A mingled
sentiment
of fear and repugnance led them to put down despotism in several cities of Greece during the sixth century B.
Universal Anthology - v03
181
everything in order, else I shall never finish. It is not an army, as you think, Phanes, but an embassy from Cambyses, the present king of powerful Persia, which is on its way hither. I heard at Samos that they have already reached Miletus. They will arrive here in a few days. Relations of the king, and even old Croesus of Lydia, are with them. We shall see rare splendor. No one knows the reason of their coming, but it is thought that King Cambyses will propose an alliance to Amasis ; it is even said that the king wishes to woo the daughter of the Pharaohs. "
" An alliance," said Phanes, with an incredulous shrug ; "the Persians already rule half the world. All the chief pow ers of Asia bow to their scepter. Only Egypt and our Greece have remained safe from the conqueror. "
" You forget golden India, and the great nomadic races of Asia," returned Callias. "You also forget that an empire which consists of seventy races, possessing different languages and customs, always bears in it the seeds of rebellion, and must be on its guard against foreign wars, lest some of the provinces seize the favorable moment for revolt when the main body of the army is absent. Ask the Milesians whether they would keep quiet, if they heard that the chief forces of their oppressor
had been defeated in battle. "
Theopompus, the Milesian merchant, interrupted him and
cried eagerly, "If the Persians are defeated in war, they will be attacked by a hundred foes, and my countrymen will not be the last to rise against the weakened tyrant. "
" Whatever the intentions of the Persians may be," contin ued"Callias, " I maintain that they will be here in three days. " And so your oracle will be fulfilled, happy Aristomachus,"
cried Rhodopis. "The horsemen from the mountains can be none other than the Persians. When they reach the shores of the Nile, the five ephors will have changed their minds and you, the father of two Olympic victors, will be recalled. Fill the goblets again, Cnacias. Let us drink the last cup to the manes of famous Lysander, and then, though unwillingly, I must warn you of the approach of day. The host who loves his guests rises from table when the joy reaches its climax. The pleasant memory of this untroubled evening will soon bring you back to this house, whereas you would be less willing to return if you were forced to think of the hours of depression which followed your enjoyment. "
182 MAXIMS OF THEOGNIS.
All the guests agreed with Rhodopis, and Ibycus praised the festive and pleasurable excitement of the evening and called her a true disciple of Pythagoras. Every one prepared for depar ture ; even the Sybarite, who, to drown the emotion which an noyed him, had drunk immoderately, raised himself from his comfortable position with the help of his slaves who had been summoned, and muttered something about violated hospitality.
When Rhodopis held out her hand to him on bidding him farewell, he cried, overcome by the wine : " By Hercules, Rho dopis, you turn us out-doors as if we were importunate credit ors. I am not used to leaving the table as long as I can stand, and still less used to being shown the door like a parasite. "
"Do you not understand, you immoderate drinker ? " began Rhodopis, trying to excuse herself and smiling ; but Philoinus, who in his present mood was irritated by this retort, laughed scornfully and cried, staggering to the door : " You call me an immoderate drinker : well, I call you an insolent slave. By Dionysus, it is easy to see what you were in your
Farewell, slave of Iadmon and Xanthus, freed slave of Charaxus. "
He had not finished, when the Spartan threw himself on him, gave him a violent blow with his fist, and carried the unconscious man, like a child, to the boat which with his slaves awaited him at the gate of the garden.
MAXIMS OF THEOGNIS.
(About 540 b. c. )
Not even Zeus pleases everybody, either when he rains or when he holds up.
From the good you will learn good : if you mix with the bad you will lose what sense you have.
Do not tell everything, even to a friend.
When you undertake great affairs, confide in but few.
Do not caress me in words, and keep your mind and heart
elsewhere. Either love me sincerely, or disown and hate me. Never love a mean man ; he will not rescue you from calam
ity nor share what he has with you. To do good to the base is like sowing the sea. The mean are never satisfied : one slip cancels all former benefits. Comrades in feasting are plenty ; not in serious matters.
youth.
MAXIMS OF THEOGNIS. 183
Do not brag in public : no one knows what a night and a day may bring forth.
A man borne down by poverty can say or do nothing he likes : his tongue is tied. [" It is hard for an empty bag to stand upright. "]
Wealth mixes the breed. [Nobles and plebeians intermarry where wealth is present. ]
Conform your temper to that of each friend. Be like the polypus, which looks like the rock it has twisted its arms around. [All things to all men. ]
The mean are not wholly mean from birth, but from associa tion with the mean. They learn bad actions, backbiting, and insolence from believing what the others say.
Among the mad I am very mad ; among the just I am justest of all.
Give a mean man wealth, still he cannot keep his mean ness in.
Do not give up a friend from belief in every slander.
If one should be wroth at all his friends' faults, there would be no friendship.
Beguile your enemy with good words ; but when you have him in your power, take vengeance on him.
Of all things on earth, not to be born is best ; but if born, one should die as soon as possible.
The mean man has no spirit either in weal or woe.
Be it mine to have moderate wealth, but bestow my enemies' riches on my friends.
It is easier to make a mean man out of a noble one than a noble out of a mean.
Fullness destroys more men than famine.
It is disgraceful for a drunken man to be among sober ones, and disgraceful for a sober man to remain among drunken ones. [This is sometimes translated, " It is disgraceful to be drunk
where others are sober, and disgraceful to be sober where others
are drunk. "]
No man lives unblamed. He is best off whom most people
care nothing about.
Economy is best ; for no one wails even for the dead unless
property has been left behind.
There are two evils in doing good to a mean man : you will
be stripped of your goods, and get no thanks.
Drink when other men drink ; but when you are troubled,
let no man know it.
184 OLIGARCHY AND DESPOTISM IN GREECE.
OLIGARCHY AND DESPOTISM IN GREECE. By GEORGE GROTE.
[George Grote, the greatest modern historian of ancient Greece, perhaps the greatest man altogether who ever wrote history, was of mingled German, Huguenot French, Irish, and English blood; born in Kent, 1794; died in Lon don, 1871. Educated till sixteen at the Charterhouse School in London, he then entered his father's banking house, still using all his leisure time for study. A massive scholar, thinker, and logician, he was also (what even for his works of pure scholarship was of the first value) a practical and experienced man of affairs. He worked hard for Parliamentary reform, and was member of Parlia ment 1832-1841 ; strove annually to introduce voting by ballot, and was a great humanist with a deep sympathy for the " dim common millions. " This ardent democratic feeling was the genesis of his immortal " History of Greece " (twelve volumes, 1846-1856), which no progress in archaeological discovery will ever supersede. In 1865 he brought out his " Plato " ; after his death his unfinished " Aristotle " and two volumes of minor writings were published, and his widow wrote a biography. In his later years he was president of University College and vice-chancellor of London University (unsectarian). ]
The monarchical institutions and monarchical tendencies prevalent throughout mediaeval and modern Europe have been both generated and perpetuated by causes peculiar to those societies ; whilst in the Hellenic societies such causes had no place : the primitive sentiment entertained toward the heroic king died out, passing first into indifference, next — after experience of the despots — into determined antipathy.
To an historian like Mr. Mitford, full of English ideas re specting government, this anti-monarchical feeling appears of the nature of insanity, and the Grecian communities like mad men without a keeper : while the greatest of all benefactors is the hereditary king who conquers them from without, the sec ond best is the home despot, who seizes the acropolis and puts his fellow-citizens under coercion. There cannot be a more cer tain way of misinterpreting and distorting Grecian phenomena than to read them in this spirit, which reverses the maxims both of prudence and morality current in the ancient world. The hatred of kings as it stood among the Greeks (whatever may be thought about a similar feeling now) was a preeminent vir tue, flowing directly from the noblest and wisest part of their nature. It was a consequence of their deep conviction of the necessity of universal legal restraint ; it was a direct expression of that regulated sociality which required the control of indi
OLIGARCHY AND DESPOTISM IN GREECE. 185
vidual passion from every one without exception, and most of all from him to whom power was confided. The conception which the Greeks formed of an unresponsible one, or of a king who could do no wrong, may be expressed in the pregnant words of Herodotus, " He subverts the customs of the country ; he violates women ; he puts men to death without trial. " No other conception of the probable tendencies of kingship was justified either by a general knowledge of human nature, or by political experience as it stood from Solon downward ; no other feeling than abhorrence could be entertained for the character so con ceived ; no other than a man of unprincipled ambition would ever seek to invest himself with it.
Our larger political experience has taught us to modify this opinion, by showing that under the conditions of monarchy in the best governments of modern Europe the enormities de scribed by Herodotus do not take place ; and that it is possible, by means of representative constitutions acting under a certain force of manners, customs, and historical recollection, to obviate many of the mischiefs likely to flow from proclaiming the duty of peremptory obedience to an hereditary and unresponsible king, who cannot be changed without extra-constitutional force. But such larger observation was not open to Aristotle, the wisest as well as the most cautious of ancient theorists ; nor if it had been open, could he have applied with assurance its lessons to the governments of the single cities of Greece. The theory of a constitutional king, especially, as it exists in England, would have appeared to him impracticable : to establish a king who will reign without governing ; in whose name all government is carried on, yet whose personal will is in practice of little or no effect ; exempt from all responsibility, without making use
of the exemption ; receiving from every one unmeasured dem onstrations of homage, which are never translated into act ex cept within the bounds of a known law ; surrounded with all the paraphernalia of power, yet acting as a passive instrument in the hands of ministers marked out for his choice by indica tions which he is not at liberty to resist.
This remarkable combination of the fiction of superhuman grandeur and license with the reality of an invisible strait- waistcoat, is what an Englishman has in his mind when he speaks of a constitutional king. The events of our history have brought it to pass in England, amid an aristocracy the most powerful that the world has yet seen ; but we have still to learn
186 OLIGARCHY AND DESPOTISM IN GREECE.
whether it can be made to exist elsewhere, or whether the oc currence of a single king, at once able, aggressive, and resolute, may not suffice to break it up. To Aristotle, certainly, it could not have appeared otherwise than unintelligible and impracti cable ; not likely even in a single case, but altogether incon ceivable as a permanent system, and with all the diversities of temper inherent in the successive members of an hereditary dynasty. When the Greeks thought of a man exempt from legal responsibility, they conceived him as really and truly such, in deed as well as in name, with a defenseless community ex posed to his oppressions ; and their fear and hatred of him was measured by their reverence for a government of equal law and free speech, with the ascendency of which their whole hopes of security were associated —in the democracy of Athens more perhaps than in any other portion of Greece. And this feeling, as it was one of the best in the Greek mind, so it was also one of the most widely spread — a point of unanimity highly valu able amid so many points of dissension. We cannot construe or criticise it by reference to the feelings of modern Europe, still less to the very peculiar feelings of England, respecting kingship.
When we try to explain the course of Grecian affairs, not from the circumstances of other societies, but from those of the Greeks themselves, we shall see good reason for the discon tinuance as well as for the dislike of kingship. Had the Greek mind been as stationary and unimproving as that of the Ori entals, the discontent with individual kings might have led to no other change than the deposition of a bad king in favor of one who promised to be better, without ever extending the views of the people to any higher conception than that of a personal government. But the Greek mind was of a progres sive character, capable of conceiving and gradually of realizing amended social combinations. Moreover, it is in the nature of
things that any government — regal, oligarchical, or democrati- cal — which comprises only a single city is far less stable than if it embraced a wider surface and a larger population. When that semi-religious and mechanical submission, which made up for the personal deficiencies of the heroic king, became too feeble to serve as a working principle, the petty prince was in too close contact with his people, and too humbly furnished out in every way, to get up a prestige or delusion of any other kind. He had no means of overawing their imaginations by
OLIGARCHY AND DESPOTISM IN GREECE. 187
that combination of pomp, seclusion, and mystery which He rodotus and Xenophon so well appreciate among the artifices of kingcraft. As there was no new feeling upon which a perpetual chief could rest his power, so there was nothing in the circumstances of the community which rendered the main tenance of such a dignity necessary for visible and effective union. In a single city, and a small circumjacent com munity, collective deliberation and general rules, with tempo rary and responsible magistrates, were practicable without difficulty.
To maintain an unresponsible king, and then to contrive accompaniments which shall extract from him the benefits of responsible government, is in reality a highly complicated sys tem, though, as has been remarked, we have become familiar with it in modern Europe. The more simple and obvious change is, to substitute one or more temporary and responsible magistrates in place of the king himself. Such was the course which affairs took in Greece. The inferior chiefs, who had originally served as council to the king, found it possible to supersede him, and to alternate the functions of administration among themselves ; retaining probably the occasional convoca tion of the general assembly, as it had existed before, and with as little practical efficacy. Such was in substance the charac ter of that mutation which occurred generally throughout the Grecian states, with the exception of Sparta : kingship was abolished, and an oligarchy took its place — a council deliberat ing" collectively, deciding general matters by the majority of voices, and selecting some individuals of their own body as temporary and accountable administrators. It was always an oligarchy which arose on the defeasance of the heroic kingdom. The age of democratical movement was yet far distant ; and the condition of the people — the general body of freemen — was not immediately altered, either for better or worse, by the revo lution. The small number of privileged persons, among whom the kingly attributes were distributed and put in rotation, were those nearest in rank to the king himself ; perhaps members of the same large gens with him, and pretending to a common divine and heroic descent. As far as we can make out, this change seems to have taken place in the natural course of events and without violence. Sometimes the kingly lineage died out and was not replaced ; sometimes, on the death of a king, his son and successor was acknowledged only as archon
188 OLIGARCHY AND DESPOTISM IN GREECE.
— or perhaps set aside altogether to make room for a Prytanis or president out of the men of rank around.
Such oligarchical governments, varying in their details but analogous in general features, were common throughout the cities of Greece proper, as well as of the colonies, throughout the seventh century B. C. Though they had little immediate tendency to benefit the mass of the freemen, yet when we com pare them with the antecedent heroic government, they indi cate an important advance —the first adoption of a deliberate and preconceived system in the management of public affairs. They exhibit the first evidences of new and important political ideas in the Greek mind — the separation of legislative and executive powers ; the former vested in a collective body, not merely deliberating but also finally deciding — while the latter is confided to temporary individual magistrates, responsible to that body at the end of their period of office. We are first in troduced to a community of citizens, according to the definition of Aristotle — men qualified, and thinking themselves qualified, to take turns in command and obedience. The collective sov ereign, called The City, is thus constituted. It is true that this first community of citizens comprised only a small propor tion of the men personally free ; but the ideas upon which it was founded began gradually to dawn upon the minds of all. Political power had lost its heaven-appointed character, and had become an attribute legally communicable as well as determined to certain definite ends : and the ground was thus laid for those thousand questions which agitated so many of the Grecian cities during the ensuing three centuries, partly respecting its appor tionment, partly respecting its employment, — questions some times raised among the members of the privileged oligarchy itself, sometimes between that order as a whole and the non- privileged many. The seeds of those popular movements, which called forth so much profound emotion, so much bitter antipathy, so much energy and talent, throughout the Grecian world, with different modifications in each particular city, may thus be traced back to that early revolution which erected the primitive oligarchy upon the ruins of the heroic kingdom.
How these first oligarchies were administered we have no direct information. But the narrow and anti-popular interests naturally belonging to a privileged few, together with the gen eral violence of private manners and passions, leave us no ground for presuming favorably respecting either their pru
OLIGARCHY AND DESPOTISM IN GREECE. 189
dence or their good feeling; and the facts which we learn respecting the condition of Attica prior to the Solonian legisla tion raise inferences all of an unfavorable character.
The first shock which they received and by which so many of them were subverted, arose from the usurpers called Despots, who employed the prevalent discontents both as pretexts and as aids for their own personal ambition, while their very fre quent success seems to imply that such discontents were wide spread as well as serious. These despots arose out of the bosom of the oligarchies, but not all in the same manner. Sometimes the executive magistrate, upon whom the oligarchy themselves had devolved important administrative powers for a certain temporary period, became unfaithful to his choosers, and ac quired sufficient ascendency to retain his dignity permanently in spite of them — perhaps even to transmit it to his son. In other places, and seemingly more often, there arose that noted character called the Demagogue, of whom historians, both ancient and modern, commonly draw so repulsive a picture : a man of energy and ambition, sometimes even a member of the oligarchy itself, who stood forward as champion of the griev ances and sufferings of the non-privileged many, acquired their favor, and employed their strength so effectively as to put down the oligarchy by force, and constitute himself despot. A third form of despot, some presumptuous wealthy man, like Kylon at Athens, without even the pretense of popularity, was occa sionally emboldened, by the success of similar adventurers in other places, to hire a troop of retainers and seize the acropolis. And there were examples, though rare, of a fourth variety — the lineal descendant of the ancient kings — who, instead of suffering himself to be restricted or placed under control by the oligarchy, found means to subjugate them, and to extort by force an ascendency as great as that which his forefathers had enjoyed by consent. To these must be added, in several Grecian states, the ^Esymnete or Dictator, a citizen formally invested with supreme and unresponsible power, placed in com mand of the military force, and armed with a standing body guard, but only for a time named, and in order to deal with some urgent peril or ruinous internal dissension. The person thus exalted, always enjoying a large measure of confidence, and generally a man of ability, was sometimes so successful, or made himself so essential to the community, that the term of
his office was prolonged, and he became practically despot for
190 OLIGARCHY AND DESPOTISM IN GREECE.
life ; or even if the community were not disposed to concede to him this permanent ascendency, he was often strong enough to keep it against their will.
From the general statement of Thucydides as well as of Aristotle, we learn that the seventh and sixth centuries B. C. were centuries of progress for the Greek cities generally, in wealth, in power, and in population ; and the numerous colonies founded during this period will furnish further illustration of such progressive tendencies. Now the changes just mentioned in the Grecian governments, imperfectly as we know them, are on the whole decided evidences of advancing citizenship. For the heroic government, with which Grecian communities begin, is the rudest and most infantine of all governments : destitute even of the pretense of system or security, incapable of being in any way fore known, and depending only upon the accidental variations in the character of the reigning individual, who in most cases, far from serving as a protection to the poor against the rich and great, was likely to indulge his passions in the same unrestrained way as the latter, and with still greater impunity.
The despots, who in so many towns succeeded and supplanted this oligarchical government, though they governed on princi ples usually narrow and selfish, and often oppressively cruel, " taking no thought (to use the emphatic words of Thucydides) except each for his own body and his own family " — yet since they were not strong enough to crush the Greek mind, im printed upon it a painful but improving political lesson, and contributed much to enlarge the range of experience as well as to determine the subsequent cast of feeling. They partly broke down the wall of distinction between the people — properly so called, the general mass of freemen — and the oligarchy: indeed the demagogue despots are interesting as the first evidence of the growing importance of the people in political affairs. The demagogue stood forward as representing the feelings and interests of the people against the governing few; probably availing himself of some special cases of ill-usage, and taking pains to be conciliatory and generous in his own personal be havior. When the people by their armed aid had enabled him to overthrow the existing rulers, they had thus the satisfaction of seeing their own chief in possession of the supreme power, but they acquired neither political rights nor increased securi
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ties for themselves. What measure of positive advantage they may have reaped, beyond that of seeing their previous oppres sors humiliated, we know too little to determine. But even the worst of despots was more formidable to the rich than to the poor ; and the latter may, perhaps, have gained by the change, in comparative importance, notwithstanding their share in the rigors and exactions of a government which had no other permanent foundation than naked fear.
A remark made by Aristotle deserves especial notice here, as illustrating the political advance and education of the Grecian communities. He draws a marked distinction between the early demagogue of the seventh and sixth centuries, and the later demagogue, such as he himself, and the generations im mediately preceding, had witnessed. The former was a military chief, daring and full of resource, who took arms at the head of a body of popular insurgents, put down the government by force, and made himself the master both of those whom he de posed and of those by whose aid he deposed them ; while the latter was a speaker, possessed of all the talents necessary for moving an audience, but neither inclined to, nor qualified for, armed attack — accomplishing all his purposes by pacific and constitutional methods. This valuable change — substituting discussion and the vote of an assembly in place of an appeal to arms, and procuring for the pronounced decision of the assembly such an influence over men's minds as to render it final and respected even by dissentients — arose from the continued practical working of democratical institutions. I shall have occasion, at a later period of this history, to estimate the value of that unmeasured obloquy which has been heaped on the Athenian demagogues of the Peloponnesian war — Kleon and Hyperbolus ; but assuming the whole to be well founded, it will not be the less true that these men were a material improve ment on the earlier demagogues such as Kypselus and Peisis- tratus, who employed the armed agency of the people for the purpose of subverting the established government and acquiring despotic authority for themselves. The demagogue was essen tially a leader of opposition, who gained his influence by de nouncing the men in real ascendency and in actual executive functions. Now under the early oligarchies his opposition could be shown only by armed insurrection, and it conducted him either to personal sovereignty or to destruction. But the growth of democratical institutions insured both to him and to
192 OLIGARCHY AND DESPOTISM IN GREECE.
his political opponents full liberty of speech, and a paramount assembly to determine between them ; whilst it both limited the range of his ambition, and set aside the appeal to armed force. The railing demagogue of Athens at the time of the Peloponnesian war (even if we accept literally the representa tions of his worst enemies) was thus a far less mischievous and dangerous person than the fighting demagogue of the earlier centuries ; and the " growth of habits of public speaking " (to use Aristotle's expression) was the cause of the difference. Opposition by the tongue was a beneficial substitute for op position by the sword.
The rise of these despots on the ruins of the previous oligarchies was, in appearance, a return to the principles of the heroic age — the restoration of a government of personal will in place of that systematic arrangement known as the City. But the Greek mind had so far outgrown those early principles, that no new government founded thereupon could meet with willing acquiescence, except under some temporary excitement. At first doubtless the popularity of the usurper — combined with the fervor of his partisans and the expulsion or intimidation of opponents, and further enhanced by the punishment of rich oppressors —was sufficient to procure for him obedience ; and prudence on his part might prolong this undisputed rule for a considerable period, perhaps even throughout his whole life. But Aristotle intimates that these governments, even when they began well, had a constant tendency to become worse and worse. Discontent manifested itself, and was aggravated rather than repressed by the vio lence employed against it, until at length the despot became a prey to mistrustful and malevolent anxiety, losing any measure of equity or benevolent sympathy which might once have animated him.
If he was fortunate enough to bequeath his authority to his son, the latter, educated in a corrupt atmosphere and surrounded by parasites, contracted dispositions yet more noxious and unsocial. His youthful appetites were more ungovernable, while he was deficient in the prudence and vigor which had been indispensable to the self-accom plished rise of his father. For such a position, mercenary guards and a fortified acropolis were the only stay — guards fed at the expense of the citizens, and thus requiring con stant exactions on behalf of that which was nothing better
OLIGARCHY AND DESPOTISM IN GREECE. 193
than a hostile garrison. It was essential to the security of the despot that he should keep down the spirit of the free people whom he governed ; that he should isolate them from each other, and prevent those meetings and mutual com munications which Grecian cities habitually presented in the School, the Lesche, or the Palaestra ; that he should strike off the overtopping ears of corn in the field (to use the Greek locution), or crush the exalted and enterprising minds. Nay, he had even to a certain extent an interest in degrading and impoverishing them, or at least in debarring them from the acquisition either of wealth or leisure. The extensive con structions undertaken by Polykrates at Samos, as well as the rich donations of Periander to the temple at Olympia, are con sidered by Aristotle to have been extorted by these despots with the express view of engrossing the time and exhausting the means of their subjects.
It is not to be imagined that all were alike cruel or un principled. But the perpetual supremacy of one man or one family had become so offensive to the jealousy of those who felt themselves to be his equals, and to the general feeling of the people, that repression and severity were inevitable, whether originally intended or not. And even if an usurper, having once entered upon his career of violence, grew sick and averse to its continuance, abdication only left him in imminent peril, exposed to the vengeance of those whom he had injured —unless indeed he could clothe himself with the mantle of religion, and stipulate with the people to become priest of some temple and deity ; in which case his new function protected him, just as the tonsure and the monastery sheltered a dethroned prince in the middle ages. Several of the despots were patrons of music and poetry, courting the good will of contemporary intellectual men by invitation as well as by reward. Moreover, there were some cases, such as that of Peisistratus and his sons at Athens, in which an attempt was made (analogous to that of Augustus at Rome) to reconcile the reality of personal omnipotence with a cer tain respect for preexisting forms. In such instances the administration —though not unstained by guilt, never other wise than unpopular, and carried on by means of foreign mercenaries — was doubtless practically milder. But cases of this character were rare ; and the maxims usual with Grecian despots were personified in Periander, the Kypselid of Corinth
VOL. III. — 13
194 OLIGARCHY AND DESPOTISM IN GREECE.
— a harsh and brutal person, though not destitute either of vigor or intelligence.
The position of a Grecian despot, as depicted by Plato, by Xenophon, and by Aristotle, and further sustained by the indications in Herodotus, Thucydides, and Isokrates, though always coveted by ambitious men, reveals clearly enough " those wounds and lacerations of mind " whereby the internal Erinnys avenged the community upon the usurper who tram pled them down. Far from considering success in usurpation as a justification of the attempt (according to the theories now prevalent respecting Cromwell and Bonaparte, who are often blamed because they kept out a legitimate king, but never because they seized an unauthorized power over the peo ple), these philosophers regard the despot as among the great est of criminals. The man who assassinated him was an object of public honor and reward, and a virtuous Greek would seldom have scrupled to carry his sword concealed in myrtle branches, like Harmodius and Aristogeiton, for the execution of the deed. A station which overtopped the re straints and obligations involved in citizenship was under stood at the same time to forfeit all title to the common sym pathy and protection ; so that it was unsafe for the despot to visit in person those great Pan-Hellenic games in which his own chariot might perhaps have gained the prize, and in which the Theors or sacred envoys, whom he sent as representa tives of his Hellenic city, appeared with ostentatious pomp. A government carried on under these unpropitious circum stances could never be otherwise than short-lived. Though the individual daring enough to seize it often found means to preserve it for the term of his own life, yet the sight of a despot living to old age was rare, and the transmission of his power to his son still more so.
Amid the numerous points of contention in Grecian politi cal morality, this rooted antipathy to a permanent hereditary ruler stood apart as a sentiment almost unanimous, in which the thirst for preeminence felt by the wealthy few, and the love of equal freedom in the bosoms of the many, alike con curred. It first began among the oligarchies of the seventh and sixth centuries B. C. , being a reversal of that pronounced monarchical sentiment which we now read in the Iliad ; and it was transmitted by them to the democracies which did not arise until a later period. The conflict between oligarchy and des
OLIGARCHY AND DESPOTISM IN GREECE. 195
potism preceded that between oligarchy and democracy, the Lacedaemonians standing forward actively on both occasions to uphold the oligarchical principle.
A mingled sentiment of fear and repugnance led them to put down despotism in several cities of Greece during the sixth century B. C. , just as, during their contest with Athens in the following century, they assisted the oligarchical party to overthrow democracy. And it was thus that the demagogue despot of these earlier times — bring ing out the name of the people as a pretext, and the arms of the people as a means of accomplishment, for his own ambitious designs — served as a preface to the reality of democracy which manifested itself at Athens a short time before the Persian war, as a development of the seed planted by Solon.
As far as our imperfeot information enables us to trace, these early oligarchies of the Grecian states, against which the first usurping despots contended, contained in themselves more repulsive elements of inequality, and more mischievous barriers between the component parts of the population, than the oligarchies of later days. What was true of Hellas as an aggregate, was true, though in a less degree, of each separate community which went to compose that aggregate. Each included a variety of clans, orders, religious brotherhoods, and local or professional sections, very imperfectly cemented to gether ; so that the oligarchy was not (like the government so denominated in subsequent times) the government of a rich few over the less rich and the poor, but that of a peculiar order, sometimes a patrician order, over all the remaining society.
In such a case the subject Many might number opulent and substantial proprietors as well as the governing Few ; but these subject Many would themselves be broken into different hetero geneous fractions not heartily sympathizing with each other, perhaps not intermarrying together, nor partaking of the same religious rites. The country population, or villagers who tilled the land, seem in these early times to have been held to a pain ful dependence on the great proprietors who lived in the forti fied town, and to have been distinguished by a dress and habits of their own, which often drew upon them an unfriendly nick name. These town proprietors often composed the governing class in early Grecian states ; while their subjects consisted : 1. Of the dependent cultivators living in the district around, by whom their lands were tilled. 2. Of a certain number of small, self-working proprietors (ainovp^oX), whose possessions
196 OLIGARCHY AND DESPOTISM IN GREECE.
were too scanty to maintain more than themselves by the labor of their own hands on their own plot of ground — residing either in the country or the town, as the case might be. 3. Of those who lived in the town, having not land, but exercising handicraft, arts, or commerce.
The governing proprietors went by the name of the Gamori or Geomori, according as the Doric or Ionic dialect might be used in describing them, since they were found in states belong ing to one race as well as to the other. They appear to have constituted a close order, transmitting their privileges to their children, but admitting no new members to a participation. The principle called by Greek thinkers a Timocracy (the ap portionment of political rights and privileges according to comparative property) seems to have been little, if at all, ap plied in the earlier times. We know no example of it earlier than Solon. So that by the natural multiplication of families and mutation of property, there would come to be many in dividual Gamori possessing no land at all, and perhaps worse off than those small freeholders who did not belong to the order ; while some of these latter freeholders, and some of the artisans and traders in the towns, might at the same time be rising in wealth and importance. Under a political classification such as this, of which the repulsive inequality was aggravated by a rude state of manners, and which had no flexibility to meet the changes in relative position among individual inhabitants, dis content and outbreaks were unavoidable. The earliest despot, usually a wealthy man of the disfranchised class, became cham pion and leader of the malcontents. However oppressive his rule might be, at least it was an oppression which bore with indis criminate severity upon all the fractions of the population ; and when the hour of reaction against him or against his successor arrived, so that the common enemy was expelled by the united efforts of all, it was hardly possible to revive the preexisting system of exclusion and inequality without some considerable abatements.
THE ISLES OF GREECE. 197
THE ISLES OF GREECE. By LORD BYRON.
[Lord George Noel Gordon Byron : A famous English poet ; born in Lon don, January 22, 1788. At the age of ten he succeeded to the estate and title of his granduncle William, fifth Lord Byron. He was educated"at Harrow and Cambridge, and in 1807 published his first volume of poems, Hours of Idle ness. " After a tour through eastern Europe he brought out two cantos of " Childe Harold," which met with instantaneous success, and soon after he mar ried the heiress Miss Millbanke. The union proving unfortunate, Byron left England, and passed several years in Italy. In 1823 he joined the Greek insur gents in Cephalonia, and later at Missolonghi, where he died of a fever April 19, 1824. His chief poetical works are: "Childe Harold," "Don Juan," "Manfred," "Cain," "Marino Faliero," " Sardanapalus," "The Giaour," "Bride of Abydos," "The Corsair," "Lara," and "Mazeppa. "]
The isles of Greece ! The isles of Greece ! Where burning Sappho loved and sung, —
Where grew the arts of war and peace, Where Delos rose and Phoebus sprung !
Eternal summer gilds them yet, — But all, except their sun, is set.
The Scian and the Teian muse,
The hero's harp, the lover's lute,
Have found the fame your shores refuse ; Their place of birth alone is mute
To sounds that echo further west
Than your sires' " Islands of the Blest. "
The mountains look on Marathon, And Marathon looks on the sea ;
And musing there an hour alone,
I dreamed that Greece might still be free ;
For, standing on the Persian's grave, I could not deem myself a slave.
A king sat on the rocky brow
That looks o'er sea-born Salamis ;
And ships by thousands lay below, And men in nations — all were his !
He counted them at break of day —
And when the sun set, where were they ?
THE ISLES OF GREECE.
And where are they ? and where art thou, My country ? On thy voiceless shore
The heroic lay is tuneless now — The heroic bosom beats no more !
And must thy lyre, so long divine, Degenerate into hands like mine ?
'Tis something in the dearth of fame, Though linked among a fettered race,
To feel at least a patriot's shame, Even as I sing, suffuse my face,
For what is left the poet here ?
For Greeks a blush — for Greece a tear.
Must we but weep o'er days more blessed ? Must we but blush ? — Our fathers bled.
Earth! render back from out thy breast A remnant of our Spartan dead !
Of the three hundred grant but three, To make a new Thermopylae !
What! silent still? and silent all? Ah ! no ; the voices of the dead Sound like a distant torrent's fall,
And answer, " Let one living head, But one, arise — we come, we come ! " 'Tis but the living who are dumb.
In vain — in vain ; strike other chords : Fill high the cup with Samian wine !
Leave battles to the Turkish hordes, And shed the blood of Scio's vine !
Hark ! rising to the ignoble call, How answers each bold Bacchanal !
You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet — Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone ?
Of two such lessons, why forget The nobler and the manlier one ?
You have the letters Cadmus gave — Think ye he meant them for a slave ?
THE ISLES OF GREECE.
Fill high the bowl with Samian wine !
We will not think of themes like these !
It made Anacreon's song divine :
He served — but served Polycrates —
A tyrant ; but our masters then Were still at least our countrymen.
The tyrant of the Chersonese
Was freedom's best and bravest friend ;
That tyrant was Miltiades !
Oh ! that the present hour would lend
Another despot of the kind !
Such chains as his were sure to bind.
Fill high the bowl with Samian wine ! On Suli's rock and Parga's shore
Exists the remnant of a line
Such as the Doric mothers bore ;
And there, perhaps, some seed is sown The Heracleidan blood might own.
Trust not for Freedom to the Franks — They have a king who buys and sells;
In native swords and native ranks, The only hope of courage dwells ;
But Turkish force and Latin fraud Would break your shield, however broad.
Fill high the bowl with Samian wine ! — I Our virgins dance beneath the shade
see their glorious black eyes shine : But, gazing on each glowing maid, My own the burning tear drop laves,
To think such breasts must suckle slaves.
Place me on Sunium's marble steep — Where nothing, save the waves and I,
May hear our mutual murmurs sweep : There, swanlike, let me sing and die :
A land of slaves shall ne'er be mine — Dash down yon cup of Samian wine !
200 ANACREONTICS.
ANACREONTICS. School of Anacbeon.
[Ahacreon flourished in the sixth century b. c, and was the chief orna ment for a while of the court of Polycrates, tyrant of Samos. He was ranked first in his age for the lyric of wine and women, and what we now call the "Horatian" philosophy of life; but his manner was so easy to imitate that his own effusions are lost in the swarm of copies. ]
(The first three following translations are by Abraham Cowley. ) Drinking.
The thirsty earth soaks up the rain,
And drinks, and gapes for drink again. The plants suck in the earth and are, With constant drinking, fresh and fair. The sea itself, which one would think Should have but little need of drink, Drinks ten thousand rivers up,
So filled that they o'erflow the cup.
The busy sun (and one would guess
By his drunken, fiery face no less)
Drinks up the sea, and when he 'as done, The moon and stars drink up the sun. They drink and dance by their own light, They drink and revel all the night. Nothing in Nature's sober sound,
But an eternal health goes round.
Fill up the bowl, then, fill it high,
Fill all the glasses there, for why
Should eVry creature drink but I ?
Why, men of morals, tell me why ?
Gold.
A mighty pain to love it
And 'tis pain that pain to miss; But of all pain the greatest pain It to love, but love in vain. Virtue now, nor noble blood,
Nor wit, by love understood; Gold alone does passion move, Gold monopolizes love
is !
is
a
is,
ANACREONTICS.
A curse on her, and on the man,
Who this traffic first began !
A curse on him who found the ore !
A curse on him who digged the store ! A curse on him who did refine it !
A curse on him who first did coin it ! A curse, all curses else above,
On him who used it first in love !
Gold begets in brethren hate,
Gold in families, debate ;
Gold does friendship separate,
Gold does civil wars create ;
These the smallest harms of it !
Gold, alas ! does love beget.
The Gbasshoppeb.
Happy insect ! what can be
In happiness compared to thee ?
Fed with nourishment divine, —
The dewy Morning's gentle wine ! Nature waits upon thee still,
And thy verdant cup does fill ;
'Tis filled wherever thou dost tread, Nature's self's thy Ganymede.
Thou dost drink, and dance, and sing, Happier than the happiest king.
All the fields which thou dost see,
All the plants, belong to thee ;
All that summer hours produce,
Fertile made with early juice ;
Man for thee does sow and plow; Farmer he, and landlord thou !
Thou dost innocently joy,
Nor does thy luxury destroy.
The shepherd gladly heareth thee,
More harmonious than he.
Thee country hinds with gladness hear, Prophet of the ripened year !
Thee Phoebus loves, and does inspire ; Phoebus is himself thy fire.
To thee of all things upon earth,
Life is no longer than thy mirth. Happy insect ! happy thou,
Dost neither age nor winter know ;
ANACREONTICS.
But when thou'st drunk, and danced, and sung Thy fill, the flow'ry leaves among,
(Voluptuous, and wise withal,
Epicurean animal ! )
Sated with thy summer feast, Thou retir'st to endless rest.
(The four following are translated by Thomas Moore. ) Drink while we Mat.
I care not for the idle state
Of Persia's king, the rich, the great !
I envy not the monarch's throne,
Nor wish the treasured gold my own.
But oh ! be mine the rosy braid,
The fervor of my brows to shade ;
Be mine the odors, richly sighing,
Amidst my hoary tresses flying.
To-day I'll haste to quaff my wine,
As if to-morrow ne'er should shine !
But if to-morrow comes, why then —
I'll haste to quaff my wine again.
And thus while all our days are bright,
Nor time has dimmed their bloomy light, Let us the festal hours beguile
With mantling cup and cordial smile ;
And shed from every bowl of wine
The richest drop on Bacchus' shrine !
For death may come with brow unpleasant, May come when least we wish him present, And beckon to the sable shore,
And grimly bid us — drink no more !
"Anttthing that Touches Thee. "
The Phrygian rock, that braves the storm, Was once a weeping matron's form;
And Progue, hapless, frantic maid,
Is now a swallow in the shade.
Oh ! that a mirror's form were mine, To sparkle with that smile divine ; And, like my heart, I then should be Reflecting thee, and only thee !
Or were I, love, the robe which flows O'er every charm that secret glows,
ANACREONTICS.
In many a lucid fold to swim,
And cling and grow to every limb !
Oh ! could I as the streamlet's wave,
Thy warmly mellowing beauties lave,
Or float as perfume on thine hair,
And breathe my soul in fragrance there ! I wish I were the zone that lies
Warm to thy breast, and feels its sighs !
Or like those envious pearls that show So faintly round that neck of snow ; Yes, I would be a happy gem,
Like them to hang, to fade like them. What more would thy Anacreon be ? Oh ! anything that touches thee. — Nay, sandals for those airy feet
Thus to be pressed by thee were sweet !
"Begone, Dull Care. "
I know that Heaven ordains me here To run this mortal life's career ;
The scenes which I have journeyed o'er Beturn no more — alas ! no more !
And all the path I've yet to go
I neither know nor ask to know.
Then surely, Care, thou canst not twine Thy fetters round a soul like mine ; No, no, the heart that feels with me Can never be a slave to thee !
And oh ! before the vital thrill,
Which trembles at my heart, is still, I'll gather joy's luxurious flowers,
And gild with bliss my fading hours ; Bacchus shall bid my winter bloom, And Venus dance me to the tomb !
The Progress op Venus.
And whose immortal hand could shed Upon this disk the ocean's bed ?
And, in a frenzied flight of soul, Sublime as Heaven's eternal pole, Imagine thus, in semblance warm, The Queen of Love's voluptuous form, Floating along the silvery sea
In beauty's naked majesty ?
204
ANACREONTICS.
Oh ! he has given the raptured sight A witching banquet of delight ;
And all those sacred scenes of Love, Where only hallowed eyes may rove, Lie faintly glowing, half concealed, Within the lucid billows veiled.
Light as the leaf that summer's breeze Has wafted o'er the glassy seas,
She floats upon the ocean's breast, Which ondulates in sleepy rest,
And stealing on, she gently pillows
Her bosom on the amorous billows.
Her bosom, like the humid rose,
Her neck, like dewy-sparkling snows, Illume the liquid path she traces,
And burn within the stream's embraces ! In languid luxury soft she glides, Encircled by the azure tides,
Like some fair lily, faint with weeping, Upon a bed of violets sleeping ! Beneath their queen's inspiring glance, The dolphins o'er the green sea dance, Bearing in triumph young Desire,
And baby Love with smiles of fire ! While, sparkling on the silver waves, The tenants of the briny caves Around the pomp in eddies play,
And gleam along the watery way.
(Translated by Thomas Stanley. ) Beauty.
Horns to bulls wise Nature lends ; Horses she with hoofs defends ;
Hares with nimble feet relieves ; Dreadful teeth to lions gives ;
Fishes learn through streams to slide ; Birds through yielding air to glide ; Men with courage she supplies ;
But to women these denies.
What then gives she ? Beauty, this Both their arms and armor is :
She, that can this weapon use,
Fire and sword with ease subdues.
Venus.
Photogravure from the painting by J. K. Wegneli
THE STORY OF CRCESUS. 205
THE STORY OF CRG3SUS. By HERODOTUS.
[For biographical sketch see page 125. ]
Cbossus was a Lydian by birth ; son of Alyattes, and sover eign of the nations on this side the river Halys. He was the first barbarian we know of that subjected some of the Greeks to the payment of tribute, and formed alliances with others. He subdued the Ionians and iEolians, and the Dorians in Asia, and formed an alliance with the Lacedaemonians. Before the reign of Croesus all the Greeks were free ; for the incursion of the Cimmerians into Ionia was not for the purpose of subject ing states, but an irruption for plunder.
The government, which formerly belonged to the Heraclidae, passed in the following manner to the family of Croesus, who were called Mermnadae. Candaules was tyrant of Sardis, and a descendant of Hercules. He was enamored of his own wife, and thought her by far the most beautiful of women. Gyges, one of his bodyguard, happened to be his especial favorite ; and to him Candaules confided his most important affairs, and moreover extolled the beauty of his wife in exaggerated terms. At last (for he was fated to be miserable) he addressed Gyges as follows: "Gyges, as I think you do not believe me when I speak of my wife's beauty (for the ears of men are natu rally more incredulous than their eyes), you must contrive to see her naked. " "
But he, exclaiming loudly, answered :
Sire, what a shock ing proposal do you make, bidding me behold my queen
naked ! With her clothes a woman puts off her modesty. Wise maxims have been of old laid down by men; from these it is our duty to learn : among them is the following : —
" ' Let every man look to the things that concern himself. ' I am persuaded that she is the most beautiful of her sex, but I entreat of you not to require what is wicked. "
Saying thus, Gyges fought off the proposal, dreading lest some harm should befall himself ; but the king answered : " Gyges, take courage, and be not afraid of me, as if I desired to make trial of you by speaking thus ; nor of my wife, lest any harm should befall you from her : for I will so contrive that she shall not know she has been seen by you. I will place you behind the open door of the apartment in which we
206 THE STORY OF CRCESUS.
sleep : as soon as I enter, my wife will come to bed. There stands by the entrance a chair ; on this she will lay her gar ments one by one as she takes them off, and then she will give you an opportunity to look at her at your leisure : but when she steps from the chair to the bed, and you are at her back, be careful that she does not see you as you are going out by the door. "
Gyges therefore, rinding he could not escape, prepared to obey. And Candaules, when it seemed to be time to go to bed, led him to the chamber, and the lady soon afterward appeared, and Gyges saw her enter and lay her clothes on the chair : when he was at her back, as the lady was going to the bed, he crept secretly out, but she saw him as he was going away. Perceiv ing what her husband had done, she neither cried out through modesty, nor appeared to notice purposing to take vengeance on Candaules for among the Lydians and almost all the bar barians, deemed great disgrace even for man to be seen naked.
everything in order, else I shall never finish. It is not an army, as you think, Phanes, but an embassy from Cambyses, the present king of powerful Persia, which is on its way hither. I heard at Samos that they have already reached Miletus. They will arrive here in a few days. Relations of the king, and even old Croesus of Lydia, are with them. We shall see rare splendor. No one knows the reason of their coming, but it is thought that King Cambyses will propose an alliance to Amasis ; it is even said that the king wishes to woo the daughter of the Pharaohs. "
" An alliance," said Phanes, with an incredulous shrug ; "the Persians already rule half the world. All the chief pow ers of Asia bow to their scepter. Only Egypt and our Greece have remained safe from the conqueror. "
" You forget golden India, and the great nomadic races of Asia," returned Callias. "You also forget that an empire which consists of seventy races, possessing different languages and customs, always bears in it the seeds of rebellion, and must be on its guard against foreign wars, lest some of the provinces seize the favorable moment for revolt when the main body of the army is absent. Ask the Milesians whether they would keep quiet, if they heard that the chief forces of their oppressor
had been defeated in battle. "
Theopompus, the Milesian merchant, interrupted him and
cried eagerly, "If the Persians are defeated in war, they will be attacked by a hundred foes, and my countrymen will not be the last to rise against the weakened tyrant. "
" Whatever the intentions of the Persians may be," contin ued"Callias, " I maintain that they will be here in three days. " And so your oracle will be fulfilled, happy Aristomachus,"
cried Rhodopis. "The horsemen from the mountains can be none other than the Persians. When they reach the shores of the Nile, the five ephors will have changed their minds and you, the father of two Olympic victors, will be recalled. Fill the goblets again, Cnacias. Let us drink the last cup to the manes of famous Lysander, and then, though unwillingly, I must warn you of the approach of day. The host who loves his guests rises from table when the joy reaches its climax. The pleasant memory of this untroubled evening will soon bring you back to this house, whereas you would be less willing to return if you were forced to think of the hours of depression which followed your enjoyment. "
182 MAXIMS OF THEOGNIS.
All the guests agreed with Rhodopis, and Ibycus praised the festive and pleasurable excitement of the evening and called her a true disciple of Pythagoras. Every one prepared for depar ture ; even the Sybarite, who, to drown the emotion which an noyed him, had drunk immoderately, raised himself from his comfortable position with the help of his slaves who had been summoned, and muttered something about violated hospitality.
When Rhodopis held out her hand to him on bidding him farewell, he cried, overcome by the wine : " By Hercules, Rho dopis, you turn us out-doors as if we were importunate credit ors. I am not used to leaving the table as long as I can stand, and still less used to being shown the door like a parasite. "
"Do you not understand, you immoderate drinker ? " began Rhodopis, trying to excuse herself and smiling ; but Philoinus, who in his present mood was irritated by this retort, laughed scornfully and cried, staggering to the door : " You call me an immoderate drinker : well, I call you an insolent slave. By Dionysus, it is easy to see what you were in your
Farewell, slave of Iadmon and Xanthus, freed slave of Charaxus. "
He had not finished, when the Spartan threw himself on him, gave him a violent blow with his fist, and carried the unconscious man, like a child, to the boat which with his slaves awaited him at the gate of the garden.
MAXIMS OF THEOGNIS.
(About 540 b. c. )
Not even Zeus pleases everybody, either when he rains or when he holds up.
From the good you will learn good : if you mix with the bad you will lose what sense you have.
Do not tell everything, even to a friend.
When you undertake great affairs, confide in but few.
Do not caress me in words, and keep your mind and heart
elsewhere. Either love me sincerely, or disown and hate me. Never love a mean man ; he will not rescue you from calam
ity nor share what he has with you. To do good to the base is like sowing the sea. The mean are never satisfied : one slip cancels all former benefits. Comrades in feasting are plenty ; not in serious matters.
youth.
MAXIMS OF THEOGNIS. 183
Do not brag in public : no one knows what a night and a day may bring forth.
A man borne down by poverty can say or do nothing he likes : his tongue is tied. [" It is hard for an empty bag to stand upright. "]
Wealth mixes the breed. [Nobles and plebeians intermarry where wealth is present. ]
Conform your temper to that of each friend. Be like the polypus, which looks like the rock it has twisted its arms around. [All things to all men. ]
The mean are not wholly mean from birth, but from associa tion with the mean. They learn bad actions, backbiting, and insolence from believing what the others say.
Among the mad I am very mad ; among the just I am justest of all.
Give a mean man wealth, still he cannot keep his mean ness in.
Do not give up a friend from belief in every slander.
If one should be wroth at all his friends' faults, there would be no friendship.
Beguile your enemy with good words ; but when you have him in your power, take vengeance on him.
Of all things on earth, not to be born is best ; but if born, one should die as soon as possible.
The mean man has no spirit either in weal or woe.
Be it mine to have moderate wealth, but bestow my enemies' riches on my friends.
It is easier to make a mean man out of a noble one than a noble out of a mean.
Fullness destroys more men than famine.
It is disgraceful for a drunken man to be among sober ones, and disgraceful for a sober man to remain among drunken ones. [This is sometimes translated, " It is disgraceful to be drunk
where others are sober, and disgraceful to be sober where others
are drunk. "]
No man lives unblamed. He is best off whom most people
care nothing about.
Economy is best ; for no one wails even for the dead unless
property has been left behind.
There are two evils in doing good to a mean man : you will
be stripped of your goods, and get no thanks.
Drink when other men drink ; but when you are troubled,
let no man know it.
184 OLIGARCHY AND DESPOTISM IN GREECE.
OLIGARCHY AND DESPOTISM IN GREECE. By GEORGE GROTE.
[George Grote, the greatest modern historian of ancient Greece, perhaps the greatest man altogether who ever wrote history, was of mingled German, Huguenot French, Irish, and English blood; born in Kent, 1794; died in Lon don, 1871. Educated till sixteen at the Charterhouse School in London, he then entered his father's banking house, still using all his leisure time for study. A massive scholar, thinker, and logician, he was also (what even for his works of pure scholarship was of the first value) a practical and experienced man of affairs. He worked hard for Parliamentary reform, and was member of Parlia ment 1832-1841 ; strove annually to introduce voting by ballot, and was a great humanist with a deep sympathy for the " dim common millions. " This ardent democratic feeling was the genesis of his immortal " History of Greece " (twelve volumes, 1846-1856), which no progress in archaeological discovery will ever supersede. In 1865 he brought out his " Plato " ; after his death his unfinished " Aristotle " and two volumes of minor writings were published, and his widow wrote a biography. In his later years he was president of University College and vice-chancellor of London University (unsectarian). ]
The monarchical institutions and monarchical tendencies prevalent throughout mediaeval and modern Europe have been both generated and perpetuated by causes peculiar to those societies ; whilst in the Hellenic societies such causes had no place : the primitive sentiment entertained toward the heroic king died out, passing first into indifference, next — after experience of the despots — into determined antipathy.
To an historian like Mr. Mitford, full of English ideas re specting government, this anti-monarchical feeling appears of the nature of insanity, and the Grecian communities like mad men without a keeper : while the greatest of all benefactors is the hereditary king who conquers them from without, the sec ond best is the home despot, who seizes the acropolis and puts his fellow-citizens under coercion. There cannot be a more cer tain way of misinterpreting and distorting Grecian phenomena than to read them in this spirit, which reverses the maxims both of prudence and morality current in the ancient world. The hatred of kings as it stood among the Greeks (whatever may be thought about a similar feeling now) was a preeminent vir tue, flowing directly from the noblest and wisest part of their nature. It was a consequence of their deep conviction of the necessity of universal legal restraint ; it was a direct expression of that regulated sociality which required the control of indi
OLIGARCHY AND DESPOTISM IN GREECE. 185
vidual passion from every one without exception, and most of all from him to whom power was confided. The conception which the Greeks formed of an unresponsible one, or of a king who could do no wrong, may be expressed in the pregnant words of Herodotus, " He subverts the customs of the country ; he violates women ; he puts men to death without trial. " No other conception of the probable tendencies of kingship was justified either by a general knowledge of human nature, or by political experience as it stood from Solon downward ; no other feeling than abhorrence could be entertained for the character so con ceived ; no other than a man of unprincipled ambition would ever seek to invest himself with it.
Our larger political experience has taught us to modify this opinion, by showing that under the conditions of monarchy in the best governments of modern Europe the enormities de scribed by Herodotus do not take place ; and that it is possible, by means of representative constitutions acting under a certain force of manners, customs, and historical recollection, to obviate many of the mischiefs likely to flow from proclaiming the duty of peremptory obedience to an hereditary and unresponsible king, who cannot be changed without extra-constitutional force. But such larger observation was not open to Aristotle, the wisest as well as the most cautious of ancient theorists ; nor if it had been open, could he have applied with assurance its lessons to the governments of the single cities of Greece. The theory of a constitutional king, especially, as it exists in England, would have appeared to him impracticable : to establish a king who will reign without governing ; in whose name all government is carried on, yet whose personal will is in practice of little or no effect ; exempt from all responsibility, without making use
of the exemption ; receiving from every one unmeasured dem onstrations of homage, which are never translated into act ex cept within the bounds of a known law ; surrounded with all the paraphernalia of power, yet acting as a passive instrument in the hands of ministers marked out for his choice by indica tions which he is not at liberty to resist.
This remarkable combination of the fiction of superhuman grandeur and license with the reality of an invisible strait- waistcoat, is what an Englishman has in his mind when he speaks of a constitutional king. The events of our history have brought it to pass in England, amid an aristocracy the most powerful that the world has yet seen ; but we have still to learn
186 OLIGARCHY AND DESPOTISM IN GREECE.
whether it can be made to exist elsewhere, or whether the oc currence of a single king, at once able, aggressive, and resolute, may not suffice to break it up. To Aristotle, certainly, it could not have appeared otherwise than unintelligible and impracti cable ; not likely even in a single case, but altogether incon ceivable as a permanent system, and with all the diversities of temper inherent in the successive members of an hereditary dynasty. When the Greeks thought of a man exempt from legal responsibility, they conceived him as really and truly such, in deed as well as in name, with a defenseless community ex posed to his oppressions ; and their fear and hatred of him was measured by their reverence for a government of equal law and free speech, with the ascendency of which their whole hopes of security were associated —in the democracy of Athens more perhaps than in any other portion of Greece. And this feeling, as it was one of the best in the Greek mind, so it was also one of the most widely spread — a point of unanimity highly valu able amid so many points of dissension. We cannot construe or criticise it by reference to the feelings of modern Europe, still less to the very peculiar feelings of England, respecting kingship.
When we try to explain the course of Grecian affairs, not from the circumstances of other societies, but from those of the Greeks themselves, we shall see good reason for the discon tinuance as well as for the dislike of kingship. Had the Greek mind been as stationary and unimproving as that of the Ori entals, the discontent with individual kings might have led to no other change than the deposition of a bad king in favor of one who promised to be better, without ever extending the views of the people to any higher conception than that of a personal government. But the Greek mind was of a progres sive character, capable of conceiving and gradually of realizing amended social combinations. Moreover, it is in the nature of
things that any government — regal, oligarchical, or democrati- cal — which comprises only a single city is far less stable than if it embraced a wider surface and a larger population. When that semi-religious and mechanical submission, which made up for the personal deficiencies of the heroic king, became too feeble to serve as a working principle, the petty prince was in too close contact with his people, and too humbly furnished out in every way, to get up a prestige or delusion of any other kind. He had no means of overawing their imaginations by
OLIGARCHY AND DESPOTISM IN GREECE. 187
that combination of pomp, seclusion, and mystery which He rodotus and Xenophon so well appreciate among the artifices of kingcraft. As there was no new feeling upon which a perpetual chief could rest his power, so there was nothing in the circumstances of the community which rendered the main tenance of such a dignity necessary for visible and effective union. In a single city, and a small circumjacent com munity, collective deliberation and general rules, with tempo rary and responsible magistrates, were practicable without difficulty.
To maintain an unresponsible king, and then to contrive accompaniments which shall extract from him the benefits of responsible government, is in reality a highly complicated sys tem, though, as has been remarked, we have become familiar with it in modern Europe. The more simple and obvious change is, to substitute one or more temporary and responsible magistrates in place of the king himself. Such was the course which affairs took in Greece. The inferior chiefs, who had originally served as council to the king, found it possible to supersede him, and to alternate the functions of administration among themselves ; retaining probably the occasional convoca tion of the general assembly, as it had existed before, and with as little practical efficacy. Such was in substance the charac ter of that mutation which occurred generally throughout the Grecian states, with the exception of Sparta : kingship was abolished, and an oligarchy took its place — a council deliberat ing" collectively, deciding general matters by the majority of voices, and selecting some individuals of their own body as temporary and accountable administrators. It was always an oligarchy which arose on the defeasance of the heroic kingdom. The age of democratical movement was yet far distant ; and the condition of the people — the general body of freemen — was not immediately altered, either for better or worse, by the revo lution. The small number of privileged persons, among whom the kingly attributes were distributed and put in rotation, were those nearest in rank to the king himself ; perhaps members of the same large gens with him, and pretending to a common divine and heroic descent. As far as we can make out, this change seems to have taken place in the natural course of events and without violence. Sometimes the kingly lineage died out and was not replaced ; sometimes, on the death of a king, his son and successor was acknowledged only as archon
188 OLIGARCHY AND DESPOTISM IN GREECE.
— or perhaps set aside altogether to make room for a Prytanis or president out of the men of rank around.
Such oligarchical governments, varying in their details but analogous in general features, were common throughout the cities of Greece proper, as well as of the colonies, throughout the seventh century B. C. Though they had little immediate tendency to benefit the mass of the freemen, yet when we com pare them with the antecedent heroic government, they indi cate an important advance —the first adoption of a deliberate and preconceived system in the management of public affairs. They exhibit the first evidences of new and important political ideas in the Greek mind — the separation of legislative and executive powers ; the former vested in a collective body, not merely deliberating but also finally deciding — while the latter is confided to temporary individual magistrates, responsible to that body at the end of their period of office. We are first in troduced to a community of citizens, according to the definition of Aristotle — men qualified, and thinking themselves qualified, to take turns in command and obedience. The collective sov ereign, called The City, is thus constituted. It is true that this first community of citizens comprised only a small propor tion of the men personally free ; but the ideas upon which it was founded began gradually to dawn upon the minds of all. Political power had lost its heaven-appointed character, and had become an attribute legally communicable as well as determined to certain definite ends : and the ground was thus laid for those thousand questions which agitated so many of the Grecian cities during the ensuing three centuries, partly respecting its appor tionment, partly respecting its employment, — questions some times raised among the members of the privileged oligarchy itself, sometimes between that order as a whole and the non- privileged many. The seeds of those popular movements, which called forth so much profound emotion, so much bitter antipathy, so much energy and talent, throughout the Grecian world, with different modifications in each particular city, may thus be traced back to that early revolution which erected the primitive oligarchy upon the ruins of the heroic kingdom.
How these first oligarchies were administered we have no direct information. But the narrow and anti-popular interests naturally belonging to a privileged few, together with the gen eral violence of private manners and passions, leave us no ground for presuming favorably respecting either their pru
OLIGARCHY AND DESPOTISM IN GREECE. 189
dence or their good feeling; and the facts which we learn respecting the condition of Attica prior to the Solonian legisla tion raise inferences all of an unfavorable character.
The first shock which they received and by which so many of them were subverted, arose from the usurpers called Despots, who employed the prevalent discontents both as pretexts and as aids for their own personal ambition, while their very fre quent success seems to imply that such discontents were wide spread as well as serious. These despots arose out of the bosom of the oligarchies, but not all in the same manner. Sometimes the executive magistrate, upon whom the oligarchy themselves had devolved important administrative powers for a certain temporary period, became unfaithful to his choosers, and ac quired sufficient ascendency to retain his dignity permanently in spite of them — perhaps even to transmit it to his son. In other places, and seemingly more often, there arose that noted character called the Demagogue, of whom historians, both ancient and modern, commonly draw so repulsive a picture : a man of energy and ambition, sometimes even a member of the oligarchy itself, who stood forward as champion of the griev ances and sufferings of the non-privileged many, acquired their favor, and employed their strength so effectively as to put down the oligarchy by force, and constitute himself despot. A third form of despot, some presumptuous wealthy man, like Kylon at Athens, without even the pretense of popularity, was occa sionally emboldened, by the success of similar adventurers in other places, to hire a troop of retainers and seize the acropolis. And there were examples, though rare, of a fourth variety — the lineal descendant of the ancient kings — who, instead of suffering himself to be restricted or placed under control by the oligarchy, found means to subjugate them, and to extort by force an ascendency as great as that which his forefathers had enjoyed by consent. To these must be added, in several Grecian states, the ^Esymnete or Dictator, a citizen formally invested with supreme and unresponsible power, placed in com mand of the military force, and armed with a standing body guard, but only for a time named, and in order to deal with some urgent peril or ruinous internal dissension. The person thus exalted, always enjoying a large measure of confidence, and generally a man of ability, was sometimes so successful, or made himself so essential to the community, that the term of
his office was prolonged, and he became practically despot for
190 OLIGARCHY AND DESPOTISM IN GREECE.
life ; or even if the community were not disposed to concede to him this permanent ascendency, he was often strong enough to keep it against their will.
From the general statement of Thucydides as well as of Aristotle, we learn that the seventh and sixth centuries B. C. were centuries of progress for the Greek cities generally, in wealth, in power, and in population ; and the numerous colonies founded during this period will furnish further illustration of such progressive tendencies. Now the changes just mentioned in the Grecian governments, imperfectly as we know them, are on the whole decided evidences of advancing citizenship. For the heroic government, with which Grecian communities begin, is the rudest and most infantine of all governments : destitute even of the pretense of system or security, incapable of being in any way fore known, and depending only upon the accidental variations in the character of the reigning individual, who in most cases, far from serving as a protection to the poor against the rich and great, was likely to indulge his passions in the same unrestrained way as the latter, and with still greater impunity.
The despots, who in so many towns succeeded and supplanted this oligarchical government, though they governed on princi ples usually narrow and selfish, and often oppressively cruel, " taking no thought (to use the emphatic words of Thucydides) except each for his own body and his own family " — yet since they were not strong enough to crush the Greek mind, im printed upon it a painful but improving political lesson, and contributed much to enlarge the range of experience as well as to determine the subsequent cast of feeling. They partly broke down the wall of distinction between the people — properly so called, the general mass of freemen — and the oligarchy: indeed the demagogue despots are interesting as the first evidence of the growing importance of the people in political affairs. The demagogue stood forward as representing the feelings and interests of the people against the governing few; probably availing himself of some special cases of ill-usage, and taking pains to be conciliatory and generous in his own personal be havior. When the people by their armed aid had enabled him to overthrow the existing rulers, they had thus the satisfaction of seeing their own chief in possession of the supreme power, but they acquired neither political rights nor increased securi
OLIGARCHY AND DESPOTISM IN GREECE. 191
ties for themselves. What measure of positive advantage they may have reaped, beyond that of seeing their previous oppres sors humiliated, we know too little to determine. But even the worst of despots was more formidable to the rich than to the poor ; and the latter may, perhaps, have gained by the change, in comparative importance, notwithstanding their share in the rigors and exactions of a government which had no other permanent foundation than naked fear.
A remark made by Aristotle deserves especial notice here, as illustrating the political advance and education of the Grecian communities. He draws a marked distinction between the early demagogue of the seventh and sixth centuries, and the later demagogue, such as he himself, and the generations im mediately preceding, had witnessed. The former was a military chief, daring and full of resource, who took arms at the head of a body of popular insurgents, put down the government by force, and made himself the master both of those whom he de posed and of those by whose aid he deposed them ; while the latter was a speaker, possessed of all the talents necessary for moving an audience, but neither inclined to, nor qualified for, armed attack — accomplishing all his purposes by pacific and constitutional methods. This valuable change — substituting discussion and the vote of an assembly in place of an appeal to arms, and procuring for the pronounced decision of the assembly such an influence over men's minds as to render it final and respected even by dissentients — arose from the continued practical working of democratical institutions. I shall have occasion, at a later period of this history, to estimate the value of that unmeasured obloquy which has been heaped on the Athenian demagogues of the Peloponnesian war — Kleon and Hyperbolus ; but assuming the whole to be well founded, it will not be the less true that these men were a material improve ment on the earlier demagogues such as Kypselus and Peisis- tratus, who employed the armed agency of the people for the purpose of subverting the established government and acquiring despotic authority for themselves. The demagogue was essen tially a leader of opposition, who gained his influence by de nouncing the men in real ascendency and in actual executive functions. Now under the early oligarchies his opposition could be shown only by armed insurrection, and it conducted him either to personal sovereignty or to destruction. But the growth of democratical institutions insured both to him and to
192 OLIGARCHY AND DESPOTISM IN GREECE.
his political opponents full liberty of speech, and a paramount assembly to determine between them ; whilst it both limited the range of his ambition, and set aside the appeal to armed force. The railing demagogue of Athens at the time of the Peloponnesian war (even if we accept literally the representa tions of his worst enemies) was thus a far less mischievous and dangerous person than the fighting demagogue of the earlier centuries ; and the " growth of habits of public speaking " (to use Aristotle's expression) was the cause of the difference. Opposition by the tongue was a beneficial substitute for op position by the sword.
The rise of these despots on the ruins of the previous oligarchies was, in appearance, a return to the principles of the heroic age — the restoration of a government of personal will in place of that systematic arrangement known as the City. But the Greek mind had so far outgrown those early principles, that no new government founded thereupon could meet with willing acquiescence, except under some temporary excitement. At first doubtless the popularity of the usurper — combined with the fervor of his partisans and the expulsion or intimidation of opponents, and further enhanced by the punishment of rich oppressors —was sufficient to procure for him obedience ; and prudence on his part might prolong this undisputed rule for a considerable period, perhaps even throughout his whole life. But Aristotle intimates that these governments, even when they began well, had a constant tendency to become worse and worse. Discontent manifested itself, and was aggravated rather than repressed by the vio lence employed against it, until at length the despot became a prey to mistrustful and malevolent anxiety, losing any measure of equity or benevolent sympathy which might once have animated him.
If he was fortunate enough to bequeath his authority to his son, the latter, educated in a corrupt atmosphere and surrounded by parasites, contracted dispositions yet more noxious and unsocial. His youthful appetites were more ungovernable, while he was deficient in the prudence and vigor which had been indispensable to the self-accom plished rise of his father. For such a position, mercenary guards and a fortified acropolis were the only stay — guards fed at the expense of the citizens, and thus requiring con stant exactions on behalf of that which was nothing better
OLIGARCHY AND DESPOTISM IN GREECE. 193
than a hostile garrison. It was essential to the security of the despot that he should keep down the spirit of the free people whom he governed ; that he should isolate them from each other, and prevent those meetings and mutual com munications which Grecian cities habitually presented in the School, the Lesche, or the Palaestra ; that he should strike off the overtopping ears of corn in the field (to use the Greek locution), or crush the exalted and enterprising minds. Nay, he had even to a certain extent an interest in degrading and impoverishing them, or at least in debarring them from the acquisition either of wealth or leisure. The extensive con structions undertaken by Polykrates at Samos, as well as the rich donations of Periander to the temple at Olympia, are con sidered by Aristotle to have been extorted by these despots with the express view of engrossing the time and exhausting the means of their subjects.
It is not to be imagined that all were alike cruel or un principled. But the perpetual supremacy of one man or one family had become so offensive to the jealousy of those who felt themselves to be his equals, and to the general feeling of the people, that repression and severity were inevitable, whether originally intended or not. And even if an usurper, having once entered upon his career of violence, grew sick and averse to its continuance, abdication only left him in imminent peril, exposed to the vengeance of those whom he had injured —unless indeed he could clothe himself with the mantle of religion, and stipulate with the people to become priest of some temple and deity ; in which case his new function protected him, just as the tonsure and the monastery sheltered a dethroned prince in the middle ages. Several of the despots were patrons of music and poetry, courting the good will of contemporary intellectual men by invitation as well as by reward. Moreover, there were some cases, such as that of Peisistratus and his sons at Athens, in which an attempt was made (analogous to that of Augustus at Rome) to reconcile the reality of personal omnipotence with a cer tain respect for preexisting forms. In such instances the administration —though not unstained by guilt, never other wise than unpopular, and carried on by means of foreign mercenaries — was doubtless practically milder. But cases of this character were rare ; and the maxims usual with Grecian despots were personified in Periander, the Kypselid of Corinth
VOL. III. — 13
194 OLIGARCHY AND DESPOTISM IN GREECE.
— a harsh and brutal person, though not destitute either of vigor or intelligence.
The position of a Grecian despot, as depicted by Plato, by Xenophon, and by Aristotle, and further sustained by the indications in Herodotus, Thucydides, and Isokrates, though always coveted by ambitious men, reveals clearly enough " those wounds and lacerations of mind " whereby the internal Erinnys avenged the community upon the usurper who tram pled them down. Far from considering success in usurpation as a justification of the attempt (according to the theories now prevalent respecting Cromwell and Bonaparte, who are often blamed because they kept out a legitimate king, but never because they seized an unauthorized power over the peo ple), these philosophers regard the despot as among the great est of criminals. The man who assassinated him was an object of public honor and reward, and a virtuous Greek would seldom have scrupled to carry his sword concealed in myrtle branches, like Harmodius and Aristogeiton, for the execution of the deed. A station which overtopped the re straints and obligations involved in citizenship was under stood at the same time to forfeit all title to the common sym pathy and protection ; so that it was unsafe for the despot to visit in person those great Pan-Hellenic games in which his own chariot might perhaps have gained the prize, and in which the Theors or sacred envoys, whom he sent as representa tives of his Hellenic city, appeared with ostentatious pomp. A government carried on under these unpropitious circum stances could never be otherwise than short-lived. Though the individual daring enough to seize it often found means to preserve it for the term of his own life, yet the sight of a despot living to old age was rare, and the transmission of his power to his son still more so.
Amid the numerous points of contention in Grecian politi cal morality, this rooted antipathy to a permanent hereditary ruler stood apart as a sentiment almost unanimous, in which the thirst for preeminence felt by the wealthy few, and the love of equal freedom in the bosoms of the many, alike con curred. It first began among the oligarchies of the seventh and sixth centuries B. C. , being a reversal of that pronounced monarchical sentiment which we now read in the Iliad ; and it was transmitted by them to the democracies which did not arise until a later period. The conflict between oligarchy and des
OLIGARCHY AND DESPOTISM IN GREECE. 195
potism preceded that between oligarchy and democracy, the Lacedaemonians standing forward actively on both occasions to uphold the oligarchical principle.
A mingled sentiment of fear and repugnance led them to put down despotism in several cities of Greece during the sixth century B. C. , just as, during their contest with Athens in the following century, they assisted the oligarchical party to overthrow democracy. And it was thus that the demagogue despot of these earlier times — bring ing out the name of the people as a pretext, and the arms of the people as a means of accomplishment, for his own ambitious designs — served as a preface to the reality of democracy which manifested itself at Athens a short time before the Persian war, as a development of the seed planted by Solon.
As far as our imperfeot information enables us to trace, these early oligarchies of the Grecian states, against which the first usurping despots contended, contained in themselves more repulsive elements of inequality, and more mischievous barriers between the component parts of the population, than the oligarchies of later days. What was true of Hellas as an aggregate, was true, though in a less degree, of each separate community which went to compose that aggregate. Each included a variety of clans, orders, religious brotherhoods, and local or professional sections, very imperfectly cemented to gether ; so that the oligarchy was not (like the government so denominated in subsequent times) the government of a rich few over the less rich and the poor, but that of a peculiar order, sometimes a patrician order, over all the remaining society.
In such a case the subject Many might number opulent and substantial proprietors as well as the governing Few ; but these subject Many would themselves be broken into different hetero geneous fractions not heartily sympathizing with each other, perhaps not intermarrying together, nor partaking of the same religious rites. The country population, or villagers who tilled the land, seem in these early times to have been held to a pain ful dependence on the great proprietors who lived in the forti fied town, and to have been distinguished by a dress and habits of their own, which often drew upon them an unfriendly nick name. These town proprietors often composed the governing class in early Grecian states ; while their subjects consisted : 1. Of the dependent cultivators living in the district around, by whom their lands were tilled. 2. Of a certain number of small, self-working proprietors (ainovp^oX), whose possessions
196 OLIGARCHY AND DESPOTISM IN GREECE.
were too scanty to maintain more than themselves by the labor of their own hands on their own plot of ground — residing either in the country or the town, as the case might be. 3. Of those who lived in the town, having not land, but exercising handicraft, arts, or commerce.
The governing proprietors went by the name of the Gamori or Geomori, according as the Doric or Ionic dialect might be used in describing them, since they were found in states belong ing to one race as well as to the other. They appear to have constituted a close order, transmitting their privileges to their children, but admitting no new members to a participation. The principle called by Greek thinkers a Timocracy (the ap portionment of political rights and privileges according to comparative property) seems to have been little, if at all, ap plied in the earlier times. We know no example of it earlier than Solon. So that by the natural multiplication of families and mutation of property, there would come to be many in dividual Gamori possessing no land at all, and perhaps worse off than those small freeholders who did not belong to the order ; while some of these latter freeholders, and some of the artisans and traders in the towns, might at the same time be rising in wealth and importance. Under a political classification such as this, of which the repulsive inequality was aggravated by a rude state of manners, and which had no flexibility to meet the changes in relative position among individual inhabitants, dis content and outbreaks were unavoidable. The earliest despot, usually a wealthy man of the disfranchised class, became cham pion and leader of the malcontents. However oppressive his rule might be, at least it was an oppression which bore with indis criminate severity upon all the fractions of the population ; and when the hour of reaction against him or against his successor arrived, so that the common enemy was expelled by the united efforts of all, it was hardly possible to revive the preexisting system of exclusion and inequality without some considerable abatements.
THE ISLES OF GREECE. 197
THE ISLES OF GREECE. By LORD BYRON.
[Lord George Noel Gordon Byron : A famous English poet ; born in Lon don, January 22, 1788. At the age of ten he succeeded to the estate and title of his granduncle William, fifth Lord Byron. He was educated"at Harrow and Cambridge, and in 1807 published his first volume of poems, Hours of Idle ness. " After a tour through eastern Europe he brought out two cantos of " Childe Harold," which met with instantaneous success, and soon after he mar ried the heiress Miss Millbanke. The union proving unfortunate, Byron left England, and passed several years in Italy. In 1823 he joined the Greek insur gents in Cephalonia, and later at Missolonghi, where he died of a fever April 19, 1824. His chief poetical works are: "Childe Harold," "Don Juan," "Manfred," "Cain," "Marino Faliero," " Sardanapalus," "The Giaour," "Bride of Abydos," "The Corsair," "Lara," and "Mazeppa. "]
The isles of Greece ! The isles of Greece ! Where burning Sappho loved and sung, —
Where grew the arts of war and peace, Where Delos rose and Phoebus sprung !
Eternal summer gilds them yet, — But all, except their sun, is set.
The Scian and the Teian muse,
The hero's harp, the lover's lute,
Have found the fame your shores refuse ; Their place of birth alone is mute
To sounds that echo further west
Than your sires' " Islands of the Blest. "
The mountains look on Marathon, And Marathon looks on the sea ;
And musing there an hour alone,
I dreamed that Greece might still be free ;
For, standing on the Persian's grave, I could not deem myself a slave.
A king sat on the rocky brow
That looks o'er sea-born Salamis ;
And ships by thousands lay below, And men in nations — all were his !
He counted them at break of day —
And when the sun set, where were they ?
THE ISLES OF GREECE.
And where are they ? and where art thou, My country ? On thy voiceless shore
The heroic lay is tuneless now — The heroic bosom beats no more !
And must thy lyre, so long divine, Degenerate into hands like mine ?
'Tis something in the dearth of fame, Though linked among a fettered race,
To feel at least a patriot's shame, Even as I sing, suffuse my face,
For what is left the poet here ?
For Greeks a blush — for Greece a tear.
Must we but weep o'er days more blessed ? Must we but blush ? — Our fathers bled.
Earth! render back from out thy breast A remnant of our Spartan dead !
Of the three hundred grant but three, To make a new Thermopylae !
What! silent still? and silent all? Ah ! no ; the voices of the dead Sound like a distant torrent's fall,
And answer, " Let one living head, But one, arise — we come, we come ! " 'Tis but the living who are dumb.
In vain — in vain ; strike other chords : Fill high the cup with Samian wine !
Leave battles to the Turkish hordes, And shed the blood of Scio's vine !
Hark ! rising to the ignoble call, How answers each bold Bacchanal !
You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet — Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone ?
Of two such lessons, why forget The nobler and the manlier one ?
You have the letters Cadmus gave — Think ye he meant them for a slave ?
THE ISLES OF GREECE.
Fill high the bowl with Samian wine !
We will not think of themes like these !
It made Anacreon's song divine :
He served — but served Polycrates —
A tyrant ; but our masters then Were still at least our countrymen.
The tyrant of the Chersonese
Was freedom's best and bravest friend ;
That tyrant was Miltiades !
Oh ! that the present hour would lend
Another despot of the kind !
Such chains as his were sure to bind.
Fill high the bowl with Samian wine ! On Suli's rock and Parga's shore
Exists the remnant of a line
Such as the Doric mothers bore ;
And there, perhaps, some seed is sown The Heracleidan blood might own.
Trust not for Freedom to the Franks — They have a king who buys and sells;
In native swords and native ranks, The only hope of courage dwells ;
But Turkish force and Latin fraud Would break your shield, however broad.
Fill high the bowl with Samian wine ! — I Our virgins dance beneath the shade
see their glorious black eyes shine : But, gazing on each glowing maid, My own the burning tear drop laves,
To think such breasts must suckle slaves.
Place me on Sunium's marble steep — Where nothing, save the waves and I,
May hear our mutual murmurs sweep : There, swanlike, let me sing and die :
A land of slaves shall ne'er be mine — Dash down yon cup of Samian wine !
200 ANACREONTICS.
ANACREONTICS. School of Anacbeon.
[Ahacreon flourished in the sixth century b. c, and was the chief orna ment for a while of the court of Polycrates, tyrant of Samos. He was ranked first in his age for the lyric of wine and women, and what we now call the "Horatian" philosophy of life; but his manner was so easy to imitate that his own effusions are lost in the swarm of copies. ]
(The first three following translations are by Abraham Cowley. ) Drinking.
The thirsty earth soaks up the rain,
And drinks, and gapes for drink again. The plants suck in the earth and are, With constant drinking, fresh and fair. The sea itself, which one would think Should have but little need of drink, Drinks ten thousand rivers up,
So filled that they o'erflow the cup.
The busy sun (and one would guess
By his drunken, fiery face no less)
Drinks up the sea, and when he 'as done, The moon and stars drink up the sun. They drink and dance by their own light, They drink and revel all the night. Nothing in Nature's sober sound,
But an eternal health goes round.
Fill up the bowl, then, fill it high,
Fill all the glasses there, for why
Should eVry creature drink but I ?
Why, men of morals, tell me why ?
Gold.
A mighty pain to love it
And 'tis pain that pain to miss; But of all pain the greatest pain It to love, but love in vain. Virtue now, nor noble blood,
Nor wit, by love understood; Gold alone does passion move, Gold monopolizes love
is !
is
a
is,
ANACREONTICS.
A curse on her, and on the man,
Who this traffic first began !
A curse on him who found the ore !
A curse on him who digged the store ! A curse on him who did refine it !
A curse on him who first did coin it ! A curse, all curses else above,
On him who used it first in love !
Gold begets in brethren hate,
Gold in families, debate ;
Gold does friendship separate,
Gold does civil wars create ;
These the smallest harms of it !
Gold, alas ! does love beget.
The Gbasshoppeb.
Happy insect ! what can be
In happiness compared to thee ?
Fed with nourishment divine, —
The dewy Morning's gentle wine ! Nature waits upon thee still,
And thy verdant cup does fill ;
'Tis filled wherever thou dost tread, Nature's self's thy Ganymede.
Thou dost drink, and dance, and sing, Happier than the happiest king.
All the fields which thou dost see,
All the plants, belong to thee ;
All that summer hours produce,
Fertile made with early juice ;
Man for thee does sow and plow; Farmer he, and landlord thou !
Thou dost innocently joy,
Nor does thy luxury destroy.
The shepherd gladly heareth thee,
More harmonious than he.
Thee country hinds with gladness hear, Prophet of the ripened year !
Thee Phoebus loves, and does inspire ; Phoebus is himself thy fire.
To thee of all things upon earth,
Life is no longer than thy mirth. Happy insect ! happy thou,
Dost neither age nor winter know ;
ANACREONTICS.
But when thou'st drunk, and danced, and sung Thy fill, the flow'ry leaves among,
(Voluptuous, and wise withal,
Epicurean animal ! )
Sated with thy summer feast, Thou retir'st to endless rest.
(The four following are translated by Thomas Moore. ) Drink while we Mat.
I care not for the idle state
Of Persia's king, the rich, the great !
I envy not the monarch's throne,
Nor wish the treasured gold my own.
But oh ! be mine the rosy braid,
The fervor of my brows to shade ;
Be mine the odors, richly sighing,
Amidst my hoary tresses flying.
To-day I'll haste to quaff my wine,
As if to-morrow ne'er should shine !
But if to-morrow comes, why then —
I'll haste to quaff my wine again.
And thus while all our days are bright,
Nor time has dimmed their bloomy light, Let us the festal hours beguile
With mantling cup and cordial smile ;
And shed from every bowl of wine
The richest drop on Bacchus' shrine !
For death may come with brow unpleasant, May come when least we wish him present, And beckon to the sable shore,
And grimly bid us — drink no more !
"Anttthing that Touches Thee. "
The Phrygian rock, that braves the storm, Was once a weeping matron's form;
And Progue, hapless, frantic maid,
Is now a swallow in the shade.
Oh ! that a mirror's form were mine, To sparkle with that smile divine ; And, like my heart, I then should be Reflecting thee, and only thee !
Or were I, love, the robe which flows O'er every charm that secret glows,
ANACREONTICS.
In many a lucid fold to swim,
And cling and grow to every limb !
Oh ! could I as the streamlet's wave,
Thy warmly mellowing beauties lave,
Or float as perfume on thine hair,
And breathe my soul in fragrance there ! I wish I were the zone that lies
Warm to thy breast, and feels its sighs !
Or like those envious pearls that show So faintly round that neck of snow ; Yes, I would be a happy gem,
Like them to hang, to fade like them. What more would thy Anacreon be ? Oh ! anything that touches thee. — Nay, sandals for those airy feet
Thus to be pressed by thee were sweet !
"Begone, Dull Care. "
I know that Heaven ordains me here To run this mortal life's career ;
The scenes which I have journeyed o'er Beturn no more — alas ! no more !
And all the path I've yet to go
I neither know nor ask to know.
Then surely, Care, thou canst not twine Thy fetters round a soul like mine ; No, no, the heart that feels with me Can never be a slave to thee !
And oh ! before the vital thrill,
Which trembles at my heart, is still, I'll gather joy's luxurious flowers,
And gild with bliss my fading hours ; Bacchus shall bid my winter bloom, And Venus dance me to the tomb !
The Progress op Venus.
And whose immortal hand could shed Upon this disk the ocean's bed ?
And, in a frenzied flight of soul, Sublime as Heaven's eternal pole, Imagine thus, in semblance warm, The Queen of Love's voluptuous form, Floating along the silvery sea
In beauty's naked majesty ?
204
ANACREONTICS.
Oh ! he has given the raptured sight A witching banquet of delight ;
And all those sacred scenes of Love, Where only hallowed eyes may rove, Lie faintly glowing, half concealed, Within the lucid billows veiled.
Light as the leaf that summer's breeze Has wafted o'er the glassy seas,
She floats upon the ocean's breast, Which ondulates in sleepy rest,
And stealing on, she gently pillows
Her bosom on the amorous billows.
Her bosom, like the humid rose,
Her neck, like dewy-sparkling snows, Illume the liquid path she traces,
And burn within the stream's embraces ! In languid luxury soft she glides, Encircled by the azure tides,
Like some fair lily, faint with weeping, Upon a bed of violets sleeping ! Beneath their queen's inspiring glance, The dolphins o'er the green sea dance, Bearing in triumph young Desire,
And baby Love with smiles of fire ! While, sparkling on the silver waves, The tenants of the briny caves Around the pomp in eddies play,
And gleam along the watery way.
(Translated by Thomas Stanley. ) Beauty.
Horns to bulls wise Nature lends ; Horses she with hoofs defends ;
Hares with nimble feet relieves ; Dreadful teeth to lions gives ;
Fishes learn through streams to slide ; Birds through yielding air to glide ; Men with courage she supplies ;
But to women these denies.
What then gives she ? Beauty, this Both their arms and armor is :
She, that can this weapon use,
Fire and sword with ease subdues.
Venus.
Photogravure from the painting by J. K. Wegneli
THE STORY OF CRCESUS. 205
THE STORY OF CRG3SUS. By HERODOTUS.
[For biographical sketch see page 125. ]
Cbossus was a Lydian by birth ; son of Alyattes, and sover eign of the nations on this side the river Halys. He was the first barbarian we know of that subjected some of the Greeks to the payment of tribute, and formed alliances with others. He subdued the Ionians and iEolians, and the Dorians in Asia, and formed an alliance with the Lacedaemonians. Before the reign of Croesus all the Greeks were free ; for the incursion of the Cimmerians into Ionia was not for the purpose of subject ing states, but an irruption for plunder.
The government, which formerly belonged to the Heraclidae, passed in the following manner to the family of Croesus, who were called Mermnadae. Candaules was tyrant of Sardis, and a descendant of Hercules. He was enamored of his own wife, and thought her by far the most beautiful of women. Gyges, one of his bodyguard, happened to be his especial favorite ; and to him Candaules confided his most important affairs, and moreover extolled the beauty of his wife in exaggerated terms. At last (for he was fated to be miserable) he addressed Gyges as follows: "Gyges, as I think you do not believe me when I speak of my wife's beauty (for the ears of men are natu rally more incredulous than their eyes), you must contrive to see her naked. " "
But he, exclaiming loudly, answered :
Sire, what a shock ing proposal do you make, bidding me behold my queen
naked ! With her clothes a woman puts off her modesty. Wise maxims have been of old laid down by men; from these it is our duty to learn : among them is the following : —
" ' Let every man look to the things that concern himself. ' I am persuaded that she is the most beautiful of her sex, but I entreat of you not to require what is wicked. "
Saying thus, Gyges fought off the proposal, dreading lest some harm should befall himself ; but the king answered : " Gyges, take courage, and be not afraid of me, as if I desired to make trial of you by speaking thus ; nor of my wife, lest any harm should befall you from her : for I will so contrive that she shall not know she has been seen by you. I will place you behind the open door of the apartment in which we
206 THE STORY OF CRCESUS.
sleep : as soon as I enter, my wife will come to bed. There stands by the entrance a chair ; on this she will lay her gar ments one by one as she takes them off, and then she will give you an opportunity to look at her at your leisure : but when she steps from the chair to the bed, and you are at her back, be careful that she does not see you as you are going out by the door. "
Gyges therefore, rinding he could not escape, prepared to obey. And Candaules, when it seemed to be time to go to bed, led him to the chamber, and the lady soon afterward appeared, and Gyges saw her enter and lay her clothes on the chair : when he was at her back, as the lady was going to the bed, he crept secretly out, but she saw him as he was going away. Perceiv ing what her husband had done, she neither cried out through modesty, nor appeared to notice purposing to take vengeance on Candaules for among the Lydians and almost all the bar barians, deemed great disgrace even for man to be seen naked.
