B.C. 445.] PERICLES AND THUCYDIDES. 465 nines, was banished from Athens on account of his failure to relieve Amphipolis, in B.C. 424. This place became again very famous in the wars with Philip. Besides the new colonies, many Athenian citizens were settled as cleruchi in the ports and islands of the Egæan. The political administration of Athens was now in the hands of Pericles, who had for a few years a powerful antagonist in Thucydides, the son of Melesias. This statesman was better qualified than Cimon had been to cope with Pericles on his own ground in the popular assembly, and the aristocratic party were better organized. But the vast superiority of Pericles in debate was confessed, if we may believe the anecdote of Plutarch, by his rival. Being asked by Archidamus, king of Sparta, whether Pericles or he were the better wrestler, Thucydides replied "Even when I throw him he denies that he has fallen, gains, his point, and talks over those who have actually seen him fall."* The time was past for discussing the foundations of the democratic constitution; and the attacks of Thucydides and his party were chiefly directed at the pacific policy of Pericles towards Persia, and the employment of the money levied from the allies, originally for the Persian war, in the decoration of the city. To the first objection it was enough for Pericles to reply, that all danger of attack from Persia had ceased, and that an aggressive war against her would be a waste of resources, demanded neither by the common voice nor the common interest of Greece. The other point was one which had long passed out of the sphere of justice into that of policy, and Pericles only gave by his genius form and consistency to the ambition of the people, that their city should be invested with an imperial grandeur answering to the imperial state she had usurped. After a fierce contest, the public will was clearly expressed by the ostracism of Thucydides (B.c. 444 or 443), leaving to Pericles the ascendancy which was undisputed for the rest of his life. The only external event of great importance, till the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, was the revolt and reduction of Samos, the most powerful of the three islands which were the sole remaining independent allies of Athens. It would seem that the oligarchical party, which had gained the upper hand in this wealthy state, was inclined to try the experiment of real independence. Having wrested from Miletus the small town of Priene on the Ionian coast, they refused to appear at Athens to answer the complaint of the Milesians. Forty ships were sent out to punish this * Plutarch, Pericles, 8; Grote, History of Greece, vol. vi. p. 21. VOL. I. act of contumacy; an Athenian garrison was placed in Samos, the government was changed into a democracy, and hostages of the noblest families were carried off to Lemnos. But the oligarchical party succeeded, by the aid of the Persian satrap of Sardis, in surprising the island and the Athenian troops, whom they sent as prisoners to Sardis, at the same time recovering their hostages from Lemnos. They then openly revolted (B.c. 440). A fleet was sent against them under the ten generals for the year, of whom Pericles was the chief, and another was the poet Sophocles. After an obstinate resistance for nine months, Samos capitulated, and was reduced to the condition of the subject allies. Byzantium, the only other state that had joined in the revolt, submitted at the same time. The suppression of the revolt of a state which had ranked second to Athens in the confederacy, must have convinced the subject allies of the hopelessness of any attempt at emancipation, nor does there seem as yet to have been any strong desire for a change. "The feeling common among them towards Athens seems to have been neither attachment nor hatred, but simple indifference and acquiescence in her supremacy.' dominion was more firmly established than ever. ""* Her But Athens shines at this period with a lustre far surpassing that of empire. We naturally feel a hesitation in applying a word, associated both in earlier and later times with power over vast regions, to so small a space as the subjects of Athens occupied on the surface of the earth. But there are other realms, depicted on no map, which own her supremacy to this very day, and this supremacy was chiefly earned in the age of Pericles. That statesman, whose own mind had been trained by the acutest thinkers of Greece, and whose daily life was spent in converse with her master-spirits, conceived the grand idea of investing Athens with an intellectual glory which no change of empire should blot out. Once, indeed, he had formed the project of making her, by the willing consent of the Hellenic states, the capital of a united Greece, and he sent out envoys to invite the assembly of a congress. Such a scheme was not only premature, but incompatible with the temper of the Greek mind, and the organization of the Greek states. There remained to him the power of making Athens, by the resources which she possessed in herself, the centre of the intellectual life of Greece,-of * Grote, History of Greece, vol. vi. p. 43. The remark quoted occurs in the midst of a most important discussion on the position of the allies in reference to Athens at this time. B. C. 444.] GLORIFICATION OF ATHENS. 467 exhibiting her to the Hellenic world as the home of art and letters, of philosophy and eloquence,-of clothing her with a beauty worthy of the queen of Hellas. Nor was this the unpractical idea of a statesman in advance of his age. The people, excited by the still recent glories of the Persian War, elated with the possession of the empire they had so rapidly acquired, stimulated by the activity of their commerce and maritime expeditions, and still more by the sense of personal freedom and the restless energy of their public life,-trained to the highest efforts of intellect in not only listening to, but judging of, the poetry of Eschylus and Sophocles, and eloquence such as that of Pericles himself,-endowed by nature with the nicest sense of harmony and beauty, and passing their lives together in the public places of their beloved city-such a people were more than ready to carry out the most magnificent schemes of improvement that a statesman could devise. When such a spirit moves at once the rulers and the people, there is sure to be no want of the best instruments that genius can supply, and the age of Pericles was the epoch of the highest creative genius ever known in the annals of the world. It is this that gives Athens her unique position in human history, the intellectual supremacy which was the fruit of her political freedom. The faults, and even the crimes, which the Athenians committed in the immoderate use of that liberty of which they were the foremost champions, wrought out their own punishment, and passed away like the ruins of their city and their empire, but the products of their intellectual energy rise, like the remains of the Parthenon above those ruins, a landmark and a pattern to intellectual effort in every age. It were a task far beyond our limits to describe the works with which the artists who flourished under Pericles beautified the city, or the nobler products with which poets and historians glorified the literature of Athens. The city itself had been rebuilt in haste, after the departure of Xerxes, like London after the fire of 1666; and its streets, in common with those of most Greek towns, had far more than all the irregularity and narrowness which deform our own city. But the Wren of that age, Hippodamus of Miletus, found ample exercise for his skill in laying out the regular streets and noble Agora of Peiræus, which gained for great works of city architecture the proverbial title of "Hippodameian." This chief port of Athens was also furnished with a splendid arsenal and docks. The system of defence connecting Athens with her ports was completed by the building of the inner 1. The Cephissus; 2. The Ilissus; 3. The Eridanus; 4. Mount Hymettus; 5. Mount Lycabettus; 6. Mount Anchesmus; 7. Mount Corydallos; 8. Mount Poecilum (this mountain and 7 are parts of the range of Egaleos); 9. The outer Ceramicus; 10. Academia; 11. Eum Ceramicum? 12. Colonus; 13. Acharne; 14. Cropeia; 15. Preonidae; 16. Eupyridae; 17. Alopece: 18. Larissa; 19. Halimus; 20. Prospalta; 21. Ceiriade? 22. Exone: 23. Thymeetia; 24. Corydallus; 25. Xypete? (Troja); 26. Hermus; 27. Oia; 28. Upper Agryle; 29. Lower Agryle B.C. 437.] WORKS OF ARCHITECTURE. 469 wall to the Peiræus, to prevent the communication being cut off in case an enemy should gain a footing in the wide space between the Peirean and Phaleric walls. While the safety of the city was consulted in these works of utility, the nobler sentiments of religious and intellectual life were ministered to by works of surpassing beauty. The theatre called Odeon was erected for the musical and poetical contests at the Panathenaïc festival;* the temples of the Acropolis were rebuilt; and a worthy approach to them was constructed in the splendid Doric Propylæa.† The crowning triumph of Athenian art was in the Parthenon, or "House of the Virgin"-the great temple of Athena on the Acropolis, constructed of white marble, after the purest Doric mould-adorned with the most perfect sculptures in the pediments of its eastern and western porticoes, in the metopes of its frieze, and on the frieze in low relief round the wall of the "cella" within the colonnade-and enshrining the colossal statue of the goddess in ivory with ornaments of pure gold. How zealously the Athenians lighted up "the lamp of sacrifice," and how strong The Great Theatre, for the exhibition of dramas at the Dionysiac festivals, was hollowed out in the south-eastern slope of the Acropolis. Its construction was commenced about B.C. 500, in consequence of the breaking down of the temporary wooden erection which used to be put up at each festival. The final completion of its architectural features seems not to have been effected till B. c. 340. A copy of the Propylæa, furnishing a striking example of the modern misapplication of classical forms, may be seen at Euston Square, leading into the courtyard and offices of a railway station. Equally correct and equally misplaced copies of other Athenian monuments are combined, into an extraordinary medley in the neighbouring church of St. Pancras. This technical term needs explanation. The chief features of a Doric portico are supposed to represent the essential parts which were present and visible (as construction always ought to be in works of art) in the primitive wooden edifices. The portico formed the gable end. Across the pillars ran the architrave (chief-beam). On this rested the ends of the longitudinal beams, the plainness of which was relieved by a kind of channelling, called a triglyph (from its triple stiles and grooves). The opening between these beam-ends, called melopes (μeтóñaι, because they were between the beds of the beams, orai), were at first left vacant: afterwards they were filled in with plain slabs, and lastly these slabs were sculptured in high-relief; affording a splendid example of the true principle of basing decorative art upon construction. This whole surface ornamented by the triglyphs and metopes formed the frieze (in Greek Swpópos, the sculpture-bearer), and its richness was balanced by the plain architrave below. The projecting cornice (кopwvís, crown) above sheltered it from the weather, and cast over it a rich shadow; and above this rose the triangular pediment, representing the gable of the roof. The opening enclosed by its sides, and filled in with plain slabs, formed the tympanum (i.e., drum), and afforded a space for groups of colossal sculpture. In the Parthenon, the sculptures of the eastern or principal front represented the birth of Athena; those of the western front, her contest with Poseidon for Attica. The back parts of all the figures are as elaborately finished as the parts which were seen. |