Authors of Greece

T >> T. W. Lumb >> Authors of Greece

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A spirit of revolt against Athenian rule appeared in Lesbos, which
seceded in 428. The chief town in this non-Ionic island was Mytilene,
which sent ambassadors to Sparta. Their speech clearly explains how
the Athenians were able to keep their hold on their policy; her policy
(like that of Rome) was to divide the allies by carefully grading
their privileges, playing off the weak against the stronger. The
Spartans proved unable to help and the Athenians easily blockaded the
city, capturing it early in 427. In their anger they at first decided
to slay all the inhabitants, but a better feeling led to a
reconsideration next day. In the Assembly two great speeches were
delivered. Pericles had been succeeded by Cleon, to whom Thucydides
seems to have been a little unjust. He opened his speech with the
famous remark that a democracy cannot govern an Empire; it is liable
to sudden fits of passion which make a consistent policy impossible.
He himself never changed his plans, but his audience were different.

"You are all eyes for speeches, all ears for deeds; you judge of
the possibility of a project from good speeches; accomplished facts
you believe not because you see them but because you hear them from
smart critics. You are easily duped by some novel plan, but you
refuse to adhere to what has been proved sound. You are slaves to
every new oddity and have nothing but contempt for what is familiar.
Every one of you would like to be a good speaker, failing that, to
rival your orators in cleverness. You are as quick to guess what is
coming in a speech as you are slow at foreseeing its consequences.
In a word, you live in some non-real world."

He pleaded for the rigorous application of the extreme penalty already
voted.

He was opposed by Diodotus, who appealed to the same principle as
Cleon did expediency.

"No penalty will deter men, not even the death penalty. Men have
run through the whole catalogue of deterrents in the hope of
securing themselves against outrage, yet offences still are common.
Human nature is driven by some uncontrollable master passion which
tempts it to danger. Hope and Desire are everywhere and are most
mischievous, for they are invisible. Fortune too is as powerful a
means of exciting men. At tunes she stands unexpectedly at their
side and leads them to take risks with too slender resources. Most
of all she tempts cities, for they are contending for the greatest
prizes, liberty or domination. It is absolutely childish then to
imagine that when human nature is bent on performing a thing it will
be deterred by law or any other force. If revolting cities are quite
sure that no mercy will be shown, they will fight to the last,
bequeathing the victors only smoking ruins. It would be more expedient
to be merciful and thus save the expenses of a long siege."

This saner view prevailed. The doctrine of a "ruling passion" is a
remarkable contribution to Greek political thought, the abstract
personifications reading like the work of a poet or philosopher. An
exciting race against time is most graphically described. After great
exertions the ship bearing the reprieve arrived just in time to save
Mytilene. This act of mercy stands in sinister contrast with the
treatment the unhappy Plataeans received from the liberators of
Greece. The citizens were captured, Athens having strangely abandoned
them in spite of her promise to help. They were allowed to commemorate
their services to Greece, appealing in a most moving speech to the
sacred ground of their city, the scene of the immortal battle. All was
in vain. The Thebans accused them of flat treachery to Boeotia,
securing their condemnation. Corcyra similarly proved unprofitable; it
was afflicted by fratricidal dissensions which coloured one of
Thucydides' darkest pictures. As the war went on it became clearer
that it was a struggle between two rival political creeds, democracy
and oligarchy. To the partisans all other ties were of little value,
whether of blood or race or religion; only frenzied boldness and
unquestioning obedience to a party organisation were of any
consequence. This wretched spirit of feud was destined in the long run
to spell the doom of the Greek cities. In 427 the first mention was
made of the will-of-the-wisp which in time led Athens to her ruin. In
her anxiety to intercept the Peloponnesian corn she supported Leontini
against Syracuse, the leading Sicilian state. In Acarnania the capable
general Demosthenes after a series of movements not quite fruitless
succeeded in bringing peace to the jarring mountain tribes.

In 425 a most important event took place. As an Athenian squadron was
proceeding to Sicily it was forced to put in at Pylos, where many
centuries later Greece won a famous victory over the Turks.
Demosthenes, though he had no official command, persuaded his comrades
to fortify the place as a base from which to harry Spartan territory.
It was situated in the country which had once belonged to the
Messenians who for generations had been held down by the Spartan
oligarchs. Deserters soon began to stream in; the gravity of the
situation was recognised by the Spartan government who landed more
than four hundred of their best troops on the island of Sphacteria at
the entrance to the bay. These were speedily isolated by the Athenian
navy; and news of the event filled all Greece with excitement. A
heated discussion took place at Athens, where Cleon accused Nicias,
the commander-in-chief, of slackness in not capturing the blockaded
force. Spartan overtures for a peace on condition of the return of the
isolated men proved vain; after a lively altercation with Nicias Cleon
made a promise to capture the Spartans within thirty days, a feat
which he accomplished with the aid of Demosthenes. Nearly three
hundred were found to prefer surrender to death; these were conveyed
to Athens and were an invaluable asset for bargaining a future peace.

A further success was the capture of Nisaea, the port of Megara, in
424, but an attempt to propagate democracy in Boeotia ended in a
severe defeat at Delium; the fate of Plataea was a bad advertisement
in an oligarchically governed district. Worse was to follow. Brasidas,
a Spartan who had greatly distinguished himself at Pylos, passed
through Thessaly with a volunteer force, reaching Thrace and capturing
some important towns; the loss of one of these, Eion, caused the exile
of the historian, who was too late to save it. In 423 a truce for one
year was arranged between the combatants, but Brasidas ignored it,
sowing disaffection among the Athenian allies. His personal charm gave
them a good impression of the Spartan character and his offer of
liberty was too attractive to be resisted. His success was partly due
to a deliberate misrepresentation of the Athenian power which proved
greater than it seemed to be. The two real obstacles to peace were
Brasidas and Cleon; at Amphipolis they met in battle; a rash movement
gave the Spartan an opportunity for an attack. He fell in action, but
the town was saved. Cleon was killed in the same battle and the path
to peace was clear. The truce for one year developed into a regular
settlement in 421, Nicias being responsible for its negotiation in
Athens. The chief clause provided that Athens should recover
Amphipolis in exchange for the Spartan captives.

The members of the Peloponnesian league considered themselves betrayed
by this treaty, for their hated rival Athens had not been humbled.
Corinth was the ringleader in raising disaffection. She determined to
create a new league, including Argos, the inveterate foe of Sparta.
This state had stood aloof from the war, nursing her strength and
biding her time for revenge. When Sparta failed to restore Amphipolis,
the war party at Athens, led by Alcibiades, formed an alliance with
Argos to reduce Sparta; but this policy alienated Corinth, who refused
to act with her trade rival. An Argive attack on Arcadia ended in the
fierce battle of Mantinea in 418, in which Sparta won a complete
victory. Argos was forced to come to terms, the new league was
dissolved and Athens was once more confronted by her combined enemies,
her diplomacy a failure and her trump-card, the Sphacterian prisoners,
lost.

Next year she was guilty of an act of sheer outrage. Her fleet
descended on the island of Melos, which had remained neutral, though
its inhabitants were colonists from the Spartan mainland close by.
Nowhere does the dramatic nature of Thucydides' work stand more
clearly revealed than in his account of this incident. He represents
the Athenian and Melian leaders as arguing the merits of the case in a
regular dialogue, essentially a dramatic device. The Athenian doctrine
of Might and Expediency is unblushingly preached and acted upon, in
spite of Melian protests; the island was captured, its population
being slain or enslaved. Such an act is a fitting prelude to the great
disaster which forms the next act of Thucydides' drama.

In 416 Athens proceeded to develop her design of subjugating Sicily.
Segesta was at feud with Selinus; as the latter city applied to
Syracuse for aid, the former bethought her of her ancient alliance
with Athens. Next year the Sicilian ambassadors arrived with tales of
unlimited wealth to finance an expedition. Nicias, the leader of the
peace party, vainly counselled the Assembly to refrain; he was
overborne by Alcibiades, whose ambition it was to reduce not only
Sicily but Carthage also. When the expedition was about to sail most
of the statues of Hermes in the city were desecrated in one night.
Alcibiades, appointed to the command with Nicias and Lamachus, was
suspected of the outrage, but was allowed to sail. The fleet left the
city with all the pomp and ceremony of prayer and ritual, after which
it showed its high spirits in racing as far as Aegina.

In Sicily itself Hermocrates, the great Syracusan patriot, repeatedly
warned his countrymen of the coming storm, advising them to sink all
feuds in resistance to the common enemy. He was opposed by
Athenagoras, a democrat who, true to his principles, suspected the
story as part of a militarist plot to overthrow the constitution. His
speech is the most violent in Thucydides, but contains a passage of
much value.

"The name of the whole is People, that of a part is Oligarchy;
the rich are the best guardians of wealth, the educated class can
make the wisest decisions, the majority are the best judges of
speeches. All these classes in a democracy have equal power both
individually and collectively. But oligarchy shares the dangers
with the many, while it does not merely usurp the material benefits,
rather it appropriates and keeps them all."

The Athenians received a cold welcome wherever they went. At Catana
they found their state vessel waiting to convey Alcibiades home to
stand his trial; he effected his escape on the homeward voyage,
crossing to the Peloponnese. The great armament instead of thrusting
at Syracuse wasted its time and efficiency on side-issues, mainly
owing to the cold leadership of Nicias. This valuable respite was used
to the full by Hermocrates, who at a congress held at Camarina was
insistent on the racial character of the struggle between themselves
who were Dorians and the Ionians from Athens. This national antipathy
contributed greatly to the final decision of the conflict.

Passing to Sparta, Alcibiades deliberately betrayed his country. His
speech is of the utmost importance.

His view of democracy is contemptuous. "Nothing new can be said of
what is an admitted folly." He then outlined the Athenian ambition; it
was to subdue Carthage and Sicily, bring over hosts of warlike
barbarians, surround and reduce the Peloponnese and then rule the
whole Greek-speaking world. He advised his hearers to aid Sicilian
incapacity by sending a Spartan commander; above all, he counselled
the occupation of Deceleia, a town in Attica just short of the border,
through which the corn supply was conveyed to the capital; this would
lead to the capture of the silver-mines at Laureium and to the
decrease of the Athenian revenues. He concluded with an attempt to
justify his own treachery, remarking that when a man was exiled, he
must use all means to secure a return.

The Spartans had for some time been anxious to open hostilities; an
act of Athenian aggression gave them an opportunity. Meanwhile in
Sicily Lamachus had perished in attacking a Syracusan cross-wall. Left
in sole command, Nicias remained inactive, while Gylippus, despatched
from Sparta, arrived in Syracuse just in time to prevent it from
capitulating. The seventh book is the record of continued Athenian
disasters. Little by little Gylippus developed the Syracusan
resources. First he made it impossible for the Athenians to
circumvallate the city; then he captured the naval stores of the
enemy, forcing them to encamp in unhealthy ground. Nicias had begged
the home government to relieve him of command owing to illness.
Believing in the lucky star of the man who had taken Nissea they
retained him, sending out a second great fleet under Demosthenes. The
latter at once saw the key to the whole situation. The Syracusan
cross-wall which Nicias had failed to render impassable must be
captured at all costs. A night attack nearly succeeded, but ended in
total defeat. Demosthenes immediately advised retreat; but Nicias
obstinately refused to leave. In the meantime the Syracusans closed
the mouth of their harbour with a strong boom, penning up the Athenian
fleet. The famous story of the attempt to destroy it calls out all the
author's powers of description. He draws attention to the narrow space
in which the action was fought. As long as the Athenians could operate
in open water they were invincible; but the Syracusans not only forced
them to fight in a confined harbour, they strengthened the prows of
their vessels, enabling them to smash the thinner Athenian craft in a
direct charge. The whole Athenian army went down to the edge of the
water to watch the engagement which was to settle their fate. Their
excitement was pitiable, for they swayed to and fro in mental agony,
calling to their friends to break the boom and save them. After a
brave struggle, the invaders were routed and driven to the land by the
victorious Syracusans.

Retreat by land was the only escape. A strategem planned by
Hermocrates and Nicias' superstitious terrors delayed the departure
long enough to enable the Syracusans to secure the passes in the
interior. When the army moved away the scene was one of shame and
agony; the sick vainly pleaded with their comrades to save them; the
whole force contrasted the proud hopes of their coming with their
humiliating end and refused to be comforted by Nicias, whose courage
shone brightest in this hour of defeat. Demosthenes' force was
isolated and was quickly captured; Nicias' men with great difficulty
reached the River Assinarus, parched with thirst. Forgetting all about
their foes, they rushed to the water and fought among themselves for
it though it ran red with their own blood. At last the army
capitulated and was carried back to Syracuse. Thrown into the public
quarries, the poor wretches remained there for ten weeks, scorched by
day, frost-bitten by night. The survivors were sold into slavery.

"This was the greatest achievement in the war and, I think, in
Greek history the most creditable to the victors, the most
lamentable to the vanquished. In every way they were utterly
defeated; their sufferings were mighty; they were destroyed
hopelessly; ships, men, everything perished, few only returning
from the great host."

So ends the most heartrending story in Greek history, told with
absolute fidelity by a son of Athens and a former general of her army.

The last book is remarkable for the absence of speeches; it is a
record of the continued intrigues which followed the Sicilian
disaster. Upheavals in Asia Minor brought into the swirl of plots
Tissaphernes, the Persian satrap, anxious to recover control of Ionia
hitherto saved by Athenian power. In 412 the Athenian subjects began
to revolt, seventeen defections being recorded in all. At Samos a most
important movement began; the democrats rose against their nobles,
being guaranteed independence by Athens. Soon they made overtures to
Alcibiades who was acting with the Spartan fleet; he promised to
detach Tissaphernes from Sparta if Samos eschewed democracy, a creed
odious to the Persian monarchy. The Samians sent a delegation to
Athens headed by Pisander, who boldly proposed Alcibiades' return, the
dissolution of the democracy in Samos and alliance with Tissaphernes.
These proposals were rejected, but the democracy at Athens was not
destined to last much longer, power being usurped by the famous Four
Hundred in 411. The Samian democracy eventually appointed Alcibiades
general, while in Athens the extremists were anxious to come to terms
with Sparta. This movement split the Four Hundred, the constitution
being changed to that of the Five Thousand, a blend of democracy and
oligarchy which won Thucydides' admiration; the history concludes with
the victory of the Athenians in the naval action at Cynossema in 410.

The defects of Thucydides are evident; his style is harsh, obscure and
crabbed; it is sometimes said that he seems wiser than he really is
mainly because his language is difficult; that if his thoughts were
translated into easier prose our impressions of his greatness would be
much modified. Yet it is to be remembered that he, like Lucretius, had
to create his own vocabulary. It is a remarkable fact that prose has
been far more difficult to invent than poetry, for precision is
essential to it as the language of reasoning rather than of feeling.
Instead of finding fault with a medium which was necessarily imperfect
because it was an innovation we should be thankful for what it has
actually accomplished. It is not always obscure; at times, when "the
lion laughed" as an old commentator says, he is almost unmatched in
pure narrative, notably in his rapid summary of the Athenian rise to
power in the first book and in the immortal Syracusan tragedy of the
seventh.

His merits are many and great; his conciseness, repression of personal
feeling, love of accuracy, careful research, unwillingness to praise
overmuch and his total absence of preconceived opinion testify to an
honesty of outlook rare in classical historians. Because he feels
certain of his detachment of view, he quite confidently undertakes
what few would have faced, the writing of contemporary history.
Nowadays historians do not trust themselves; we may expect a faithful
account of our Great War some fifty years hence, if ever. Not so
Thucydides; he claims that his work will be a treasure for all time;
had any other written these words we should have dismissed them as an
idle boast.

For he is the first man to respect history. It was not a plaything; it
was worthy of being elevated to the rank of a science. As such, its
events must have some deep causes behind them, worth discovering not
only in themselves as keys to one particular period, but as possible
explanations of similar events in distant ages. Accordingly, he deemed
it necessary to study first of all our human nature, its varied
motives, mostly of questionable morality, next he studied
international ethics, based frankly on expediency. The results of
these researches he has embodied (with one or two exceptions) in his
famous speeches. He surveyed the ground on which battles were fought;
he examined inscriptions, copying them with scrupulous care; he
criticised ancient history and contemporary versions of famous events,
many of which he found to be untrue. Further, his anxiety to discover
the real sources of certain policies made it necessary for him to
write an account of seemingly purposeless action in wilder or even
barbarous regions such as Arcadia, Ambracia, Macedonia; in consequence
his work embraces the whole of the Greek world, as he said it would in
his famous preface.

As an artist, he is not without his merits. The dramatic nature of his
plan has been frequently pointed out; to him the main plot is the
destruction not of Athens, but of the Periclean democracy, the
overthrow thereof being due to a conflict with another like it; hence
the marked change in the last book, in which the main dramatic
interest has waned. This dramatic form has, however, defeated its own
objects sometimes, for all the Thucydidean fishes talk like
Thucydidean whales.

To us he is indispensable. We are a maritime power, ruling a maritime
empire, our potential enemies being military nations. He has warned us
that democracy cannot govern an empire. Perhaps our type of this creed
is not so full of the lust for domination and aggrandisement as was
that of Athens; it may be suspected that we are virtuous mainly
because we have all we need and are not likely to be tempted overmuch.
But there is the other and more subtle danger. The enemies within the
state betrayed Deceleia which safeguarded the food-supply. We have
many Deceleias, situate along the great trade-routes and needing
protection. Once these are betrayed we shall not hold out as Athens
did for nearly ten years; ten weeks at the outside ought to see our
people starving and beaten, fit for nothing but the payment of
indemnities to the power which relieves us of our inheritance.

TRANSLATIONS:--

The earliest is by Hobbes, the best is by Jowett, Oxford. Though
somewhat free, it renders with vigour the ideas of the original text.

The Loeb Series has a version by Smith.

_Thucydides Mythistoricus,_ Cornford (Arnold), is an adverse criticism
of the historian; it points out the inaccuracies which may be detected
in his work.

_Clio Enthroned_ by W. R. M. Lamb, Cambridge, should be read in
conjunction with the above. The author adopts the traditional estimate
of Thucydides.

See also Bury, _Ancient Greek Historians_, as above.

PLATO

Shortly after the outbreak of the Peloponnesian war Plato was born,
probably in 427. During the eighty years of his life he travelled to
Sicily at least twice, founded the Academy at Athens and saw the
beginning of the end of the Greek freedom. He represents the
reflective spirit in a nation which seems to appear when its
development is well advanced. After the madness of a long war the
Athenians, stripped of their Empire for a time, sought a new outlet
for their restless energies and started to conquer a more permanent
kingdom, that of scientific speculation about the highest faculties of
the human mind.

The death of Socrates in 399 disgusted Plato; democracy apparently was
as intolerant as any other form of political creed. His writings are
in a sense a vindication of the honesty of his master, although the
picture he draws of him is not so true to life as that of Xenophon.
The dialogues fall into two well-marked classes; in the earlier the
method and inspiration is definitely Socratic, but in the later
Socrates is a mere peg on which Plato hung his own system. In itself
the dialogue form was no new thing; Plato adopted it and made it a
thing of life and dramatic power, his style being the most finished
example of exalted prose in Greek literature. The order in which the
dialogues were written is a thorny problem; there is good reason for
believing that Plato constantly revised some of them, removing the
inconsistencies which were inevitable while he was feeling his way to
the final form which his speculations assumed. It is perhaps best to
give an outline of a series which exhibits some regular order of
thought.

It is sometimes thought that Philosophy has no direct bearing on
practical questions. A review of the _Crito_ may dispel this illusion.
In it Socrates refuses to be tempted by his young friend Crito who
offers to secure his escape from prison and provide him a home among
his own friends. The question is whether one ought to follow the
opinions of the majority on matters of justice or injustice, or those
of the one man who has expert knowledge, and of Truth. The laws of
Athens have put Socrates in prison; they would say;

"by this act you intend to perpetrate your purpose to destroy us
and the city as far as one man can do so. Can any city survive and
not be overturned in which legal decisions have no force, but are
rendered null by private persons and destroyed?"

Socrates had by his long residence of seventy years declared his
satisfaction with the Athenian legal system. The laws had enabled him
to live in security; more, he could have taken advantage of legal
protection in his trial, and if he had been dissatisfied could have
gone away to some other city. What sort of a figure would he make if
he escaped? Wherever he went he would be considered a destroyer of
law; his practice would belie his creed; finally, the Laws say,

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