But we have not yet exhausted the interest of that brief excerpt from Herodotus. Our thoughts travel with those Samians who, making for Egypt, were driven by contrary winds farther and farther west, until at last they passed the Straits of Gibraltar and found a superb new market at Tartessos just outside. It has been generally believed by scholars that Tartessos is the Tarshish with which, as we read in the Old Testament, King Hiram of Tyre exchanged merchandise; but of this there is now some doubt. Tartessos stood on an island at the (Note 52)mouth of the Guadalquivir, and was doubtless known to the Phoenicians before the Samians got there. It is surely of it that Arnold is thinking at the end of that long simile which concludes The Scholar Gipsy, when he tells how the Phoenician trader after passing the Atlantic straits reaches a place where through sheets of foam, shy traffickers, the dark Iberians come. The discovery of the Atlantic made a profound impression on the Greek mind. Pious and conservative spirits, like Pindar, thought it wicked to venture beyond the Straits; and indeed, it was long before any one did venture far, because, for one thing, the sort of craft which was suited to the tideless Mediterranean could not face so well the different conditions of the ocean. For another thing, the Phoenicians had got a monopoly of the British trade.
We do not know how the Samians lost the market of Tartessos, but in later times we find their fellow-countrymen the Phokaians in possession. This privilege was the result of the friendliness of Arganthonios, King of the Tartessians, who reigned eighty years and lived to be “quite a hundred and twenty.” The Phokaians perhaps deserved their luck, for they were the most daring of all the Ionian navigators. Some of their adventures would doubtless make good reading. The Phokaians also attract us because of all the Ionians they loved their freedom most. When Harpagos, the general of Cyrus, besieged them, rather than live even in a nominal subjection to the Persian, they launched their famous fifty-oared ships, and embarking their wives and children and furniture sailed to Chios. However, the Chians could not help them, so they decided to (Note 53)go and settle in distant Corsica. But first they made a sudden descent on their city and slew the Persian garrison which had occupied it. Then, when this had been done by them, they made strong curses against any who should remain behind of their company. And beside the curses they sank also a lump of iron and sware an oath that they would not return to Phokaia until this lump came up to light again. But as they were setting out for Corsica, more than half the people of the town were seized with longing and pity for their city and the familiar places of the land, and broke their oath and sailed back to Phokaia. The remnant reached Corsica, where they dwelt five years. Then they fought a disastrous drawn battle with a fleet of Etruscans and Carthaginians. Once more they took on board their wives and children and property and sailed away, this time to Reggio, from which they set out again and “founded that city in the Oenotrian land which is now called Hyele,” better known as Elea, a little south of Paestum.
Half a century later, when the Ionians revolted against the Persian rule, they chose for their admiral a Phokaian called Dionysios. Later they regretted their choice, considering Dionysios to be altogether too much of a disciplinarian, and would no longer take his orders. Disunion broke out among them, and they were entirely defeated at the Battle of Ladê. What did Dionysios do? He captured three of the enemy’s vessels, and then, to elude pursuit, sailed into the Levant, where he sank a number of trading-barks and collected a great treasure. Then he made for Sicily, where he “set up as a buccaneer,” sparing Greek ships of course, (Note 54)but attacking Etruscans and Carthaginians. I suppose it was piracy, but at least it was Drake’s sort, not Captain Kidd’s. We may hope he came to a good end.
There was a contemporary of Dionysios who is an even more significant figure for our understanding of Hellenism. This is Demokêdês of Kroton. The political background of the story of Demokêdês, as it is told by Herodotus, does not quite harmonize with the rest of his history, for it implies a policy towards Greece which Persia did not adopt till later. But otherwise there is no reason to doubt that things happened much as Herodotus says. Demokêdês was born at Kroton in the extreme south of Italy. It is a town famous in the history of medicine. We do not know how the medical school there originated. The earliest seems to have been in the Aegean island of Kos in connexion with the worship of Asklepios (Aesculapius), the God of Healing. Whether the physicians of Kroton had an independent tradition or not, they soon became famous. The first great name is Demokêdês. That he had a teacher we know from his words to Darius, but he has not mentioned his teacher’s name. The fact is that Demokêdês was the first doctor whose personality refused to be merged in the guild to which he doubtless belonged. At Kos the guild was so powerful (it had a semi-religious character there) that it was not until the Peloponnesian War that the world heard the personal name of one of its members—Hippokratês. Thus Demokêdês corresponds to Archilochus. I am about to tell again the story of a man of genius.
At Kroton he was always quarrelling with his father, (Note 55)who had a violent temper. When he could not stand him any longer, he left him and went to Aegina. Settling down there, he in his first year proved his superiority to all the other doctors, although he lacked an outfit and had none of the instruments of his art. And in his second year the Aeginetans hired him for a talent paid by the State, in the third year the Athenian people hired him for a hundred silver pounds, and in the fourth year Polykratês—tyrant of Samos—for two talents.
The instant recognition of Demokêdês is not only an indication of his genius, it shows a remarkable degree of enlightenment on the part of contemporary Greek governments. More credit belongs, no doubt, to the Aeginetans and Athenians than to Polykratês, who evidently retained the services of Demokêdês for the court at Samos. Yet Polykratês too was enlightened. Under his absolute rule or “tyranny,” which is the Greek technical term, the Ionian island of Samos had become the most splendid state in Greece. Not counting those who became tyrants of the Syracusans, there is none of all the other Greek tyrants who is fit to be compared to Polykratês in magnificence. This position was won by sea-power. Polykratês is the first of those Greeks we know who aimed at the Thalassocracy (the command of the sea) save Minos the Knossian and any one else who acquired the rule of the sea before Minos—an interesting remark in view of the theory that the Ionians definitely aimed at reconstituting the maritime empire of prehistoric Crete. This glittering tyrant suffered at last a reversal of fortune so strange and complete that it became a proverbial instance of the hand of God in human affairs. He was enticed to the Asiatic continent opposite his island by the Persian grandee Oroitês, and there treacherously seized and with nameless tortures put to death. His entourage became the slaves of Oroitês. One of them was Demokêdês.
Some years afterwards King Darius, who had in the meanwhile succeeded to the throne, was flung from his horse while hunting and dislocated his ankle. He entrusted his injury to the court-physicians at Susa, who were Egyptians, Egypt being the home of a very ancient body of medical lore transmitted from father to son. But the Egyptian doctors by wrenching and forcing the foot made the evil greater. For days seven and seven nights Darius was possessed by sleeplessness by reason of the malady which beset him, but on the eighth day, when the King was in poor case, one who had caught a report in Sardis before he came to Susa of the skill of Demokêdês of Kroton made report to Darius; and he commanded that he be brought before him with all speed. And when they had discovered him among the slaves of Oroitês in some neglected corner, they brought him into the presence dragging his fetters and clothed in rags. And as he stood there Darius asked him if he understood the art; but he would not admit it, fearing that, if he discovered himself, he would lose Hellas altogether. But Darius perceived clearly that he understood the art, but was feigning, and he commanded the men who had brought him to bring forth pricks and goads. Then indeed Demokêdês discovers himself, saying that he had no accurate knowledge of the matter, but having been the disciple of a leech he had some poor knowledge of that skill. Afterwards when he had entrusted himself to him, by using Greek remedies and applying mild cures after the violent he caused him to get sleep, and in short space restored him to sound health, that no longer hoped to have his foot whole again. For a gift thereafter Darius bestows on him two pairs of golden fetters; but Demokêdês asked him if he thus doubled his misfortunes for a gift, just because he had made him whole. Darius was pleased at the speech and sends him to his wives. And the eunuchs who led him there said to the women that this was the man who had given back his life to the King. And each of them, plunging a cup in the chest of gold, gave Demokêdês so rich a gift that his servant, whose name was Skiton, following him gathered up the nobles that fell from the cups, and a great deal of gold was amassed by him.
Then Demokêdês having healed Darius had a very great house at Susa, and sat at table with the King, and had all else save one thing only, namely his return to the Greeks. And the Egyptian physicians, who formerly tended the King, when they were about to be impaled on the stake for that they had been overcome by a Greek physician, he both saved by his prayers to the King, and also rescued a prophet of Elis, who had followed Polykratês, and was neglected among the slaves. And Demokêdês was a very great matter with the King.
Herodotus is so interesting that it is almost inexcusable to interrupt him; but the essayist has to study brevity. I will therefore in the main summarize what follows, indulging myself in only one remark (which has probably already occurred to my reader) that of course the story has passed through the popular imagination, and that the historian has to admire, not so much the caprice of destiny, as the genius of an indomitable personality.
Shortly after the accident to Darius, his queen Atossa was afflicted by an ulcer on her breast. Atossa was an unspeakably great lady. She was the daughter of Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian Empire. She had been the wife of the son and successor of Cyrus, her brother Cambyses. Now she was the wife of Darius and the mother of Xerxes. Darius himself may well have been a little in awe of her. She outlived him, if we may believe Aeschylus, who has introduced her into his play of The Persians, uttering magnificent stately lamentations over the ruin of the Persian cause in Hellas, and evoking from his royal tomb the ghost of the “god” Darius. Such was the half-divine woman, who was to help Demokêdês back to the Greece for which he felt so deep a nostalgia. A single touch of Herodotus makes her as real as any patient you have seen in a hospital. So long as the thing was comparatively little she concealed it and being ashamed of it did not tell anybody, but when she was seriously ill she sent for Demokêdês. He cured her after extracting a promise, which she fulfilled in the following manner. She persuaded Darius to plan an expedition against Greece and, as an aid to this, to send Demokêdês to make a report on his native country. The King then summoned fifteen Persians of distinction and instructed them to accompany Demokêdês on the projected voyage along the coasts of Hellas in quest of intelligence, commanding them on no account to let Demokêdês escape. Next he sent for his healer and explained the nature of the employment to which he designed to put him. He bade Demokêdês take all his movable possessions with him as presents for his father and his brethren, promising to requite him many times over. Demokêdês declined this offer, that he might not betray himself by too manifest an eagerness. He did accept the gift of a merchant-vessel freighted with “goods of every sort” for his “brethren”—and for his father too, we may hope, that irascible old man.
The expedition went first to Sidon, where they fitted out two triremes and the merchant-vessel freighted with goods of every sort, then sailed for Greece. They touched at various points of the coast, spying out the land and writing down an account of what seemed most remarkable. In this way they came at last to Tarentum in Italy. There Demokêdês got in touch with Aristophilidês, whom Herodotus calls the “king” of the Tarentines. Aristophilidês removed the steering-apparatus of the foreign ships, which prevented their sailing, and imprisoned the crew as spies; while Demokêdês took advantage of their predicament to escape to his native Kroton. Then Aristophilidês released the Persians and gave them back their rudders. They at once sailed in pursuit of their prisoner, and found him at Kroton “holding the attention of the Agora,” which was the centre of Greek city-life. There they sought to lay hands on him. And some of the men of Kroton, fearing the might of Persia, would have yielded him up, but others gat hold of him on their part, and began to beat the Persians with their staves; who made profession in such words as these: “Ye men of Kroton, consider what ye do; ye are taking from us a man that is a runaway slave of the King. How then shall King Darius be content to have received this insult? And how shall your deeds serve you well, if ye drive us away? Against what city shall we march before this, and what city shall we try to enslave before yours?” So spake they, but they did not indeed persuade the men of Kroton, but had Demokêdês rescued out of their hands, and the merchantman, which they had brought with them, taken away from them, and so sailed back to Asia; neither did they seek any further knowledge concerning Greece, though this was the object of their coming; for they had lost their guide. Now as they were putting forth, Demokêdês charged them with no message but this, bidding them tell Darius “Demokêdês is married to Milo’s daughter.” For the name of Milo the wrestler was of great account with the King. I think that Demokêdês hurried on this marriage, paying a great sum, in order that Darius might see clearly that in his own country also Demokêdês was a great man.
The explanation of Herodotus is convincing. Demokêdês was suffering from repressed egotism. He had had wealth and consideration in Persia, but he could not breathe its spiritual atmosphere. It is pleasant to reflect that in the court of Susa he may have regretted his father. To the Hellenic mind it was a chief curse in Barbarism that it swamps the individual. How shall a man possess his soul in a land where the slavery of all but One is felt to be a natural state of things? So in ancient Greece it was above all else personality that counted; freedom was a merely external matter unless it meant the liberation of the spirit, the development (as our jargon expresses it) of personality—although this development realized itself most effectively in the service of the State. Greek history is starred with brilliant idiosyncrasies—Demokêdês being one, whom we may now leave triumphant there at home (Note 61)in his flaming Persian robe, “holding the attention of the Agora” with his amazing story.
It would be too strange an omission to say nothing about that which, before Alexander’s tremendous march, is the most familiar of all Greek adventures among the Barbarians; I mean that suffered and described by Xenophon the Athenian. Again we witness the triumph of a personality, although that is not the important thing about the Retreat of the Ten Thousand. The important thing is the triumph of the Greek character in a body of rascal mercenaries. The personality of the young gentleman who gained so much authority with them found its opportunity in a crisis among ignorant men, but it never became a great one. To the last it was curiously immature. Perhaps it would be an apter metaphor to say of Xenophon what some one said of Pitt—“He did not grow, he was cast.” His natural tastes were very much those of a more generous and incomparably greater man, Sir Walter Scott. They were the tastes of a country gentleman with a love of literature and history, especially with a flavour of romance. The Cyropaedia is the false dawn of the Historic Novel. Both Xenophon and Sir Walter wanted, probably more than anything else, to be soldiers. But Xenophon wanted to be too many things. Before his mind floated constantly the image of the “Archical Man”—the ideal Ruler—who had long exercised the thoughts of Greek philosophers, of none perhaps more than Socrates, whose pupil Xenophon professed himself to be. One day it seems to have struck him: Might not he, Xenophon, be the Archical Man? He may not have framed the thought so precisely, for it is of the kind that even youth does not always admit to itself; but the thought was there. It was his illusion. He was not born to command, he was born to write. He did not dominate, he was always more or less under the influence of some one else—Socrates, Cyrus, Agesilaos. He was an incredibly poor judge of men and the movement of affairs. But put a pen in his hands and you have, if not one of the great masters, yet a master in a certain vivid manner of his own.
He can have been little more than a boy when Fate sent him his incomparable adventure. The King of Persia had died leaving two sons, his heir and successor Artaxerxes, and Cyrus, the favourite of their dreadful mother, the dowager queen Parysatis. The younger son began secretly to collect and mobilize an army in Asia Minor, where authority had been delegated to him, intending to march without declaration of war against Artaxerxes. Xenophon was introduced to Cyrus by Proxenos of Boeotia, who indeed had induced him to visit Sardis. Proxenos, says his friend, thought it was sufficient for being and being thought an Archical Man to praise him who did well and to refrain from praising the wrongdoer. Consequently the nice people among those who came into contact with him liked him, but he suffered from the designs of the unscrupulous, who felt that they could do what they pleased with him. Xenophon appears to have fallen immediately under the spell of Cyrus, who undoubtedly has somewhat the air of a man of genius and who, as a scion of the Achaemenids, would in any case have inspired in him much the same feeling as a Bourbon inspired in Sir Walter Scott. In the army of invasion was a large body (Note 63)of Greek mercenary soldiers, chiefly from the Peloponnese, under the command of a hard-bitten Spartan condottiere called Klearchos. Xenophon joined this force as a volunteer. He believed at the time, as did Proxenos, who was one of the “generals” (Strategi), and indeed everybody except Klearchos, who was in the secret, that the expedition was preparing against the Pisidians, hill-tribes delighting in brigandage. It was not until the army had passed the “Cilician Gates” of the Taurus and had reached Tarsus that the Greek troops found confirmed their growing suspicion that they were being led against the King. They protested and refused to go farther. Their discontent was allayed with difficulty, but it is clear that Xenophon had already made up his mind. He went with the rest. They threaded the “Syrian Gates” of the range called Amanus, and struck across the desert. Having reached the Euphrates, they followed the river into “Babylonia,” what we call Mesopotamia, as far as Kunaxa, in the region where the two great streams begin to open out again after coming so close in the neighbourhood of Bagdad. At Kunaxa the Great King met them with an enormous army. A huge disorderly battle followed, in which the Greeks very easily dispersed everything that met them—but Cyrus was slain.
What were they to do? The whole purpose of the campaign—to put Cyrus on the throne—had vanished. It was clear to them that they could not rely on the Barbarians who had marched with them the two thousand miles from Sardis. Nothing to do but retreat. But retreat by the way they had come was no longer possible, since they had eaten up the country. It remained to follow the line of the Tigris up into Armenia, and so cross—in the winter—that savage plateau, in the hope of coming at last to Trebizond, away there on the Euxine, all those leagues away.
So they set out. It was the first requirement of their plan to cross Babylonia to the Tigris. Breaking up their camp at dawn, they were alarmed in the afternoon by the sight of horses, which at first they took for Persian cavalry, but soon discovered to be baggage-animals out at grass. That in itself was surprising—it seemed the King’s encampment must be near. They continued their advance, and at sunset the vanguard entered and took up their quarters in some deserted and pillaged huts, while the rest of the army, with much shouting in the darkness, found such accommodation outside as they could. That was a night of panics. An inexplicable uproar broke out in camp, which Klearchos allayed by proclaiming a reward for information against “the individual who let loose the donkey.” The enemy, as appeared in the morning, had been equally nervous. At least he had vanished from the neighbourhood. Moreover heralds now appeared offering a truce from the King. The offer was accepted under promise that the Greek army would be provisioned. So the host set out again under the guidance of the King’s messengers through a country all criss-crossed by irrigation-ditches, looking suspiciously full of water for the time of year. However, they soon reached some villages full of food and drink. There were some dates ... “like amber,” says Xenophon reminiscently. (He had got no breakfast that morning.) Here also they tasted “the brain of the palm”—the “cabbage”—delicious, but it gave them a headache.
In these excellent villages they remained three days and continued negotiations with Tissaphernes, the subtle representative of the King. As a result of the conversations they moved on again under the satrap’s direction as far as the towering “Wall of Media,” which crossed the land in a diagonal line towards Babylon, being twenty feet broad, a hundred feet high, and twenty leagues long. From the Wall they marched between twenty and thirty miles, crossing canals and ditches, until they struck the Tigris at Sittakê, where they encamped in a “paradise” full of trees. At the bridge of Sittakê met the roads to Lydia and Armenia, to Susa and Ecbatana (Hamadan). Next morning the Greeks crossed without opposition and advanced as far as a considerable stream traversed by a bridge at “Opis,” near which populous centre they found themselves observed by a large force of Asiatics. Thereupon Klearchos led his men past in column two abreast, now marching and now halting them. Every time the vanguard stopped the order to halt went echoing down the line, and had barely died out in the distance when the advance was resumed; so that even to the Greeks themselves the army seemed enormous, while the Persian looking on was astounded.
They were now in “Media”—really Assyria—a very different country from the “Garden of Eden” they had left on the other side of the Tigris. They marched and marched, and at last reached a cluster of dwellings called the “Villages of Parysatis.” Then another twenty leagues to the town of Kainai and the confluence of the Tigris with the Greater Zab, on whose bank they rested three days. All this time the enemy, although never attacking, had been following in a watchful cloud. Klearchos therefore sought an interview with Tissaphernes to discover his intentions. The satrap responded with Oriental courtesy and invited to a discussion at his headquarters Klearchos and the other generals, namely Proxenos, Menon, Agias and Socrates the Achaean. With grave misgivings, relying on the faith of the Barbarian, they entered the Persian camp. There they were immediately arrested. The officers who had accompanied the generals were cut down, and the Persian cavalry galloped out over the plain, killing every Greek they could find. The Hellenes from their camp could make out that something unusual was happening in that distant cloud of horse, but what it was they never guessed until Nikarchos the Arcadian came tearing along with his hands upon a great wound in his belly, holding in his entrails. He told them his story; they ran to arm themselves. However, the enemy did not come on. Meanwhile the generals were sent to the King, who had them beheaded.
As for the leaderless men, few of them tasted food that evening, only a few kindled a fire, many did not trouble to return to their quarters at all, but lay down where each happened to find himself, unable to close their eyes for misery and longing for the home-town, and father, and mother, and the wife, and the baby. Xenophon got a little sleep at last, and as he slept he dreamed that his father’s house was struck by a thunderbolt and set on fire. The dream was so vivid that he awoke and began to ponder what it might signify. His excited imagination revived (Note 67)in still more startling colours the terrors of the situation. Here was the stage set for a moving scene. Where was the hero? Where was the Archical Man? Here at last was the opportunity he had prayed for. There was kindled that night in Xenophon the flame of a resolution which, while it lasted, did really keep at the heroic pitch a spirit secretly doubtful of itself. It was the sense of drama acting on an artistic temperament; and of course that army, being Greek, accepted the miracle and naturally assumed its rôle. The gentleman ranker developed a Napoleonic energy, and made eloquent speeches (for which he dressed very carefully); with the result that he was chosen one of the new generals. He became in fact henceforward the leading spirit, and was entrusted with the most difficult task—the command of the rearguard in a fighting retreat. He made mistakes; he was not a Napoleon. But the distinguished French officer who has written the best military history of the Retreat gives him high credit for his grasp of the principles of war, which General Boucher believes he learned from Socrates. Perhaps you have not thought of Socrates as an authority on the art of war?
Next morning they crossed the Zab—it was the dry season—but had not advanced far on the other side when they were overtaken by a small force of horsemen, archers and slingers under the command of a certain Mithradates. These approached in a seeming-friendly manner until they were fairly near, when all at once they began to ply their bows and slings. The Greek army, marching in hollow square, could not retaliate. A charge failed to capture a single man, the enemy retiring before the charge and shooting as they retired, according to the “Parthian” tactics which were to become famous in Roman times. That day the Greeks covered little more than three miles. Clearly something must be done about it. Xenophon discovered that the army contained some Rhodians, who could sling leaden bullets twice as far as the Persians could cast their stones, which were “as big as your fist.” These Rhodians then were formed overnight into a special corps and instructed in their task. Next day the host set out earlier than usual, for they had to cross a ravine, where an attack would be especially dangerous. When they were about a mile beyond, Mithradates crossed after them with a thousand horsemen and four thousand archers and slingers. No sooner had he come within range than a bugle rang out and the special troops rushed to close quarters. The enemy did not await the charge, but fled back to the ravine pursued by a small body of mounted men for whom Xenophon had somehow collected horses. It was a brilliant little victory, stained by the infamy of some, who mutilated the dead—a thing so startlingly un-Greek that I cannot remember another historical instance. And here what was done was not done in cold blood.
In the evening of that day they came to a great deserted city, the name of which was Larissa. A great city; it was girdled by a wall two leagues in length, twenty-five feet in thickness, and a hundred feet high. Hard by was a pyramid of stone two hundred feet in height, where the Greeks found many fugitives who had sought refuge there from the neighbouring villages. Their next march brought them to another great empty fortress, called Mespila, opposite what (Note 69)we now call Mosul. Somewhere in this region of Larissa and Mosul had anciently stood the enormous city of Nineveh, the capital of Assyria; and the whole district (as one gathers from Xenophon) was full of dim legends of an overwhelming disaster. The soldiers were marching over the grave of an empire. Even the fragments were imposing. Mespila was based on a kind of ring, fifty feet broad and fifty feet high, built all of a polished stone “full of shells”; and on this foundation rose a wall of bricks, the breadth of it fifty feet, and the height four hundred, and the circuit six leagues.
Beyond Mespila Tissaphernes attacked again with what appeared a very large force. But his light-armed troops were no match for the Rhodian slingers and the Cretan bowmen, whose every shot told in the dense array of the enemy, who withdrew discomfited. The Greek army was now approaching the mountains, which they had long seen towering on the horizon. It appeared to the generals that the “hollow square” must be replaced by a new formation better suited to the narrow ways they would soon be following, and this they now devised. They were to use it successfully henceforward.
They came in sight of a “palace surrounded by villages.” The way to it, they observed with joy, led across a series of knolls where (thought they) the Persian cavalry could not come at them. Their joy was short-lived, for no sooner had the light-armed troops who composed the Greek rearguard begun to leave the summit of the first height than the enemy rushed up after them, and began showering darts and arrows and stones from the sling upon them, and so put them out of action for that day. The heavy-armed did their best. But they were naturally unable to overtake the skirmishers, and it went hard with the army until special tactics were devised which answered their purpose. The knolls which had served them so ill were foothills of a loftier line of heights running parallel to the road. A sufficient detachment was sent to occupy and move along the heights simultaneously with the main body advancing by the road. Afraid of being caught between two forces, the Persian did not attack. This was the first employment of a manœuvre which the Greeks repeated many times, and always with success.
The Palace and Villages turned out to be full of bread and wine and fodder collected by the satrap of the region. So the Greeks halted there for three days, resting their wounded. Having set out again on the fourth day, they were overtaken by the implacable Tissaphernes and, warned by experience, made for the nearest village, where they beat off his attack very easily. That night they took advantage of an unmilitary practice of the Persians in never encamping less than seven miles from an enemy, to steal a march on them. The result was that the next day, and the day after, and the day after that, they proceeded on their way unmolested. On the fourth day they came to a place where the Zacho Dagh, which they had kept so long on their right, sends down a spur to the river, which it steeply overhangs in a tall cliff picturesquely crowned to-day by a native village. The Tigris being still unfordable, the road is forced to climb over the cliff. Cheirisophos, commanding the van, halted and sent a message to Xenophon, who was in command of the rear. This was highly inconvenient to Xenophon, (Note 71)because at that very moment who should appear on the road behind him but Tissaphernes? However, Xenophon galloped to the front and requested an explanation. Cheirisophos pointed to the cliff, and there sure enough were armed men in occupation. Between these and Tissaphernes the army was in a perilous position. What to do? Xenophon, looking up at the wall of the Zacho Dagh, noticed that the main height at this part of the range was directly opposite them; looking again, he could make out a track leading from this peak to the cliff. He immediately proposed to seize the peak. A picked force was hastily got together, and off they set upon their climb. No sooner did the men on the cliff catch sight of them than they too began to race for the key-position. With shouts the two sides strained for the goal. Xenophon rode beside his men, encouraging them. A grumbling fellow from Sicyon complained that he had to run with a shield while the general rode on a horse. Xenophon dismounted, pushed the man out of the ranks, took his shield from him, and struggled on in his place. Thus enkindled, the Greeks—the men to whom mountains were native—reached the summit first. But it was a near thing.
Thus the pass was turned. But the situation remained not less than dreadful. On the right of the army arose the cruel mountains of Kurdistan; on their left ran swiftly the profound current of the Tigris. A soldier from Rhodes suggested crossing the stream on an arrangement of inflated skins, such as appears to be still in use upon the Tigris, where it is called a “tellek.” The suggestion was impracticable in face of the enemy, who was found in possession of the opposing bank. Reluctantly therefore they turned their backs upon the river and set their minds upon the mountains. Under cover of darkness they stole across the plain and were on the high ground with the dawn. They were now in the country of the Kardouchians, whom we now call the Kurds, in whose intricate valleys and startling ravines whole armies had been lost. On the appearance of the Greeks the natives fled with their wives and children from their villages and “took to the heather.” The invaders requisitioned the supplies they found, but made some effort to conciliate the highlanders. These remained sullenly unresponsive. All day long they watched the ten thousand hoplites with the light-armed and the women of the camp struggle through the high pass. Then as the last men were descending in the early-gathering darkness the Kardouchians stirred. Stones and arrows flew, and some of the Greeks were killed. Luckily for the army the enemy had been surprised so completely that no concerted attack was made in the steep-walled road. As it was, although they bivouacked that night without further annoyance, they could see the signal fires blaze from every peak, boding ill for the morrow.
When it came they resolved to leave behind all prisoners and all they could spare of the baggage-train. Thus disencumbered, they set forward in stormy weather and under constant attack, so that little progress was made. Finally they came to a complete check. In front of them rose the sheer side of a mountain, up which the road was seen to climb, black with their enemies. A frontal attack was not to be thought of. But was there no byway across the heights? A captured Kurd confessed that there was. Only at one point this path led over an eminence, which must be secured in advance. Therefore late in the afternoon a storming party set out with the guide, their orders being to occupy the eminence in the night, and sound a bugle at dawn. A violent rainstorm served to conceal this movement, whose success was also aided by the advance of Cheirisophos along the visible road. He soon reached a gulch, which his men must cross to gain a footing on the great cliff. But when they attempted the passage the enemy rolled down enormous boulders, which shattered themselves into flying fragments against the iron sides of the ravine, so that crossing was merely impossible. The attempt then was not at that time renewed. But through the night the Greeks continued to hear the thunder of the plunging rocks sent down by the unwearied and suspicious foe.
Meanwhile the storm-troops who had gone by the circuitous path surprised a guard of Kardouchians seated about a fire, and, having dispersed them, held the position under the impression that it was the “col” or eminence. In this they were mistaken, but at dawn they realized their error and set out in a friendly mist to seize their true objective. Its defenders fled as soon as the Greek trumpet sang out the attack. In the road below Cheirisophos heard the sound and rushed to the assault of the cliff. His men struggled up as best they might, hoisting one another by means of their spears. The rearguard, under Xenophon, followed the bypath. They captured one crest by assault, only to find themselves confronted by another. Xenophon therefore left a garrison on the first, and with the rest of his force attacked and captured the second—only to find a third rising before them, being in fact the eminence itself. That also was assailed. To the surprise of the Greeks the enemy made no resistance and made off at once. Soon a fugitive came to Xenophon with the news that the crest where he had left a garrison had been stormed, and all its defenders slain—all who had not escaped by jumping down its rocky sides. It was now evident why the Kardouchians had left the main eminence; they had seen from their greater elevation what was happening in Xenophon’s rear. They now came back to a height facing the eminence and began discussing a truce, while gradually they were collecting their people. An agreement was reached, and the Greeks began to descend from their position, when instantly the Barbarians were on them, yelling and rolling down boulders after them. However, with little difficulty now, a junction was effected with Cheirisophos.
In all a week was consumed in traversing the land of the Kardouchians, and not a day passed without hard fighting. Every narrow way was beset by the fierce mountaineers, who shot arrows two cubits long from bows so mighty that the archer had to use one foot to get a purchase on his weapon. One man was pierced through shield and breastplate and body, another was shot fairly through the head. In these mountains the Greeks “suffered more than all they had endured at the hands of the King and Tissaphernes.” Fighting their way along the Zorawa, they reached at last the more open ground, where that river falls into the Bohtan Su, which Xenophon calls the Kentrîtês. Alas, in the morning light they saw the further bank lined with hostile forces, both foot and horse, while on the mountains they had just escaped the Kardouchians were gathered, ready to fall on their rear, if they should attempt the passage of the Kentrîtês, a deep river full of big slippery stones. Gloom settled again upon the host. But in a little time, while Xenophon was still at breakfast, there ran to him two young men with great news. The pair of them had gone to collect sticks, and, down by the river, they had noticed on the other side “among rocks that came right down to the water an old man and a woman putting away in a kind of cave what looked like a bag of clothes.” So the soldiers put their knives between their teeth and prepared to swim across. To their surprise they got to the other side without the need of swimming. Now here they were back again, having brought the clothes for evidence.
Shortly afterwards they were guiding the division of Cheirisophos to the ford they had so opportunely discovered, while Xenophon led the rearguard, whose duty it was to protect the passage of the army from the assaults of the Kardouchians. These were duly made, but were beaten off and eluded; and the Kentrîtês was crossed.
The Greeks were now in Armenia. Before them stretched a wide rolling plateau, sombre, lonely, savagely inclement at that season; and yet they found it at first like Elysium after their torments up among the clouds. They crossed two streams, the Bitlis Tchai, by whose deep trench the caravans still travel, and the Kara Su. It was in the country of the satrap Tiribazos, who kept following the invaders with an army. So the march went on. One night they reached the usual “palace surrounded by villages,” and there, finding plenty to eat and drink, with joy refreshed their weariness. It was judged imprudent to billet the men out among the villages, so they bivouacked in the open. Then the snow came—a soft, persistent snow; and in the morning nothing seemed desirable except to remain warm and drowsy under that white blanket. At last Xenophon sprang up, and began to chop wood, so that the men were shamed and got up too, and took the log from him, and kindled fires, and anointed themselves with a local unguent. But all were certain that such another night would be the death of them; so it was resolved that they should find quarters among the villages. Off rushed the soldiers with cheers.
But the retreat must proceed. They caught a man who told them that Tiribazos meant to attack them in a high defile upon their road. This stroke they anticipated and, crossing the pass, marched day after day in a wilderness of snow. At one point in their dreadful journey they waded up to their waists across the icy waters of the upper Euphrates. The snow got deeper and deeper. Worst of all the wind—the north wind—blew in their faces. The snow became six feet deep. Baggage-cattle, slaves, some thirty of the soldiers themselves disappeared in the drifts. At last by the mercy of the gods the wind dropped a little, and they found an abundance of wood, which they burned, and so cleared spaces in the snow, that they might sleep upon the ground. Then they must bestir themselves and labour on again. Men began (Note 77)to drop from hunger-faintness. Xenophon got them a mouthful to eat; whereupon they got on their legs and stumbled forward with the rest. All the time bands of marauders prowled about the skirts of the army. If a beast were abandoned, they swooped down upon it, and shortly you would hear them quarrelling over the carcase. Not only the beasts were lost, but every now and then a man would fall out because of frostbite or snow-blindness. Once a whole bunch of soldiers dropped behind, and, seeing a dark patch where a hot spring had melted the snow, they sat down there. Xenophon implored them to get up; wolfish enemies were at their heels. Nothing he could say moved them. Then he lost his temper. The only result was a tired suggestion from the men that he should cut their throats. Darkness was falling; nearer and nearer came the clamour of the pillagers wrangling over their spoils. Xenophon and his men lay concealed in the bare patch, which sloped down into a cañon smoking with the steam of the hot spring. When the miscreants came near, up sprang the soldiers with a shout, while the outworn men whooped at the pitch of their voices. The startled enemy “flung themselves down the snow into the cañon, and not one ever uttered a sound again.”
Not long after, the Greeks came to some villages, one of which was assigned to Xenophon and his men. It was occupied so rapidly that the inhabitants had not time to escape. An extraordinary village it was, for the houses were all underground. You entered the earth-house at a hole “like the mouth of a well,” and, descending a ladder, found yourself in a fine roomy chamber, shared impartially by “goats and sheep and cows and poultry” as well as people. There was store of provender for the animals, and wheat and barley and greens for folk. There was also “barley-wine,” which you sucked through a reed, and which was “a very delightful beverage to one who had learned to like it.” Xenophon naturally lived with the headman of the village, whom he graciously invited to dinner at the expense of the house. He managed to reassure the headman, who was troubled about many things, including the capture of his daughter, who had just been married. So the wine was produced, and they made a night of it. Next morning, awakening among the cocks and the hens and the other creatures, Xenophon went to call on Cheirisophos, taking the headman with him. On the way they looked in at all the houses and in each they found high revelry. They were forced to come down the ladder and have breakfast. Xenophon has forgotten how many breakfasts he had that morning, but he remembers lamb, kid, pork, veal and poultry, not to mention varieties of bread. If anybody proposed to drink somebody’s health, he was haled to the bowl and made to shove in his head and “make a noise like an ox drinking.” To the headman the soldiers offered “anything he would like.” (When you think of it, they could scarcely do less.) The poor man chose any of his relations whom he noticed. At the headquarters of Cheirisophos there were similar scenes. The soldiers in their Greek way had wreathed their heads for the feast, making wisps of hay serve the purpose of flowers, and had formed the Armenian boys “in their strange clothes” into picturesque waiters. Xenophon took seventeen magnificent young horses which his village had been rearing for the King, and divided them among his officers, keeping the best for himself. In return he presented the headman with an oldish steed of his own, which he rather thought was going to die.
After a jolly week the weary retreat began again. The headman told the Greeks to tie bags upon the feet of their horses to keep them from falling through the frozen surface of the snow. He went as guide with Cheirisophos in the van. As they marched on and on, never coming to a human habitation, the general flew into a rage and struck the guide. Next morning they found that the man had disappeared in the night. This turned out to be the worst thing that had befallen them yet. After a week of padding the hoof over a white desert with no relief for the eyes but their own red rags, they came to a river. It was the Araxes, and if they had taken the right turn here, a few days more would have brought them to Trebizond. Unfortunately, misled perhaps by the sound of the native name, they got it into their heads that the river was the Phasis, about which everybody knew that it flowed through the land of the Colchians into the Black Sea. Therefore they went down the Araxes.
Fighting began at the very outset. Moreover provisions soon failed them. They were now in the wild country of the “Taochians,” who lived in strong places, where they had stored all their supplies. The army must capture one of these strongholds or starve. The first they came to was typical. It was simply an enclosed space on the top of a precipice. A winding stream served as a moat. There was only one narrow way of approach to the stockade, and this path was commanded by an insuperable cliff. Within the stockade huddled a throng of men and women and animals. On the top of the cliff were Taochian warriors, who flung stones and precipitated rocks on any Greek who ventured to set foot on the path. Several who ventured had their legs broken or their ribs crushed. Some shelter was afforded by a wood of tall pines, through which about seventy soldiers filtered, until no more than fifty or so feet of open ground lay between them and the stockade. An officer called Kallimachos began to amuse the army by popping out and into the wood, thus drawing the fire of the stoners, who let fly at him with “more than ten cart-loads of rock.” Then, in a lull of the stones, two or three made a sudden dash across the exposed ground and into the stockade. The rest followed at their heels. Then occurred a very horrible thing. The women flung their babies down the precipice and jumped after them. A sort of heroic madness swept the helpless defenders. Aeneas of Stymphalos gripped a man who had a splendid dress on; the man flung his arms about Aeneas and took him with him over the cliff. Hardly any were saved.
Now the ten thousand entered the country of the Chalybians, the bravest race they met on all their march; whose strongholds the Greeks did not take. The Chalybians, who wore an immense tasselled breastplate of linen, and carried a prodigious long spear and a short sword, used to cut off the heads of their enemies and go into battle, swinging the heads, and singing and dancing. Having escaped from such savages, the army crossed a river and marched many parasangs, turning west by a route that led them perhaps by way of the modern towns of Alexandropol and Kars to a populous city by Xenophon named Gymnias, which must have been near Erzerum. Here they found a guide, who promised to set them on the true road home. Him they followed for four days. On the fifth day Xenophon, who as usual was in command of the rearguard, heard a great and distant shouting. At once he and his men concluded that the van had been attacked, for the whole country was up in arms. Every moment the far-off clamour increased. As they stared at the mountain-side, which the van had just ascended, they noticed that, whenever a company had got a certain distance, the men suddenly took to their heels and tore up the mountain for their lives. It was clear that something extraordinary was happening. Xenophon sprang on his horse and, followed by the cavalry, galloped to the rescue. But now in a little they could hear what they were crying on the mountain; it was The Sea! The Sea! Then the rearguard also ran, and the baggage-animals and the horses too! And on the top they fell to embracing one another, officers and men indiscriminately, and the tears ran down their faces. Then they raised a great cairn of stones on that hill-top, overlooking “the col of Vavoug,” where the road still passes.
IV
ELEUTHERIA
What was the special gift of Greece to the world? The answer of the Greeks themselves is unexpected, yet it is as clear as a trumpet: Eleutheria, Freedom. The breath of Eleutheria fills the sail of Aeschylus’ great verse, it blows through the pages of Herodotus, awakens fierce regrets in Demosthenes and generous memories in Plutarch. “Art, philosophy, science,” the Greeks say, “yes, we have given all these; but our best gift, from which all the others were derived, was Eleutheria.”
Now what did they mean by that?
They meant the Reign of Law. Aeschylus says of them in The Persians:
Atossa. Who is their shepherd over them and lord of their host?
Chorus. Of no man are they called the slaves or subjects.
Now hear Herodotus amplifying and explaining Aeschylus. For though they are free, yet are they not free in all things. For they have a lord over them, even Law, whom they fear far more than thy people fear thee. At least they do what that lord biddeth them, and what he biddeth is still the same, to wit that they flee not before the face of any multitude (Note 83)in battle, but keep their order and either conquer or die. It is Demaratos that speaks of the Spartans to King Xerxes.
Eleutheria the Reign of Law or Nomos. The word Nomos begins with the meaning “custom” or “convention,” and ends by signifying that which embodies as far as possible the universal and eternal principles of justice. To write the history of it is to write the history of Greek civilization. The best we can do is to listen to the Greeks themselves explaining what they were fighting for in fighting for Eleutheria. They will not put us off with abstractions.
No one who has read The Persians forgets the live and leaping voice that suddenly cries out before the meeting of the ships at Salamis: Onward, Sons of the Hellenes! Free your country, free your children, your wives, your fathers’ tombs and seats of your fathers’ gods! All hangs now on your fighting! This, then, when it came to action, is what the Greeks meant by the Reign of Law. It will not seem so puzzling if you put it in this way: that what they fought for was the right to govern themselves. Here as elsewhere we may observe how the struggle of Greek and Barbarian fills with palpitating life such words as Freedom, which to dull men have been apt to seem abstract and to sheltered people faded. For the Barbarians had not truly laws at all. How are laws possible where “all are slaves save one,” and he responsible to nobody? So the fight for Freedom becomes a fight for Law, that no man may become another’s master, but all be subject equally to the Law, “whose service is perfect freedom.”
That conception was wrought out in the stress of conflict with the Barbarians, culminating in the Persian danger. On that point it is well to prepare our minds by an admission. The quarrel was never a simple one of right and wrong. Persia at least was in some respects in advance of the Greece she fought at Salamis; and not only in material splendour. That is now clear to every historian; it never was otherwise to the Greeks themselves. Possessing or possessed by the kind of imagination which compels a man to understand his enemy, they saw much to admire in the Persians—their hardihood, their chivalry, their munificence, their talent for government. The Greeks heard with enthusiasm (which was part at least literary) the scheme of education for young nobles—“to ride a horse, to shoot with the bow, and to speak the truth!” In fact the two peoples, although they never realized it, were neither in race nor in speech very remote from one another. But it was the destiny of the Persians to succeed to an empire essentially Asiatic and so to become the leaders and champions of a culture alien to Greece and to us. In such a cause their very virtues made them the more dangerous. Here was no possible compromise. Persia and Greece stood for something more than two political systems; the European mind, the European way of thinking and feeling about things, the soul of Europe was at stake. There is no help for it; in such a quarrel we must take sides.
Let us look first at the Persian side. The phrase I quoted about all men in Persia being slaves save one is not a piece of Greek rhetoric; it was the official language of the empire. The greatest officer (Note 85)of state next to the King was still his “slave” and was so addressed by him. The King was lord and absolute. An inscription at Persepolis reads I am Xerxes the Great King, the King of Kings, the King of many-tongued countries, the King of this great universe, the Son of Darius the King, the Achaemenid. Xerxes the Great King saith: “By grace of Ahuramazda I have made this portal whereon are depicted all the countries.” The Greek orator Aeschines says, “He writes himself Lord of men from the rising to the setting sun.” The letter of Darius to Gadatas—it exists to-day—is addressed by “Darius the son of Hystaspes, King of Kings.” That, as we know, was a favourite title. The law of the land was summed up in the sentence: The King may do what he pleases. Greece saved us from that.
No man might enter the sacred presence without leave. Whoever was admitted must prostrate himself to the ground. The emperor sat on a sculptured throne holding in his hand a sceptre tipped with an apple of gold. He was clad in gorgeous trousers and gorgeous Median robe. On his head was the peaked kitaris girt with the crown, beneath which the formally curled hair flowed down to mingle with the great beard. He had chains of gold upon him and golden bracelets, a golden zone engirdled him, from his ears hung rings of gold. Behind the throne stood an attendant with a fan against the flies and held his mouth lest his breath should touch the royal person. Before the throne stood the courtiers, their hands concealed, their eyelids stained with kohl, their lips never smiling, their painted faces never moving. Greece saved us from all that.
The King had many wives and a great harem of concubines—one for each day of the year. You remember the Book of Esther. Ahasuerus is the Greek Xerxes. There is in Herodotus a story of that court which, however unauthentic it may be in details, has a clear evidential value. On his return from Greece Xerxes rested at Sardis, the ancient capital of Lydia. There he fell in love with the wife of his brother Masistes. Unwilling to take her by force, he resorted to policy. He betrothed his son Darius to Artaynte, the daughter of Masistes, and took her with him to Susa (the Shushan of Esther), hoping to draw her mother to his great palace there, “where were white, green and blue hangings, fastened with cords of fine linen and purple to silver rings and pillars of marble.” In Susa, however, the King experienced a new sensation and fell in love with Artaynte—who returned his affection. Now Amestris the Queen had woven with her own hands a wonderful garment for her lord, who inconsiderately put it on to pay his next visit to Artaynte. Of course Artaynte asked for it, of course in the end she got it, and of course she made a point of wearing it. When Amestris heard of this, she blamed, says Herodotus, not the girl but her mother. With patient dissimulation she did nothing until the Feast of the Birthday of the King, when he cannot refuse a request. Then for her present she asked the wife of Masistes. The King, who understood her purpose, tried to save the victim; but too late. Amestris had in the meanwhile sent the King’s soldiers for the woman; and when she had her in her power she cut away her breasts and threw them to the dogs, cut off her nose and ears and lips and tongue, and sent her home.
It may be thought that the Persian monarchy cannot fairly be judged by the conduct of a Xerxes. The reply to this would seem to be that it was Xerxes the Greeks had to fight. But let us choose another case, Artaxerxes II, whose life the gentle Plutarch selected to write because of the mildness and democratic quality which distinguished him from others of his line. Yet the Life of Artaxerxes would be startling in a chronicle of the Italian Renaissance. The story which I will quote from it was probably derived from the Persian History of Ktesias, who was a Greek physician at the court of Artaxerxes. This Ktesias, as Plutarch himself tells us, was a highly uncritical person, but after all, as Plutarch goes on to say, he was not likely to be wrong about things that were happening before his eyes. Here then is the story, a little abridged.
She—that is, Parysatis the queen-mother—perceived that he—Artaxerxes the King—had a violent passion for Atossa, one of his daughters.... When Parysatis came to suspect this, she made more of the child than ever, and to Artaxerxes she praised her beauty and her royal and splendid ways. At last she persuaded him to marry the maid and make her his true wife, disregarding the opinions and laws (Nomoi) of the Greeks; she said that he himself had been appointed by the god (Ahuramazda) a law unto the Persians and judge of honour and dishonour.... Atossa her father so loved in wedlock that, when leprosy had overspread her body, he felt no whit of loathing thereat, but praying for her sake to Hera (Anaitis?) he did obeisance to that goddess only, touching the (Note 88)ground with his hands; while his satraps and friends sent at his command such gifts to the goddess that the whole space between the temple and the palace, which was sixteen stades (nearly two miles) was filled with gold and with silver and with purple and with horses.
Artaxerxes afterwards took into his harem another of his daughters. The religion of Zarathustra sanctioned that. It also sanctioned marriage with a mother. According to Persian notions both Xerxes and Artaxerxes behaved with perfect correctness. The royal blood was too near the divine to mingle with baser currents. There is no particular reason for believing that Xerxes was an exceptionally vicious person, while Artaxerxes seemed comparatively virtuous. It was the system that was all wrong. What are you to expect of a prince, knowing none other law than his own will, and surrounded from his infancy by venomous intriguing women and eunuchs? Babylon alone used to send five hundred boys yearly to serve as eunuchs.... I think we may now leave the Persians.
Hear again Phocylides: “A little well-ordered city on a rock is better than frenzied Nineveh.” The old poet means a city of the Greek type, and by “well-ordered” he means governed by a law which guarantees the liberties of all in restricting the privileges of each. This, the secret of true freedom, was what the Barbarian never understood. Sperthias and Boulis, two rich and noble Spartans, offered to yield themselves up to the just anger of Xerxes, whose envoys had been flung to their death in a deep water-tank. On the road to Susa they were entertained by the Persian grandee Hydarnes, who (Note 89)said to them: Men of Sparta, wherefore will ye not be friendly towards the King? Beholding me and my condition, ye see that the King knoweth how to honour good men. In like manner ye also, if ye should give yourselves to the King (for he deemeth that ye are good men), each of you twain would be ruler of Greek lands given you by the King. They answered: Hydarnes, thine advice as touching us is of one side only, whereof thou hast experience, while the other thou hast not tried. Thou understandest what it is to be a slave, but freedom thou hast not tasted, whether it be sweet or no. For if thou shouldst make trial of it, thou wouldest counsel us to fight for it with axes as well as spears!
So when Alexander King of Macedon came to Athens with a proposal from Xerxes that in return for an alliance with them he would grant the Athenians new territories to dwell in free, and would rebuild the temples he had burned; and when the Spartan envoys had pleaded with them to do no such thing as the King proposed, the Athenians made reply. We know as well as thou that the might of the Persian is many times greater than ours, so that thou needest not to charge us with forgetting that. Yet shall we fight for freedom as we may. To make terms with the Barbarian seek not thou to persuade us, nor shall we be persuaded. And now tell Mardonios that Athens says: “So long as the sun keeps the path where now he goeth, never shall we make compact with Xerxes; but shall go forth to do battle with him, putting our trust in the gods that fight for us and in the mighty dead, whose dwelling-places and holy things he hath contemned and burned with fire.” This was their answer to Alexander; but to the Spartans (Note 90)they said: The prayer of Sparta that we make not agreement with the Barbarian was altogether pardonable. Yet, knowing the temper of Athens, surely ye dishonour us by your fears, seeing that there is not so much gold in all the world, nor any land greatly exceeding in beauty and goodness, for which we would consent to join the Mede for the enslaving of Hellas. Nay even if we should wish it, there be many things preventing us: first and most, the images and shrines of the gods burned and cast upon an heap, whom we must needs avenge to the utmost rather than be consenting with the doer of those things; and, in the second place, there is our Greek blood and speech, the bond of common temples and sacrifices and like ways of life—if Athens betrayed these things, it would not be well....
οὐ καλῶς ἂν ἔχοι, “it would not be well.” When I was writing about Greek simplicity I should have remembered this passage. But our present theme is the meaning of Eleutheria. “Our first duty,” say the Athenians, “is to avenge our gods and heroes, whose temples have been desecrated.” Such language must ring strangely in our ears until we have reflected a good deal about the character of ancient religion. To the Greeks of Xerxes’ day religion meant, in a roughly comprehensive phrase, the consecration of the citizen to the service of the State. When the Athenians speak of the gods and heroes, whose temples have been burned, they are thinking of the gods and heroes of Athens, which had been sacked by the armies of Mardonios; and they are thinking chiefly of Athena and Erechtheus.
Now who was Athena? You may read in books that she was “the patron-goddess of Athens.” But she was more than that; she was Athens. You may read that she “represented the fortune of Athens”; but indeed she was the fortune of Athens. You may further read that she “embodied the Athenian ideal”; which is true enough, but how small a portion of the truth! It was not so much what Athens might become, as what Athens was, that moulded and impassioned the image of the goddess. It was the city of to-day and yesterday that filled the hearts of those Athenians with such a sense of loss and such a need to avenge their Lady of the Acropolis. For that which had been the focus of the old city-life, the dear familiar temple of their goddess, was a heap of stones and ashes mixed with the carrion of the old men who had remained to die there.
As for Erechtheus, he was the great Athenian “hero.” The true nature of a “hero” is an immensely controversial matter; but what we are concerned with here is the practical question, what the ancients thought. They, rightly or wrongly, normally thought of their “heroes” as famous ancestors. It was as their chief ancestor that the Athenians regarded and worshipped Erechtheus. Cecrops was earlier, but for some reason not so worshipful; Theseus was more famous, but later, and even something of an alien, since he appears to come originally from Troezen. Thus it was chiefly about Erechtheus as “the father of his people,” rather than about maiden Athena, that all that sentiment, so intense in ancient communities, of the common blood and its sacred obligations entwined itself. This old king of primeval Athens claimed his share of the piety due to the dead of (Note 92)every household, an emotion of so powerful a quality among the unsophisticated peoples that some have sought in it the roots of all religion. It is an emotion hard to describe and harder still to appreciate. Erechtheus was the Son of Earth, that is, really, of Attic Earth; and on the painted vases you see him, a little naked child, being received by Athena from the hands of Earth, a female form half hidden in the ground, who is raising him into the light of day. The effect of all this was to remind the Athenians that they themselves were autochthones, born of the soil, and Attic Earth was their mother also. Not only her spiritual children, you understand, nor only fed of her bounty, but very bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh. Gê Kourotrophos they called her, “Earth the Nurturer of our Children.” Unite all these feelings, rooted and made strong by time: love of the City (Athena), love of the native and mother Earth (Gê), love of the unforgotten and unforgetting dead (Erechtheus)—unite all these feelings and you will know why the defence of so great sanctities and the avenging of insult against them seemed to Athenians the first and greatest part of Liberty.
So Themistocles felt when after Salamis he said: It is not we who have wrought this deed, but the gods and heroes, who hated that one man should become lord both of Europe and of Asia; unholy and sinful, who held things sacred and things profane in like account, burning temples and casting down the images of the gods; who also scourged the sea and cast fetters upon it. And it is this feeling which gives so singular a beauty and charm to the story of Dikaios. “Dikaios the son of Theokydes, an Athenian then in exile and held in reputation among the Persians, said that at this time, when Attica was being wasted by the footmen of Xerxes and was empty of its inhabitants, it befell that he was with Demaratos in the Thriasian Plain, when they espied a pillar of dust, such as thirty thousand men might raise, moving from Eleusis. And as they marvelled what men might be the cause of the dust, presently they heard the sound of voices, and it seemed to him that it was the ritual-chant to Iacchus. Demaratos was ignorant of the rites that are performed at Eleusis, and questioned him what sound was that. But he said, Demaratos, of a certainty some great harm will befall the host of the King. For this is manifest—there being no man left in Attica—that these are immortal Voices proceeding from Eleusis to take vengeance for the Athenians and their allies. And if this wrathful thing descend on Peloponnese, the King himself and his land army will be in jeopardy; but if it turn towards the ships at Salamis, the King will be in danger of losing his fleet. This is that festival which the Athenians hold yearly in honour of the Mother and the Maid, and every Athenian, or other Greek that desires it, receives initiation; and the sound thou hearest is the chanting of the initiates. Demaratos answered, Hold thy peace, and tell no man else this tale. For if these thy words be reported to the King, thou wilt lose thine head, and I shall not be able to save thee, I nor any other man. But keep quiet and God will deal with this host. Thus did he counsel him. And the dust and the cry became a cloud, and the cloud arose and moved towards Salamis to the encampment of the Greeks. So they knew that the navy of Xerxes was doomed.”
Athena, the Mother-Maid Demeter-Persephone with the mystic child Iacchus, Boreas “the son-in-law of Erechtheus,” whose breath dispersed the enemy ships under Pelion and Kaphareus—of such sort are “the gods who fight for us” and claim the love and service of Athens in return. It is well to remember attentively this religious element in ancient patriotism, so large an element that one may say with scarcely any exaggeration at all that for the ancients patriotism was a religion. Therefore is Eleutheria, the patriot’s ideal, a religion too. Such instincts and beliefs are interwoven in one sacred indissoluble bond uniting the Gods and men, the very hills and rivers of Greece against the foreign master. Call this if you will a mystical and confused emotion; but do not deny its beauty or underestimate its tremendous force.
But here (lest in discussing a sentiment which may be thought confused we ourselves fall into confusion) let us emphasize a distinction, which has indeed been already indicated. Greek patriotism was as wide as Greece; but on the other hand its intensity was in inverse ratio to its extension. Greek patriotism was primarily a local thing, and it needed the pressure of a manifest national danger to lift it to a wider outlook. That was true in the main and of the average man, although every generation produced certain superior spirits, statesmen or philosophers, whose thought was not particularist. It was this home-savour which gave to ancient patriotism its special salt and pungency. When the Athenians in the speech I quoted say that their first duty is to avenge their gods, they are thinking more of Athens than of Greece. They are thinking of all we mean by “home,” save that home for them was bounded by the ring-wall of the city, not by the four walls of a house.