A General History for Colleges and High Schools

P >> P. V. N. Myers >> A General History for Colleges and High Schools

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35

1. THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR (431-404 B.C.).

CAUSES OF THE WAR.--During the closing years of the life of Pericles, the
growing jealousy between Athens and Sparta broke out in the long struggle
known as the Peloponnesian War. Pericles had foreseen the coming storm: "I
descry war," said he, "lowering from the Peloponnesus." His whole later
policy looked toward the preparation of Athens for the "irrepressible
conflict."

The immediate causes of the war were, first, the interference of Athens,
on the side of the Corcyraeans, in a quarrel between them and their mother
city Corinth; and secondly, the blockade by the Athenians of Potidaea, on
the Macedonian coast. This was a Corinthian colony, but it was a member of
the Delian league, and was now being chastised by Athens for attempted
secession. Corinth, as the ever-jealous naval rival of Athens, had
endeavored to lend aid to her daughter, but had been worsted in an
engagement with the Athenians.

With affairs in this shape, Corinth, seconded by other states that had
causes of complaint against Athens, appealed to Sparta, as the head of the
Dorian alliance, for aid and justice. The Spartans, after listening to the
deputies of both sides, decided that the Athenians had been guilty of
injustice, and declared for war. The resolution of the Spartans was
endorsed by the Peloponnesian confederation, and apparently approved by
the Delphian oracle, which, in response to an inquiry of the Spartans as
to what would be the issue of the proposed undertaking, assured them that
"they would gain the victory, if they fought with all their might."

COMPARISON OF THE RESOURCES OF SPARTA AND OF ATHENS.--The resources of
Hellas were, at the outbreak of the war, very evenly divided between the
two parties. With Sparta were all the states of the Peloponnesus, save
Argos and Achaia, while beyond the Isthmus the Boeotian League, headed by
Thebes, and other states were her allies. Together, these states could
raise a land force of sixty thousand men, besides a considerable naval
armament, Corinth being especially strong in ships.

Athens commanded all the resources of the subject cities--about three
hundred in number, with twice as many smaller towns--of her great maritime
empire. Her independent allies were Chios, Lesbos, Corcyra, and other
states. Of course the chief strength of Athens lay in her splendid navy.

THE BEGINNING: ATTACK UPON PLATAEA BY THE THEBANS.--The first act in the
long and terrible drama was enacted at night, within the walls of Plataea.
This city, though in Boeotia, was under the protection of Athens, and
would have nothing to do with the Boeotian League.

Anxious to get possession of this place before the actual outbreak of the
war which they saw to be inevitable, the Thebans planned its surprise and
capture. Three hundred Thebans gained access to the unguarded city in the
dead of night, and marching to the public square, summoned the Plataeans to
exchange the Athenian for a Boeotian alliance.

The Plataeans were upon the point of acceding to all the demands made upon
them, when, discovering the small number of the enemy, they attacked and
overpowered them in the darkness, and took a hundred and eighty of them
prisoners. These captives they afterwards murdered, in violation, as the
Thebans always maintained, of a sacred promise that their lives should be
spared. This wretched affair at Plataea precipitated the war (431 B.C.).

INVASION OF ATTICA: PESTILENCE AT ATHENS.--A Spartan army was soon
overrunning Attica, while an Athenian fleet was ravaging the coasts of the
Peloponnesus. Pericles persuaded the country people of Attica to abandon
their villas and hamlets and gather within the defences of the city. He
did not deem it prudent to risk a battle in the open fields. From the
walls of Athens the people could see the flames of their burning villages
and farmhouses, as the enemy ravaged the plains of Attica up to the very
gates of the city. It required all the persuasion of Pericles to restrain
them from issuing in a body from behind the ramparts and rushing to the
defence of their homes.

The second year the Lacedaemonians again ravaged the fields about Athens,
and drove the Athenians almost to frenzy with the sight of the flame and
smoke of such property as had escaped the destruction of the previous
year. To increase their misery, a pestilence broke out within the crowded
city, and added its horrors to the already unbearable calamities of war.
No pen could picture the despair and gloom that settled over the city.
Athens lost, probably, one-fourth of her fighting men. Pericles, who had
been the very soul and life of Athens through these dark days, fell a
victim to the plague (429 B.C.). In dying, he said he considered his
greatest praise to be that "he had never caused an Athenian to put on
mourning."

After the death of Pericles the leadership of affairs at Athens fell into
the hands of unprincipled demagogues, of whom Cleon was chief. The mob
element got control of the popular assembly, so that hereafter we shall
find many of its actions characterized neither by virtue nor wisdom.

DESPERATE AND CRUEL CHARACTER OF THE WAR.--On both sides the war was waged
with the utmost vindictiveness and cruelty. As a rule, all the men
captured by either side were killed.

In the year 428 B.C. the city of Mytilene, on the island of Lesbos,
revolted from the Athenians. With the rebellion suppressed, the fate of
the Mytileneans was in the hands of the Athenian assembly. Cleon proposed
that all the men of the place, six thousand in number, should be slain,
and the women and children sold as slaves. This infamous decree was
passed, and a galley despatched bearing the sentence for execution to the
Athenian general at Mytilene.

By the next morning, however, the Athenians had repented of their hasty
and cruel resolution. A second meeting of the assembly was hurriedly
called; the barbarous vote was repealed; and a swift trireme, bearing the
reprieve, set out in anxious haste to overtake the former galley, which
had twenty-four hours the start. The trireme reached the island just in
time to prevent the execution of the barbarous edict.

The second resolution of the Athenians, though more discriminating than
the first decree, was quite severe enough. Over one thousand of the nobles
of Mytilene were killed, the city was destroyed, and the larger part of
the lands of the island given to citizens of Athens.

Still more unrelenting and cruel were the Spartans. In the summer of the
same year that the Athenians wreaked such vengeance upon the Mytileneans,
the Spartans and their allies captured the city of Plataea, put to death
all the men, sold the women as slaves, and turned the site of the city
into pasture-land.

EVENTS LEADING UP TO THE PEACE OF NICIAS (421 B.C.).--Soon after the
affair at Mytilene and the destruction of Plataea, an enterprising general
of the Athenians, named Demosthenes, seized and fortified a point of land
(Pylos) on the coast of Messenia. The Spartans made every effort to
dislodge the enemy. In the course of the siege, four hundred Spartans
under Brasidas, having landed upon a little island (Sphacteria), were so
unfortunate as to be cut off from the mainland by the sudden arrival of an
Athenian fleet. About three hundred of them were at last captured and
taken as prisoners to Athens.

But affairs now took a different turn; the Athenians were worsted (at the
battle of Delium, 424 B.C.), and then much indecisive fighting followed.
At last negotiations for peace were opened, which, after many embassies to
and fro, resulted in what is known as the Peace of Nicias, from the
prominent Athenian general who is supposed to have had most to do in
bringing it about. The treaty arranged for a truce of fifty years. Each
party was to give up to the other all prisoners and captured places.

ALCIBIADES AND THE SICILIAN EXPEDITION (415-413 B.C.).--The Peace of
Nicias was only a nominal one. Some of the allies of the two principal
parties to the truce were dissatisfied with it, and consequently its terms
were not carried out in good faith or temper on either side. So the war
went on. For about seven years, however, Athens and Sparta refrained from
invading each other's territory; but even during this period each was
aiding its allies in making war upon the dependents or confederates of the
other. Finally, hostilities flamed out in open and avowed war, and all
Hellas was again lit up with the fires of the fratricidal strife.

[Illustration: ALCIBIADES]

The most prominent person on the Athenian side during this latter period
of the struggle was Alcibiades, a versatile and brilliant man, but a
reckless and unsafe counsellor. He was a pupil of Socrates, but he failed
to follow the counsels of his teacher. His astonishing escapades only
seemed to attach the people more closely to him, for he possessed all
those personal traits which make men popular idols. His influence over the
democracy was unlimited. He was able to carry through the popular assembly
almost any measure that it pleased him to advocate. The more prudent of
the Athenians were filled with apprehension for the future of the state
under such guidance. The noted misanthrope Timon gave expression to this
feeling when, after Alcibiades had secured the assent of the popular
assembly to one of his impolitic measures, he said to him: "Go on, my
brave boy, and prosper; for your prosperity will bring on the ruin of all
this crowd." And it did, as we shall see.

The most prosperous enterprise of Alcibiades, in the Timonian sense, was
the inciting the Athenians to undertake an expedition against the Dorian
city of Syracuse, in Sicily. The scheme that Alcibiades was revolving in
his mind was a most magnificent one. He proposed that the Athenians, after
effecting the conquest of Sicily, should make that island the base of
operations against both Africa and Italy. With the Italians and
Carthaginians subdued, the armaments of the entire Hellenic world outside
of the Peloponnesus, were to be turned against the Spartans, who with one
blow should be forever crushed, and Athens be left the arbiter of the
destinies of Hellas.

Alcibiades succeeded in persuading the Athenians to undertake at least the
first part of the colossal enterprise. An immense fleet was carefully
equipped and manned. [Footnote: It consisted of one hundred and thirty-
four costly triremes, bearing thirty-six thousand soldiers and sailors.
The commanders were Alcibiades, Nicias, and Lamachus. Later, Demosthenes
was sent out with a reinforcement consisting of seventy-three triremes and
five thousand soldiers.] Anxiously did those remaining behind watch the
squadron as it bore away from the port of Athens. Could the watchers have
foreseen the fate of the splendid armament, their anxiety would have
passed into despair. "Athens itself was sailing out of the Piraeus, never
again to return."

Scarcely had the expedition arrived at Sicily, before Alcibiades, who was
one of the leading generals in command of the armament, was summoned back
to Athens to answer a charge of impiety. [Footnote: Just upon the eve of
the departure of the expedition, the numerous statues of Hermes scattered
throughout the city were grossly mutilated. Alcibiades was accused of
having had a hand in the affair, and furthermore of having mimicked the
sacred rites of the Eleusinian mysteries.] Fearing to trust himself in the
hands of his enemies at Athens, he fled to Sparta, and there, by
traitorous counsel, did all in his power to ruin the very expedition he
had planned. He advised the Spartans to send at once their best general to
the Syracusans. They sent Gylippus, an able commander, whose generalship
contributed largely to the total and irretrievable defeat that the
Athenians finally suffered. Their fleet and army were both virtually
annihilated. Seven thousand prisoners were crowded into the open stone
quarries, where hundreds speedily died of exposure and starvation. Most of
the wretched survivors were sold as slaves. The disaster was appalling and
complete. The resources of Athens were wrecked.

THE DECELEAN WAR: THE FALL OF ATHENS--While the Athenians were before
Syracuse, the Spartans, acting upon the advice of Alcibiades, had taken
possession of and fortified a strong and commanding position known as
Decelea, in Attica, only twelve miles from Athens. This was a thorn in the
side of Athens. Secure in this stronghold, the Spartans could annoy and
keep in terror almost all the Attic plain. The occupation by the Spartans
of this strategic point had such a determining influence upon the
remainder of the Peloponnesian War, that this latter portion of it is
known as the Decelean War (413-404 B.C.).

Taking advantage of the terrible misfortunes of Athens, her subject-allies
now revolted and fell away from her on every side. The Persians, ever
ready to aid the Greeks in destroying one another, lent a willing ear to
the solicitations of the traitor Alcibiades, and gave help to the
Spartans.

The Athenians put forth almost superhuman efforts to retrieve their
fortunes. Had they been united among themselves, perhaps their efforts
might not have been in vain. But the oligarchical party, for the sake of
ruining the democracy were willing to ruin the empire. While the army was
absent from Athens, they overturned the government, and established a sort
of aristocratical rule (411 B.C.), under which affairs were in the hands
of a council of Four Hundred.

The Athenian troops, however, who were at Samos, would not recognize the
new government. They voted themselves to be the true Athens, and
forgetting and forgiving the past, recalled Alcibiades, and gave him
command of the army, thereby well illustrating what the poet Aristophanes
said respecting the disposition of the Athenians towards the spoiled
favorite,--"They love, they hate, but cannot live without him."

Alcibiades detached the Persians from the side of the Spartans, and gained
some splendid victories for Athens. But he could not undo the evil he had
done. He had ruined Athens beyond redemption by any human power.
Constantly the struggle grew more and more hopeless. Alcibiades was
defeated, and fearing to face the Athenians, who had deposed him from his
command, sought safety in flight.

Finally, at AEgospotami, on the Hellespont, the Athenian fleet was
surprised and captured by the Spartans under Lysander (405 B.C.). The
prisoners, three thousand in number, were massacred, and the usual rites
of burial denied their bodies.

The battle of AEgospotami sealed the fate of Athens. "That night," writes
the historian Xenophon, referring to the night upon which the news of the
woful disaster reached Athens, "That night no man slept."

The towns on the Thracian and Macedonian coasts, and the islands of the
AEgean belonging to the Athenian Empire, now fell into the hands of the
Peloponnesians. Athens was besieged by sea and land, and soon forced to
surrender. Some of the allies insisted upon the total destruction of the
city, and the conversion of its site into pasture-land. The Spartans,
however, with apparent magnanimity, declared that they would never consent
thus "to put out one of the eyes of Greece."

The real motive, doubtless, of the Spartans in sparing the city was their
fear lest, with Athens blotted out, Thebes or Corinth should become too
powerful. So the city itself was spared, but the fortifications of Piraeus
and the Long Walls were levelled to the ground, the work of demolition
being begun to the accompaniment of festive music (404 B.C.).

Sparta's power was now supreme. She had neither peer nor rival among all
the Grecian states. Throughout the war she had maintained that her only
purpose in warring against Athens was to regain liberty for the Grecian
cities. We shall very soon see what sort of liberty it was that they
enjoyed under her guardianship.

RESULTS OF THE WAR.--"Never," says Thucydides, commenting upon the
lamentable results of the Peloponnesian War, "Never had so many cities
been made desolate by victories;... never were there so many instances of
banishment; never so many scenes of slaughter either in battle or
sedition."

Athens was but the wreck of her former self. She had lost two hundred
ships and sixty thousand men, including the killed among her allies.
Things were just the reverse now of what they were at the time of the
Persian invasion. When, with all Athens in ruins, Themistocles at Salamis
was taunted by the Spartans with being a man without a city, he replied
grandly, "Athens is here in her ships." But now the real Athens was gone;
only the empty shell remained.

And all the rest of Hellas showed the marks of the cruel war. Spots where
once had stood large towns were now pasture-land. But more lamentable than
all else besides, was the effect of the war upon the intellectual and
moral life of the Greek race. The Grecian world had sunk many degrees in
morality; while the vigor and productiveness of the intellectual and
artistic life of Hellas, the centre and home of which had been Athens,
were impaired beyond recovery. The achievements of the Greek intellect,
especially in the fields of philosophic thought, in the century following
the war were, it is true, wonderful; but these triumphs merely show, we
may believe, what the Hellenic mind would have done for art and general
culture, had it been permitted, unchecked, and under the favoring and
inspiring conditions of liberty and self-government, to disclose all that
was latent in it.

2. THE SPARTAN AND THE THEBAN SUPREMACY.

SPARTAN SUPREMACY.--For just one generation following the Peloponnesian
War (404-371 B.C.), Sparta held the leadership of the Grecian states.
Aristocratical governments, with institutions similar to the Spartan, were
established in the different cities of the old Athenian Empire. At Athens,
the democratical constitution of Solon, under which the Athenians had
attained their greatness, was abolished, and an oppressive oligarchy
established in its stead. The Thirty Tyrants, however, who administered
this government, were, after eight months' infamous rule, driven from the
city, and the old democratic constitution, somewhat modified, was re-
established (403 B.C.).

It was during this period that Socrates, the greatest moralist and teacher
of antiquity that Europe had produced, was condemned to death, because his
teachings were thought contrary to the religion of the Athenians. To this
era also belongs the well-known expedition of the Ten Thousand Greeks.

EXPEDITION OF THE TEN THOUSAND (401-400 B.C.).--Cyrus, satrap of the
Persian province of Asia Minor, thinking that his brother Artaxerxes held
the throne unjustly, planned to wrest it from him. For carrying out this
purpose, he raised an army composed of a hundred thousand Barbarians and
about eleven thousand Greek mercenaries.

With this force Cyrus set out from Sardis, in the spring of 401 B.C. He
marched without opposition across Asia Minor and Mesopotamia to Babylonia,
into the very heart of the Persian empire. Here, at Cunaxa, he was
confronted by Artaxerxes with a force of more than half a million of men.
The Barbarian allies of Cyrus were scattered at the first onset of the
enemy; but the Greeks stood like a rampart of rock. Cyrus, however, was
slain; and the other Greek generals, having been persuaded to enter into a
council, were treacherously murdered by the Persians.

The Greeks, in a hurried night meeting, chose new generals to lead them
back to their homes. One of these was Xenophon, the popular historian of
the expedition. Now commenced one of the most memorable retreats in all
history. After a most harassing march over the hot plains of the Tigris
and the icy passes of Armenia, the survivors reached the Black Sea, the
abode of sister Greek colonies.

THEBAN SUPREMACY (371-362 B.C.).--Throughout all the period of her
supremacy, Sparta dealt selfishly and tyrannically with the other Grecian
states. But at last the fiery resentment kindled by her oppressive
measures inspired such a determined revolt against her as brought to an
end her assumed supremacy over her sister cities. It was a city in Boeotia
that led the uprising against Sparta. This was Thebes. The oligarchical
government which the Lacedaemonians had set up in that capital was
overthrown by Pelopidas at the head of the so-called Sacred Band, a
company of three hundred select men who were bound by oath to stand by
each other to the last. Pelopidas was seconded in all his efforts by
Epaminondas, one of the ablest generals the Grecian race ever produced.
Under the masterly guidance and inspiration of these patriot leaders,
Thebes very soon secured a predominating influence in the affairs of
Greece.

It was Epaminondas who, when his enemies sought to disgrace and annoy him
by electing him "public scavenger," made, in accepting the office, the
memorable utterance, "If the office will not reflect honor upon me, I will
reflect honor upon it."

At Leuctra (371 B.C.) the Thebans earned the renown of being the most
invincible soldiers in the world by completely overthrowing, with a force
of six thousand men, the Spartan army of twice that number. This is said
to have been the first time that the Spartans were ever fairly defeated in
open battle. Their forces had been annihilated, as at Thermopylae,--but
annihilation is not defeat.

From the victory of Leuctra dates the short but brilliant period of Theban
supremacy. The year after that battle Epaminondas led an army into the
Peloponnesus to aid the Arcadians, who had risen against Sparta. Laconia
was ravaged, and for the first time Spartan women saw the smoke of fires
kindled by an enemy.

To strengthen Arcadia's power of resistance to Sparta, Epaminondas
perfected a league among the hitherto isolated towns and cantons of the
district. As the mutual jealousies of the leading cities prevented him
from making any one of them the capital of the confederation, he founded
Megalopolis, or the Great City, and made it the head of the union. In the
pursuit of the same policy, Epaminondas also restored the independence of
Messenia.

But, moved by jealousy of the rapidly growing power of Thebes, Athens now
formed an alliance with her old rival Sparta against her. Three times more
did Epaminondas lead an army into the Peloponnesus. During his fourth and
last expedition he fought with the Spartans and Athenians the great battle
of Mantinea, in Arcadia. On this memorable field, Epaminondas led the
Thebans once more to victory; but he himself was slain, and with him fell
the hopes and power of Thebes (362 B.C.).

All the states of Greece now lay exhausted, worn out by their endless
domestic contentions and wars. There was scarcely sufficient strength left
to strike one worthy blow against enslavement by the master destined soon
to come from the North.

CHAPTER XVI.

PERIOD OF MACEDONIAN SUPREMACY: EMPIRE OF ALEXANDER. (338-323 B.C.)

GENERAL STATEMENT.--Macedonia lay to the north of Greece proper. The
ruling class of the country was probably of Hellenic race; at all events
the Macedonian kings were allowed to take part in the Olympian games--a
privilege accorded to none but pure Hellenes. Their efforts to spread
Greek art and culture among their subjects, a race of rough but brave and
martial men, unaccustomed to city life, had been so far successful that
the country had, to a certain degree, become Hellenized.

So this period of Macedonian supremacy upon which we are entering belongs
to the history of the political life of the Greek race, as well as the
eras marked by Athenian, Spartan, or Theban leadership. It was Hellenic
institutions, customs, and manners, Hellenic language and civilization,
that the Macedonians, in the extended conquests which we are about to
narrate, spread over the world. [Footnote: Of course it was rather the
outer forms than the real inner life and spirit of the old Greek
civilization which were adopted by the non-Hellenic peoples of Egypt and
Western Asia. Hence the resulting culture is given a special name,
_Hellenism_, which, in Professor Jebbs' language, means,--"not '_being_
Hellenes,' or Greeks, but--'doing _like_ Hellenes'; and as the adjective
answering to _Hellas_ is _Hellenic_, so the adjective answering to
_Hellenism_ is _Hellenistic_."] It is this which makes the short-lived
Macedonian empire so important in universal history.

PHILIP OF MACEDON.--Macedonia first rose to importance during the reign of
Philip II. (359-336 B.C.), better known as Philip of Macedon. He was a man
of pre-eminent ability, of wonderful address in diplomacy, and possessed
rare genius as an organizer and military chieftain. The art of war he had
learned in youth as a hostage-pupil of Epaminondas of Thebes. He was the
originator of the "Macedonian phalanx" a body as renowned in the military
history of Macedonia as is the "legion" in that of Rome.

With his kingdom settled and consolidated at home, Philip's ambition led
him to seek the leadership of the Grecian states. He sought to gain his
purpose rather by artful diplomacy and intrigue than by open force. In the
use of these weapons he might have been the teacher of the Athenian
Themistocles.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35