Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14/VII
VII
THE GREATER HELLENISM
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policy. His head was somewhat turned by success; he assumed the airs and designation of a god as Zeus Philippus. Nothing seemed too hard for him to do, and the answer given him by the Pythia at Delphi was regarded as favourable ("The bull is crowned, the end is come: the slayer is at hand"), though the tragedy which soon followed served to give it a different interpretation. For though he was encouraged to push on with this national undertaking, and actually despatched Attalus and Parmenio into Asia with orders to free the Greek cities, he was not destined to fight another campaign. Early the next year (B.C. 336) he was assassinated at a wedding feast by one of his own guards. His work was taken up by his son and successor, Alexander, whose mother, Olympias, was suspected of having been privy to the crime.
Alexander was just twenty years old, and before he could enter upon what was to be his great work he was obliged to secure his power at home against the partisans of his father's second wife, and against the Illyrian tribe of the Triballi. The news of Philip's death had also incited the Greeks, at the instigation of Demosthenes, to strike for freedom. The appearance of Alexander at the head of an army repressed the movement, and he was elected "General with full powers," like his father. Next year, however, he was obliged to go to Amphipolis, and thence to the Danube, to suppress renewed risings of the barbarians; and a false rumour having reached Greece that he had fallen, an insurrection broke out at Thebes, as well as in Ætolia, Elis, and Arcadia. But Alexander marched rapidly south- wards. He besieged and took Thebes, which was destroyed, and its inhabitants for the most part sold into slavery. In the rest of Greece the rebellion immediately died out; and next year (B.C. 334) Alexander started on his expedition against Darius.
The marvellous conquests of Alexander, achieved in little more than ten years (B.C. 334-323), were the beginning of a new and more extensive Hellenism, which, however, was not to have its chief home in Greece, but in Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt. For more than a thousand years Europe was no longer to fear invasion from the East; and though Greece was to be no more really free, the next great empire to which it was to belong would absorb its ideas and give them a world-wide influence.
Alexander's campaigns must be only briefly summarised here, and the general plan indicated. His army consisted of about 40,000 men of various nationalities. His phalanx—infantry trained to charge sixteen deep, and armed with long spears, or sarissae—consisted principally of 12,000 Macedonians. He did not strike straight at the heart of the Persian Empire—at the capitals on the Euphrates or Tigris. His plan was first to secure Asia Minor and all the lands held by the Persian king bordering on the Mediterranean. This was done in three years. Crossing early in the spring of B.C. 334 from Sestos to Abydos, and first visiting Ilium, he won a decisive victory in a cavalry engagement at the River
Granicus (May), and then captured in rapid succes
ALEXANDER THE GREAT, B.C. 356–323.
(British Museum.)
sion Sardis—important as the place from which the great roads branched off—Ephesus, Magnesia, Miletus, and, in fact, all the Greek towns in Asia Minor. He hardly met with any resistance except at Ephesus and Halicarnassus where he was assisted by his fleet. The immediate effect upon the Greek towns was the establishment of a democratic form of government, of course in subordination to the Macedonian monarch. They were free from the Persian satraps, and from the tyrants which the satraps constantly set up. Those cities which submitted quietly received specially favourable treatment; inscriptions are extant recording remissions of contribution {syntaxis), restoration of temples, and the law against tyrants, in virtue of which they are deposed and declared outlaws. The settlement of Alexander was in some places, as in Lesbos, upset for a time by the Persian fleet under Memnon, and those who succeeded him after his death in B.C. 333; but in the next year Hegelochus, the commander of the Macedonian fleet, drove away the governors replaced by the Persians, and from that time the will of Alexander was supreme in Asia Minor and the islands. In these transactions he acted as the head of Hellas and encouraged Hellenic restorations. Thus he is said to have contributed largely to the expense of rebuilding the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, burnt the year of his birth. He rebuilt a temple to Athena at Pirene, and an inscription remains recording the dedication by one of his officers of a statue at Olympia. When sufficient time had elapsed to heal the feuds occasioned by the changes of dynasty one of the last acts of Alexander's life was to proclaim the return of all exiles, the Macedonian power after his marvellous victories being held sufficient to prevent party contests in the cities, which were to have no policy but his own.
After the settlement of Asiatic Hellas, Alexander continued his conquests in Syria, Phoenicia, Palestine, and Egypt, thus securing his hold upon the western part of the Persian Empire, and making himself still more completely master of the Eastern Mediterranean. Darius was beaten and driven into headlong flight at the battle of Issus (B.C. 333), and while Alexander was engaged on the siege of Tyre (B.C. 332) offered to cede everything west of the Euphrates. But Alexander, though giving Darius ample time to reconstruct his shattered forces while he was himself engaged in completing these more western conquests, had not relinquished his plan of pushing his invasion into the very heart of the Persian Empire. No peace, therefore, was made; and he went on with the siege of Tyre, which occupied him seven months, and then entered Palestine, where the only resistance experienced was at Gaza.[1] On the surrender of Gaza he proceeded by sea to Pelusium in the Delta of the Nile, and the Persian satrap at once surrendered. The Egyptians always disliked the Persians, who plundered and insulted their temples, while Alexander, as in Greece, was careful to show respect to the national religion. Landing at Pelusium he went up the river bank to Memphis, where he sacrificed to Apis and held a festival of gymnastics and music. He even went several days' journey in the desert to visit the shrine and oracle of Ammon. He then went to the Canobic mouth and sailed round the Maeotic Lake. While there he was struck by the advantages of the strip of land opposite the island of Pharus, as a site for a town, and marked out a circuit of ten miles for the walls of what was called Alexandria after him, and very quickly rose to be one of the most important cities of the ancient world. Here, too, he was careful to respect the feelings of the natives, and to provide for a joint occupation of it ; while his plan embraced a temple to Isis as well as to the gods of Greece.
With the immense prestige gained by his triumphant march through Asia Minor to Egypt, and enriched by enormous treasures which he seized in Damascus and wherever the Persian Government had been centred, Alexander in the following year began his wonderful march into the interior of Asia, the heart of the Persian Empire. Darius had gathered a great host to meet him, and was encamped on the Upper Tigris at Gaugamela, more than twenty miles from Arbela, which has given its name to the battle, and in which Darius had left his baggage and treasure. The victory of Alexander (September, B.C. 331), was again complete, and Darius fled into Media. All resistance at once collapsed; there was no holding out of strong towns as at Tyre or Gaza. The Persian Empire passed to Alexander at one blow, with all its immense accumulations of treasure at Babylon, Susa, and Persepolis. Next year was taken up with the pursuit of Darius, and when he was assassinated by Bessus, in attacking Bessus himself, who had escaped to Bactria and there had himself crowned as “Artaxerxes, King of Asia.” Bessus was quickly taken prisoner, mutilated, and sent for execution to Ecbatana. Alexander now assumed the royal dress, ornaments, and power of the Persian kings. The enormous wealth found in the royal cities enriched both himself and his army, and, believing himself invincible, he embarked on the most ambitious designs. “When he had conquered Sogdiana and Bactriana, he found himself stopped by the lofty mountain chain of the Hindu-kush; and, to the south, he heard of the great waters of the Indus and the Deccan. Beyond were great peoples, with elephants and chariots, with a new culture and language, and a religion unknown even to report But neither mountains nor rivers were able to resist him. He passed over the Hindu-kush with his whole army—a task hardly any modern general would attempt; he forced the Koord, Kabul, and Kyber Passes; he crossed the Indus, the Hydaspes, in the face of a great hostile army; he conquered his new enemy and all his elephants with a skill not inferior to any yet shown; the whole Punjaub was in his hands; he was on the point of passing into India when his troops—his Macedonian troops—refused to go further” (B.C. 329–325).[2]
Alexander returned from the Indus partly by ship, and took up his residence at the various royal towns, finally at Babylon. His object was now to make a great European-Asiatic Empire, as far as possible uniform in administration, and with inhabitants of mixed race. He sent home a large number of veterans who had mutinied in the Punjaub, he married a daughter of Darius, having already married a beautiful Bactrian named Roxana, and encouraged Macedonian officers to marry Persian wives. He also filled up the places of the veterans sent home with Persian recruits. He was planning further conquests in Arabia, and issuing orders as to the internal affairs of Greece, when all his schemes were cut short by a fever, to which he succumbed on the 11th of June, B.C. 323.
The death of Alexander was the signal for universal disruption. It did not come at once, or professedly as a consequence of his death. His half-brother, Philip Arrhidaeus, was declared King of Macedonia, with a reservation of the right of the child of Roxana by Alexander, if it should prove to be a boy, and meanwhile Perdiccas (to whom Alexander is said to have given his signet-ring) was to be guardian and chief director of the Empire, with the title of Chiliarch. Nevertheless the ultimate division of the Empire into separate and independent kingdoms was foreshadowed by the division of the provinces among the chief generals of Alexander, who were not likely long to submit to any one chief, or to act together. In fact, from this time to B.C. 301 there was a constant succession of wars—the result of which was the formation of four considerable kingdoms: Macedonia, Syria, Egypt, and Thrace. These kingdoms were reduced to three on the death of Lysimachus, King of Thrace, in B.C. 281, whose dominions were divided between the kings of Egypt and Syria. Subordinate kingdoms—or what became such—in Asia, which afterwards grew to some importance, were those of Bithynia, Cappadocia, Pontus, and Pergamus. All these, though containing a large majority of non-Hellenic subjects, retained much of the Hellenic civilisation introduced or strengthened by Alexander. But the more eastern parts of his conquests lapsed quickly back to Orientalism, and before the middle of the next century the Parthians were winning nearly all that the Persian kings had held east of the Euphrates; and Armenia, which first asserted and then lost its independence, never ceased to struggle till, in the second century B.C., it regained its national life.
In one sense the formation of these kingdoms shattered the ideal of Hellenism—local autonomy and free constitutions. The miseries caused by the constant wars between such free constitutions had caused a widespread revulsion in favour of monarchies and strong states. The only alternative—that of leagues or alliances—had failed in the case of the two Athenian leagues of B.C. 476 and B.C. 378. An alliance of sea-powers, Byzantium, Chios, and Rhodes, had some temporary success, but was not strong enough to hold out against the united power of Rome. The experiment of a closer league was again made in the Peloponnese and Aetolia, and we shall have hereafter to consider its brief success and final failure.
To the Greeks of the day, however, the death of Alexander seemed to promise them a renewal of freedom. They had never heartily acquiesced in his supremacy. Sparta, indeed, had never yielded to Philip, and had continued to play the part of protector of Greek freedom. In B.C. 338 one of its kings, Archedamus III., had crossed to Italy to assist the Lacedaemonian colony of Tarentum in its struggles with surrounding barbarians, and had fallen on the same day, it is said, as that of the battle of Chaeroneia.
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COINS OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT, B.C. 356–323.
His son and successor, Agis III., made an alliance
with the Persian satraps in B.C. 333, and being
supplied by them with money and ships, occupied the
greater part of Crete, while Alexander was engaged
in Thrace and Boeotia. In B.C. 331, when he had
crossed to Asia, Agis induced the Eleians, Achaeans
and Arcadians to join in an open rebellion, and began
the war by besieging Megalopolis, which refused to
join him. But this short-lived revolt was sternly
suppressed by Antipater, whom Alexander had left
in charge of Macedonia.
More than 5,000 Lacedaemonians are said to have fallen, and this seems to have been a fatal blow to Spartan power and activity,
for Sparta took no part in the rising which followed
on the news of Alexander's death.
But nearly all the rest of Greece did join this movement. It was warmly promoted by Demosthenes, who had been living in banishment at Aegina since B.C. 324, for having accepted a bribe from Harpalus, a dishonest officer of Alexander's who had fled to Athens. He was now recalled, and threw himself eagerly into the task of persuading the Greek states to join. They had recently been made still more disaffected by the decree of Alexander for the restoration of exiles, and there seems to have been little hesitation anywhere. A body of men who had served in Alexander's army as mercenaries, and had been sent home by his order, were stationed in Taenarum, and an energetic leader named Leosthenes having been secured, these men, with contingents from all parts of Greece, were mustered at Thermopylae, as though once more to make a stand there for freedom. The war has been called the Lamian War (B.C. 323–322), because it began by a siege of Antipater in Lamia, some twenty-five miles north of Thermopylae. Unfortunately Leosthenes fell during the siege, and his successor, Antiphilus, though he won one battle against the Macedonian Leonnatus, was defeated by the combined forces of Antipater and Craterus at Crannon, in Thessaly (August, B.C. 322). Though the Greeks lost heavily in the battle, the defeat was not so decisive as to account in itself for a complete collapse. But shortly before this a fleet of 170 vessels, under an Athenian commander, which had been operating among the Ionian islands, sustained two severe defeats off the Echinadae—a group of islands on the south coast of Acarnania—and the Macedonians were left in complete command of the sea. The Greek states had therefore no option: they were obliged to submit. They did indeed try to bargain that terms should be made with them en bloc, but the Macedonian generals would not admit of this, and insisted on each state being treated with separately. They enforced their view by storming the Thessalian cities, and before long the whole country submitted. Some states received more indulgent treatment than others, but the general result was that they had to admit a Macedonian garrison, and to submit to such changes of constitution as the Macedonian government thought necessary to secure that the party favouring the Macedonians should have the chief power in the several states.
In the Peloponnesian cities this seems to have been effected generally by establishing oligarchies or tyrants; in Athens, while a Macedonian garrison was to be stationed in Munychia, the franchise was to be restricted to men possessing property to the value of two thousand drachmae, and the greater part of those below this standard were compelled to emigrate, principally to Thrace, only about 9,000 full citizens being left. The surrender of the orators who had taken part against Macedonia was also demanded, and Demosthenes poisoned himself rather than fall into their hands. The Athenians were also required to withdraw their cleruchs from Samos, and to give up all authority there. It is true that in the struggles that ensued between the governors, who had divided the Empire among themselves, the freedom of Greece and the independence of its cities was more than once proclaimed—as in B.C. 318 by Polyperchon, the successor of Antipater as regent, in B.C. 314 by Antigonus in order to drive out Cassander, Antipater's son, and in B.C. 311, when these governors made formal peace with each other. But this declaration only served as an excuse for fresh war between these princes under pretext of freeing Greek towns, which suffered sieges and devastations from both sides alternately. The constant quarrels between the Diadochi, however—especially the disputes as to the regency, and then the throne, of Macedonia—did allow the Greek cities in Europe gradually to assert a kind of independence. There were Macedonian garrisons in some towns, but not in all, and banished democrats found their way back from time to time and restored some sort of free government.
Athens underwent more changes of fortune, perhaps, than any other state. After the Lamian war (B.C. 322) twelve thousand citizens had been banished. In B.C. 318, Cassander, son of the late regent Antipater, having only the office of Chiliarch, tried to secure his position against the regent Polyperchon by making himself master of Athens with the connivance of the oligarchical party headed by Phocion, the old opponent of Demosthenes. The Athenian democrats, seeing an opportunity, sided with Polyperchon, who had proclaimed the independence of
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Bas-relief from the Parthenon: Magistrates Consulting.
(British Museum.)
Greek cities, and the recall of exiles. Phocion was condemned to death, and the democracy fancied itself restored. But Cassander was too strong to be ousted. Retaining his hold on Munychia and Piraeus, he placed Athens under the rule of Demetrius of Phalerum, a poet, orator, and man of letters, under whose mild sway the city had ten years of peace and content (B.C. 317–307), though without the old strenuous life and activity. Participation in public affairs became unfashionable, and few were willing to bear state burdens. Yet its ancient reputation as a seat of literature and philosophy did not disappear at once. The poets of the New Comedy were either Athenians or lived for many years in Athens, as being the place where they could obtain and enjoy the widest fame and the most favourable opportunities. The greatest of them all—Menander (B.C. 342–290)—was a native Athenian. Philemon of Syracuse (B.C. 388–292) was early in life granted citizenship at Athens, where he lived for the greater part of his long life; and of the other twenty or twenty-four poets of the New Comedy quoted or named by later writers, the majority were Athenians or residents at Athens. But Comedy was no longer political and personal, statesmen were no longer worth attacking, or it was no longer safe to touch on public affairs. It was a comedy of manners, and its characters were intriguing youths, girls virtuous or the reverse, cunning slaves, greedy parasites, stern or indulgent fathers. The society represented was that pictured in the “Characters” of Theophrastus, the successor of Aristotle (B.C. 372–287)—a society of petty ambitions and narrow interests. Nor was oratory what it had been, when the interests concerned were greater and the issues more portentous. It came to be used as the vehicle of literary or social criticism rather than as the art of persuasion. And the most flourishing schools of rhetoric were found rather in other parts of Hellas—in Rhodes and the Asiatic cities. Philosophy, however, continued to find its chief home in Athens. Plato, who died in B.C. 347, and Aristotle in B.C. 322, had successors in their Schools of adequate abilities, though of far inferior influence. But Epicurus—an Athenian, though born in Samos—coming to Athens in B.C. 307, drew numerous pupils to his quiet garden to listen to doctrines which were to have an influence beyond the Hellenic world; and Zeno about the same time made the Stoa, in which he taught the fountain head of an elevated philosophy which attracted many of the best minds for many centuries after his death. It is true that there was an opposition which in B.C. 305 carried a decree banishing all philosophers, but this was repealed in the next year, and Athens gradually became a place of study and a university, though its fortifications, especially at the harbour, were still sufficiently formidable to make it a place of arms if the same spirit had still inspired its citizens. Yet it never again played a serious part in Greek politics, and practical men like Polybius were apt to sneer even at its philosophical schools as encouraging useless and sophistical speculations rather than sound learning.
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VENUS, BY PRAXITELES.
(Vatican Museum.)
The decay of other parts of Greece was still more marked. Thessaly was practically incorporated with Macedonia, and though for a time it seems to have enjoyed a quiet kind of prosperity, it suffered much in after-times as the battle-ground of Macedonia and Rome. In Sparta the true Spartans were steadily dwindling, the land was passing into the hands of a few families, the institutions which had created a nation of soldiers were falling into neglect, and the government was becoming more and more oligarchical. A small class of wealthy persons were living in a nation for the most part idle and needy—a “Laconian” no longer suggested the idea of a brave and simple soldier so much as of a needy buffoon. Here, however, as in Thessaly and in the Lacedaemonian colony at Tarentum, there was still a military class, which probably included the most energetic portion of the citizens, who were highly valued by other states or sovereigns as mercenary soldiers. The decadence of Boeotia was perhaps more marked than that of the other parts of Greece. Cassander restored Thebes in B.C. 315 (it had always retained some of its inhabitants, and the temples had not been destroyed), but it did not recover political power or influence. The two cities of Boeotia which did retain a certain prosperity were Thespiae and Tanagra, where a fine kind of pottery ware was produced. In the rest of Boeotia a rather vulgar luxury and ostentation took the place of political activity. Polybius says that the decline became rapid after a war with the Aetolians in B.C. 245, but asserts that it began much earlier. With this political decline came not only a decline in literature and art, but a change in their central home to such places as Pergamus, Alexandria, or Syracuse.
Yet in spite of this decline in vigour, the Greeks showed in the presence of the next great national danger that they had not quite forgotten their ancient valour. In B.C. 280 a horde of Celts (Gauls), numbering, say the historians (with no doubt some exaggeration), 300,000 souls, crossed the Alps into Pannonia, and there divided into two hosts for the invasion of Macedonia and Greece. The next year Macedonia and Thrace were overrun, the king (Ptolemy Ceraunus) killed, and the country everywhere ravaged and plundered. These Celts appear to have gone back home for the winter, but the next year a horde of over 150,000 foot and 20,000 horse entered Greece. The danger called forth almost for the last time a combined movement of Greek states in defence of freedom. The Barbarians marched down to Thermopylae, which was being held by a combined army of Athenians, Boeotians, Phocians, Megarians, and Aetolians, supported by a fleet off the shore. The Gauls discovered the path over Mount Callidromus by which Leonidas had of old been surrounded; but the Greeks defended themselves with courage, and were able to get on board their ships in safety. The Gauls, however, had won the pass, and thence, like one column of Xerxes' army, made for Delphi, attracted by the report of the immense wealth stored there. The repulse which they met with at Delphi was attributed, like that of the troops of Xerxes, to the direct interposition of the god and the
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| Photo] | [Alinari |
The Dying Gaul (Dying Gladiator) from Pergamus, about B.C. 230.
(Capitoline Museum.)
appearance of the local heroes. There is the same earthquake, and the fall of an immense rock from Parnassus. But a more rationalistic explanation is that which speaks of the weariness of the Gauls and their intemperance. The oracle had bidden the country people not to take their food and wine from their houses, and the Gauls—as was their wont—revelled in the booty which they found ready to their hands. Delphi had also been put into a state of defence, and allies had mustered there from Ætolia and all the surrounding cities. A great number of the Gauls fell in battle, and, according to one story, a still greater number by mutual slaughter the following evening, in consequence of a mysterious panic that fell upon them. At any rate, they passed away northward, pursued and harassed by Athenians and other peoples, and crossed over to Asia, where after various fortunes they were finally driven further inland by the rulers of Pergamus and gave their name to Galatia, or enlisted as mercenaries in various services in Asia and Europe. They had been turned towards Macedonia and Greece because the growing power of Rome had prevented further immigrations into Italy after the victory at Sentinum in Umbria (B.C. 295), and their repulse at Delphi was the last successful movement of united Hellas against a foreign invader.
Meanwhile the Greek world in the West had been passing through vicissitudes, in some respect like those in Greece itself, which led eventually to a more complete decadence. We know little of the early history of the Greek cities in Southern Italy, but they seem to have resembled their parent cities in the constant quarrels and wars which they waged with each other. Such combinations and leagues as were from time to time formed arose from the necessity of repelling common enemies—Lucani, Messapii, or Samnites. As in Greece, too, some one city possessed or claimed hegemony among the rest, in which it was opposed by some other which differed from it in origin, constitution, or habits. In early times this primacy seems to have been held by Sybaris—afterwards a bye word, perhaps unjustly, for wealth and luxury—whose rival was Croton. The people of Croton, an Achaean colony, prided themselves on a healthier and more manly way of life. They zealously practised athletics, won a great many prizes at Olympia, and rewarded those of their citizens who were victors with the highest honours and commands. In a war with Sybaris (about B.C. 510) they utterly destroyed that city. But they did not long enjoy the primacy they secured, for not many years later they sustained a crushing defeat at the hands of the people of Locri Epizypherii and Rhegium. In common with other towns of South Italy, they suffered much in the fifth century from a series of democratic revolutions brought on by popular risings against the followers of the philosopher Pythagoras, who settled in Croton about B.C. 530. His followers in after-years formed societies or clubs, which among other things supported oligarchical ideas. Nevertheless, when Dionysius of Syracuse crossed over to attack Magna
Graecia (B.C. 389), Croton was the head of the league 
Figurine from Tanagra.
(British Museum.)
formed to repel him. Fifty years later, Tarentum—a colony of Sparta—began to claim the hegemony. But as far as it did exercise this leadership, Tarentum guided the Greek cities to their ruin. The Taren- tines adopted the policy, which had so often proved mischievous, of invoking foreign help against the surrounding natives—first from Sparta, in B.C. 338, when King Archidamus came to their aid, only to fall in battle with the Barbarians; next from Epirus in B.C. 333, when Alexander, King of the Molossi, and brother-in-law of Alexander the Great, came with great ideas of making an empire in the West like that of his namesake in the East. The result was that the Tarentines drew back, and he tried to establish a new Hellenic league to meet at Thurii. He lost his life, however, in the midst of his career by the treachery of a Lucanian native in his own bodyguard (B.C. 331). Finally it was the Tarentines who invited Pyrrhus in B.C. 280, not now against Samnite or Lucanian, but against Rome, with whom they had been strong enough some fifty years before to make an advantageous treaty. The defeat of Pyrrhus (B.C. 275) and the capture of Tarentum by the Romans (B.C. 272) were the sure prelude to the loss of freedom for all the Greek cities. They had to join the Roman system, some on better terms than others, but all in some sort as subjects. For a time this seems to have secured a spell of security and prosperity for some of them—a relief, perhaps, from the attacks of surrounding nations. In B.C. 264 it was to the Greek Tarentum, Locri, Elea, and Naples, that the Romans had to go for ships to meet the Carthaginians in Sicily; and in B.C. 217, after the first disasters in the Second Punic War, Naples, Paestum, and Syracuse were foremost in the offers of help and encouragement to Rome. But the Italian campaigns of Hannibal were fatal to most of them, and in the next century all but Tarentum, Naples, and Rhegium lost not only material prosperity, but almost all traces of Hellenic life.
In Sicily that life lasted longer. The Greek cities there (about twenty) had from early times to contend with the encroaching power of the Carthaginians as well as with mutual jealousies and quarrels. They had, however, enjoyed a considerable period of prosperity. Letters and art had flourished; stately temples and other public buildings had attracted universal admiration, and the fertility of the soil gained them wealth and luxury. The most powerful of the cities were Agrigentum and Syracuse. But it was the latter which was the chief champion of freedom against the Carthaginians, and after the victory of its tyrant Gelo over them in B.C. 480 the Greek cities enjoyed about seventy years' immunity from this danger. After the destruction of the Athenian armament in B.C. 413 Syracusan ships had even been sent eastward to co-operate with the Spartans, as though Syracuse were now one of the great Hellenic powers. But after the Carthaginian invasions of B.C. 409-6, under the usual pretext of assisting one city against another, Agrigentum suffered so severely as to cease for many years to be of any importance. Henceforth the hegemony belonged to Syracuse without dispute. In Syracuse,
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EPICURUS, B.C. 342–270.
as in Agrigentum and other cities, there had been many changes of government. Troublous times had generally resulted in the establishment of some despot. Gelo (B.C. 485–476) and Hiero (B.C. 478–467) had not only repulsed Carthaginians, but had raised the power and prestige of the city to a great height. The democracy which followed the expulsion of its last despot Thrasybulus (B.C. 466) was overthrown by Dionysius in B.C. 405. He retained power till his death in B.C. 367. After a struggle of fourteen years he was able to make a treaty which confined the Carthaginians to the part of the island west of the River Halycus (B.C. 383). His reign was a period of great glory for Syracuse. He possessed a powerful fleet; the city was adorned with splendid buildings; he encouraged literature and art, and welcomed philosophers and men of learning to his court. Yet it was not a happy time for Western Greece. Dionysius and his fleets, indeed, were able to suppress Etruscan and Illyrian pirates, and to keep safe both the Adriatic and Tyrrhenian seas; but he used them also to force the cities of Southern Italy to submit to him. The special object of his enmity was Rhegium, against which he supported Locri as a centre of his influence. This, and the constant danger from the neighbouring Lucanians, forced the Greek cities in Italy to combine against him. But he won a great victory over their united forces, and thenceforth, though they were not annexed, his will was paramount among them. Perhaps this might have had the same counterbalancing advantages, in securing peace and rest, as in some way made up to cities in Greece for the loss of their independence under Macedonian rule. But whatever advantages were thus gained disappeared under the troubled reign of his son (B.C. 367–344), twice interrupted as it was by revolutions. The other cities in Sicily shook off the supremacy of Syracuse, but generally fell under the rule of incompetent tyrants. The Carthaginians reappeared and even got possession of the greater part of the city of Syracuse (B.C. 345).
The state of the island was exceedingly miserable, when Timoleon of Corinth arrived in B.C. 345 with the express purpose of putting down tyranny in the cities and checking the encroachments of the Carthaginians. He came in answer to a petition from Syracuse and in a spirit of knight-errantry which makes the story read like a romance. He was eagerly welcomed at Rhegium as well as by the Sicilian cities. The Carthaginians were driven from Syracuse, the tyrants were deposed in the cities, and the Carthaginian side of the island even was invaded and their army crushed in a great battle on the banks of the Cremisus (B.C. 340). Unlike other so-called deliverers, Timoleon did not use his success to establish power for himself, but lived in Syracuse as a private citizen, beloved and honoured till his death in B.C. 336. Free institutions now prevailed in the Greek cities and a few years of prosperity followed; deserted cities became populous again, and the land which had been lying fallow was once more cultivated. The cities were also once more adorned with splendid buildings and fine works of art.
Agathocles, whom the necessity of fighting the Carthaginians again raised to supreme power in B.C. 317, seems not to have impaired this prosperity. On the contrary, he secured a period of peace to Sicily by carrying the war into Carthaginian territory in Africa and stirring up the African cities to rebel- lion against Carthage. But after his death (B.C. 298) some Italian mercenaries—called Mamertini,"Sons of Mamers," or "Mars"—whom he had employed, seized on Messene, expelled or put to death the male inhabitants, and took possession of the city, lands, women, and children. They made their stolen home the vantage-ground for plundering expeditions upon other cities, and thus one Greek city not only ceased to be Hellenic, but became a danger to other Hellenic cities, who now had two enemies instead of one to combat. Syracuse itself was torn by internal factions, and was held—in spite of its nominal free government—by one military adventurer after another and could do nothing against either the Carthaginians or the Mamertines.
Ten years of great misery were the consequence; and it was to heal these disorders that Pyrrhus, who had married a daughter of Agathocles, was invited to leave his campaign in Italy and come to Sicily (B.C. 278). But though Pyrrhus—another knight-errant—had for a time as great a success as Timoleon, he did not, like him, retain the confidence of the Sicilians. He restored some sort of order at Syracuse, cut off marauding parties of the Mamertines, drove the Carthaginian garrison from Agrigentum and Eryx, Hercte and Panormus, and seemed on the point of expelling them altogether from Sicily and thus anticipating the result of the First Punic War. But one Carthaginian stronghold held out—Lilybaeum; and this he failed after a lengthy siege to take. This failure ruined his position in Sicily. In Syracuse plots were made against him; in the other cities murmurs arose that he aimed at making himself tyrant, that he was granting lands to his friends, and putting men in places of trust who tampered with justice. In the latter part of B.C. 276, therefore, he left Sicily and went back to meet disaster in Italy.
The old state of disorder immediately revived. The Carthaginians recovered their territory west of the Halycus, reoccupied Agrigentum, and again began intriguing to assert their authority throughout the island. Syracuse, with its subordinate towns, naturally fell once more under the power of a military despot, this time happily an able and moderate man, Hiero II. (B.C. 270–216). By his prudence the kingdom of Syracuse remained independent, when the rest of Sicily became Roman in B.C. 242. The effect of the first Punic war was that the Roman government took over the supremacy exercised by Carthage, and the cities paid their tenths of corn and other produce to the Roman exchequer. Each city was to enjoy its own laws and courts, but an appeal would lie from them to that of the praetor sent annually from Rome. Some few towns were excused the tenths, as having served the Roman cause, but even they were bound to supply ships and sailors or soldiers to serve in the Roman army and navy. Rome protected them and maintained peace, but they lost the right to maintain an army or to go to war, in fact to have any foreign policy.
The kingdom of Syracuse came to an end after the capture of the city by Marcellus in B.C. 214, and was added to the rest of the island as one Roman province. This is the permanent subjection of another once important and flourishing portion of Hellas, preceded, if not caused, by a long series of intestine disorders and appeals for outside help as in Greece itself. It is a kind of epitome of Greek history. It is difficult to decide exactly what the effect of the Roman occupation was. The cities retained much of Hellenic habits and aspect, and in spite of the immense robberies of Marcellus and others, many works of Greek art as well as the stately temples which beautified them. But besides large districts—such as the Leontine plain—which were made ager publicus, the lands fell for the most part into the hands of Roman speculators who worked them by slave labour. The slaves were in many cases the Sicilians themselves, Greek by origin, whose fathers, at any rate, had once owned the lands on which they laboured. Others, perhaps, were imported from Africa or the East. The stewards and agents of the Italian landowners no doubt found the country pleasant enough, but those Greeks who retained property and freedom had much to suffer at the hands of corrupt governors and oppressive tax-collectors. The miserable state of the slaves again was shown by the two dreadful servile wars of B.C. 134 and 103. Its history, however, henceforth follows that of Rome rather than of Greece.
The Greek towns in Sicily had had an intellectual life by no means unimportant in the general sum of Greek culture. Stesichorus of Himera flourished about B.C. 600 and was one of the earliest writers of lyrical as well as other poetry. Comedy seems to have been brought to Hyblaean Megara from Megara in Greece, and Epicharmus of Cos, one of its earliest authors, spent the greater part of his life there (fl. about B.C. 475). The court of Hiero I. (B.C. 478–467) was frequented by the greatest writers—Aeschylus, Pindar, Bacchylides, Simonides, and the poet-philosopher Xenophanes. Leontini was the home of the famous Sophist Gorgias; Agrigentum of Empedocles (fl. B.C. 445). Philistus, the historian of Sicily and other countries, was a native of Syracuse (fl. B.C. 395), Xenarchus, the mimograph, resided at the court of Dionysius, Apollodorus, a comic poet, was a native of Gela (fl. B.C. 340). Dionysius the elder was himself a writer in various styles and encouraged the presence of philosophers and men of letters; and the most famous of ancient mathematicians, Archimedes, was born at Syracuse about B.C. 287. But the poet of Sicily, whose fame has been most abiding, is Theocritus of Syracuse (fl. about B.C. 284–270). There must still have been peaceful and quiet scenes of country life to be found in Sicily, in spite of wars and revolutions, to inspire his sweet pastoral muse. Like other poets of his day, he spent some of his time in Alexandria under the patronage of the second Ptolemy (Philadelphus), but his idyll on the Adonis feast—a dialogue between two Syracusan women—has nothing of town life
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| Photo] | [Giraudon. |
Statuettes from Tanagra.
(Louvre.)
about it; the women arc country women and go sight-seeing with all the freshness and naivete of country folk. Nearly contemporary with Theocritus was Moschus, also born at Syracuse, from whom we have four surviving pastorals, one of them a lament for the death of Bion of Smyrna, who had himself conic to Sicily to cultivate the bucolic muse.