IVTHE GRAND CENTURY

Plate XXXIII.THE TEMPLE OF POSEIDON AT PAESTO

Their spuriousness was conclusively demonstrated by the great Richard Bentley.

Lyric poets too arose in Sicily and Asia Minor. Stesichorus of Himera, who was stricken blind because he spoke ill of beautiful Helen of Troy, and Ibycus of Rhegium, who sings with almost Sapphic fire of roses and nightingales and Eros

“Who shooteth his melting glance from under his shadowy eyelids.”

But most remarkable for its volume of talent is the galaxy of poets gathered at Syracuse round the great tyrant Hiero. His wealth is indicated by his frequent victories in the chariot-races of Greece. To these athletic triumphs we owe not only the incomparable coin-types of Syracuse, but the immortal victory-songs of Pindar. The eagle flights of Pindar I have already described as indescribable. We cannot, I think, put ourselves into the attitude of the Greeks with regard to horseraces. Heavily as we may bet about them, we do not associate them with history and religion. Until we do so Pindar must remain largely a stranger to us. He is like some fairy juggler throwing up strings of jewels which vanish when we try to grasp them. Bacchylides is a lesser, more facile Pindar. I have mentioned that his uncle Simonides and Anacreon also migrated to this court. Presently they were joined by a greater than them all—the tragedian Æschylus.

As the East had powerful barbarian kingdoms to withstand, so the West had a terrible enemy always at the gates—the Semites. These Phœnician traders were far more powerful and aggressive in their colony of Carthage than in the mother cities, Tyre and Sidon. Admirably organised as a State, with able generals and highly trained mercenary troops, they coveted the rich island of Sicily. They seem to have effected a lodgment on the west end of the island before the Greeks came to colonise the east and south. Thanks to the great resources of the tyrants of Syracuse, the Greeks here weremore successful in resisting the barbarians than were the Ionians of the east. The great conflict came in the battle of Himera, fought, according to tradition, on the same day as Salamis, and won by Gelo, who preceded his brother Hiero on the throne of Syracuse. This victory thrust the Phœnicians back into their corner for nearly a century.

It is to be observed that Himera and Platæa meant far more than physical victories. Neither Persians nor Phœnicians were in our sense barbarians; indeed, so far as political organisation and material comfort are concerned they were far ahead of the Greeks. It was a question which of two civilisations, which of two spiritual and moral standpoints, should prevail. In these victories Europe escaped out of Gomorrah with the smell of the brimstone upon the hair of her head and the skirts of her raiment.

The town nearest to the Carthaginians in Sicily was Selinus. The wealth and piety of this city are indicated by the remains of eight Doric temples, seven of which belong to the sixth and early fifth centuries. From these come the earliest examples of temple sculpture. The earliest is the very archaic metope[42]which shows Perseus cutting off the head of the Gorgon, who is clinging to a small Pegasus, while Athene stands behind to encourage the hero. The heads are full-face, while the legs are in profile. The Gorgon is the happiest effort (she looks the happiest of the three), because this was a recognised art type of ugliness and terror. The other[43]here illustrated is of the early fifth century, a little before the Olympia metopes. It represents with great dignity and beauty the appearance of Hera to Zeus when she came in all her finery, as related in Homer, to beguile his heart. Observe how admirably the scene is designed to fill the space of the panel without overcrowding.

Acragas, too, the home of the tyrant Theron, has left us ruins of a colossal temple of an unusual design. The columns are so huge that a man can stand inside the fluting of them.

FIG. 1. PERSEUS AND GORGONFIG. 2. HERA AND ZEUSPlate XXXIV.METOPES FROM THE TEMPLE OF HERA AT SELINUS

FIG. 1. PERSEUS AND GORGON

FIG. 2. HERA AND ZEUS

Plate XXXIV.METOPES FROM THE TEMPLE OF HERA AT SELINUS

The most remarkable feature is the row of pillars, carved to represent men, bearing up the heavy entablature, as the caryatids of the Erechtheum carried their portico upon their heads. But the motive at Acragas was to indicate the strength of the bearers and the weight of the burden. The refined Athenian put maidens in their place, with a very light roof to carry. It was not an idea that found much acceptance among the Greeks, though it is rather popular with the modern architect—witness the Hermitage Palace at Petersburg.

Of all the splendours of ancient Syracuse the best memorials are the lofty Doric columns built into the walls of the Christian cathedral. For Syracusan art, however, we prefer to turn to their coins.[44]It is said that Gelo cast these first beautiful silver pieces out of the spoil taken from the Carthaginians at Himera. The reverse always bears the chariot, with four horses for a tetradrachm, two for a didrachm, and one for a drachma. On the obverse is the head of the nymph Arethusa, who presided over the sacred spring on the peninsular citadel of Syracuse which was called Ortygia. The dolphins around the head are held to indicate the salt sea which surrounds this fresh spring of water. If the coin types are any proof, we may suppose that Gelo thought more of his victories at Olympia in the chariot race than of his triumph on the battlefield of Himera.

ὅθι παῖδες Ἀθαναίων ἐβάλοντο φαεννὰν κρηπῖδ’ ἐλευθερίας.Pindar.

“NEVER in all the world’s history was there such a leap of civilisation as in Greece of the fifth century. In one town of about thirty thousand citizens during the lifetime of a man and his father these things occurred: a world-conquering Power was shattered for ever, a naval empire was built up, the drama was developed to full stature, sculpture grew from crude infancy to a height it has never yet surpassed, painting became a fine art, architecture rose from clumsiness to the limit of its possibilities in one direction, history was consummated as a scientific art, the most influential of all philosophies was begotten. And all this under no fostering despot, but in the extreme human limit of liberty, equality, and fraternity. One Athenian family might have known Miltiades, Themistocles, Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Socrates, Pheidias, Pericles, Anaxagoras, Aristophanes, Herodotus, Thucydides, Polygnotus, and Ictinus.

No historical cause will account for genius, no historian can predict its coming. Some say that great literature is produced by outbursts of national emotion, as Shakespeare was “produced” by the defeat of the Spanish Armada (though he

Plate XXXV.EARLY COINS OF SICILY AND MAGNA GRÆCIA1. NAXOS.2. TARENTUM.3. CATANA.4. SYRACUSE.

Plate XXXV.EARLY COINS OF SICILY AND MAGNA GRÆCIA

was twenty-four when it happened) and Milton by the Puritan rebellion (though he wrote “Comus” in 1634). Others maintain that art is the blossom of decay. It is vain to look to politics for the real cause of the uprising of genius. But when a whole state rises simultaneously to an intellectual heat, at which masterpieces are thrown off almost daily, in almost every department of human activity, we may, and must, look for some historical and political explanation.

Peisistratus, as I have argued, had laid the foundations of Athenian civilisation, partly by making it into a real city-state, partly by direct encouragement of art and literature, partly by promoting commerce, and thus opening the way to foreign influences. Then in 507 Cleisthenes and the Spartans had given Athens a free republic, with distinctly democratic tendencies. Thus the cold domination of the conservative, uncultured aristocracy, who had mainly been occupied in agricultural pursuits, had lost ground, although, no doubt, the Areopagus, which still “directed most things,” maintained its influence to a considerable extent. What now grew into the most powerful element in the state was the seafaring commercial population, who lived mainly on the sea-coast. These were the restless, eager brains which were beginning to think things out, and to find their bearings in the big world outside Attica. They would be in constant business relations with their Ionian kinsmen across the sea, and thus catch a tincture of their cosmopolitan culture. Accordingly, when at the close of the sixth century the Ionians rose in revolt against their Persian masters, Athens, with Eretria, another commercial city of Eastern connections, alone responded to their cry for help. It was only a raid, but it singed the Great King’s beard by burning one of his capitals, Sardis. For this revenge was promised. The Great King of those days was no effeminate, luxurious Oriental, such as those whom Alexander chased about Asia in later days. The Medes and Persians were then invincible conquerors, who had just devoured all the great empires andancient civilisations of the East. They were out to conquer the world, and now nothing but a narrow sea lay between them and the presumptuous Greeks. Accordingly, ambassadors were sent in the usual fashion to Greece, to demand earth and water in token of submission. The Athenians are said to have thrown their envoys into the barathron where the bodies of felons were flung for burial, there to collect what earth they could. The Spartans, with whom originality was never a strong point, threwtheirsinto a well, indicating thereby that the answer was in the negative. So Darius collected a very great host from all his vassals, and sent it round by land, with the ships coasting alongside. Fortunately for Greece, the fleet met with fearful shipwreck off the dangerous Chalcidian promontory of Mount Athos. In 490 Darius tried again. This time it was a much smaller force, designed, not to conquer Greece, but merely to punish Athens and Eretria. It was a naval expedition only, but room was provided in the ships to bring back the Athenians in chains for summary judgment. Datis and Artaphernes were the leaders, but the ex-tyrant Hippias was there to show them the way to the Acropolis, where it seems he already had some friends awaiting his return. But Athens also had an ex-tyrant of the Chersonese among her generals, one who knew the Persian method of fighting and had the strongest motives for resisting them. That tyrant was Miltiades. Hippias’ plan was to cross over the strait from Eubœa, where the Persians had succeeded in enslaving Eretria, land on the north coast of Attica with a large force, and while the land army of Athens was engaged there, slip round with the fleet to Peiræus and catch Athens undefended. His plans miscarried, for the Athenian line swept down the hill at Marathon[45]upon the Persian archers before they were fully deployed, and with their lightning charge hurled them back into the sea with great slaughter, then marched back at full speed to the city, in time.

Plate XXXVI.THE PLAIN OF MARATHONEnglish Photo Co., Athens

Plate XXXVI.THE PLAIN OF MARATHON

English Photo Co., Athens

This was the triumph of the Athenian hoplite—his only really great feat in history—led by aristocrats and governed by an aristocratic council. The hoplite himself was a comfortable burgess who could afford a full suit of armour. It was not a victory for democracy, and the clamorous proletariat of the Peiræus had little, if any, share in it. But it was a purely Athenian triumph. Alone—with the help of her little Bœotian friend Platæa—alone she had done it. The great Dorian city had been urgently entreated by the runner Philippides to send aid. But Sparta was busy with a festival and had to wait until the moon came right for marching. Athens now, by virtue of this supreme achievement, stepped up into the second rank of Greek Powers.

A few years later some slaves working in the Athenian silver-mines at Laurium chanced to strike a rich vein of metal. All Athenian citizens were shareholders in all the state’s property, and naturally expected to divide the profits, which would amount to about ten francs a head. Then stood up a certain Themistocles—not an aristocrat, but a persuasive speaker with the supplest brain that Zeus had ever created since Hermes stole the cows—and proposed to spend the whole bonus on ships. This is the turning-point of Athenian history. The stout hoplites who had won the day at Marathon stood aghast at the proposal. They pointed out that the strength of Pallas lay in her spear, that to create a navy would be to encourage those turbulent radicals at the Peiræus. Besides, what was it for? The Persians had gone home again. Themistocles, in reply, drew attention to a little war then on hand with Ægina, an island obviously not to be conquered by hoplites only. Doubtless a Greek neighbour was the more persuasive bogey, but Themistocles must have known that Persia was the enemy. Athens did not require a hundred new ships to fight Ægina, which had not a score for use in battle. No doubt Themistocles had the support of the “nautical rabble,” for he gained a majority for his proposal, and soon afterwards got rid of his chief opponent, Aristeides,by ostracism. Thus Athens acquired a fleet beyond all comparison the most powerful in Greek waters. It was needed.

Persia had spent the interval in suppressing Egypt; Darius was dead, and Xerxes reigned in his stead. But still the slave stood behind the royal chair to whisper every day at dinner, “Master, remember the Athenians.” In 480 he had time to remember them. This time there were to be no miscalculations; no mere raid this time, but the hugest armament in history. No shipwrecks this time: where the army had to cross the sea at the Dardanelles a bridge was constructed; where the fleet had to round the promontory a canal was dug.

The host was on the same scale. Herodotus and Æschylus alike delight to parade the outlandish names of the Oriental leaders, to display the numbers of that mighty host of all the nations of the earth, how they drank the rivers dry as they marched, to dwell on the strange equipment of the remote barbarians of Thrace, India, and the Soudan, the wealth and magnificence of the Great King, how he lashed the sea when it broke his bridge, how he questioned the exiled Spartan king Demaratus, unable to believe that these little people should dare to stand up against him. Even more than the life and death of Crœsus, this immortal story of the Persian monarch’s great Armada and its fall, with the tragic contrast between his glorious setting out and miserable return, stirred the imagination of the Greeks for ever afterwards. Did it not illustrate their favourite philosophy of “No excess” and “Know thyself”? All their art was based on this motive: “Know thyself; practise Reverence, because Wealth and Prosperity lead to Insolence, and that arouses Envy in gods and men. Wrath (Nemesis) follows on the heels of Insolence, beguiling with false Hope, and finally leading into Ruin.” That is the doctrine of all Greek tragedy; both Herodotus and Thucydides illustrated it in history, the former taking Persia and the latter Athens for its examples and victims. But itgoverned their art also; it is the secret of the self-restraint that characterises all the best of their work. That virtue of Aidôs ruled their spirits. That is why it is so absurd to think of the Greeks as happy pagans. They walked in the fear of the Lord, in the shadow of tragedy.

The news of that marshalling of the host found Greece in a state of disunion and terror. Some states submitted at the first summons. All sent for advice to the Delphic oracle. Apollo, I regret to say, was panic-stricken. He told the Cretans not to interfere, he told the Argives to guard their own head; to Athens in particular he sent the most terrible menaces: “O wretched men, why sit ye here? Fly to the ends of the earth, leaving your houses and the high citadel of your wheel-shaped city.... For fire and swift Ares, driving the Syrian chariot, destroyeth it. And he will destroy many other castles, and not yours alone; and he will deliver many temples of the immortals to devouring fire, which now stand dripping with sweat and shaken with terror; black blood trickles from the topmost roofs, foretelling inevitable ruin. Go from the sanctuary, and steel your hearts to meet misfortunes.” Conceive the effect of such an oracle at such a time, and conceive the courage of Athens in preparing to resist! Thessaly submitted; Gelo of Syracuse, the most powerful Greek ally they could have, had declined to help, being in reality fully occupied with the Carthaginian invasion of Sicily; Corcyra was sitting on the fence. Thebes was supposed to be traitorous, but there is little doubt that history has been unfair to Thebes. Nevertheless, the Persian was invited to do his worst. The Spartan plan was to draw strong lines across the Isthmus of Corinth and to fight there in defence of the Peloponnese, which was all the Greece that Sparta cared about. This meant the desertion of all the northern parts. Eventually she was persuaded to try resistance at the northern passes, but she did so half-heartedly. Tempe was found to be indefensible, for the invaders were pouring over another pass to the west of it. The first resistance wastherefore made at Thermopylæ, where the mountains left only a narrow track along the shore.

The battle of Thermopylæ and the death of Leonidas with his three hundred Spartans are often represented as a forlorn hope and a gallant suicide. It was, on the contrary, a reasonable plan of defence, though intended only as a first line of resistance. Six thousand Greek hoplites marched with Leonidas, and they should have been sufficient to hold that narrow pass, and the mountain track, which alone could turn it, against a great force. Of course, the Persians were coming by land and sea, but Themistocles, with the Greek fleet, was to hold their fleet in check at a parallel point. The plan failed, because the Phocians, who were guarding the mountain track, were caught napping and fled. The Peloponnesian allies who were then sent back by Leonidas were not being dismissed because the case was hopeless, but despatched to defend the point where the mountain track debouches into the main pass. This they failed to do. Leonidas was caught between two fires, and perished valiantly with all his men. It was not the less glorious because it was reasonable. Meanwhile a great storm had inflicted serious loss on the Persian fleet.

Now the strategy of defending the isthmus seemed the only hope, and that, of course, meant the abandonment of Athens. Sadly the Athenians saw the necessity; they removed their wives and children to the island of Salamis, and put all their fighting men on board their fleet, which amounted to nearly two hundred vessels. Dr. G. B. Grundy, the modern investigator of these wars, believes that the defence of the Acropolis was a serious attempt, rather than a fanatical misinterpretation of that second oracle which bade Athens trust to wooden walls. The Persians swept on irresistibly, wrecked and ruined Attica, and burnt the city of Athens and her citadel—not, however, so completely as to destroy all the old sculptures there.

The great sea-fight of Salamis[46]needs no describing here

Plate XXXVII.THE BAY OF SALAMISEnglish Photo Co., Athens

Plate XXXVII.THE BAY OF SALAMIS

English Photo Co., Athens

It was Themistocles’ victory. He had cajoled, threatened, and finally deceived the Spartan admiral into remaining there instead of retiring to the isthmus. He craftily persuaded the Persian monarch to attack the Greeks in narrow waters where numbers were only an obstacle; the fleet which won the day was his creation. The battle has gained its deathless glamour from the picture of Xerxes sitting on the hill above, enthroned on marble, to watch the engagement taking place at his feet. In that narrow strait between Salamis and the mainland, and in that lucid atmosphere, every detail of the fight must have been visible to the monarch, and his courtiers, his eunuchs, and his concubines. There was no smoke or dust; the manœuvre was simply “full speed ahead and ram,” steering, if you could, so that the metal prow of your ship struck the enemy obliquely, and sheared off the whole row of protruding oars on one side. Then, unless the enemy sank under the impact, it was a case of hand-to-hand fighting with spear and shield against arrows and scimitars.

Thus there was no need of the lines at the isthmus. Athens had conquered at sea as she had conquered on land at Marathon. Xerxes fled home with the bulk of his army in mighty dread lest his bridge over the Hellespont should be broken.

He left behind him a great force under Mardonius, a force of picked Persian cavalry and infantry, which for some time devastated Northern Greece and perpetrated a second sack of Athens. At last it came to the great campaign of Platæa (479). Here the Spartan infantry got its opportunity and proved worthy of it, though the Athenian hoplites slew their thousands also. So at length the Persian peril rolled away and Greece was able to breathe again.

This whole episode was the great achievement of the Greeks in the field of action. It passed into the realm of heroic history. It is almost the only historical episode which the drama, usually devoted to heroic and epic subjects, was permitted to use. No public oration was complete without areference to it. Vase-painters also depicted the story of Darius and Xerxes as they did that of Hector and Priam. It remained on the border-line of the permissible, however, for when temple sculptors wished to allude to it they generally did so under cover of Homeric contests between Greeks and Trojans or mythological battles between gods and giants or Lapithæ and Centaurs. The memory of this united action had some influence in counteracting the local separatism of the Greeks.

The side of this great contest which chiefly concerns us is its effect in promoting Athenian civilisation. Salamis and Platæa had pushed Athens forward into the front rank of Greece, to a position almost on a level with Sparta herself. It is true that she still had to ask Sparta’s permission, or to trick her into acquiescence, before she could build the walls she desired. But above all it was a triumphant vindication of the policy of Themistocles. Even Aristeides, who had come home to help his country in her hour of trial, had to admit that. Henceforth he seems to be working with Themistocles on the democratic side. For Salamis had outshone even Marathon. The “nautical rabble” had justified itself. The party of cautious hoplites, who feared democracy, no longer controlled the policy of the state. Instead, they remained on their devastated farms, grumbling at the “demagogues,” and issuing forth to support conservative politicians like Kimon and Nikias. Their great champion in literature is Aristophanes, who loves to depict the old Marathon men as the real bulwark of the state. When Athens was rebuilt Themistocles saw to it that the Peiræus should henceforth be part of the city, connected with it by long walls. The Peiræus stood for naval interests and naval empire, for commerce (though not for peace), and for democracy. It was not so far off but that the voters could flock up to Athens when an Assembly was to be held. It contained a large population of resident foreigners.

This was how Athens became a democratic city-state.

Plate XXXVIII.PERICLESMansell & Co.

Plate XXXVIII.PERICLES

Mansell & Co.

Democracy advanced in various stages: the poorest were made eligible for the magistracies; the encroaching power of the Areopagus was reduced; the magistrates (archons) and the Councillors were no longer leaders elected for merit, but ordinary burgesses chosen by lot; the Assembly became actually sovereign over administration within the terms of the constitution. Themistocles himself was presently ostracised, being far too great and clever to be a comfortable companion in a democratic city-state. Curiously enough, time has spared one of the very “ostraka,” or potsherds, bearing his name by which he was condemned to banishment.

Ostrakon of Themistocles

Then an empire fell into their lap. It began, as most ancient empires did begin, with an alliance gradually transformed into a tyranny. Most Ionian cities had already won their freedom on the defeat of the Persian navy, but some had still to be liberated, and all needed protection for the future. The year after Platæa was spent by the Greek fleets in cruising about the Ægean, doing the work of liberation. At first Spartan admirals were in command, but the Ionians disliked Dorian discipline, and Pausanias, the victor of Platæa, was puffed up with pride and power. So they turned to Athens, whose commanders were Kimon, the rich and generous son of Miltiades, Aristeides the Just, and Xanthippus, the father of Pericles, all men of the aristocracy, but loyal servants of Athens and capable seamen. Thus they formed the Confederacy of Delos, a league of maritime states, Ionians who worshipped the Delian Apollo. On his sacred island was to be the treasury of the league, and there the common synods were to meet. This league Athens soon transformed into an empire. From the first some of its members were too poor to supply the normal unit of subscription, the trireme galley. These, then, contributed money on the assessment of Aristeides.Athens built the ships for them in her own dockyards and sent her collectors round for the money. Soon, with true Ionian slackness, all the states except Chios, Samos, and Lesbos converted their naval contribution into a money payment. States were coerced into joining the league, garrisons and magistrates were sent from Athens to hold them in subjection. Often colonies of Athenian citizens were planted on their territory. When the Persian danger was finally removed by the destruction of the Phœnician fleet at Eurymedon the allies began to contemplate withdrawal. They were very soon taught that membership was not a voluntary privilege. Now the empire of Athens was a naked despotism, only mitigated by the fact that many of the states were permitted to manage their own internal affairs. The treasury of the league was removed from Delos to Athens, and the money was spent at her discretion. Meanwhile the ambitions of Athens had extended with success. She was no longer content with a naval empire. She began to cherish plans of a great colonial dominion in the west; she wanted to eat up her shrunken neighbour, Megara, in order to have an outlet to the Corinthian Gulf; she took Naupactus on those waters as a base, and sent reconnoitring expeditions to Sicily and planned a great Panhellenic colony at Thurii, in South Italy. Moreover, she mixed in the affairs of great foreign Powers like Egypt. She attacked Cyprus and overran Bœotia.

In all this imperial policy from about 460 onwards the leader of the democracy, who by his personal ascendancy was almost as powerful as a monarch at Athens, was Pericles.[47]He was one of those aristocrats who succeed in securing the allegiance of the masses, like Tiberius Gracchus, or Pitt, or Salisbury, by their very aloofness. His single aim was to make Athens free, powerful, and glorious. In Greece imperialism was allied, as it is not with us, with radicalism. At home Pericles had swept away the last vestiges of power from the Areopagus; he had introduced payment of jurymen,

Plate XXXIX.PEDIMENTAL FIGURES FROM THE TEMPLE OF APHAIA AT ÆGINABruckmann

Plate XXXIX.PEDIMENTAL FIGURES FROM THE TEMPLE OF APHAIA AT ÆGINA

Bruckmann

payment of soldiers and sailors, payment to enable the poor to attend the theatre. He was, in short, what we should now call a Socialist. Abroad he was the advocate of imperial expansion by land as well as sea. He was for keeping a tight hold over the “allies,” and he justified the appropriation of their subscriptions to the private purposes of Athens. He had apparently come into power over Kimon’s shoulders as the advocate of hostility to Sparta. The Peloponnesian War was of his making. There is much in this sketch of his policy which displeases us. But there was something in the personality of Pericles which made even critics like Thucydides venerate his name, while they execrated the men who carried on precisely the same line of policy after his death. This was his idealistic patriotism, free from all sordid and selfish motives. He believed in Athenian liberty, and he was prepared to extend it by force if necessary. This illogical and paradoxical state of mind is common to idealists; we ourselves have our pugnacious “pacifists,” our churches prepared to extend the Gospel of Peace by the sword.

Conflict with Sparta was inevitable. Athens was constantly treading on her toes in various parts of Greece. She was an upstart rival aspiring openly to the foremost place in Hellas. That being so, we have no need to inquire closely into the occasion of the great war which filled the latter quarter of the century from 431 to 404, and ended in the humiliating defeat of Athens. In any case the causes of it must be sought much earlier in the century, since Athens and Sparta had long been subsisting on terms of truce only.

The main features of the Peloponnesian War, which forms the theme of the great history of Thucydides, may be briefly stated. Almost before it began Athens had to surrender all her claims to land empire. That had been a mistake from the first, for Athens could never turn out a hoplite line fit to stand against the Spartan charge. The strategy of Pericles, dictated by necessity, was to retire within the walls of the city, relying upon the fleet to keep communications open andeffect reprisals on the enemy. The weakness of this strategy lay in the fact that no fleet could touch Sparta, and that it put a very serious strain on the rural population of Attica, who had to desert their homes and see their crops ravaged in yearly forays from Sparta. That state of affairs led to a disastrous plague at Athens, and to a feeling of bitterness against Pericles which darkened his closing years. He died two years after the war began, and his place was taken by Cleon, who walked in his footsteps as democrat and imperialist, but, lacking his lofty personality and high birth, has come very badly out of the hands of history and literature. Aristophanes’ perpetual appellation of “tanner” directed against him probably has its point in the fact that he openly represented commercial interests. He was responsible for the shocking decree which condemned all the male inhabitants of Mitylene to death in punishment of their revolt, a decree which was repented and repealed at the eleventh hour, and he was a frequent obstacle to peace. But there is no ground for charging him with selfishness or dishonesty, and he was certainly not devoid of talent. He should be credited with the most brilliant achievement of the Athenian campaign, the taking of Sphacteria and its Spartan garrison.

It would seem that the war might have gone on for ever, but for the insane ambition of the Athenian democracy, which led her to despatch a huge fleet in 415 to Sicily for the subjugation of that island. It was the hare-brained scheme of that good-looking rascal Alcibiades. No one except Socrates could refuse him anything, much less the mass meetings on the Athenian Pnyx. So Athens squandered two great expeditions on an enterprise undertaken in ignorance and entrusted to inefficient commanders. With all her reserves, she just managed to fit out a new fleet and gain a few more sea-fights, but the end could not be long delayed. At last an Athenian admiral was caught napping at Ægospotami. There were no more ships, no more money in the treasury. After a brief siege Athens capitulated to Lysander in 404.

Such in briefest outline is the historical content of the Great Century, and such is the story of the first of European empires. What bearing has it upon our original inquiry as to the causes of the artistic and intellectual brilliance of the fifth century? We have, to start with, a people singularly endowed by Nature with quick intelligence and a marvellous sense of form. The Persian wars and the rise of Athens had added to these natural advantages a passion of pride in their city and an almost fanatical belief in her mission. Thus all her citizens were eager to do their utmost to increase the beauty and honour of the violet-crowned city and her virgin goddess. A city-state makes a much more direct appeal to the emotion of patriotism than the large modern territorial state. Lastly, there was freedom in Athens such as no state in history has ever enjoyed, freedom in thought as well as in politics. This has been denied, but the attacks made upon Pheidias and Pericles, and upon the philosophers Anaxagoras and Socrates, may all be explained on political grounds. We have only to look at the plays of Aristophanes to see what amazing liberty of speech prevailed at Athens. Moreover, it was a privileged and educated equality. We must never forget the thousands of slaves whose cruel toil in mine and factory rendered this brilliant society possible at such an early stage in history. It must not be forgotten that Greek liberty and communism was that of an aristocracy, however democratic might be the relations between its members. Thus you have at Athens a large citizen body lifted by the state above all sordid cares and interests, living a very full social life in the open air, with everything to stimulate intellectual interests—the daily speeches and debates in law-court and Assembly, the continual festivals and dramatic exhibitions, the endless conversations in the agora, the palæstra, and the various colonnades, the daily coming and going of ships from all quarters, constant embassies from the cities of the League, visits from all the talent of Greece, just sufficient intercourse with Egypt and the East—everythingto stimulate the intelligence, and yet a dominant religious or moral conviction which tended inevitably to the austerest self-restraint and abhorrence of all extravagance.

In the great oration over the bodies of the dead Athenian soldiers which Thucydides ascribes to Pericles the statesman is made to express his ideal of Athens. She was “the instructress of Greece.” She alone, he said, followed “culture without extravagance, and philosophy without softness.” She alone combined daring with reflection. She alone welcomed strangers, and, while reverencing the gods and the laws, permitted freedom of speech and conscience to all men. He congratulated her upon the happiness of life at Athens, the public displays and sacrificial banquets which afforded daily delight to her inhabitants. He did not lay much stress upon the outward magnificence of the city, for that, in a large measure, was his own work. But it is that aspect of his policy which we can all appreciate, whether we are democrats or imperialists or neither or both.

Pericles himself set the example which Athens followed of encouraging talent from all quarters to devote its abilities to the service of Athens. Aspasia seems to have maintained a salon which was frequented by most of the men of genius of the day. She herself was of Miletus, and being an Ionian, was accustomed to a freedom of intellectual intercourse denied to the cloistered women of Attica. Pericles had separated by mutual consent from his wife, and though the laws did not allow him to marry a foreigner, he lived with Aspasia through most of his public career. She was a wit as well as a beauty. At her house you would meet Pheidias the sculptor, Damon the musician, Anaxagoras the philosopher, Alcibiades, and Socrates. There, we may presume, the plans for the beautification of Athens were freely discussed.

It was a rare opportunity for the artists. Here was an imperial city to be rebuilt, and plenty of money to build with.

Plate XL.SCULPTURES OF THE EASTERN PEDIMENT OF THE PARTHENONMansell & Co.

Plate XL.SCULPTURES OF THE EASTERN PEDIMENT OF THE PARTHENON

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The directors of the work were Pheidias the sculptor and Ictinus the architect. Pheidias had learnt his craft under Agelâdas of Argos. Thus he stands at the very beginning of the period of fine art. Technical mastery over stone and bronze was by no means complete when he began to work. The “archaic smile” still hovered over the lips of contemporary sculptures, the eyes were too prominent, the eyelids were still cut to meet at the corners instead of overlapping, hair was still conventionally rendered by parallel grooves, or spirals, or roughly blocked out for coloration.

The body, however, thanks to athletic models, was already much more successfully delineated than the head. Perhaps the best examples of fifth-century sculpture before Pheidias are the pedimental figures from Ægina. These figures from the temple of Aphaia at Ægina were discovered by the English architect Cockerell in 1811; they were acquired by the King of Bavaria, restored by Thorwaldsen, and are now at the Glyptothek in Munich. Our illustration[48]will depict their style in all its archaic vigour. All but the face is highly successful; the naked muscular forms of the warriors follow even the poses of athletics, especially the figure in the attitude of a wrestler making his hold stooping forward to drag away the body of Patroclus. The reader should also notice how cleverly the pose is designed to fit that very difficult angle of the pediment where the roof slopes down. It taxed the ingenuity of artists to compose scenes to fit these triangular spaces. The ordinary rule is that the east pediments should depict a scene of divine peace and grandeur, that being the end at which the worshippers entered the temple. The west pediments, on the contrary, generally display a struggle. In this early Æginetan temple both ends are filled with scenes of warfare from the epic glories of Ægina, one of Ajax, and one of his father, Telamon. These Æginetan sculptures are assigned to the period between Marathon (490) and Salamis (480). The Harmodius group of which I have already spoken belongs clearly to the same phase.

If we turn from this to the Parthenon sculptures, we shall see the amazing swiftness of the blossoming of Greek art. With Pheidias, and largely no doubt owing to his genius, the plastic art has conquered its stubborn material, but it has not yet attained that fatal fluency which induces carelessness or conscious elaboration and extravagant striving for effect. This is the stage at which the arts and crafts produce their masterpieces. In our days, thanks to mechanical appliances, stone is as easy to work as clay. The sculptor produces his model, foreign underlings do the heavy chiselling, and the artist finishes it off. This is perhaps why Rodin produces such an effect of strength by leaving much of his work in the rough. We may be sure that Pheidias executed the whole process with loving care and diligence from first to last.

Head of Zeus, on Coin of ElisHead of Zeus, on Coin of Philip II. of Macedon

Here, alas! it must be confessed that we have not a single work which we can ascribe with certainty to the hand of the master himself. His great masterpieces, the Zeus of Olympia and the Parthenos of the Parthenon, were of ivory and gold. Of course they have perished utterly. We have to content ourselves with descriptions—and the ancient art critic was singularly inept even for an art critic—and casual attempts at copying on coins or statuettes. The coins of Elis do indeed give us a Zeus of considerable dignity which may impart some faint notion of the glorious original, but of the Athena Parthenos we have not even this relic. I decline to follow the text-books on Greek architecture by presenting the woolly-headed “Jove of Otricoli” or the well-groomed but fatuous old senator known as the “Dresden Zeus” for the work of Pheidias. Nor will I insult him by depicting the Parthenos by means of the stumpy “Varvakeion” or the inchoate “Lenormant” statuettes. Such

Plate XLI.PORTIONS OF THE EAST FRIEZE OF THE PARTHENONMansell & Co.

Plate XLI.PORTIONS OF THE EAST FRIEZE OF THE PARTHENON

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caricatures only disturb our judgment. For these statues we had better trust our imaginations, working upon what Pliny tells us: “The beauty of the Olympian Zeus seems to have added something to the received religion, so thoroughly does the majesty of the work suit the deity.”

But can you, after all, imagine the splendour of these two statues made by the greatest sculptor who has ever lived? The flesh parts were of ivory, the clothing of solid gold on a core of wood or stone. Zeus was of colossal size, forty feet high. On his head was a green garland of branched olive; in his right hand he bore a Victory of ivory and gold, in his left a sceptre inlaid with every kind of metal. On the golden robe figures and lilies were chased. The throne was adorned with gold and precious stones and ebony and ivory, with figures painted and sculptured upon it. Even the legs and bars of the throne were adorned with reliefs. Round it were low screens, blue enamel in front, and paintings by the sculptor’s brother, Panainos, at the back and sides. The stool on which the god’s feet were resting was adorned with figures in gold; the base, on which the throne rested, likewise. We must not picture ancient Greek art as cold and colourless like the marble statues by which it is represented in our museums. The Greeks loved colour, and used it everywhere. We have grown so accustomed to plain white statues that some of us are offended by the idea of colour in statuary and architecture. In this matter we may safely trust the good taste of the artists who could design and carve so wonderfully. The two favourite Greek marbles, the Parian and the Pentelic, are both of themselves very beautiful fabrics, far more lovely, with their glistening coarse grain and the intermixture of iron which gives them a warm yellowish glow, than the favourite modern marble of Carrara, which is so coldly white and so fine of texture as to dazzle and fatigue the eye and to blur all the delicate outlines. But the Greeks of that day looked upon even their lovely marbles as we do upon brick, good enough for building temples, but not worthy of the high gods. Ivory and goldfor the gods, if the worshippers could afford it, otherwise bronze.

Regretfully, therefore, we must seek the genius of Pheidias in works which were probably constructed according to his designs, minor works, mere decorative reliefs applied to architecture, much defaced by accident and time, but still bearing the stamp of grandeur and dignity. It seems from the latest evidence that the execution of the Parthenon sculptures did not begin until after the banishment of Pheidias. But we may well believe that they had been designed by the master. In any case they are originals of the great period, and thus far better guides than any copies, however skilfully executed. Plutarch tells us that as the buildings of Periclean Athens rose “majestic in size and inimitable in symmetry and grace, the workmen rivalled one another in the artistic beauty of their workmanship. Especially wonderful was their speed. Pheidias was the overseer.” The surviving relics of the Parthenon sculptures fall into three groups, according to their place on the temple—the Pediments, the Metopes, and the Frieze.

Of these the Pediments are the most important for their size and prominence in the building. For example, they are the only external sculptures noticed by the traveller Pausanias. Moreover, each figure is a separate statue carved in the round, and perfectly finished back and front alike, though by no possibility could they be visible except from the front. Ruskin would inform us that this is evidence of the moral excellence of the artist. But the Greeks were a practical people who disliked waste in any form, and Professor Ernest Gardner is probably right in suggesting that the sculptor finished his statues in order that he might be sure they were rightly made. Such fidelity to his religious duty is evidence, after all, of moral excellence. Time has wrought cruel havoc with the sculptures. The central figures had gone even before Carrey made his drawings for the Marquis de Nointel in 1674. In 1687 a great explosion occurred, when a Venetian gunner (with the good old Venetian name of Schwartz) dropped a bomb into the

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