the earth, the planting of fruit-trees, the destruction of noxious animals, the bringing water to a barren land. 10. Such were the ancient Persians. But their character had undergone a great change before the period of the war with Greece. At this time they were a degenerate and corrupted people. Athens had recently thrown off the yoke of the Pisistratidæ, and highly valued her new liberty. Sparta, in the ardour of patriotism, forgot all jealousy of her rival state, and cordially united in the defence of their common country. The Persians, in this contest, had no other advantage than that of numbers, an unequal match for superior heroism and military skill. XII.-The War between Greece and Persia. 1. The ambition of Darius, the son of Hystaspes, heightened by the passion of revenge, gave rise to the project of that monarch for the invasion of Greece. The Athenians had aided the people of Iónia in an attempt to throw off the yoke of Persia, and burnt and ravaged Sardis, the capital of Lydia. Darius speedily reduced the Ionians to submission, and then turned his arms against the Greeks, the [Athenian] exile Hippias eagerly prompting the expedition. 2. After an insolent demand of submission, which the Greeks scornfully refused, Darius began a hostile attack both by sea and land. The first Persian fleet was wrecked in doubling the promontory of Athos; [three hundred vessels were dashed against the rocks, and 20,000 men perished in the waves], a second, of 600 sail, ravaged the Grecian islands; while an immense army, landing in Eubœa, poured down with impetuosity on Attica. The Athenians met them on the plain of Marathon, and, headed by Miltiades, defeated them with prodigious slaughter, 490 B.C. [The Persian army commanded by Datis, consisted of 100,000 foot, and 10,000 horse, that of the Athenians, amounted to about 10,000 men, headed by ten generals, of whom Miltiades was the chief.] The loss of the Persians in this battle, was 6,300, that of the Athenians 190 3. The merit of Miltiades, signally displayed in this great battle, was repaid by his country with the most shocking ingratitude. Accused of treason for an unsuccessful attack on the isle of Paros, his sentence of death was commuted into a fine of fifty talents; which being unable to pay, he was thrown into prison, and there died of his wounds. 4. The glory of ungrateful Athens was yet nobly sustained in the Persian war by Themistocles and Aristides. Darius dying, was succeeded by his son Xerxes, the heir of his father's ambition, but not of his abilities. He armed, as is said, five millions of men for the conquest of Greece; twelve hundred ships of war, and three thousand ships of burden. Landing in Thessaly, he proceeded, by rapid marches, to Thermopylæ, a narrow defile on the Sinus Maliacus, [the bay of Malia.] The Athenians and Spartans, aided only by the Thespians, Platæans, Æginétes, [and Corinthians], determined to withstand the invader. Leonidas, King of Sparta, was chosen to defend this important pass with six thousand men. Xerxes, after a weak attempt to corrupt him, imperiously summoned him to lay down his arms. Let him come, said Leonidas, and take them. For two days the Persians in vain strove to force their way, and were repeatedly repulsed with great slaughter. An unguarded track being at length discovered, [by the treachery of Ephialtes, a Trachinian deserter], the defence of the pass became a fruitless attempt on the part of the Greeks. Leonidas, foreseeing certain destruction, commanded all to retire but three hundred of his countrymen. His motive was to give the Persians a just idea of the spirit of that foe whom they had to encounter. He, with his brave Spartans, were all cut off to a man,* 480 B.C. A monument, erected on the spot, bore this noble inscription, written by Simonides: O stranger! tell it at Lacedæmon, that we died here in obedience to her laws. 5. The Persians poured down upon Attica. The inhabitants of Athens, after conveying their women and children to the islands for security, betook themselves to their fleet, abandoning the city, which the Persians pillaged and burnt. The fleet of the Greeks, consisting of three hundred and eighty sail, was attacked in the straits of Salamis, by that of the Persians, amounting to twelve hundred ships. Xerxes himself beheld from an eminence * Herodotus informs us, that these brave patriots were all interred in the place were they fell. Upon their tomb was this inscription: "Here once from Pelops' sea-girt region brought Four thousand men three hostile millions fought."-Es. on the coast, the total discomfiture of his squadron. He then fled with precipitation across the Hellespont. A second overthrow awaited his army by land: for Mardónius, at the head of three hundred thousand Persians, was totally defeated at Platæa by the combined army of the Athenians and Lacedæmonians, 379 B.C. [250,000 of the Persian army perished on this occasion.] On the same day the Greeks engaged and destroyed the remains of the Persian fleet at Mycale. From that day the ambitious schemes of Xerxes were at an end: and his in glorious life soon after terminated by assassination. He was succeeded in the throne of Persia, by his son Artaxerxes Longimanus, 464 B.C. 6. At this time the national character of the Greeks was at its highest elevation. The common danger had annihilated all partial jealousies between the states, and given them union as a nation. But with the cessation of danger those jealousies re-commenced. Sparta meanly opposed the rebuilding of deserted Athens. Athens, rising again into splendour, saw with pleasure, the depopulation of Sparta, by an earthquake, [which destroyed about 20,000 of her inhabitants], and hesitated to give her aid in that juncture of calamity against a rebellion of her slaves. 7. Cimon, the son of Miltiades, after expelling the Persians from Thrace, attacked and destroyed their fleet on the coast of Pamphylia, and landing his troops, gained a signal victory over their army the same day. Supplanted in the public favour by the arts of his rival Péricles, he suffered a temporary exile, to return only with higher popularity, and to signalize himself still more in the service of his ungrateful country. [With an armament of two hundred ships], he attacked and totally destroyed the Persian fleet of three hundred sail; and, landing in Cilicia, completed his triumph, by defeating three hundred thousand Persians under Megabyzes, 460 B.C. Artaxerxes now had the prudence to sue for peace, which was granted by the Greeks on terms most honourable to the nation. They stipulated for the freedom of all the Grecian cities of Asia, and that the fleets of Persia should not approach their coasts from the Euxine to the extreme boundary of Pamphylia. The last fifty years were the period of the highest glory of the Greeks; and they owed their prosperity entirely to their union. The peace with Persia dissolving that connexion, brought back the jealousies between the predominant states, the intestine disorders of each, and the national weakness. 8. The martial and the patriotic spirit began visibly to decline in Athens. An acquaintance with Asia, and an importation of her wealth, introduced a relish for Asiatic manners and luxuries. With the Athenians, however, this luxurious spirit was under the guidance of taste and genius. It led to the cultivation of the finer arts; and the age of Pericles, though the national glory was in its wane, is the era of the highest internal splendour and magnificence of Greece. XII.-Age of Pericles. 1. Republics, equally with monarchies, are generally regulated by a single will; only in the former there is a more frequent change of masters. Pericles ruled Athens with little less than arbitrary sway; and Athens pretended at this time to the command of Greece. She held the allied states in the most absolute subjection, and lavished their subsidies, bestowed for the national defence, in magnificent buildings, games, and festivals, for her own citizens. The tributary states loudly complained, but durst not call this domineering republic to account; and the war of Peloponnesus, dividing the nation into two great parties, bound the lesser cities to the strictest subordination on the predominant powers. 3. The state of Corinth had been included in the last treaty between Athens and Sparta. The Corinthians waging war with the people of Corcyra, an ancient colony of their own, both parties solicited the aid of Athens, who took part with the latter; a measure which the Corinthians complained of, not only as an infraction of the treaty with Sparta, but as a breach of a general rule of the national policy, that no foreign power should interfere in the disputes between a colony and its parent state. War was proclaimed on this ground between Athens and Lacedæmon, each supported by its respective allies. The detail of the war, which continued for twentyeight years, with various and alternate success, is to be found in Thucydides. Pericles died before its termination; a splendid ornament to his country, but reproached as a corrupter of her manners, by fostering the spirit of luxury. Alcibiades ran a similar career, with equal talents, equa ambition, and still less purity of moral principle. In the interval of a truce with Sparta, he inconsiderately projected the conquest of Sicily; and failing in the attempt, was, on his return to Athens, condemned to death for treason. He hesitated not to wreak his vengeance against his country, by selling his services, first to Sparta, and afterwards to Persia. Finally, he purchased his peace with his country, by betraying the power which protected him, and returned to Athens the idol of a populace as versatile as worthless. sea. 3. A fatal defeat of the Athenian fleet at Egos Potamos, by Lysander, reduced Athens to the last extremity; and the Lacedæmonians blockaded the city by land and The war ended by the absolute submission of the Athenians, who agreed to demolish their port, to limit their fleet to twelve ships, and undertake for the future no military enterprise, but under the command of the Lacedæmonians, 405 B.C. 4. It is to the same Lysander, who terminated the Peloponnesian war so gloriously for Lacedæmon, that history ascribes the first great breach of the constitution of his country, by the introduction of gold into that republic Lysander, after the reduction of Athens, abolished the popular government in that state, and substituted in its place thirty tyrants, whose power was absolute. The most eminent of the citizens fled from their country: but a band of patriots, headed by Thrasybulus, attacked, vanquished, and expelled the usurpers, and once more reestablished the democracy. 5. One event which happened at this time reflected more disgrace on the Athenian name than their natural humiliation this was the persecution and death of Socrates, a philosopher who was himself the patron of every virtue which he taught. The sophists, whose futile * *Although the annals of ancient history abound with memoirs of wise and heroic minds, it must be allowed that the pagan world never produced any character so truly great and perfect as that of Socrates, either before or after his time. When we observe to what a height this paragon of heathen philosophy carries the sublimity of his sentiments, not only in respect to moral virtue, temperance, sobriety, patience in adversity, the contempt of poverty, and the forgiveness of wrongs, but what is far more considerable in regard to the Divinity, his unity, omnipotence, creation of the world, and providence in the government of it, the immortality of the soul, the reward of the good, and the punishment of the wicked. When we consider this train of sublime knowledge, we ask our reason, whether it is a pagan who thinks and speaks in this manner, and can scarce persuade ourselves that from so dark and obscure a cloud of paganism, should shine forth such living and glorious rays of light.-ED. |