Читать книгу The History of Greece from Its Earliest Beginnings to the Hellenistic Age - John Bagnell Bury - Страница 47

It is necessary here to digress for a moment to tell of the strange manner of the birth of king Cleomenes, who liberated Athens. His father king Anaxandridas was wedded to his niece, but she had no children. The Ephors, heedful that the royal family of the Agids should not die out, urged him to put her away, and when he gainsaid, they insisted that he should take a second wife into his house. This he did, and Cleomenes was born. But soon afterwards his first wife, hitherto childless, bore a son, who was named Dorieus. When the old king died, it was ruled that Cleomenes as the eldest should succeed, and Dorieus, who had looked forward to the kingship, was forced to leave Sparta. He went forth to seek his fortune in lands beyond the sea; having attempted to plant a settlement in Libya, he led an expedition of adventure to the west; he took part in a war of Croton with Sybaris, and then fared to Sicily, with the design of founding a new city in the south-west country, yet he did not bring his purpose to pass, for he fell in a battle against the Carthaginians and their Elymian allies. It must also be told that after the birth of Dorieus his mother brought Anaxandridas two other sons, Leonidas and

After the expulsion of the tyrant, the Athenians had to deal with the political problems, whose solution, fifty years before, had been postponed by the tyranny. The main problem was to modify the constitution of Solon in such a way as to render it practicable. The old evils which had hindered the realisation of Solon’s democracy reared their heads again as soon as Hippias had been driven out and the Spartans had departed. The strife of factions, led by noble and influential families, broke out; and the Coast and Plain seem to have risen again in the parties of the Alcmaeonid Cleisthenes and his rival Isagoras. As Cleisthenes had been the most active promoter of the revolution, Isagoras was naturally supported by the secret adherents of the tyrant’s house. The struggle at first turned in favour of Isagoras, who was elected to the chief magistracy; but it was only for a moment. Cleisthenes won the upper hand by enlisting on his side superior numbers. He rallied to his cause a host of poor men who were outside the pale of citizenship, by promising to make them citizens. Thus the victory of Cleisthenes—and the victory of Cleisthenes was the victory of reform—was won by the threat of physical force; and in the year of his rival’s archonship he introduced new democratic measures of law. Isagoras was so far outnumbered that he had no recourse but appeal to Sparta. At his instance the Lacedaemonians, who looked with disfavour on democracy, demanded that the Alcmaeonids, as a clan under a curse, should be expelled from Attica; and Cleisthenes, without attempting resistance, left the country. But this was not enough. King Cleomenes entered Attica for the second time; he expelled 700 families pointed out by Isagoras, and attempted to dissolve the new constitution and to set up an oligarchy. But the whole people rose in arms; Cleomenes, who had only a small band of soldiers with him, was blockaded with Isagoras in the Acropolis, and was forced to the capitulate on the third day “in spite of his Spartan spirit.” Cleisthenes could now return with all the other exiles and complete his work. The event was a check for Lacedaemon. It was the first, but it was not the last, time that Athenian oligarchs sought Spartan intervention and Spartan men-at-arms held the hill of Athena.