Mosaics of Grecian History Part 46

"Brothers and sons! we have reared you men: Our walls are the ocean swell; Our winds blew keen down the rocky glen Where the staunch Three Hundred fell.

"Our hearts are drenched in the wild sea-flow, In the light of the hills and the sky; And the Spartan women, if need be so, Will teach the men to die.

"We are brave men's mothers, and brave men's wives: We are ready to do and dare; We are ready to man your walls with our lives, And string your bows with our hair.

"Let the young and brave lie down to-night, And dream of the brave old dead, Their broad s.h.i.+elds bright for to-morrow's fight, Their swords beneath their head.

"Our b.r.e.a.s.t.s are better than bolts and bars; We neither wail nor weep; We will light our torches at the stars, And work while our warriors sleep.

"We hold not the iron in our blood Viler than strangers' gold; The memory of our motherhood Is not to be bought and sold.

"Shame to the traitor heart that springs To the faint soft arms of Peace, If the Roman eagle shook his wings At the very gates of Greece!

"Ask not the mothers who gave you birth To bid you turn and flee; When Sparta is trampled from the earth Her women can die, and be free."

Soon after the repulse at Sparta, Pyrrhus again marched against Antig'onus; but having attacked Argos on the way, and after having entered within the walls, he was killed by a tile thrown by a poor woman from a house-top. The death of Pyrrhus forms an important epoch in Grecian history, as it put an end to the struggle for power among Alexander's successors in the West, and left the field clear for the final contest between the liberties of Greece and the power of Macedon. Antigonus now made himself master of the greater part of Peloponnesus, and then sought to reduce Athens, the defence of which was aided by an Egyptian fleet and a Spartan army. Athens was at length taken (262 B.C.), and all Greece, with the exception of Sparta, seemed to lie helpless at the feet of Antigonus, who little dreamed that the league of a few Achaean cities was to become a formidable adversary to him and his house.

IV. THE ACHae'AN LEAGUE.--PHILIP V, OF MACEDON.

The Achaean League at first comprised twelve towns of Acha'ia, which were a.s.sociated together for mutual safety, forming a little federal republic. But about twenty years after the death of Pyrrhus other cities gave in their adherence, until the confederacy embraced nearly the whole of the Peloponnesus. Athens had been reduced to great misery by Antigonus, and was in no condition to aid the League, while Sparta vigorously opposed it, and finally succeeded in inducing Corinth and Argos to withdraw from it.

Sparta subsequently made war against the Achaeans, and by her successes compelled them to call in the aid of the Macedonians, their former enemies. Antigonus readily embraced this opportunity to restore the influence of his family in southern Greece, and, marching against the Lacedaemonians, he obtained a decisive victory which placed Sparta at his mercy; but he used his victory moderately, and granted the Spartans peace on liberal terms (221 B.C.). Antigonus died soon after this success, and was succeeded by his nephew and adopted son, Philip V., a youth of only seventeen. The aeto'lians, a confederacy of rude Grecian tribes, aided by the Spartans, now began a series of unprovoked aggressions on some of the Peloponnesian states. The Messenians, whose territory they had invaded by way of the western coast of Peloponnesus, called upon the Achaeans for a.s.sistance; and the youthful Philip having been placed at the head of the Achaean League, a general war began between the Macedonians and Achaeans on the one side, and the aetolians and their allies on the other, that continued with great severity and obstinacy for four years.

Philip was on the whole successful, but new and more ambitious designs led him to put an end to the unprofitable contest. The great struggle going on between Rome and Carthage attracted his attention, and he thought that an alliance with the latter would open to himself prospects of future conquest and glory. So a treaty was concluded with the aetolians, which left all the parties to the war in the enjoyment of their respective possessions (217 B.C.), and Philip prepared to enter the field against Rome.

After the battle between Carthage and Rome at Can'nae (216 B.C.), which seemed to have extinguished the last hopes of Rome, Philip sent envoys to Hannibal, the Carthaginian general, and concluded with him a treaty of strict alliance. He next sailed with a fleet up the Adriatic, to a.s.sist Deme'trius of Pharos, who had been driven from his Illyrian dominions by the Romans; but while besieging Apollo'nia, a small town in Illyria, he was met and defeated by the Roman praetor M. Vale'rius Laevi'nus, and was forced to burn his s.h.i.+ps and retreat overland to Macedon. Such was the issue of his first encounter with the Romans. The latter now turned their attention to Greece (211 B.C.), and contrived to keep Philip busy at home by inciting a violation of the recent treaty with the aetolians, and by inducing Sparta and Elis to unite in a war against Macedon. Philip was for a time supported by the Achaeans, under their renowned leader Philopoe'men; but Athens, which Philip had besieged, called in the aid of a Roman fleet (199 B.C.), and finally the Achaeans themselves, being divided into factions, accepted terms of peace with the Romans. Philip continued to struggle against his increasing enemies until his defeat in the great battle of Cynoceph'alae (197 B.C.), by the Roman consul t.i.tus Flamin'ius, when he purchased peace by the sacrifice of his navy, the payment of a tribute, and the resignation of his supremacy over the Grecian states.

At this time there was a Grecian epigrammatic poet, ALCae'US, of Messe'ne, who was an ardent partisan of the Roman consul Flaminius, and who celebrated the defeat of Philip in some of his epigrams. He wrote the following on the expedition of Flaminius:

Xerxes from Persia led his mighty host, And t.i.tus his from fair Italia's coast.

Both warred with Greece; but here the difference see: That brought a yoke--this gives us liberty.

He also wrote the following sarcastic epigram on the Macedonians of Philip's army who were slain at Cynocephalae:

Unmourned, unburied, pa.s.senger, we lie, Three myriad sons of fruitful Thessaly, In this wide field of monumental clay.

aetolian Mars had marked us for his prey; Or he who, bursting from the Ausonian fold, In t.i.tus' form the waves of battle rolled; And taught aema'thia's boastful lord to run So swift that swiftest stags were by his speed outdone.

Philip is said to have retorted this insult by the following inscription on a tree, in which he pretty plainly states the chastis.e.m.e.nt Alcaeus would receive were he to fall into the hands of his enemy:

Unbarked, and leafless, pa.s.senger, you see, Fixed in this mound Alcaeus' gallows-tree.

--Trans. by J. H. MERIVALE.

V. GREECE CONQUERED BY ROME.

At the Isthmian games, held at Corinth the year after the downfall of Philip, the Roman consul Flaminius, a true friend of Greece, under the authority of the Roman Senate caused proclamation to be made, that Rome "took off all impositions and withdrew all garrisons from Greece, and restored liberty, and their own laws and privileges, to the several states" (196 B.C.). The deluded Greeks received this announcement with exultation, and the highest honors which a grateful people could bestow were showered upon Flaminius. [Footnote: See a more full account of the events connected with this proclamation, in Mosaics of Roman History.]

A Roman master stands on Grecian ground, And to the concourse of the Isthmian games He, by his herald's voice, aloud proclaims "The liberty of Greece!" The words rebound Until all voices in one voice are drowned; Glad acclamation by which the air was rent!

And birds, high flying in the element, Dropped to the earth, astonished at the sound!

A melancholy echo of that noise Doth sometimes hang on musing Fancy's ear.

Ah! that a conqueror's words should be so dear; Ah! that a boon should shed such rapturous joys!

A gift of that which is not to be given By all the blended powers of earth and heaven.

--WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

The Greeks soon realized that the freedom which Rome affected to bestow was tendered by a power that could withdraw it at pleasure. First, the aetolians were reduced to poverty and deprived of their independence, for having espoused the cause of Anti'ochus of Syria, the enemy of Rome. At a later period Perseus, the successor of Philip on the throne of Macedon, being driven into a war by Roman ambition, finally lost his kingdom in the battle of Pydna (168 B.C.); and then the Achaeans were charged with having aided Macedon in her war with Rome, and, without a shadow of proof against them, one thousand of their worthiest citizens were seized and sent to Rome for trial (167 B.C.). Here they were kept seventeen years without a hearing, when three hundred of their number, all who survived, were restored to their country.

These and other acts of cruelty aroused a spirit of vengeance against the Romans, that soon culminated in war. But the Achaeans and their allies were defeated by the consul Mum'mius, near Corinth (146 B.C.), and that city, then the richest in Greece, was plundered of its treasures and consigned to the flames.

Corinth was specially distinguished for its perfection in the arts of painting and sculpture, and the poet ANTIP'ATER, of Sidon, thus describes the desolation of the city after its destruction by the Romans:

Where, Corinth, are thy glories now-- Thy ancient wealth, thy castled brow, Thy solemn fanes, thy halls of state, Thy high-born dames, thy crowded gate?

There's not a ruin left to tell Where Corinth stood, how Corinth fell.

The Nereids of thy double sea Alone remain to wail for thee.

--Trans. by GOLDWIN SMITH.

The last blow to the liberties of the h.e.l.lenic race had now been struck, and all Greece, as far as Epi'rus and Macedonia, became a Roman province under the name of Achaia. Says THIRLWALL, "The end of the Achaean war was the last stage of the lingering process by which Rome enclosed her victim in the coils of her insidious diplomacy, covered it with the slime of her sycophants and hirelings, crushed it when it began to struggle, and then calmly preyed upon its vitals." But although Greece had lost her independence, and many of her cities were desolate, or had sunk into insignificance, she still retained her renown for philosophy and the arts, and became the instructor of her conquerors. In the well-known words of HORACE,

When conquered Greece brought in her captive arts, She triumphed o'er her savage conquerors' hearts.

-Bk. II. Epistle 1.

As another has said, "She still retained a sovereignty which the Romans could not take from her, and to which they were obliged to pay homage." In whatever quarter Rome turned her victorious arms she encountered Greek colonies speaking the Greek language, and enjoying the arts of civilization. All these were absorbed by her, but they were not lost. They diffused Greek customs, thought, speech, and art over the Latin world, and h.e.l.las survived in the intellectual life of a new empire.

CHAPTER XVII.

LITERATURE AND ART AFTER THE CLOSE OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR.

LITERATURE.

I. THE DRAMA.

As we have seen in a former chapter, Greek tragedy attained its zenith with the three great masters--aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. As MAHAFFY well says, "Its later annals are but a history of decay; and of the vast herd of latter tragedians two only, and two of the earliest--Ion of Chi'os, and Ag'athon--can be called living figures in a history of Greek literature." Even these, it seems, wrote before Sophocles and Euripides had closed their careers. But few fragments of their genius have come down to us. Longi'nus said of Ion, that he was fluent and polished, rather than bold or sublime; while Agathon has been characterized as "the creator of a new tragic style, combining the verbal elegancies and ethical niceties of the Sophists with artistic claims of a luxurious kind."

While tragedy declined, with comedy the case was different, for its changes were progressive. Most writers divide Greek comedy into the Old, the Middle, and the New; and although the boundary lines between the three orders are very indistinct, each has certain well-defined characteristics. It is a.s.serted, as we have elsewhere noted, that the chief subjects of the first were the politics of the day and the characters and deeds of leading persons; that the chief peculiarity of the second, in which the action of the chorus was much curtailed, was the exclusion of personal and political criticism, and the adoption of parodies of the G.o.ds and ridicule of certain types of character; and that the New Comedy, in which the chorus disappeared, aimed to paint scenes and characters of domestic life. The Middle Comedy, however, still continued to be in some degree personal and political, and even in the New Comedy these features of the Old are frequently apparent.

Aristoph'anes, the leader of the Old Comedy, toward the close of his life produced The Frogs--a work that signalized the transition from the Old to the Middle Comedy. The latter school, however, took its rise in Sicily, and its most distinguished authors were Antiph'anes, probably of Athens, born in 404, and Alex'is of Thu'rii, born about 394. The New Comedy arose after Athens had fallen under Macedonian supremacy, and as many as sixty-four poets belong to this period, the later of whom composed their plays in Alexandria, in the time of Alexander's successors.

The founder of this school was Phile'mon of Soli, in Cilicia, born about 360 B.C. Of his ninety plays fragments of fifty-six remain. The majority of these have been described as "elegant but not profound reflections on the 'changes and chances of this mortal life.'" A late critic chooses the following fragment as ill.u.s.trative of Philemon, and at the same time favorable to his reputation:

Have faith in G.o.d, and fear; seek not to know him; For thou wilt gain naught else beyond thy search; Whether he is or is not, shun to ask: As one who is, and sees thee, always fear him.

--Trans. by J. A. SYMONDS.

MENANDER.

The acknowledged master and representative of this period, however, and the last of the cla.s.sical poets of Greece, was Menan'der, an Athenian, son of Diopi'thes, the general whom Demosthenes defended in his speech "On the Chersonese," and a nephew of the poet Alexis. Menander was born in 342 B.C.; and although only fragments of his writings exist, he was so closely copied or imitated by the Roman comic poets that his style and character can be very clearly traced. MR. SYMONDS thus describes him: "His personal beauty, the love of refined pleasure that distinguished him in life, the serene and genial temper of his wisdom, the polish of his verse, and the harmony of parts he observed in composition, justify us in calling Menander the Sophocles of comedy. If we were to judge by the fragments transmitted to us, we should have to say that Menander's comedy was ethical philosophy in verse; so mature is its wisdom, so weighty its language, so grave its tone. The brightness of the beautiful Greek spirit is sobered down in him almost to sadness. Yet the fact that Stobae'us found him a fruitful source of sententious quotations, and that alphabetical anthologies were made of his proverbial sayings, ought not to obscure his fame for drollery and humor.

If old men appreciated his genial or pungent worldly wisdom, boys and girls read him, we are told, for his love-stories."