and profitable,
demanded that there should be brought to bear upon it the powers
of a keen, analytical intellect. To separate history from the
traditions and falsehoods with which it had been overlaid, and
to give the early history of Greece in its most truthful form;
to trace Athenian supremacy from its rise to its ruin, and the
growing jealousy of other states, whether inferiors or rivals,
to which that supremacy gave rise; to show its connection with
the enmities of race and the opposition of politics; to point
out what causes led to such wide results; how the insatiable
ambitions of Athens, gratifying itself in direct disobedience
to the advice of her wise statesman, Pericles, led step by step
to her ultimate ruin,--required not a mere narrator of events,
however brilliant, but a moral philosopher and a statesman. Such
was Thucydides. Although his work shows an advance, in the science
of historical composition, over that of Herodotus, and his mind
is of a higher, because of a more thoughtful order, yet his fame
by no means obscures the glory which belongs to the Father of
History. Their walks are different; they can never be considered
as rivals, and therefore neither can claim superiority." [Footnote:
"Greek and Roman Classical Literature," by Professor R. W. Browne,
King's College, London.]

* * * * *

IV. PHILOSOPHY.

ANAXAG'ORAS.

The most illustrious of the Ionic philosophers, and the first
distinguished philosopher of this period of Grecian history,
was Anaxagoras, who was born at Clazom'enae in the year 499 B.C.
At the age of twenty he went to Athens, where he remained thirty
years, teaching philosophy, and having for his hearers Pericles,
Socrates, Euripides, and other celebrated characters. While the
pantheistic systems of Tha'les, Heracli'tus, and other early
philosophers admitted, in accordance with the fictions of the
received mythology, that the universe is full of gods, the doctrine
of Anaxagoras led to the belief of but one supreme mind or
intelligence, distinct from the chaos to which it imparts motion,
form, and order. Hence he also taught that the sun is an inanimate,
fiery mass, and therefore not a proper object of worship. He
asserted that the moon shines by reflected light, and he rightly
explained solar and lunar eclipses. He gave allegorical explanations
of the names of the Grecian gods, and struck a blow at the popular
religion by attributing the miraculous appearances at sacrifices
to natural causes. For these innovations he was stoned by the
populace, and, as a penalty for what was considered his impiety,
he was condemned to death; but through the influence of Pericles
his sentence was commuted to banishment. He retired to Lamp'sacus,
on the Hellespont, where he died at the age of seventy-two.

A short time before his death the senate of Lampsacus sent to
Anaxagoras to ask what commemoration of his life and character
would be most acceptable to him. He answered, "Let all the boys
and girls have a play-day on the anniversary of my death." The
suggestion was observed, and his memory was honored by the people
of Lampsacus for many centuries with a yearly festival. The amiable
disposition of Anaxagoras, and the general character of his
teachings, are pleasantly and very correctly set forth in the
following poem, which is a supposed letter from the poet Cleon,
of Lampsacus, to Pericles, giving an account of the philosopher's
death:

The Death of Anaxagoras.

Cleon of Lampsacus, to Pericles:
Of him she banished now let Athens boast;
Let now th' Athenian raise to him they stoned
A statue. Anaxagoras is dead!
To you who mourn the master, called him friend,
Beat back th' Athenian wolves who fanged his throat,
And risked your own to save him--Pericles--
I now unfold the manner of his end:

The aged man, who found in sixty years
Scant cause for laughter, laughed before he died,
And died still smiling: Athens vexed him not!
Not he, but your Athenians, he would say,
Were banished in his exile!

When the dawn
First glimmers white o'er Lesser Asia,
And little birds are twittering in the grass,
And all the sea lies hollow and gray with mist,
And in the streets the ancient watchmen doze,
The master woke with cold. His feet were chill,
And reft of sense; and we who watched him knew
The fever had not wholly left his brain,
For he was wandering, seeking nests of birds,
An urchin from the green Ionian town
Where he was born. We chafed his clay-cold limbs;
And so he dozed, nor dreamed, until the sun
Laughed out--broad day--and flushed the garden gods
Who bless our fruits and vines in Lampsacus.

Feeble, but sane and cheerful, he awoke,
And took our hands and asked to feel the sun;
And where the ilex spreads a gracious shade
We placed him, wrapped and pillowed; and he heard
The charm of birds, the whisper of the vines,
The ripple of the blue Propontic sea.
Placid and pleased he lay; but we were sad
To see the snowy hair and silver beard
Like withering mosses on a fallen oak,
And feel that he, whose vast philosophy
Had cast such sacred branches o'er the fields
Where Athens pastures her dull sheep, lay fallen,
And never more should know the spring! Confess
You too had grieved to see it, Pericles!

But Anaxagoras owned no sense of wrong;
And when we called the plagues of all your gods
On your ungrateful city, he but smiled:
"Be patient, children! Where would be the gain
Of wisdom and divine astronomy,
Could we not school our fretful minds to bear
The ills all life inherits? I can smile
To think of Athens! Were they much to blame?
Had I not slain Apollo? plucked the beard
Of Jove himself? Poor rabble, who have yet
Outgrown so little the green grasshoppers
From whom they boast descent, are they to blame?
[Footnote: The Athenians claimed to be of indigenous origin--
Autoch'tho-nes, that is, Aborigines, sprung from the earth
itself. As emblematic of this origin they wore in their hair
the golden forms of the cicada, or locust, often improperly
called grasshopper, which was believed to spring from the
earth. So it was said that the Athenians boasted descent
from grasshoppers.]

"How could they dream--or how believe when taught--
The sun a red-hot iron ball, in bulk
Not less than Peloponnesus? How believe
The moon no silver goddess girt for chase,
But earth and stones, with caverns, hills, and vales?
Poor grasshoppers! who deem the gods absorbed
In all their babble, shrilling in the grass!
What wonder if they rage, should one but hint
That thunder and lightning, born of clashing clouds,
Might happen even with Jove in pleasant mood,
Not thinking of Athenians at all!"

He paused; and, blowing softly from the sea,
The fresh wind stirred the ilex, shaking down
Through chinks of sunny leaves blue gems of sky;
And lying in the shadow, all his mind
O'ershadowed by our grief, once more he spoke:
"Let not your hearts be troubled! All my days
Hath all my care been fixed on this vast blue,
So still above us; now my days are done,
Let it have care of me! Be patient, meek,
Not puffed with doctrine! Nothing can be known;
Naught grasped for certain: sense is circumscribed;
The intellect is weak, and life is short!"

He ceased, and mused a little while we wept.
"And yet be nowise downcast; seek, pursue!
The lover's rapture and the sage's gain
Less in attainment lie than in approach.
Look forward to the time which is to come!
All things are mutable, and change alone
Unchangeable. But knowledge grows! The gods
Are drifting from the earth like morning mist;
The days are surely at the doors when men
Shall see but human actions in the world!
Yea, even these hills of Lampsacus shall be
The isles of some new sea, if time fail not!"

And now the reverend fathers of our town
Had heard the master's end was very near,
And come to do him homage at the close,
And ask what wish of his they might fulfil.
But he, divining that they thought his heart
Might yearn to Athens for a resting-place,
Said gently, "Nay; from everywhere the way
To that dark land you wot of is the same.
I feel no care; I have no wish. The Greeks
Will never quite forget my Pericles,
And when they think of him will say of me,
'Twas Anaxagoras taught him!"

Loath to go,
No kindly office done, yet once again
The reverend fathers pressed him for a wish.
Then laughed the master: "Nay, if still you urge,
And since 'twere churlish to reject good-will,
I pray you, every year, when time brings back
The day on which I left you, let the boys--
All boys and girls in this your happy town--
Be free of task and school for that one day."

He lay back smiling, and the reverend men
Departed, heavy at heart. He spoke no more,
But, haply musing on his truant days,
Passed from us, and was smiling when he died.
--WILLIAM CANTON, in The Contemporary Review.

The teachings of Anaxagoras were destined to attain to wide-spread
power over the Grecian mind. As auguries, omens, and prodigies
exercised a great influence on the public affairs of Greece, a
philosophical explanation of natural phenomena had a tendency
to diminish respect for the popular religion in the eyes of the
multitude, and to leave the minds of rulers and statesmen open
to the influences of reason, and to the rejection of the follies
of superstition. The doctrines taught by Anaxagoras were the
commencement of the contest between the old philosophy and the
new; and the varying phases of the struggle appear throughout
all subsequent Grecian history.

THE SOPHISTS.

In the fifth century there sprang up in Greece a set of teachers
who traveled about from city to city, giving instruction (for
money) in philosophy and rhetoric; under which heads were included
political and moral education. These men were called "Sophists"
(a term early applied to wise men, such as the seven sages),
and though they did not form a sect or school, they resembled
one another in many respects, exerting an important, and, barring
their skeptical tendencies, a healthful influence in the formation
of character. Among the most eminent of these teachers were
Protag'oras of Abde'ra, Gor'gias of Leontini, and Prod'icus of
Ce'os. That great philosopher of a later age, Plato, while
condemning the superficiality of their philosophy, characterized
these men as important and respectable thinkers; but their
successors, by their ignorance, brought reproach upon their calling,
and, in the time of Socrates, the Sophists--so-called--had lost
their influence and had fallen into contempt. "Before Plato had
composed his later Dialogues," says MAHAFFY, "they had become
too insignificant to merit refutation; and in the following
generation they completely disappear as a class." This author
thus proceeds to give the causes of their fall:

"It is, of course, to be attributed not only to the opposition
of Socrates at Athens, but to the subdivision of the profession
of education. Its most popular and prominent branch--that of
Rhetoric--was taken up by special men, like the orator An'tiphon,
and developed into a strictly defined science. The Philosophy
which they had touched without sounding its depths was taken
up by the Socratic schools, and made the rule and practice of
a life. The Politics which they had taught were found too general;
nor were these wandering men, without fixed home, or familiarity
with the intricacies of special constitutions, likely to give
practical lessons to Greece citizens in the art of state-craft.
Thus they disappear almost as rapidly as they rose--a sudden
phase of spiritual awakening in Greece, like the Encyclopaedists
of the French." [Footnote: "History of Classical Greek literature,"
vol. ii., p. 63.]

SOCRATES.

The greatest teacher of this age was Socrates, who was born near
Athens in 469 B.C. His father was a sculptor, and the son for
some time practiced the same profession at Athens, meanwhile
aspiring toward higher things, and pursuing the study of philosophy
under Anaxagoras and others. He served his country in the field
in the severe struggle between Sparta and Athens, where he was
distinguished for his bravery and endurance; and when upward
of sixty years of age he was chosen to represent his district
in the Senate of Five Hundred. Here, and under the subsequent
tyranny, his integrity remained unshaken; and his boldness in
denouncing the cruelties of the Thirty Tyrants nearly cost him
his life. As a teacher, Socrates assumed the character of a moral
philosopher, and he seized every occasion to communicate moral
wisdom to his fellow-citizens. Although often classed with the
Sophists, and unjustly selected by Aristophanes as their
representative, the whole spirit of his teachings was directly
opposed to that class. Says MAHAFFY, "The Sophists were brilliant
and superficial, he was homely and thorough; they rested in
skepticism, he advanced through it to deeper and sounder faith;
they were wandering and irresponsible, he was fixed at Athens,
and showed forth by his life the doctrines he preached." GROTE,
however, while denying that the Sophists were intellectual and
moral corrupters, as generally charged, also denies that the
reputation of Socrates properly rests upon his having rescued
the Athenian mind from their influences. He admires Socrates for
"combining with the qualities of a good man a force of character
and an originality of speculation as well as of method, and a
power of intellectually working on others, generically different
from that of any professional teacher, without parallel either
among contemporaries or successors." [Footnote: "History of Greece,"
Chap. lxviii.]

Socrates taught without fee or reward, and communicated his
instructions freely to high and low, rich and poor. His chief
method of instruction was derived from the style of Zeno, of
the Eleatic school, and consisted of attacking the opinions of
his opponents and pulling them to pieces by a series of questions
and answers. [Footnote: A fine example of the Socratic mode of
disputation may be seen In "Alciphron; or, the Minute Philosopher,"
by George Berkeley, D.D., Bishop of Cloyne, Ireland. It is a
defence of the Christian religion, and an expose of the weakness
of infidelity and skepticism, and is considered one of the most
ingenious and excellent performances of the kind in the English
tongue.] He made this system "the most powerful instrument of
philosophic teaching ever known in the history of the human
intellect." The philosopher was an enthusiastic lover of Athens,
and he looked upon the whole city as his school. There alone
he found instruction and occupation, and through its streets
he would wander, standing motionless for hours in deep meditation,
or charming all classes and ages by his conversation. Alcibiades
declared of him that, "as he talks, the hearts of all who hear
leap up, and their tears are poured out." The poet THOMSON, musing
over the sages of ancient time, thus describes him:

O'er all shone out the great Athenian sage,
And father of Philosophy!
Tutor of Athens! he, in every street,
Dealt priceless treasure; goodness his delight,
Wisdom his wealth, and glory his reward.
Deep through the human heart, with playful art,
His simple question stole, as into truth
And serious deeds he led the laughing race;
Taught moral life; and what he taught he was.

Of the unjust attack made upon Socrates by the poet Aristophanes
we have already spoken. That occurred in 423 B.C., and, as a
writer has well said, "evaporated with the laugh"--having nothing
to do with the sad fate of the guiltless philosopher twenty-four
years after. Soon after the restoration of the democracy in Athens
(403 B.C.) Socrates was tried for his life on the absurd charges
of impiety and of corrupting the morals of the young. His accusers
appear to have been instigated by personal resentment, which
he had innocently provoked, and by envy of his many virtues;
and the result shows not only the instability but the moral
obliquity of the Athenian character. He approached his trial
with no special preparation for defence, as he had no expectation
of an acquittal; but he maintained a calm, brave, and haughty
bearing, and addressed the court in a bold and uncompromising
tone, demanding rewards instead of punishment. It was the strong
religious persuasion (or belief) of Socrates that he was acting
under a divine mission. This consciousness had been the controlling
principle of his life; and in the following extracts which we
have taken from his Apology, or Defence, in which he explains
his conduct, we see plain evidences of this striking characteristic
of the great philosopher:

The Defence of Socrates.
[Footnote: From the translation by Professor Jowett, of Oxford
University.]

"Strange, indeed, would be my conduct, O men of Athens, if now,
when, as I conceive and imagine, God orders me to fulfil the
philosopher's mission of searching into myself and other men,
I were to desert my post through fear of death, or any other
fear: that would indeed be strange, and I might justly be arraigned
in court for denying the existence of the gods, if I disobeyed
the oracle because I was afraid of death: then I should be fancying
I was wise when I was not wise. For this fear of death is indeed
the pretence of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being the appearance
of knowing the unknown; since no one knows whether death, which
he in his fear apprehends to be the greatest evil, may not be
the greatest good. Is there not here conceit of knowledge which
is a disgraceful sort of ignorance? And this is the point in
which, as I think, I am superior to men in general, and in which
I might, perhaps, fancy myself wiser than other men--that whereas
I know but little of the world below, I do not suppose that I
know; but I do know that injustice and disobedience to a better,
whether God or man, is evil and dishonorable, and I will never
fear or avoid a possible good rather than a certain evil. And
therefore should you say to me, 'Socrates, this time we will
not mind An'ytus, and will let you off, but upon one condition,
that you are not to inquire and speculate in this way any more,
and that if you are caught doing this again you shall die'--if
this were the condition on which you let me go, I should reply,
'Men of Athens, I honor and love you; but I shall obey God rather
than you, and while I have life and strength I shall never cease
from the practice and teaching of philosophy, and exhorting,
after my manner, any one whom I meet.' I do nothing but go about
persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought
for your persons or your properties, but first and chiefly to
care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that
virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue come money
and every other good of man, public as well as private. This
is my teaching; and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the
youth, my influence is ruinous indeed. But if anyone says that
this is not my teaching, he is speaking an untruth. Wherefore,
O men of Athens, I say to you, do as Anytus bids or not as Anytus
bids, and either acquit me or not; but whatever you do, know
that I shall never alter my ways, not even if I have to die many
times."

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