Читать книгу The History of Greece from Its Earliest Beginnings to the Hellenistic Age - John Bagnell Bury - Страница 36

The most important achievement of Cleisthenes, and that which won him most fame in the Greek world, was his championship of the Delphic oracle.

The temple of Delphi, or Pytho, lay in the territory of the Phocian town of Crisa. A Delphic Hymn tells how Apollo came “to Crisa, a hill facing to westward, under snowy Parnassus; a beetling cliff overhangs it, beneath is a hollow, rugged glen. Here,” he said, “I will make me a fair temple, to be an oracle for men”. The poet’s picture is perfect The sanctuary of “rocky Pytho” was terraced on a steep slope, hard under the bare sheer cliffs of Parnassus, looking down upon the deep glen of the Pleistus; an austere and majestic scene, supremely fitted for the utterance of the oracles of God. The city of Crisa lay on a vine-tressed hill to the west of the temple, and commanded its own plain which stretched southward to the sea. The men of Crisa claimed control over the Delphians and the oracle, and levied dues on the visitors who came to consult the deity. The Delphians desired to free themselves from the control of the Crisaeans, and they naturally looked for help to the great league of the north, in which the Thessalians, the ancient foes of the Phocians, were now the dominant member. The folks who belonged to this religious union were the “dwellers around” the shrine of Demeter at Anthela, close to the pass of Thermopylae; and hence they were called the Amphictiones of Anthela or Pylae. The league was probably old; it was formed, at all events, before the Thessalians had incorporated Achaean Phthiotis in Thessaly; for the people of Phthiotis were an independent member of the league, which included the Locrians, Phocians, Boeotians, and Athenians, as well as the Dorians, Malians, Dolopians, Enianes, Thessalians, Perrhaebians, and Magnetes. The members of the league were bound not to destroy, or cut off running water from, any city which belonged to it.

The Amphictions espoused warmly the cause of Apollo and his Delphian servants, and declared a holy war against the men of Crisa who had violated the sacred territory. And Delphi found a champion in the south as well as in the north. The tyrant of Sicyon across the gulf went forth against the impious city. It was not enough to conquer Crisa and force her to make terms or promises. As she was situated in such a strong position, commanding the road from the sea to the sanctuary, it was plain that the utter destruction of the city was the only conclusion of the war which could lead to the assured independence of the oracle. The Amphictions and Sicyonians took the city after a sore struggle, rased it to the ground, and slew the indwellers. The Crisaean plain was dedicated to the god; solemn and heavy curses were pronounced against whosoever should till it. The great gulf which sunders northern Greece from the Peloponnesus, and whose old name “Crisaean” testified to the greatness of the Phocian city, received, after this, its familiar name “Corinthian” from the city of the Isthmus.

One of the consequences of this war was the establishment of a close connexion between Delphi and the Amphictiony of Anthela. The Delphic shrine became a second place of meeting, and the league was often called the Delphic Amphictiony. The temple was taken under the protection of the league; the administration of the property of the god was placed in the hands of the Hieromnemones or sacred councillors, who met twice a year in spring and autumn, both at Anthela and at Delphi. Two Hieromnemones were sent as its representatives by each member of the league. The oracle and the priestly nobles of Delphi thus won a position of independence; their great career of prosperity and power began. The Pythian games were now reorganised on a more splendid scale, and the ordering of them was one of the duties of the Amphictions. The festival became, like the Olympian, a four-yearly celebration, being held in the middle of each Olympiad; gymnastic contests were introduced, whereas before there had been only a musical competition; and money-prizes were abolished for a wreath of bay. Cleisthenes won the laurel in the first chariot-race in the new hippodrome which was built in the plain below the ruins of Crisa. Hard by was the stadion or racecourse in which the athletes ran and wrestled; and it was not till after many years had passed that the new stadion was built high up above Delphi itself, close under the cliffs. Cleisthenes was remembered as having taken a prominent part both in the Sacred War and in the institution of the games; and he commemorated the occasion of his victory by founding Pythian games at Sicyon, which afterwards, by a stroke of the irony of history, became associated with the hated hero Adrastus. Before the Sacred War it would seem that Sicyon had a treasure-house within the Delphic precinct; some traces of its round form, some traces possibly of its primitive sculptures, have been discovered; but not long after the war, the old building had to make way for a larger house in the shape of a Doric temple, and it is hard not to believe that it was Cleisthenes himself who erected this lordlier treasury for Sicyon.

Much about the same time two other Panhellenic festivals were instituted at Isthmus and at Nemea. It is uncertain whether the Isthmian games in honour of Poseidon were founded by Periander, or in commemoration of the abolition of tyranny at Corinth after the death of Psammetichus. The games in honour of Nemean Zeus were administered by the little town of Cleonae, and seem to have been established by the influence of Cleisthenes. Both the Isthmian and the Nemean festivals were two-yearly. Thus from the beginning of the sixth century four Panhellenic festivals are celebrated, two in the Peloponnesus, one on the isthmus, one in the north; and throughout the course of Grecian history the prestige of these gatherings never wanes.

These four Panhellenic festivals helped to maintain a feeling of fellowship among all the Greeks; and we may suspect that the promotion of this feeling was the deliberate policy of the rulers who raised these games to Panhellenic dignity. But it must not be overlooked that the festivals were themselves only a manifestation of a tendency towards unity, which had begun in the eighth century. We have already seen how this tendency was promoted by colonisation, and confirmed by the introduction of a common name for the Greek race. About the middle of the seventh century, we meet the name “Panhellenes” in a poem of Archilochus. The Panhellenic idea, the conception of a common Hellenic race with common interests, was displayed above all in the reconstruction of the history of the past. The Trojan war had come to be regarded as a common enterprise of all the Greeks; and this, as we saw, was the idea which inspired the composer of the Homeric Catalogue of the Ships, a work of the seventh century. This poet was studious that nearly all the states of Greece should be represented at Troy; and, as the Catalogue became part of the Iliad in its final shape, the fiction won universal acceptance. The Homeric poems were a bond among all men of Greek speech. The feeling of community was also displayed in the recognition of the Pythian Apollo as the chief and supreme oracle of Greece. The growth of the prestige of the Delphic god might almost have been used as a touchstone for measuring the growth of the feeling of community. As a meeting-place for pilgrims and envoys from all quarters of the Greek world, Delphi served to keep distant cities in touch with one another, and to spread news; purposes which were effected in a less degree by the Panhellenic the festivals. The tendencies to unity were also shown by the leagues, chiefly of a religious kind, which were formed among neighbouring states. The maritime league of Calauria is an instance; the northern Amphictiony of Anthela is another; and we shall presently have a glimpse of the Ionic federation of Delos. Early in the sixth century we find the cities of Italy bound together by a sort of commercial league, which was indicated in the character of their coinage. We shall soon see Sparta uniting a large part of the Peloponnesus in a confederacy under her presidency.

These tendencies to unity never resulted in a political union of all Hellas. The Greek race never became a Greek nation; for the Panhellenic idea was weaker than the love of local independence. But an ideal unity was realised; it was realised in those beliefs and institutions which we have just been considering. They fostered in the hearts of the Greeks a lively feeling of fellowship and a deep pride in Hellas; though there was no political tie. And it is to be noted that the Delphic oracle made no efforts to promote political unity, though unintentionally it promoted unity of another kind. If it had made any such efforts, they would certainly have failed; for the oracle had little influence in initiation. Greek states did not ask Apollo to originate or direct their policy; they only sought his authority for what they had already determined.

We saw that the Boeotians were a member of the northern Amphictiony. The unity of Boeotia itself had taken the form of a federation, in which Thebes was the dominant power, being not only the federal capital, but—at all events in later times—being represented by two members on the board of Boeotarchs, as the federal magistrates were called, whereas each of the other cities returned only one Boeotarch. Its religious centre—for like all old Greek federations it was religious before it became political—was the sanctuary of Poseidon at Onchestus. In the seventh century it did not yet include all Boeotia; Orchomenus still resisted. But at length Thebes forced Orchomenus to join, and in the course of the sixth century the Graian land of Oropus was annexed. The unity of Boeotia, thus completed, had its weak points; its maintenance depended upon the power of Thebes; some of the cities were reluctant members. Above all, Plataea chafed; she had kept herself pure from mixture with the Boeotian settlers, and her whole history—of which some remarkable episodes will pass before us—may be regarded as an isolated continuation of the ancient struggle between the elder Greek inhabitants of the land and the Boeotian conquerors.