Looking Toward Salamis

FOR our knowledge of the invasion of Greece by Xerxes, as well as for our information concerning the earlier history of nearly all Oriental nations, we are indebted chiefly to a single precious volume, the History of Herodotos. There are few books which inspire a more general and kindly regard for their authors; few indeed which the world could so ill have spared. It would perhaps be difficult to name another which so delights the heart of boyhood, and to which at the same time world - wearied age turns as confidently for diversion and companionship. And this is most fitting and natural, for there is hardly to be found another writer who combines so fully the naive faith and love of the marvelous, which give an added grace to childhood, with that knowledge of the world, that perception of national and even of human brotherhood, which are rarely to be looked for save in the tranquil harvest time of a full and varied life.

Perhaps the most surprising characteristic, however, of Herodotos’ literary work is the outward unity which he has so largely succeeded in giving to this somewhat heterogeneous mass of information concerning nearly all the nations of the earth then known to the Greeks. The idea about which he groups his materials is this : that the struggle between Greece and Persia was but the culminating event in a series of mutual aggressions on the part of Europeans and Asiatics. Among these earlier acts of violence he includes, to be sure, purely mythical events : the abduction of Europa by the Phoenicians, of Medea by the Argonauts, of Helen by her Trojan lover. Of course, in this literal form we cannot accept the chronicler’s view of earlier history; but in a larger sense, as Herodotos himself adequately realized, the Persian wars were in truth a death struggle between the Oriental and the Hellenic ideals, between despotism and individualism.

Herodotos was himself a Persian subject, born in a subjugated Greek city, Halicarnassos, in Asia Minor, four years before Xerxes’ invasion, He had no vulgar contempt for the Persian civilization and national character. With the widened vision of the thoughtful traveler, he had himself seen in Mesopotamia and in the valley of the Nile the cities, the monuments, and the national life which had taught Solon before him that the Greeks were mere children in comparison with the venerable traditions of those elder races. He knew personally, and obtained his information from, many survivors of both the contending hosts. His sympathies are fully enlisted on the side of the Greeks, yet his impartiality as a chronicler is generally conceded.

To this prevailing belief in Herodotos’ just treatment of men and races one important exception is often made, and probably with some reason. He has an unmistakable aversion for Themistocles, which seems at times to cloud the fairness of his judgment. This concession will, however, only increase the convincing force of that memorable passage in which Herodotos ascribes to the daring aggressiveness of the Athenians — not to the stubborn but passive and sluggish resistance offered by the Spartans — the honor of having turned the tide of defeat to glorious victory. The sentences here quoted are from the one hundred and thirty-ninth chapter of the seventh book, — a passage for which a great German historian has expressed his admiration as the most statesmanlike utterance of the entire chronicle. It will be remembered that Herodotos is writing at a time, late in the fifth century B. C., when Athens had gradually converted her voluntary and grateful allies of the Delian confederacy into reluctant tributaries, eager for her day of adversity, when they could desert and humiliate her.

“ At this point,” says Herodotos, “ I am obliged to utter an opinion distasteful to most men ; yet, since it appears to me to be true, I will not suppress it. If the Athenians, terrified by the approaching danger, had deserted their country, or, remaining, had given themselves up to Xerxes, on the sea none would have attempted to oppose the king, . . . and upon the land this would have been the course of events. . . . The allies of the Lacedaemonians would have forsaken them, not indeed voluntarily, but perforce, being subdued city by city through the naval armament of the barbarian. The Lacedaemonians would have been left alone, and after performing great deeds of valor would have perished honorably. Either this would have been their fate, or else, before it came to that, as they saw the rest of the Greeks medizing, they would have come to terms with Xerxes. Thus, in either case Hellas would have passed under the sway of the Persians. But as it is, one who said the Athenians became the saviours of Hellas would not miss the truth. . . . When they determined that Greece should survive in freedom, they roused all the rest of the Hellenic race, so much as had not medized; and it was they — next at least to the gods — who thrust back the king.”

It is still a favorite employment of the imagination thus to trace the changes which might have been caused in the events of the past if the result of a single hard-fought contest, or of some like crisis in human affairs, had been reversed. If Hannibal, following up the victory at Cannæ, had entered Rome at the heels of the panic-stricken legionaries ; if Charles Martel had lost the great battle of Tours, which rolled back the tide of Saracen conquest ; if the indomitable Lion of the North had not flung his own life away on the field of victory at Lutzen ; if Grouchy, and not Blücher, had come up in time at Waterloo ; if Lee’s northward march had not been stopped at Gettysburg, — what then ? Such questions are no doubt unanswerable, from one point of view perhaps even irreverent. The discussion of any such problem soon reaches the hopeless dilemma of predestination and free will, on which surely no one below the pulpit stairs will venture to speak as with authority. Yet even men who feel most strongly the responsibility of individual character and action may be none the less confident that they perceive in the records of the past, as a whole, clear traces of progress toward better conditions ; a working-out of far-reaching, beneficent plans for the improvement of our race.

From such a vantage, the greatest apparent disasters of war or peace become at most only momentary obstacles to an irresistible current. The fiercest battlefields are but

Among such important crises, when the destinies of all the future ages have seemed at least to hang trembling in the balance, the sea fight in the Salaminian strait holds by general consent a prominent, it may be the most prominent place. If the tide of war had turned the other way in the narrows of Salamis, there could have been no longer a free Athens or a free Greece. The statesmanship of Pericles, the drama of Æschylos’ maturity and Sophocles’ prime, the glories of the Parthenon and all the other great works of Phidias and his followers, the long and happy life of Socrates among his friends and disciples, would never have been. But these things, with their direct or indirect results, comprise most of what makes life beautiful even to-day. Instead of the achievements of that wonderful fifth century, there would be but the dull monotony that covers the annals of all the other races which were absorbed into the unwieldy Persian Empire, the Russia of antiquity.

We are peculiarly fortunate, therefore, to possess, in Æschylos’ Persians, a vivid description of the battle, by a poet of almost the highest rank, who wars himself engaged in the struggle, and who knew that his drama must be produced before the critical eyes of innumerable fellow-contestants and eye-witnesses of the victory.

In two other respects, also, this play has an unique claim upon our attention. Among the thirty-two Greek tragedies which have been preserved, this is the earliest of which the age is known ; and with the possible exception of the hopelessly corrupt and comparatively uninteresting Suppliants, it is without question the oldest of them all. Moreover, it is the sole survivor from the small group of serious dramas which took their subjects from contemporary history, instead of dealing, as was usual, with the mythical legends of gods or heroes. This latter fact in particular may be accepted as sufficient occasion for a somewhat rapid retrospect, which shall include a number of historic incidents essential for the comprehension of the play itself. As has been indicated already, every modern chronicler is here dependent almost wholly upon Herodotos.

One question all students ask instinctively, though it will probably never be satisfactorily answered: Whence came to the Athenian race their wonderful impulse to all-sided, harmonious, yet rapid development? Why did they, above every other people, possess the creative, the artistic power ? But this is, after all, only a part of a larger mystery. As the Athenians are preëminent among the Greeks, so the Hellenic race as a whole is strikingly superior to all the elder nations of men. By their delight in physical life, by their passionate love of beauty, their freedom from superstitious fear of the higher powers, above all by their capacity for improvement, the Hellenes seem to be set apart from the rest of mankind.

The Athenians were closely allied by blood and speech to the Ionians of the Ægean Islands and the Asian coast, whom they regarded as their colonists. It was on account of her practical recognition of this tie between her own people and the Greek communities of Asia that Athens drew down upon herself the Persian invasions. Stimulated by the freer life of mercantile communities, and by contact with the older civilizations of Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, and Egypt, these Eastern colonies, if such they were, had reached their culmination while life in the mother country was yet sterile and crude. It is true that the Homeric poems cannot be safely used as a picture of social conditions in the poet’s day. Still, the very existence of these epics certainly demonstrates that the Eastern Hellenes had already attained a high level of comfort and of culture. Races of barbarians or plodding boors produce no Iliads. Yet already in the sixth century B. C. the Asiatic towns and the adjacent islands had lost their vigor and their independence, becoming subject first to the gentle philhellenic Croesus of Lydia, and soon after submitting perforce to the harsher yoke of his conqueror, Cyrus, founder of the great Persian Empire. Meanwhile, in Attica, there had matured more slowly the seeds of a sturdier and loftier Ionian civilization.

Of the real beginnings of that civilization we can, in the nature of things, know little or nothing. Those races that seem to leap forth from time to time, in human history, from the darkness behind them, exultant in their youthful strength, must of course really

But of that slow progress from the savage and the cave only the last stage is ever recorded.

Thucydides makes one instructive statement as to the remote past of his country. The soil of Attica, he reminds us, was for the most part thin and poor. In consequence of this fact, says the historian, the wars and convulsions of the early migratory days left this region undisturbed to its original inhabitants ; while, as a secure haven of refuge, it received many of the ablest men from other Hellenic tribes, when they were exiled from their former homes. Thucydides is here speaking by conjecture as to a time concerning which no real historical data could have been in existence ; but it will be readily acknowledged that a permanent abode in the dry, clear, invigorating air of Attica, a prolonged and successful struggle with a reluctant soil, and gradual accessions from the best blood of kindred races might well produce the choicest among all Hellenic types.

The first Athenian who stands out clearly seen in the twilight about him is Solon. While he is an interesting figure as the first Attic poet, he is far more illustrious as the unselfish, patriotic statesman. His economic reforms were largely successful in mitigating the bitter sectional and partisan strife, the oppressed and desperate condition of the peasants, and the cruel wrongs suffered by the unfortunate and numerous debtor class. The unselfishness of Solon is as striking as his patriotism and courage. More helpful, perhaps, than any of his political or economic measures was the lofty example which he presented of brave and generous devotion to the good of the community. The likeness between Solon and Washington is not wholly a fanciful one.

The moderately democratic constitution, by which Solon hoped to end the strife of parties within the state, was apparently overthrown before the lawgiver’s death, by his younger kinsman, the shrewd demagogue Pisistratos, generally known as the tyrant of Athens. The following period, however, the half century from 560 to 510 B. C., is by no means merely one of debasing despotism. Pisistratos himself was repeatedly exiled from Athens for years through a combination of the opposing factions. Even when his power was undisputed, he controlled the internal and the foreign policy of the state through the forms of popular government, and did not attempt the erection of a throne. We may perhaps regard Pisistratos as a classic Cromwell, or rather as an earlier Bismarck, standing guard, somewhat too efficiently, over an infant constitution. In another respect, indeed, we are reminded rather of Augustus and of the Florentine Medici, for Pisistratos, and his sons after him, accorded a generous hospitality and patronage to the literary men and artists of their time.

It is especially interesting to note that to the illustrious autocrat is accredited a most important service to the past of Hellenic letters, and also one hardly less notable to their future. Probably no scholar now believes the statement that the Homeric poems were first reduced to writing in Attica in his time. This much may, however, well be accepted as true, that the first authentic and careful edition of the Iliad and Odyssey by scholarly hands was made at his court. And to this same period we must certainly assign the first crude beginnings of the drama in Alliens. Pisistratos apparently invited Thespis, the “father of tragedy,” to transfer his exhibitions from his native village, Icaria. — made peculiarly interesting to us by the recent excavations and discoveries by students of the American School at Athens, — to the capital.¹

The poet Æschylos was born at Eleusis, in 525 B. C. Eleusis was the most illustrious centre for the worship of Demeter and Persephone, with whom Dionysos was there closely united. The solemn associations of the spot, the periodic celebration of the holy mysteries in the presence of reverent pilgrims from every Hellenic land, can hardly have failed to exert an influence upon the boyish imagination of the future dramatist, and may help us to understand the austere and lofty piety of his poetic creations. In Aristophanes’ comedy the Frogs, where the elder tragic poet is, on the whole, justly and respectfully treated, the following lines, possibly a quotation from the opening of his lost drama The Eleusinians, are put into Æschylos’ mouth: —

It must not, however, be imagined that the poet’s place of birth made him any the less a native Athenian, Before the beginning of authentic history all the lesser towns of Attica had been reduced politically to the rank of mere outlying wards of the city itself. The ancient world hardly attained to the modern conception of a state, as a voluntary though indissoluble union of cities or clans on equal terms. To express the two ideas, city and state, the Greek language had only the single word polis. Aristotle insists that the rulers must needs know the face and character of each man in the community, and that a commonwealth of a hundred thousand citizens is an impossibility. The “ leagues ” of later Greek history worked out the problem of federation, at best, only in the crudest and most evanescent fashion. The Roman Empire itself attempted to govern an ever-widening circle of subjugated cities and provinces through the machinery of a town meeting. Among the Greeks, a conquered city either became tributary, while otherwise retaining its independent existence, or lost its political identity altogether, as Eleusis appears to have done in a prehistoric war with the city on the Acropolis.

By the tranquil Eleusinian bay, then, the first great Athenian dramatist was born, just after Pisistrntos, at his death, had left his power in the weaker hands of his sons. The famous assassination of the younger brother, Hipparchos, by Harmodios and Aristogeiton in 514 B. C. may have lingered as a faint first memory in the mind of Æschylos. The future poet of Dionysos was still but a lad of fifteen when Hippias, the surviving son of the elder tyrant, was driven from Athens, in 510 B. C., and found a secure refuge at the court of the Persian king.

It was perhaps due in some degree to the lasting results of Solon’s economic and social reforms that Athens did not, like so many other Greek cities, fall into the hands of an oligarchy composed of the powerful aristocratic chieftains who had enabled the people to expel the tyrants. Much of her good fortune, however, seems to have been thrust upon her by the disagreements of others. Clisthenes himself, though his name is inseparably connected with the revival of the Solonian constitution, is said by Herodotos to have “ taken the people into partnership ” only when he saw himself overmastered by his rival among the nobles. While nominally restoring the constitution of Solon, the Athenians really organized their state, at this time, on a far more democratic plan than had ever before been known, and the great struggle of the next generation found them fully prepared to assume their natural place as the protagonists of Hellenism.

It was probably a few years earlier than this that King Darius, the ablest organizer and conqueror of all who followed Cyrus upon the Persian throne, led a great expedition into Europe, but, most fortunately, not against the Greeks, who could then have made no such effective resistance as they did a generation later. Having bridged and crossed the Bosporus, he waged an ineffective campaign against the roving tribes north of the Danube. He left an army behind him in Europe which completed the conquest of Thrace, and the Macedonian king also sent him earth and water in token of submission. His empire, therefore, extended to the borders of Thessaly twenty years before Marathon !

During Æschylos’ early manhood, about the year 500 B. C., occurred the general revolt of the Greek cities in Asia Minor from their Persian master. The Athenians, seconded by their neighbors the Eretrians only, gave the Ionians some military aid, and by the burning of Sardis, Croesus’ ancient capital, and still the metropolis of the Persian province, drew upon themselves the lasting resentment of Darius. Then they weakly abandoned their Asiatic brethren to the fate which lack of union and love of ease made inevitable. The reader of Herodotos will recall the account of the reception by King Darius of the evil tidings from Sardis, which is so characteristic of an Oriental despot: how he shot an arrow into the sky, and cried, “ O Zeus, grant me vengeance on the Athenians ! ” and how he bade the servant who served his dinner always say to him thrice, “ O king, remember the Athenians! ”

When the opposing fleets of Ionians and Persians met for the decisive battle near Lade, at the mouth of the Mæander, the Samians, by previous secret agreement with their former masters, suddenly broke away from the Greek line with their fifty galleys, and set out for home. The Lesbians followed. In the confusion and panic the Persians easily gained a decisive victory. There is a striking resemblance, though of course a still greater contrast, between Lade and Salamis, which is effectively worked out by Mr. Grote.

The great and wealthy city Miletos, the head of the revolt, was finally captured after a siege, and utterly destroyed. This occurred about 495 B. C. A year or two more sufficed the Persians to stamp out in merciless fashion the last embers of the great insurrection. As the tie of mother city and colony was considered a peculiarly close and sacred one, the Athenians felt not only the deepest grief, but lasting mortification, over the tragic end of the struggle.

The fall of Miletos was the subject of a tragedy by Phrynichos. Of this elder contemporary and rival of Æschylos, who gained a prize for the first time in 511 B. C., we shall have occasion to speak in move direct connection with Æschylos’ drama. We may transcribe here from the pages of Herodotos the curious passage to which we owe our knowledge of his unfortunate play: “ The Athenians showed in manifold ways that they were distressed over Miletos’ downfall ; and especially when Phrynichos composed and brought out his drama, The Capture of Miletos, the audience burst into tears; and they not only fined him a thousand drachmæ for recalling sorrows of their own, but ordained that no one should make use of this drama.” This last prohibition must refer to repeated performances of the same play, which was, it appears, an honor sometimes accorded to successful dramas, even in the fifth century, though it was not a constant practice until the fourth. We are not informed in what year the tragedy of Phrynichos was written. It would seem at least highly probable, however, that this outburst of grief by the Athenians was not many years later than the actual downfall of the daughter city, and decidedly not after the Persian hosts had been destroyed, and the Ionian brethren liberated from the yoke of the great king, seventeen years after Miletos’ destruction.

As soon as his hands were freed from difficulties nearer home, Darius prepared to avenge the injuries he had suffered from the Athenians. He could now use against Athens not merely the Phoenician, Egyptian, and other vessels with the aid of which Ionia had been reduced, but also the still powerful armaments and well-trained sailors of the Ionian cities themselves. In 492 he sent his first great expedition against Hellas; but, as it proceeded along the northern shores of the Ægean, this fleet was almost entirely destroyed by shipwreck upon the stormy promontory of Mount Athos. Two years later an immense force came straight across the Ægean, captured Eretria, in Euboea, which alone had joined Athens in aiding the Ionians, and sent the inhabitants as slaves to the king’s court. In their subsequent landing on the Marathonian plain, the Persians were undoubtedly guided by the exiled tyrant Hippias. In this section of Attica were the firmest partisans of the banished family, and thence Pisistratos had formerly made his triumphant entrance into Athens after long-enforced absence. The famous defeat in the open Marathonian plain, 490 B. C., the first pitched battle won by Greeks against Persians, put an end to the Athenian tyrant’s hopes of restoration.

The mission of Persian heralds to the chief Greek states just before this invasion, their demand for the regular tokens of submission, and the cruel death inflicted upon those who came to Athens and Sparta will be remembered by all students of Greek history. Far more significant, however, was the action of the Æginetans and the events resulting therefrom. These islanders, the hated neighbors and commercial rivals of Athens, were ready to make formal submission to Persia. Athens, then at war with both Ægina and Thebes, made public protest to Sparta against such a betrayal of the general interests of Hellenism. In this action the Athenians fully recognized the position of Sparta as the head of the Greek race. There is no evidence that such an acknowledgment of supremacy had ever been made by them before. It was probably not a mere confession of conscious weakness on the part of the Athenians, but was due rather to a statesmanlike realization that the crisis was a peculiarly grave one. The Spartans, whose military supremacy, particularly in the Peloponnesos, was at this period quite undisputed, acted for the moment with unusual energy, forced the Æginetans into sullen submission, and deposited ten of their chief citizens as hostages in the hands of the Athenians.

Yet the supreme moment found the Spartans already relapsed into their usual selfish procrastination. The urgent appeal of Athens for immediate aid from Sparta had been disregarded, “ because the moon was not full for five days ” ! With only this flimsy excuse, the Spartan contingent actually arrived at Marathon too late to see any Persians save the heaps of slain. The Athenians never forgot their single-handed victory over desperate odds, and it may well be that from that day their far-sighted statesmen looked steadily forward to eventual supremacy in Hellas. In one respect Marathon was a prouder memory for the Athenian patriot than the larger triumphs of the second Persian war; for this signal success over the dreaded foe from the East and the plots of traitors at home was gained without the aid of a single other Hellenic city, except the gallant little neighbor town of Platæa, whence a thousand men had come to share the honors of the first victory over the hosts of the despot of Asia. In this and similar crises of the Persian wars the diverse characters of Sparta and Athens may be most clearly seen.

The poet Æschylos, then just

bore his part manfully in the perils of the day, and to this experience, but not to any triumphs of the theatre, allusion is made in his epitaph, supposed to have been composed by Æsehylos himself. His brother, Kynegairos, was one of the most illustrious heroes of the day, and perished in truly Homeric fashion. Laying hold on one of the Persian ships to prevent its escape, his hand was lopped off, and he died from the wound. The brothers undoubtedly fought side by side in the ranks of their tribe ; and here again we have a scene whose influence upon the warrior poet is unmistakable.

These repeated failures were to Darius, without doubt, a source of vexation and disappointment; and the Persian inscriptions of his time, despite their reiterated assurance of native truthfulness as contrasted with the lying propensities of the great king’s unlucky enemies, appear to have observed a discreet silence in regard to his relations with Athens. It has seemed necessary to touch upon them somewhat fully here partly because Æschylos has carried the maxim “ Nil de mortuis ” quite too far in his drama. In order to make an effective contrast with Xerxes’ arrogance and woeful fall, the impression is repeatedly given that Darius never lost a battle, nor threw away the lives of his folk.

Nevertheless, we may be sure that the possibility of ultimate failure and disaster did not enter the king’s mind. He did not live to conduct another invasion of Hellas, and his last days may have been embittered by the thwarting of his revenge, though probably less than by the revolt of Egypt, which followed soon after Marathon. As a whole, however, he and his countrymen had abundant reason for pride in the outward growth and the improved internal organization of the empire during his long reign. Unless he realized the vacillating and cowardly nature of his son and successor, he could hardly have doubted that the Hellenes, as well as all other races not already tributary, would soon and easily be brought under the Persian yoke.

At any rate, Darius died in the midst of his warlike preparations ; “ nor was it destined for him,” says Herodotos, “ to punish either the revolted Egyptians or the Athenians.” Xerxes promptly and successfully accomplished the first of these tasks, left him as part of his royal inheritance, but Herodotos describes him as undertaking the latter only after long reluctance, and with many misgivings. Such were the various chances — if chance there be in the affairs of men — which accorded to the Athenians a ten years’ respite between the impressive warning at Marathon and the final descent of the avalanche.

To every reader of history the incidents thus far described are, or have been, a familiar tale. All that has been attempted here is to sharpen the outlines, and in some cases to connect more firmly with each other the most striking occurrences, which so soon become in the memory a mere succession of isolated pictures. In regard to the invasion of Greece by Xerxes, however, even so much assistance may well be repelled as superfluous. There is perhaps no series of events in all history so dramatically united and complete, none more indelibly stamped upon the thoughtful mind. As for the happy youth to whom the story is yet untold, let him turn at once to the book of the master of all storytellers, Herodotos himself.

It is in the expedition of Xerxes that the History finds its natural culmination and artistic unity. The struggle between Hellenism and Orientalism, announced in the opening chapters as the true subject, and never quite lost from sight in all the fascinating digressions of the earlier books, now hurries on like a tragic plot to its terrible solution. As “ all Asia resounded with the din,” while year after year the preparations for the march continued, so in the narrative itself the tread of the gathering host grows more and more distinct, until at last nothing else is heard or seen.

Even to him who reads the account for the first time it is clear that Xerxes rushes in his pride toward some awful doom. The gods of Herodotos are jealous gods ; imperial power and haughtiness alone would have sufficed to provoke their vengeance. Moreover, the issue is foreshadowed again and again by visions, by wrathful utterances from desecrated shrines; nay, it is foreseen and foretold by many even among the Persian chieftains. How far this tragic tone was imparted to the tale by poetic invention and popular tradition after the event cannot now be known.

Of course the half - credulous, halfshrewd old chronicler does not satisfy all the demands of nineteenth-century criticism. He rarely cites his “ original sources; ” and if he did, much that is actually most precious to us would still be condemned as idle gossip or traditional folk lore. The narrative is indeed full of personal adventure, conversation, and isolated witty remarks, which, from their nature, can hardly have been recorded at first hand. But whether authentic or not, they are essential to the very outlines of the chronicle, and priceless as interpreters of the feelings of men in Xerxes’, or at any rate in Herodotos’ times.

In certain directions, indeed, we are compelled to cut loose altogether from the statements of our author. This is notably true as to the number of the invading host. After reaching a total of two million six hundred thousand, he calmly doubles this respectable figure by assigning an attendant slave to every man, officer and private, bond or free ! No military authority, however, would permit us to believe that even the former number could be led in a single column, with no great depots of supplies, practically “ living off the country,” around the rugged and thinly inhabited shores of the northern Ægean.

The methods of the census particularly mentioned are more picturesque than convincing : “ They led together a body of ten thousand men, and crowding them close drew a circle around them. Then driving out the men, they built a wall about the circle, carrying it up waisthigh. Then they drove other men into the inclosure, until all had been counted in this fashion.” ²

Herodotos himself is especially struck by the fact that the host actually “ drank up ” most of the rivers passed in their march. We ourselves, as schoolboys, were doubtless all much impressed by so graphic an illustration. The present writer, however, chances to have had in later life a personal experience which throws a direct light on this question of the water supply. Herodotos remarks that the first such occurrence, after the great host marched out of Sardis, was at the Scamander, whose shores Xerxes visited, “ having a longing to behold and ascend the citadel of Priam.” As he had skirted the eastern slopes of Ida since leaving Antandros, the king no doubt approached the Hellespont through the great water-gap formed by the Scamander itself at the head of the Trojan plain. It is recorded that the river literally failed to sate the thirst of the innumerable host. This ignominious disappearance of the Homeric “ king of rivers ” is peculiarly fitted to stifle the doubts of both Greeks and barbarians. But in September of the year 1881 A. D. a small party of the latter, pedestrian videttes from their camp at Assos, and led by the same longing as the Persian monarch, also passed through the great natural gateway, and necessarily crossed the bed of the Scamander shortly after, on their downward march toward Hissarlik. A few miles above, the river had been seen, “ running with a swift, clear stream, half a metre deep at most, and half a dozen metres in width, among the banks of sand that filled its broad winter bed.” ³ In the upper portion of the plain itself, however, the water had sunk quite out of sight, apparently flowing over some denser substratum, to appear again nearer the sea. At any rate, an eager search failed to disclose even a pool sufficient to slake the thirst of two weary pilgrims. Upon our return, in October, the first heavy rains had fallen, and, though on horseback, we had difficulty in fording without serious mishap.

The simple truth is, that most rivers of the Ægean coasts nearly or quite disappear in the dry season ; and this seems to have been approximately true in ancient times as well. Even in the twentyfirst book of the Iliad, “ in the floods with which Xanthos nearly overwhelms Achilles, and the subsequent drying up of the stream by the fires of Hephaistos, we can hardly refuse to see a reminiscence, though an unconscious one, of these furious winter floods and summer droughts.”⁴

There can be no question, however, that the Greeks were in truth entering upon a struggle against desperate odds. The invading army, obeying the will of a single despot, and supported by the teeming millions and untold wealth of all Asia, must in itself have far outnumbered all the Hellenes capable of bearing arms who dwelt to the southward from Thermopylae to Malea. These Hellenes, moreover, were divided into scores of independent states, and had met, for the most part, only as foes on Grecian battlefields, never as allies in a foreign war. Many of them were only too eager to throw themselves at Xerxes’ feet, either to save their own lands and lives, or to gratify a more bitter hatred against their nearest neighbors. Prominent in their minds, also, must have been the still recent subjugation of their Asiatic kinsmen, who were now actually serving perforce in the fleet of Xerxes.

Even so far as the mountain range that forms the northern barrier of the great Thessalian basin, the Persian king was, as we have already seen, merely traversing the lands of his tributary subjects. A Grecian force, sent to hold the vale of Tempe, retreated on learning that their rear would be exposed to attack by a circuitous path farther inland, similar to that by which Thermopylae was really carried. Thus all Thessaly fell into Xerxes’ hands without a stroke, and the famous Thessalian cavalry made an important addition to his forces.

At Thermopylae Xerxes met and destroyed, without suffering any appreciable loss, the king of the leading Greek state, and the flower of his troops. Hearty as was the Persians’ appreciation of dauntless courage, they could hardly have admired the generalship that led so inadequate a force to hold the key of the land, and then flung away the lives of troops and commander together when the day was lost and the line of retreat still open. It is magnificent,’’ if you please, ‘‘but it is not war.”

As for the shipwreck in the great storm on the Thessalian coast, and the loss inflicted upon the royal fleet by the Greek squadron guarding the northern shores of Eubæa, these were doubtless made the most of by Grecian tradition ; yet Herodotos assures us that all such losses were fully offset by accessions from the states overrun and conquered during the southward march. Even the audacious Athenians, the burners of Sardis, had made no stand for their temples and homes, and now, huddled among the rocks of Salamis, helpless and despairing, watched the avenging flames that rose high over their own city. There was no longer any Grecian land force in the field. The whole population of the Peloponnese, crazed by their fears, were engaged night and day in building a wall across the isthmus, thinking thus to shut out an invader to whom they were even now abandoning the sea no less than the land ! For it was only with reluctance and murmuring that the commanders of the allied fleet had yielded to the Athenians’ plea to put in at Salamis just long enough for the homeless refugees from Attica to embark. The only strategy for which a hearing could be gained was the strategy of despair. It was merely a question whether they would flee each to his own home under cover of the night, or wait to do so when the morning dawned. Of this disunion and desperation Xerxes must have been aware through spies and traitors, even before the arrival of Themistocles’ famous message advising the Persians to close up the straits and catch their panic-stricken foes in a single trap, thus saving the trouble of pursuing them singly. Well might the king set up his throne on the steep side of Aigaleos, to witness the crowning scene of his triumphant progress.

The decisive victory of the Athenians and their allies the next morning—made decisive, indeed, only by the terror and pusillanimous flight of Xerxes himself — was fittingly regarded by the Greeks, doubtless also by the thoughtful and reverent Persians, as brought about chiefly through a manifest interposition of the Hellenic divinities, wroth at the willful destruction of so many shrines and temples, but wroth and jealous, above all, at the superhuman power and overweening pride of Xerxes. Even in us, with all the wisdom that follows the event, with the clearer vision of the unconcerned spectator, this sudden and overwhelming reverse of fortune rouses astonishment that is almost incredulity. It is not merely that the victor’s progress has suffered a notable check. A single hour brings a revolution whose results are as lasting as they were unexpected. Never again did a Persian sail darken the waters of the Hellenic peninsula. Never did a Persian soldier, after the doomed millions of Xerxes, puss the gates of Thermopylae, or even through the vale of Tempe. Regarded merely as a conflict between nationalities, therefore, Salamis may well be counted among the chief crises of history. But it chanced that this was not the sole, perhaps hardly the chief, result there attained. In that single hour of glorious strife the Athenians were also wresting from the Spartans the leadership in Hellas, and assuring to themselves for the next half century imperial sway on the coasts and islands of the Ægean.

But it is necessary to retrace our steps for a moment, in order to cast a glance at the internal history of the Athenian commonwealth in the decade since Marathon. The salient events of this period. as of early Athenian history generally, may be discerned somewhat more clearly since the recent discovery, in Egypt, of an Aristotelian treatise, frequently cited in antiquity, and long lamented as lost in modern times, describing the Constitution of Athens.

The career of Miltiades, who had won immortal fame by wise and successful leadership in the Marathonian campaign, came to an ignominious close a few months later. Demanding and obtaining, without having disclosed his purpose, an armament of seventy ships, he made an unsuccessful descent on the island of Paros, probably to satisfy a personal grudge. Being brought to trial for “ deceiving the people,” he was condemned to pay a heavy fine, and a few days later died, perhaps in the public prison, from an injury received in the foray.

A majority of Athens’ most illustrious citizens — perhaps the assertion may be made of all Hellas — suffered imprisonment or exile. Whether their fall was due to the ingratitude of a democracy, or to a lack of self-control in the great men themselves, is a question still debatable. In the case of Miltiades Mr. Grote makes a memorable defense of the Athenian people, and indeed it is clear that the “ tyrant of the Chersonese ” was quite unfitted for life in a constitutional republic. This last act in Miltiades’ career is of twofold interest, since it reminds us that Athens already possessed a respectable fleet, and also plainly indicates the growing power of the popular law courts, the chief stronghold of the democratic constitution. Miltiades himself is a figure already belated on the stage. The leaders of the new time show clearly, in all their acts and methods, that the people’s will is now really supreme in Athens. Themistocles and Aristides are the first constitutional leaders of political parties approaching the modern type.

The partisans of the exiled tyrant had attempted traitorous action during the brief campaign of 490 B. C. Miltiades’ forced march of twenty-six miles back to Athens on the very day of the battle at Marathon is believed to have saved the city from capture through their treachery. In the first delight of success, the patriotic majority appear to have displayed what Aristotle calls “ the usual leniency of the people,” — a most significant expression from the friend of Alexander, and one which Grote would have used effectively in his defense of the action taken against Miltiades. It has been conjectured that the news of Darius’ preparations for a fresh invasion may finally have stirred up the Athenians to vigorous measures against the foes at home. At any rate, in 488 B. C. a younger Hipparchos, kinsman of the exiled family, and leader of their faction in Athens, was banished by ostracism. This famous device for exiling a dangerous citizen without trial or disgrace was now used for the first time, though elaborated by Clisthenes twenty years earlier. It was suggested by the warning example of Pisistratos, and was especially intended for use, in case of need, against this very Hipparchos. Megacles, who suffered the same fate in the following year, is also to be classed as a friend of the tyrant’s. But the appeal to this judgment, as Grote has clearly shown, tended inevitably to become the final weapon in any heated strife between parties or popular leaders. This probably accounts for the exile of Xanthippos, Pericles’ father, the accuser of Miltiades, in 486. It is without doubt the explanation of the famous ostracism of Aristides, which Aristotle assigns to the year 484. The familiar story of the illiterate citizen who, not knowing Aristides by sight, asked his aid in preparing his ballot, and desired to vote for the exile of the man he was tired of hearing called “the just,” may possibly be true ; but a probable adequate cause for the statesman’s banishment is not far to seek.

Aristotle tells us that in this same year the Attic silver mines were discovered. A large sum at once flowed into the treasury, doubtless from the first lease of the mining privileges. Themistocles insisted that a hundred talents should be devoted to the construction of as many war ships. It was surely no ordinary demagogue or merely selfish politician who pushed such a measure, and thwarted the more popular proposal for a donation of ten drachmae to every free inhabitant of Attica. Themistoeles’ plan, with the resultant policy of transforming Athens into a maritime and mercantile community, would naturally be opposed by the conservative and agricultural forces, under Aristides’ lead. We can hardly refuse to connect the latter’s exile with this struggle of principles. Within a year Themistocles carried the proposal, despite all resistance. He found it necessary, indeed, to point to the renewed war with Ægina, in order to bring the people to support his measure; but his own eye was evidently fixed on the blacker storm-cloud which never left the eastern horizon. Of this Æginetan war Herodotos emphatically remarks that it “ proved the salvation of Hellas, by forcing the Athenians to become a race of seamen.” Though some emulation was aroused in Corinth and Ægina, the commercial rivals of Athens, yet the latter actually mustered far more ships for the Persian war than all the rest of the Greek world !

It seemed as if ostracism were already becoming the favorite amusement of a fickle populace, and might prove as disastrous as the similar institution of “ petalism ” among the Syracusans, which is said to have been applied so unfairly and so constantly as to deter men of rank and fortune from attempting any political activity. But there is hope for a free people which shows its greatest wisdom in the time of deadly peril. In the spring of 480 B. C., when Thessaly was full of Xerxes’ invading soldiery, Athens had the good sense and the courage to summon home all her exiled citizens.

There is something nobly typical in that famous meeting of Aristides and Themistocles, on the latter’s galley, in the harbor of Salamis, late in the night before the final contest. Aristides has just run the gauntlet of the Persian fleet to rejoin his homeless countrymen. He announces that the enemy’s ships are already closing in. Themistocles fearlessly reveals to his honorable rival his own duplicity, avowing that the cowardice of the Peloponnesian allies has left him no resource but the secret message to Xerxes. On this occasion were uttered most memorable words, destined to be echoed often, even though unconsciously, by brave patriots, ready to forget personal griefs and interests in the hour of national peril. Aristides thus greets Themistocles : “It is our destiny, now as in other times, to be rivals, striving each to render the greater service to the fatherland.” In that instant, we would fain believe, each man, diverse as they were and must always remain, saw clearly that both were indispensable to Athens. It seemed the darkest moment in her history. Only a few hours before, in the council of war, the Corinthian leader had bidden Themistocles be silent, and protested against his voting, on the ground that he no longer had a fatherland to represent there !

Of the brief contest on the morrow we shall find the best extant description in the tragedy of The Persians itself. There was a tradition in later times that Euripides, the third of the great Athenian dramatists, was born on the island of Salamis, on the very day of the battle. It was perhaps only an invention for the sake of a certain artistic completeness. Æschylos undoubtedly fought upon an Athenian trireme, and the young Sophocles was chosen, because of his physical beauty and grace, to lead the chorus that danced and sang about the trophy of victory.

As for the restored exiles, the parts they played in the great deeds of this and the succeeding years are the most signal justification, as well as proof, of the confidence accorded to them by their countrymen. On the day of Salamis Aristides led the Athenian heavy infantry, which landed on an island in the channel, and cut to pieces a picked body of Persians posted there, including many favorite courtiers of Xerxes. The next year, when Mardonios and the four hundred thousand Persians left by Xerxes “to complete the conquest of Greece” found dishonored graves inPlataea’s soil, Aristides again distinguished himself at the head of the Athenian infantry. Xanthippos had meanwhile succeeded Themistocles as commander of the Athenian division in the national fleet. On the very day of Plataea the Persian ships were chased ashore at Mycale, in Asia Minor. The Greeks landed, burned the ships, and utterly routed the land army. The Athenians were acknowledged the chief heroes of this battlefield. The Grecian islands were at once liberated by the victory, and after the Peloponnesian fleet returned home Xanthippos completed the campaign by the capture of Sestos, the key of the Chersonese and the Hellespont. The Grecian cities on the mainland, also, were soon to be released from the Persian yoke. With the return of the squadron to Hellas — bearing away the remnants of the famous bridges over the Hellespont, to be consecrated as memorials in Grecian temples — the tale of Herodotos reaches a fitting close. Never did the whirligig of time bring round more swiftly a completer revenge.

A still more responsible and honorable duty fell to Aristides’ lot the next year, 478 B. C. In conjunction with Kimon, Miltiades’ son, he commanded the Athenian division — which, as usual, constituted more than half—of a small fleet sent out under command of Pausanias, the Spartan regent, to continue the war against Persia. This force effected the reduction of Byzantium. Pausanias’ vanity had been fatally excited by the victory, gained under his feeble and vacillating command, at Platæa, and he now entered into a treasonable correspondence with Xerxes, dismissing his prisoners of the royal blood, and aspiring to wed the daughter of the Asiatic despot. Though this action was probably at most only suspected at the time, his haughtiness, cruelty, and folly exasperated the Ionian commanders to such a degree that they utterly refused to serve longer under Spartan leadership. They insisted that Athens should become the head of a maritime league for the common defense against the Persians. Thus was formed the confederacy of Delos. Sparta and the other Peloponnesian states recalled their squadrons, but made no opposition to the new organization. Aristides was deputed to fix the amount of the annual contributions by each city for the general service, and apparently exerted a controlling influence in the whole work of creating the league.

This revolt from Spartan authority was but the inevitable issue required by the “ logic of events.” It was in fact the final result of Themistocles’ farsighted wisdom in building up the Athenian navy. Though Athens had suffered far more, she had also accomplished far more, in the war than all the Peloponnesian states together. Sparta had shown her unfitness to lead by even more than ordinary selfishness and faithlessness. In particular, the second occupation and devastation of Athens by Mardonios, in 479, perhaps the sack of the year before as well, should be charged to Sparta’s failure to send her troops, as she had promised, to meet the Persians in Boeotia. Even before Salamis, the question was raised whether Athens, furnishing more than half of all the vessels and crews, should be granted the chief command upon the sea. But the other Dorian states refused to serve under any leadership save that of the Spartans ; and the Athenians, wisely and patriotically, consented still to follow where they alone were fit to lead. The Spartan character and traditions were averse to naval service, aggressive foreign war, and close relations with remoter Hellenic states. In short, the Athenians, and they alone, could take advantage of the new and happier conditions in the Ægean, which their own energy and prowess had brought about.

How this voluntary and helpful union between the strong and the weak became, perhaps inevitably, an oppressive imperial rule ; how the contributions came to be regarded as tribute ; how the treasury of the league was removed from the Ionian sanctuary of Delos to the Athenian Acropolis, and eventually despoiled for the adornment of Periclean Athens, — all this lies beyond our proper limits. The Athenians, however, down to the very day of their utter humiliation, could truthfully assert that their strength, and their strength alone, had kept the ways of the sea open and safe for peaceful intercourse and profitable commerce. To the formation of this great confederacy, the greatest and most beneficent union of free states ever attained in the ancient world, the universally known and aggressive honesty of Aristides was without doubt indispensable. His life, side by side with that of Themistocles, teaches unmistakably the lesson that, while craft may at times seem, and perhaps truly seem, indispensable to the salvation even of a whole nation, yet only single-hearted devotion to duty can bring to a man permanent happiness or spotless fame.

It must not be supposed, however, that any political revolution had at this time displaced Themistocles from the leading position. In the whole story of his stratagem, by which the jealousy of Sparta was baffled while the new fortifications of Athens were raised, it is plainly assumed that he was still the idol of the people and the controlling mind in affairs. The subsequent fortification of the great harbor city Piræus was also devised and executed by him.

Indeed, if the Aristotelian treatise is to be credited, Themistocles remained in Athens nearly twenty years after Xerxes’ defeat. There are serious difficulties in accepting so late a date for his ostracism and subsequent flight to Persia, but it is pleasant to believe that Themistocles and Aristides (whose death is assigned by Nepos to the year 468 B. C.) never again returned to the implacable partisan enmities of their earlier years.

The author of the Constitution of Athens gives us the important information that the Council of the Areopagus exercised a vigorous control over political action in Athens for the two decades following the Persian wars. If true, this offers an interesting parallel to the long and glorious rule of the Roman Senate, these two bodies being alike composed of citizens who had held the highest offices of state. It was, at any rate, a time of many-sided activity and prosperous growth. Early in that period, in the year 472 B. C., Æschylos exhibited in the theatre of Dionysos his historical tragedy The Persians. The discussion of the circumstances immediately attending the performance of the play may properly open another paper, which will include a version of the important portions of the drama. Throughout this tragedy may be heard not only a pious feeling of thankfulness for wondrous deliverance, but also a lofty confidence and proud self-consciousness characteristic of a free, happy, and ambitious generation.

William Cranston Lawton.