which is punished by their defeat and death. Eteocles and Polynices fall by each other's hands; and Adrastus (the Inevitable) * alone escapes, to show that the curse is not yet accomplished. The courageous disobedience of Antigone to the edict of Creon forbidding the burial of Polynices involves her and her lover Hæmon, the son of Creon, in the general destruction. At length, in the following generation, the "Epigoni" (Descendants) repeat the expedition of their fathers against Thebes; and the doomed city is taken, and razed to the ground. These Epigoni appear again, with the chieftains of every other part of Greece, as far west as the island of Ithaca,† in the WAR OF TROY, the crowning legend of the heroic age. The well-known story, and the ten years' wanderings of the hero of many devices, who saw the cities and learnt the ways of many men, and suffered much by land and sea, need not be repeated. The questions, historical, topographical, and literary, arising out of it, are too wide to be discussed here. We believe that there was a Troy, and that there was a Homer; but how much of the legend applies to the former, and how much of the Homeric poems belongs to the latter, are questions to be studied afresh by every scholar, and not to be expounded to any but real students of classical antiquity. It is enough to say, as to the event, that some great collision must have taken place between the Greeks and the kindred race who had founded a great kingdom on the opposite coast, which combined the Greek nation in a common effort, and involved a reaction that unsettled most of the Achæan and Æolian states. ‡ And as to the poet-the reader need not fear a repetition of the long controversy, from the first assault of Wolf, to Mr. Grote's most ingenious discovery of the germ of the Iliad in an original "Achilleïd." Rather let us be content to know that such legends as those at which we have now glanced were sung at the courts of the Achæan and Eolian princes, whose subjects, assembled in the colonnade before the palace, might hear them too, by bards, of whom the Homeric poems themselves give us a picture in Demodocus at the Court of Alcinous. We cannot doubt that such a bard, whose perfect art (combined with some internal proofs) Comp. chap. x. p. 258. 66 The smallest of the seven Ionian Islands." We cannot stay to relate the long story of the house of Pelops, its ancient crimes, the murders of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, and the expiation of Orestes-a legend as striking in itself, and as grandly treated by the tragedians, as the story of Thebes. confirms the story of his origin from Asiatic Greece, the earliest Hellenic seat of letters, wandered, like the minstrels of every age and country that has had bold exploits to tell of and men worthy to hear them, from court to court of the descendants of the heroes who fought at Troy, receiving special honour at those which he has repaid with special fame, Ithaca, Sparta, Pylos. Whether but one such, or whether more, composed the poems we possess, matters but little, so long as we pay to the name of Homer the tribute due to that which, with one sacred exception, is the choicest, as well as the earliest fruit of the human intellecthanded down to us, however imperfectly, first by the memory of reciters, and then by the enduring medium of letters. Thus does the mythical age of Greece bring us down at last to an historic fact the most real, the most abiding, the most fruitful, in the secular history of the world-the existence of such works as the Iliad and Odyssey, for our use in training our minds to the richest graces of imagination. Those other facts which are clearly deducible from these poems concerning the political and social state of the Greeks of the heroic age, we reserve for the next chapter, as they belong to history.* The two most commonly * The traditional dates for the fall of Troy are various. accepted are B.C. 1184 and B.C. 1127; but they depend on backward computations resting on uncertain data. TRANSITION FROM LEGEND TO HISTORY. CHAPTER XII. THE HELLENIC STATES AND COLONIES, FROM THE Clime of the unforgotten brave ! Whose land, from plain to mountain cave, 319 CONDITION OF GREECE IN THE HEROIC AGE-POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CHANGES AFTER THE TROJAN WAR-DORIAN INVASION OF PELOPONNESUS-ACHEANS AND IONIANS DISPLACED -COLONIES IN ASIA MINOR, IONIAN, EOLIAN, AND DORIAN-CRETE-EXTENSION OF THE DORIAN AND IONIAN RACES-HISTORICAL EPOCH OF THE FIRST OLYMPIAD, B.C. 776 -THE GREEK NATION AS A WHOLE-THE AMPHICTYONIES AND AMPHICTYONIC COUNCILTHE GREAT FESTIVALS-OLYMPIC GAMES-ABSENCE OF POLITICAL UNITY-THE SEPARATE STATES OF GREECE-ARGOS, UNDER PHEIDON-SPARTA AND THE INSTITUTIONS OF LYCURGUS-CONQUEST OF LACONIA AND MESSENIA-LACEDÆMONIAN SUPREMACY IN PELOPONNESUS-THE TYRANTS IN GREECE AND THE COLONIES-EARLY HISTORY OF ATTICATHESEUS-CODRUS-ABOLITION OF ROYALTY-GOVERNMENT BY ARCHONS-THE SENATE OF AREOPAGUS-LEGISLATION OF DRACO-CYLON AND THE ALCMEONIDS-LEGISLATION OF SOLON-USURPATION OF PISISTRATUS-EXPULSION OF THE FAMILY-REFORMS OF CLEISTHENES-WARS WITH SPARTA, THEBES, AND CHALCIS-THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY FIRMLY ESTABLISHED OTHER STATES OF GREECE-COLONIES-IN THE COUNTRIES NORTH OF GREECE-IN ASIA-IN SICILY AND ITALY-IN GAUL AND SPAIN-IN AFRICA-SURVEY OF HELLAS AT THE EPOCH OF THE PERSIAN WARS-PROGRESS OF LITERATURE, PHILOSOPHY, AND art. AT the close of the mythical age, Mr. Grote recognises a period of intermediate darkness before the dawn of historical Greece: but even before we reach the border land between legend and true history, we find some things in the former that belong to the province of the latter. The external events, though related as facts, are for us mere legends; but they enclose a kernel of real facts relating to the political and social state of the heroic age. The free states of Greece form a spectacle altogether different from the great monarchies of the East. Partly from essential differences of character, but chiefly, it would seem, from the physical causes which divided them into small territories, each lying compactly about its own city, the Greeks resisted the compressing force of empire. Hence, while in Asia the usurping power of some great conqueror crushed the primitive patriarchal constitution of society, in Greece that constitution passed, by a not unnatural transition, into the royalty of the heads o certain families, who are but the first among the whole body o nobles and chieftains. These, as well as the supreme ruler of the state, are called by Homer kings; and, like him, they trace their lineage to the gods, and are literally "Kings born of Jove, who them this honour gave. They form the council of the king, but with no power to control his acts, except by their advice. In this council, however, we see the germ of an oligarchic constitution, for the king could only retain his ascendancy by qualities of body and mind answering to his divine lineage. Nor was the popular element altogether absent. The king not only administered justice in public, with or without his nobles for assessors, but he presided among them in full council in the market-place or public square, where measures were debated before the whole body of the citizens. But these had neither voice nor vote. In such an assembly, in the camp before Troy, Ulysses puts down every attempt at popular oratory with the words so often repeated since : "Bad is the rule of many; let there be One lord, one king, to whom Jove gave the sway ;", and when Thersites persists in speaking, he sends him out writhing beneath the blows of his sceptre. But the very delineation of such a scene, and the emphasis with which Homer lays down his monarchical doctrine, are proofs that something of the spirit which produced the democracies of later times was already at work among the free citizens. They were for the most part an independent body of proprietors, cultivating their own land; but there was an exceptional class, who were reduced by the loss of their property to work for hire on the farms of others.† The existence of slavery prevented the poorest class of freemen from sinking lower still. Slaves were, however, found only in the palaces of the kings and nobles;-" captives taken by the spear," themselves often of royal or noble birth, wives and children of slain heroes. Their hapless lot, so pathetically described by Homer, consisted in their reverse of fortune, rather than in those peculiar hardships which were the curse of slavery in the East, and which have been so cruelly inflicted, in all ages, upon races supposed to be inferior to their masters. It is needful to bear in mind the difference between the Grecian states and those of modern times. While the latter generally embrace extensive countries, the former were usually composed of single cities, each with the land surrounding it to a very moderate distance. Thus in the small district afterwards called Argolis, we find Diomed king of Argos, while Agamemnon rules at Mycenæ.‡ * The Greek word Agora, which denotes a place of assembly, describes the open place in the midst of the city, which was used for all public purposes. This lowest class of freemen were called Thetes. Hence the twofold sense of the Greek word polis (city), from which we borrow * SOCIAL STATE OF THE HEROIC AGE. 321 Hence the possibility of assembling all the citizens in the agora with the king and nobles, and of working the republics of later times without the device of representation. This limited extent of the state too, combined with the open-air life of the Greeks in their delicious climate, had the greatest influence on their social life. Meeting daily in the agora, the citizens were personally known to one another, and their thoughts and views were exchanged as freely as the current coin of the market. Their life at home preserved a high degree of the patriarchal order and simplicity. The father's authority was the real and supreme law; his blessing was sought like that of Jacob by his children; and the curse of Edipus was the direst of the woes that befell his sons. The wife held her due place of honour, though she was purchased from her parents with costly gifts, as was the custom also among the Hebrews. The seclusion of the women in their separate apartments was a later usage, borrowed from the Asiatic Greeks. They were equally in their own sphere, when directing their maidens in private at the spinning-wheel and loom, or coming forth to exercise that hospitality which was a chief grace of the heroic age. The stranger guest was freely welcomed, and if he came as a suppliant, it was a sacred duty to receive him. Not till he was refreshed with the bath and banquet, was any inquiry made about his name or object. Ample room was found for lodging guests under the colonnade surrounding the front court of the palace, which was the most agreeable sleeping-place in a Grecian night, though it bore from its use during the day the epithet of "very noisy." The banquet was plentiful, but simple, free from all intemperance, and enlivened by the strains of the bard, reciting the loves of the gods, or the martial deeds of heroes. It is only by reading Homer that we can form to ourselves a picture of the simple life led even by the kings, or, on the other hand, of the ferocity in war, the frequent homicides, and the unrestrained plundering by land and sea, which allowed no security but to the strong. Great progress had been made in the arts and appliances of life. The heroic age was one of "well-built cities," palaces, and temples. Of its massive architecture some idea may be obtained from the ruins of Tiryns and Mycena.† The "Lion Gate" of the our leading political terms. It is only in a figurative sense that we speak of a citizen of America, but the Greek was literally a citizen of his state. *The Gynaceum, or women's house. The so-called Agamemnon. VOL. I. Treasury of Atreus" is now conjectured to be the tomb of Y |