Читать книгу The History of Greece from Its Earliest Beginnings to the Hellenistic Age - John Bagnell Bury - Страница 33

The rebellion of Messenia had been especially formidable to Sparta, because the rebels had been supported by two foreign powers, Arcadia and Pisa. Part of Arcadia seems to have been united at this time under the lordship of the king of the Arcadian Orchomenus. The king of Pisa on the Alpheus had recently risen to new power and honour with the help of Argos; and Argos itself had been playing a prominent part in the peninsula under the leadership of her king Pheidon. The reign of this king was the last epoch of Argos as an active power of the first rank. We know little about him, but his name became so famous that in later times the royal house of distant Macedonia, when it reached the height of its success in Alexander the Great, was anxious to connect its line of descent with Pheidon. Under his auspices a system of measures was introduced into Argos and the Peloponnesus. These measures were called after his name Pheidonian, and were likewise adopted at Athens; they seem to have been closely connected with the Aeginetan system of weights. But the only clear action of Pheidon is his expedition to the west. He led an Argive army across Arcadia to the banks of the Alpheus, and presided there over the celebration of the Olympian festival, which is now for the first time heard of in the history of Greece.

The altis or sacred grove of Olympia lay, under the wooded mount of Cronus, where the river Cladeus flows into the Alpheus, in the angle between the two streams. It was dedicated to the worship of Zeus; but the spot was probably sacred to Pelops, before Zeus claimed it for himself, and Pelops, degraded to the rank of a hero, kept his own sacred precinct within the larger enclosure. The sanctuary was in belongs to the territory of Pisa, and there is no doubt that the care of the worship and the conduct of the festivals belonged originally to the Pisan community. But the men of Elis, the northern neighbours of Pisa, set their hearts on having the control of the Olympian sanctuary, which, though it is not once mentioned, as Delphi and Dodona are mentioned, in the poems of Homer, must by the seventh century have won a high prestige in the Peloponnesus and drawn many visitors. As Elis was stronger than Pisa, the Eleans finally succeeded in usurping the conduct of the festival. Games were the chief feature of the festival, which was held every fourth year, at the time of the second full moon after midsummer’s day. The games at first included foot-races, boxing, and wrestling; chariot-races and horse-races were added later. Such contests were an ancient institution in Greece. We know not how far back they go, or in what circumstances they were first introduced, but the funeral games of Patroclus, described in the Iliad, permit us to infer that they were a feature of Ionian life in the ninth century. We can see but dimly into the political relations of Pheidon’s age; but we can discern at least that Sparta lent her countenance to Elis in this usurpation, and that Argos, jealous of the growing power of Sparta, espoused the cause of Pisa. This was the purpose of king Pheidon’s expedition to Olympia. He took the management of the games out of the hands of Elis and to restored it to Pisa. And for many years Pisa maintained her rights.

She maintained them so long as Sparta, absorbed in the Messenian strife, had no help to spare for Elis; and during that time she did what she could to help the foes of Sparta. But when the revolt was suppressed, it was inevitable that Elis should again, with Spartan help, win the control of the games, for Argos, declining under the successors of Pheidon, could give no aid to Pisa.

When king Pheidon held his state at Olympia, the most impressive shrine in the altis was the temple of Hera and Zeus; and this is the most ancient temple of which the foundations are still preserved on the soil of Hellas. It was built of sun-baked bricks, upon lower courses of stone, and the Doric columns were of wood. The days of stone temples were at hand; but it was not till two centuries later that the elder shrine was overshadowed by the great stone temple of Zeus. The temple of Hera is supposed by some to have been founded in the eleventh or tenth century; it is hardly likely to be so old; but it was certainly very old, like the games of the place. The mythical institution of the games was ascribed to Pelops or to Heracles; and, when the Eleans usurped the presidency, the story gradually took shape that the celebration had been revived by the Spartan Lycurgus and the Elean Iphitus in the year 776 BC, and this year was reckoned as the first Olympiad. From that year until the visit of Pheidon, the Eleans professed to have presided over the feast; and their account of the matter won its way into general belief.

It is possible that king Pheidon reorganised the games and inaugurated a new stage in the history of the festival. At all events, by the beginning of the sixth century the festival was no longer an event of merely Peloponnesian interest. It had become famous wherever the Greek tongue was spoken, and, when the feast-tide came round in each cycle of four years, there thronged to the banks of the Alpheus, from all quarters of the Greek world, athletes and horses to compete in the contests and spectators to behold them. During the celebration of the festival a sacred truce was observed, and the men of Elis claimed that in those days their territory was inviolable. The prize for victory in the games was a wreath of wild olive; but rich rewards always awaited the victor when he returned home in triumph and laid the Olympian crown in the chief temple of his city.

It may seem strange that the greatest and most glorious of all Panhellenic festivals should have been celebrated near the western shores of the Peloponnesus. One might have looked to find it nearer the Aegean. But situated where it was, the scene of the great games was all the nearer to the Greeks beyond the western sea; and none of the peoples of the mother-country vied more eagerly or more often in the contests of Olympia than the children who had found new homes far away on Sicilian and Italian soil. This nearness of Olympia to the western colonies comes into one’s thoughts, when standing in the sacred altis one beholds the terrace on the northern side of the precinct, and the scanty remains of the row of twelve treasure-houses which once stood there. For of those twelve treasuries five at least were dedicated by Sicilian and Italian cities. Thus the Olympian festival helped the colonies of the west to keep in touch with the mother-country; it furnished a centre where Greeks of all parts met and exchanged their ideas and experiences; it was one of the institutions which expressed and quickened the consciousness of fellowship among the scattered folks of the Greek race; and it became a model, as we shall see, for other festivals of the same kind, which concurred in promoting a feeling of national unity.

The final success of Sparta in the long struggle with Messenia marks the period at which the balance of power among the Peloponnesian states began to shift. In the seventh century, Argos is the leading state. She has reduced Mycenae; she has annihilated Asine; she has made Tiryns an Argive fort; she has defeated Sparta at Hysiae. There can be little doubt that Pheidon’s authority extended over all Argolis; possibly his influence was felt in Aegina, and the Laconian island of Cythera may have been an Argive possession, as well as the whole eastern coast of Laconia. But his reign is the last manifestation of the greatness of the southern Argos. Fifty years after the subjugation of Messenia, the Spartans become the strongest state in the Peloponnesus, and the Argives sink into the position of a second-rate power—always able to maintain their independence, always a thorn in the side of Sparta, always to be reckoned with as a foe and welcomed as a friend, but never leading, dominant, or originative.