Читать книгу The American Encyclopedia of History, Biography and Travel - Thomas H. Prescott - Страница 10

Athens. We now turn to Athens, long the principal seat of Grecian learning. Athens is said to have been founded by Cecrops, 1550 B. C., and in the most ancient times was called Cecropia. It probably received the name of Athens from the goddess Minerva, who was called also Athena, by the Greeks, and to whom an elegant temple had been erected in the city. The old city spread from the mount of the Acropolis over a wide and pleasant vale or low peninsula, formed by the junction of the Cephesus and Ilissus. Its distance from the sea-coast was about five miles. In the course of time Athens became populous and surpassingly elegant in its architecture, while its citizens contrived to take a lead in the affairs of the communities around. At first they were governed by kings, but, as in the case of the Spartan citizens, they became dissatisfied with their existing constitution, and about the year 600 B. C. invited Solon, one of the wisest men in Greece, to reörganize their political constitution. Solon obeyed the summons, and constituted the government on a broad republican basis, with a council of state, forming a judicial court, consisting of 400 members, and called the Areopagus. This court of Areopagus besides its other duties, exercised a censorship over public morals, and was empowered to punish impiety, profligacy, and even idleness. To this court every citizen was bound to make an annual statement of his income, and the sources from which it was derived. The court was long regarded with very great respect, and the right was accorded to it of not only revising the sentences pronounced by the other criminal tribunals, but even of annulling the judicial decrees of the general assembly of the people. The regulations of Solon were not maintained for any great length of time, although the republican form of government, in one shape or other, continued as long as the country maintained its independence. Clesthenes, the leader of a party, enlarged the democratic principle in the state; he introduced the practice of ostracism, by which any person might be banished for ten years, without being accused of any crime, if the Athenians apprehended that he had acquired too much influence, or harbored designs against the public liberty. Ostracism was so called, because the citizens, in voting for its infliction, wrote the name of the obnoxious individual upon a shell (ostreon). It is said that Clesthenes was the first victim of his own law, as has happened in several other remarkable cases, ancient and modern.

For a period of about two centuries after the settlement of a republican constitution, there is little of importance to relate in Athenian history. Athens was gradually enlarged, the taste for refinement increased, and various men of sagacious understanding, entitled Philosophers, began to devote themselves to inquiries into the nature of the human mind and the character of the Deity. The principal Grecian philosopher who flourished in this era (550 B. C.) was Pythagoras, a man of pure and exalted ideas, and an able expounder of the science of mind.

THIRD PERIOD OF HISTORY

The year 490 B. C. closes the gradually-improving period in Grecian history, or second period, as it has been termed; and now commenced an era marked by the important event of an invasion from a powerful Asiatic sovereign.

Persian Invasion. Darius, king of Persia, having imagined the possibility of conquering Greece, sent an immense army against it in the year just mentioned. Greatly alarmed at the approach of such an enemy, the Athenians applied to the Spartans for aid; but that people had a superstition which prohibited their taking the field before the moon was at the full, and as at the time of the application it still wanted five days of that period, they therefore delayed the march of their troops. Being thus refused all assistance from their neighbors, the Athenians were left to depend entirely on their own courage and resources. A more remarkable instance of a small state endeavoring to oppose the wicked aggression of an overgrown power, has seldom occurred in ancient or modern times; but the constant exercises and training of the Athenian population enabled them to present a bold and by no means contemptible front to the invader. War had been their principal employment, and in the field they displayed their noblest qualities. They were unacquainted with those highly-disciplined evolutions which give harmony and concert to numerous bodies of men; but what was wanting in skill they supplied by courage. The Athenian, and also other Greek soldiers, marched to the field in a deep phalanx, rushed impetuously to the attack, and bravely closed with their enemies. Each warrior was firmly opposed to his antagonist, and compelled by necessity to the same exertions of valor as if the fortune of the day depended on his single arm. The principal weapon was a spear, which, thrown by the nervous and well-directed vigor of a steady hand, often penetrated the firmest shields and bucklers. When they missed their aim, or when the stroke proved ineffectual through want of force, they drew their swords, and summoning their utmost resolution, darted impetuously on the foe. This mode of war was common to the soldiers and generals, the latter being as much distinguished in battle by their strength and courage as their skill and conduct. The Greeks had bows, slings, and darts, intended for the practice of distant hostility; but their chief dependence was on the spear and sword. Their defensive armor consisted of a bright helmet, adorned with plumes, and covering the head, a strong corslet defending the breast, greaves of brass decending the leg to the feet, and an ample shield, loosely attached to the left shoulder and arm, which turned in all directions, and opposed its firm resistance to every hostile assault. With men thus organized and accoutred, a battle consisted of so many duels, and the combatants fought with all the keenness of personal resentment. The slaughter in such engagements was correspondingly great, the fight seldom terminating till one of the parties was nearly destroyed, or at least greatly reduced in numbers.

It was a people so animated and prepared that the hosts of Persia were about to encounter. Compelled to meet the invaders unassisted, the Athenians were able to march an army of only 9000 men, exclusive of about as many light-armed slaves, into the field. With Miltiades as their leader and commander-in-chief, they met the Persians in battle on the plain of Marathon, thirty miles from Athens, and by great skill and courage, and the force of their close phalanx of spearmen, completely conquered them. Upwards of 6000 Persians were slain on the field, while the number killed of the Athenians was but 192. This is reckoned by historians one of the most important victories in ancient times, for it saved the independence of the whole of Greece. To the disgrace of the fickle Athenians, they afterwards showed the greatest ingratitude to Miltiades, and put him in prison on a charge of favoring the Persians. He died there the year after his great victory. Soon after, the citizens of Athens, on a plea equally unfounded, banished Aristides, an able leader of the aristocratic party in the state, and who, from his strict integrity and wisdom, was usually entitled ‘Aristides the Just.’ On the banishment of this eminent individual, Themistocles, a person who was more democratic in his sentiments, became the leader of the councils of the Athenians. Meanwhile the Grecian liberties were again menaced by the Persians. Xerxes, son of Darius, marched an army across the Hellespont by a bridge of boats from the Asiatic shore, and led it towards the southern part of Greece. The utmost force that the confederate Greeks could oppose to the countless host of Persians, did not exceed 60,000 men. Of these, a band of Spartans, numbering 8,000 soldiers, under Leonidas their king, was posted at the pass of Thermopylae, to intercept the enemy, and here they discomfited every successive column of the Persians as it entered the defile. Ultimately, foreseeing certain destruction, Leonidas commanded all to retire but 300, with whom he proposed to give the Persians some idea of what the Greeks could submit to for the sake of their country. He and his 300 were cut off to a man. Xerxes took possession of Attica and Athens, but in the naval battle with the Athenian fleet at Salamis, which occurred soon after [October 20, 480 B. C.], his army was utterly routed, and its scattered remains retreated into Asia.

By this splendid victory the naval power of Persia was almost annihilated, and the spirit of its monarch so completely humbled, that he durst no longer undertake offensive operations against Greece. Here, therefore, the war ought to have terminated; but so great and valuable had been the spoils obtained by the confederate forces, that they were unwilling to relinquish such a profitable contest. The war, therefore, was continued for twenty years longer, less, apparently, for the chastisement of Persia, than for the plunder of her conquered provinces.

But now that all danger was over, many of the smaller states, whose population was scanty, began to grow weary of the contest, and to furnish with reluctance their annual contingent of men to reinforce the allied fleet. It was, in consequence, arranged that those states whose citizens were unwilling to perform personal service, should send merely their proportion of vessels, and pay into the common treasury an annual subsidy, for the maintenance of the sailors with whom the Athenians undertook to man the fleet. The unforeseen but natural consequence of this was the establishment of the complete supremacy of Athens. The annual subsidies gradually assumed the character of a regular tribute, and were compulsorily levied as such; while the recusant communities, deprived of their fleets, which had been given up to the Athenians, were unable to offer effectual resistance to the oppressive exactions of the dominant state. The Athenians were thus raised to an unprecedented pitch of power and opulence, and enabled to adorn their city, to live in dignified idleness, and to enjoy a constant succession of the most costly public amusements, at the expense of the vanquished Persians, and of the scarcely more leniently-treated communities of the dependent confederacy.

Pericles. We have arrived at the most flourishing period of Athenian history, during which Pericles rose to distinction, and greatly contributed to the beautifying of the capital. The talents of Pericles were of the very first order, and they had been carefully cultivated by the ablest tutorage which Greece could afford. After serving for several years in the Athenian army, he ventured to take a part in the business of the popular assembly, and his powerful eloquence soon gained him an ascendancy in the national councils; and his power, in fact, became as great as that of an absolute monarch (445 B. C.). Some of the most interesting events of Grecian history now occurred. After a number of years of general peace, a dispute between the state of Corinth and its dependency the island of Corcyra (now Corfu), gave rise to a war which again disturbed the repose of all the Grecian states. Corcyra was a colony of Corinth, but having, by its maritime skill and enterprise, raised itself to a higher pitch of opulence than its parent city, it not only refused to acknowledge Corinthian supremacy, but went to war with that state on a question respecting the government of Epidammus, a colony which the Corcyreans had planted on the coast of Illyria. Corinth applied for and obtained aid from several of the Peloponnesian states to reduce the Corcyreans to subjection; while Corcyra, on the other hand, concluded a defensive alliance with Athens, which sent a fleet to assist the island in vindicating its independence. By way of punishing the Athenians for intermeddling in the quarrel, the Corinthians stirred up a revolt in Potidæa, a town of Chalcidice, near the confines of Macedonia, which had originally been a colony of Corinth, but was at this time a tributary of Athens. The Athenians immediately despatched a fleet and army for the reduction of Potidæa, and the Peloponnesians were equally prompt in sending succors to the city. The Corinthians, meanwhile, were actively engaged in endeavoring to enlist in their cause those states which had not yet taken a decided part in the dispute. To Lacedæmon, in particular, they sent ambassadors to complain of the conduct of the Athenians, which they characterized as a violation of a universally-recognised law of Grecian policy—​that no state should interfere between another and its dependencies. The efforts of the Corinthians were successful, and almost all the Peloponnesian states, headed by Sparta, together with many of those beyond the isthmus, formed themselves into a confederacy for the purpose of going to war with Athens. Argos and Achaia at first remained neuter. Corcyra, Acarnania, some of the cities of Thessaly, and those of Platæa and Naupactus, were all that took part with the Athenians.

Pericles beheld without dismay the gathering of the storm, but his countrymen were not equally undaunted. They perceived that they were about to be called upon to exchange the idle and luxurious life they were at present leading for one of hardship and danger, and they began to murmur against their political leader for involving them in so alarming a quarrel. They had not at first the courage to impeach Pericles himself, but vented their displeasure against his friends and favorites. Phidias, a very eminent sculptor, whom the great statesman had appointed superintendent of public buildings, was condemned to imprisonment on a frivolous charge; and the philosopher Anaxagoras, the preceptor and friend of Pericles, was charged with disseminating opinions subversive of the national religion, and banished from Athens. Respecting another celebrated individual who at this time fell under persecution, it becomes necessary to say a few words. Aspasia of Miletus was a woman of remarkable beauty and brilliant talents, but she wanted that chastity which is the greatest of feminine graces, and by her dissolute life was rendered a reproach, as she would otherwise have been an ornament, to her sex. This remarkable woman having come to reside in Athens, attracted the notice of Pericles, who was so much fascinated by her beauty, wit and eloquence, that, after separating from his wife, with whom he had lived unhappily, he married Aspasïa. It was generally believed that for the gratification of a private grudge, she had instigated Pericles to quarrel with the Peloponnesian states, and her unpopularity on this score was the true cause of her being now accused, before the assembly of the people, of impiety and grossly-immoral practices. Pericles conducted her defense in person, and plead for her with so much earnestness, that he was moved even to tears. The people, either finding the accusations to be really unfounded, or unable to resist the eloquence of Pericles, acquitted Aspasia. His enemies next directed their attack against himself. They accused him of embezzling the public money; but he completely rebutted the charge, and proved that he had drawn his income from no other source than his private estate. His frugal and unostentatious style of living must have of itself gone far to convince the Athenians of the honesty with which he had administered the public affairs; for while he was filling the city with temples, porticoes, and other magnificent works of art, and providing many costly entertainments for the people, his own domestic establishment was regulated with such strict attention to economy, that the members of his family complained of a parsimony which formed a marked contrast to the splendor in which many of the wealthy Athenians then lived.

Confirmed in his authority by his triumphant refutation of the slanders of his enemies, Pericles adopted the wisest measures for the public defense against the invasion which was threatened by the Peloponnesians. Unwilling to risk a battle with the Spartans, who were esteemed not less invincible by land than the Athenians were by sea, he caused the inhabitants of Attica to transport their cattle to Eubœa and the neighboring islands, and to retire with as much of their other property as they could take with them, within the walls of Athens. By this provident care, the city was stored with provision sufficient for the support of the multitudes which now crowded it; but greater difficulty was found in furnishing proper accommodation for so vast a population. Many found lodgings in the temples and other public edifices, or in the turrets on the city walls, while great numbers were obliged to construct for themselves temporary abodes in the vacant space within the long walls extending between the city and the port of Piræus.

The memorable contest of twenty-seven years’ duration, called ‘the Peloponnesian War,’ now commenced (431 B. C.). The Spartan king, Archidamus, entered Attica at the head of a large army of the confederates, and meeting with no opposition, proceeded along its eastern coast, burning the towns, and laying waste the country in his course. When the Athenians saw the enemy ravaging the country almost up to their gates, it required all the authority of Pericles to keep them within their fortifications. While the confederates were wasting Attica with fire and sword, the Athenian and Corcyrean fleets were, by the direction of Pericles, avenging the injury by ravaging the almost defenseless coasts of the Peloponnesus. This, together with a scarcity of provisions, soon induced Archidamus to lead his army homewards. He retired by the western coast, continuing the work of devastation as he went along.

Early in the summer of the following year, the confederates returned to Attica, which they were again permitted to ravage at their pleasure, as Pericles still adhered to his cautious policy of confining his efforts to the defense of the capital. But an enemy far more terrible than the Peloponnesians attacked the unfortunate Athenians. A pestilence, supposed to have originated in Ethiopia, and which had gradually spread over Egypt and the western parts of Asia, broke out in the town of Piræus, the inhabitants of which at first supposed their wells to have been poisoned. The disease rapidly advanced into Athens, where it carried off a great number of persons. It is described as having been a species of infectious fever, accompanied with many painful symptoms, and followed, in those who survived the first stages of the disease, by ulcerations of the bowels and limbs.

Historians mention, as a proof of the singular virulence of this pestilence, that the birds of prey refused to touch the unburied bodies of its victims, and that the dogs which fed upon the poisonous relics perished.

The mortality was dreadful, and was of course greatly increased by the overcrowded state of the city. The prayers of the devout, and the skill of the physicians, were found equally unavailing to stop the progress of the disease; and the miserable Athenians, reduced to despair, believed themselves to be forgotten or hated by their gods. The sick were in many cases left unattended, and the bodies of the dead allowed to lie unburied, while those whom the plague had not yet reached, openly sat at defiance all laws, human and divine, and rushed into every excess of criminal indulgence.

Pericles was in the meantime engaged, with a fleet of 150 ships, in wasting with fire and sword the shores of Peloponnesus. At his return to Athens, finding that the enemy had hastily retired from Attica, through fear of the contagion of the plague, he despatched the fleet to the coast of Chalcidice, to assist the Athenian land forces who were still engaged in the siege of Potidæa—​an unfortunate measure, productive of no other result than the communication of the pestilence to the besieging army, by which the majority of the troops were speedily swept away. Maddened by their sufferings, the Athenians now became loud in their murmurs against Pericles, whom they accused of having brought upon them at least a portion of their calamities, by involving them in the Peloponnesian war. An assembly of the people was held, in which Pericles entered upon a justification of his conduct and exhorted them to courage and perseverance in defense of their independence. The hardships to which they had been exposed by the war, were, he observed, only such as he had in former addresses prepared them to expect; and as for the pestilence, it was a calamity which no human prudence could either have foreseen or averted. He reminded them that they still possessed a fleet which that of no potentate on earth could equal or cope with, and that, after the present evil should have passed away, their navy might yet enable them to acquire universal empire. ‘What we suffer from the gods,’ continued he, ‘we should bear with patience; what from our enemies, with manly firmness; and such were the maxims of our forefathers. From unshaken fortitude in misfortune has arisen the present power of this commonwealth, together with that glory which, if our empire, according to the lot of all earthly things, decay, shall still survive to all posterity.’

The eloquent harangue of Pericles diminished, but did not remove, the alarm and irritation of the Athenians, and they not only dismissed him from all his offices, but imposed upon him a heavy fine. Meanwhile domestic afflictions were combining with political anxieties and mortifications to oppress the mind of this eminent man, for the members of his family were one by one perishing by the plague. Still, however, he bore himself up with a fortitude which was witnessed with admiration by all around him; but at the funeral of the last of his children, his firmness at length gave way; and while he was, according to the custom of the country, placing a garland of flowers on the head of the corpse, he burst into loud lamentations, and shed a torrent of tears. It was not long till his mutable countrymen repented of their harshness towards him, and reinvested him with his civil and military authority. He soon after followed his children to the grave, falling, like them, a victim to the prevailing pestilence (429 B. C.). The concurrent testimony of the ancient writers assigns to Pericles the first place among Grecian statesmen for wisdom and eloquence. Though ambitious of power, he was temperate in its exercise; and it is creditable to his memory, that, in an age and country so little scrupulous in the shedding of blood, his long administration was as merciful and mild as it was vigorous and effective. When constrained to make war, the constant study of this eminent statesman was, how to overcome his enemies with the least possible destruction of life, as well on their side as on his own. It is related that, when he was lying at the point of death, and while those who surrounded him were recounting his great actions, he suddenly interrupted them by expressing his surprise that they should bestow so much praise on achievements in which he had been rivaled by many others, while they omitted to mention what he considered his highest and peculiar honor—​namely, that no act of his had ever caused any Athenian to put on mourning.

After the death of Pericles, the war was continued, without interruption, for seven years longer, but with no very decisive advantage to either side. During this period the Athenian councils were chiefly directed by a coarse-minded and unprincipled demagogue named Cleon, who was at last killed in battle under the walls of Amphipolis, a Macedonian city, of which the possession was disputed by the Athenians and Lacedæmonians. Cleon was succeeded in the direction of public affairs by Nicias, the leader of the aristocratic party, a man of virtuous but unenterprising character, and a military officer of moderate abilities. Under his auspices a peace for fifty years, commonly known by the name of the ‘Peace of Nicias,’ was concluded in the tenth year of the war (421 B. C.). It was not long, however, till the contest was resumed. Offended that its allies had given up a contest undertaken for the assertion of its alleged rights, Corinth refused to be a party to the treaty of peace, and entered into a new quadruple alliance with Argos, Elis, and Mantinæa, a city of Arcadia; the ostensible object of which confederation was the defense of the Peloponnesian states against the aggressions of Athens and Sparta. This end seemed not difficult of attainment, as fresh distrust had arisen between the two last-mentioned republics, on account of the reluctance felt and manifested by both to give up certain places which they had bound themselves by treaty mutually to surrender. The jealousies thus excited were fanned into a violent flame by the artful measures of Alcibiades, a young Athenian, who now began to rise into political power, and whose genius and character subsequently exercised a strong influence upon the affairs of Athens.

Alcibiades. Alcibiades was the son of Clinias, an Athenian of high rank. Endowed with uncommon beauty of person, and talents of the very highest order, he was unfortunately deficient in that unbending integrity which is an essential element of every character truly great, and his violent passions sometimes impelled him to act in a manner which has brought disgrace on his memory. While still very young, Alcibiades served in the Athenian army, and became the companion and pupil of Socrates, one of the wisest and most virtuous of the Grecian sages. Having rendered some service to his country in a protracted and useless war with Lacedæmon, and being possessed of a talent for addressing the passions of the multitude, Alcibiades, as others had done before him, became the undisputed head of public affairs in Athens. But this preëminence was not of long continuance. An opinion arose among the people that he designed to subvert the constitution, and his fall was as quick as his promotion. Many of his friends were put to death, and he, while absent on an expedition, deprived of his authority. Being thus left without a public director of affairs, Athens, as usual, was torn by internal discords: the aristocratic faction succeeded in overthowing the democratic government (411 B. C.), and establishing a council of 400 individuals to administer the affairs of state, with the power of convoking an assembly of 5000 of the principal citizens for advice and assistance in any emergency. These 400 tyrants, as they were popularly called, were no sooner invested with authority, than they annihilated every remaining portion of the free institutions of Athens. They behaved with the greatest insolence and severity towards the people, and endeavored to confirm and perpetuate their usurped power, by raising a body of mercenary troops in the islands of the Ægean, for the purpose of overawing and enslaving their fellow-citizens. The Athenian army was at this period in the island of Samos, whither it had retired after an expedition against the revolted cities of Asia Minor. When intelligence arrived of the revolution in Athens, and the tyrannical proceedings of the oligarchical faction, the soldiers indignantly refused to obey the new government, and sent an invitation to Alcibiades to return among them, and assist in reëstablishing the democratic constitution. He obeyed the call; and as soon as he arrived in Samos, the troops elected him their general. He then sent a message to Athens, commanding the 400 tyrants to divest themselves immediately of their unconstitutional authority, if they wished to avoid deposition and death at his hands.

This message reached Athens at a time of the greatest confusion and alarm. The 400 tyrants had quarreled among themselves, and were about to appeal to the sword: the island of Eubœa, from which Athens had for some time been principally supplied with provisions, had revolted, and the fleet which had been sent to reduce it had been destroyed by the Lacedæmonians, so that the coasts of Attica, and the port of Athens itself, were now without defense. In these distressing circumstances, the people, roused to desperation, rose upon their oppressors, overturned the government of the 400, after an existence of only a few months, and reëstablished their ancient institutions. Alcibiades was now recalled; but before revisiting Athens, he was desirous of performing some brilliant military exploit, which might obliterate the recollection of his late connection with the Spartans, and give his return an air of triumph. He accordingly joined the Athenian fleet, then stationed at the entrance of the Hellespont, and soon obtained several important victories over the Lacedæmonians, both by sea and land. He then returned to Athens, where he was received with transports of joy. Chaplets of flowers were showered upon his head, and amidst the most enthusiastic acclamations he proceeded to the place of assembly, where he addressed the people in a speech of such eloquence and power, that at its conclusion a crown of gold was placed upon his brow, and he was invested with the supreme command of the Athenian forces, both naval and military. His forfeited property was restored, and the priests were directed to revoke the curses which had formerly been pronounced upon him.

This popularity of Alcibiades was not of long continuance. Many of the dependencies of Athens being in a state of insurrection, he assumed the command of an armament intended for their reduction. But circumstances arose which obliged him to leave the fleet for a short time in charge of one of his officers, named Antiochus, who, in despite of express orders to the contrary, gave battle to the Lacedæmonians during the absence of the commander-in-chief, and was defeated. When intelligence of this action reached Athens, a violent clamor was raised against Alcibiades: he was accused of having neglected his duty, and received a second dismissal from all his offices. On hearing of this, he quitted the fleet, and retiring to a fortress he had built in the Chersonesus of Thrace, he collected around him a band of military adventurers, with whose assistance he carried on a predatory warfare against the neighboring Thracian tribes.

Alcibiades did not long survive his second disgrace with his countrymen. Finding his Thracian residence insecure, on account of the increasing power of his Lacedæmonian enemies, he crossed the Hellespont, and settled in Bithynia, a country on the Asiatic side of the Propontis. Being there attacked and plundered by the Thracians, he proceeded into Phrygia, and placed himself under the protection of Pharnabasus, the Persian satrap of that province. But even thither the unfortunate chief was followed by the unrelenting hatred of the Lacedæmonians, by whose directions he was privately and foully assassinated. Thus perished, about the fortieth year of his age (403 B. C.), one of the ablest men that Greece ever produced. Distinguished alike as a warrior, an orator, and a statesman, and in his nature noble and generous, Alcibiades would have been truly worthy of our admiration if he had possessed probity; but his want of principle, and his unruly passions, led him to commit many grievous errors, which contributed not a little to produce or aggravate those calamities which latterly overtook him.

DECLINE OF ATHENIAN INDEPENDENCE.

With Alcibiades perished the last of the great men who possessed the power to sway the wild democracy, or, properly speaking, the mob of Athens. From the period of his death till the subjugation of the country, the Athenian people were at the mercy of contending factions, and without a single settled principle of government. During this brief period of their history, in which a kind of popular democracy had attained the command of affairs, happened the trial and condemnation of Socrates, an eminent teacher of morals, and a man guiltless of every offense but that of disgracing, by his illustrious merit, the vices and follies of his cotemporaries. On the false charge of corrupting the morals of the pupils who listened to his admirable expositions, and of denying the religion of his country, he was, to the eternal disgrace of the Athenians, compelled to die by drinking poison, a fate which he submitted to with a magnanimity which has rendered his name for ever celebrated. This odious transaction occurred in the year 400 B. C.

After the death of this great man, the political independence of Athens drew to its termination—​a circumstance which cannot excite the least surprise, when we reflect on the turbulence of its citizens, their persecution of virtue and talent, and their unhappy distrust of any settled form of government. Their ruin was finally accomplished by their uncontrollable thirst for war, and can create no emotions of pity or regret in the reader of their distracted history. The Lacedæmonians, under the command of an able officer named Lysander, attacked and totally destroyed the Athenian fleet. By this means having obtained the undisputed command of the sea, Lysander easily reduced those cities on the coasts of Thrace and Asia Minor, and those islands of the Ægean, which still acknowledged the supremacy of Athens. Having thus stripped that once lordly state of all its dependencies, he proceeded to blockade the city of Athens itself. The Athenians made a heroic defense; but after a lengthened siege, during which they suffered all the horrors of famine, they were obliged to surrender on such conditions as their enemies thought fit to impose (404 B. C.). The Spartans demanded that the fortifications of Piræus, and the long walls which connected it with the city, should be demolished; that the Athenians should relinquish all pretensions to authority over their former tributaries, recall the exiled partisans of the 400 tyrants, acknowledge the supremacy of Sparta, and follow its commanders in time of war; and finally, that they should adopt such a political constitution as should meet the approbation of the Lacedæmonians.

Thus sank the power of Athens, which had so long been the leading state of Greece, and thus terminated the Peloponnesian war, in which the Grecian communities had been so long engaged, to little other purpose than to waste the strength, and exhaust the resources, of their common country.

Condition of Athens. During the age preceding its fall, Athens, as already mentioned, had been greatly beautified and enlarged by Pericles. At the same time, the comparative simplicity of manners which formerly prevailed was exchanged for luxurious habits. This alteration has been thus described by Gillies in his ‘History of Ancient Greece:’—​‘In the course of a few years, the success of Aristides, Cimon, and Pericles, had tripled the revenues, and increased in a far greater proportion the dominions of the republic. The Athenian galleys commanded the eastern coasts of the Mediterranean; their merchantmen had engrossed the traffic of the adjacent countries; the magazines of Athens abounded with wood, metal, ebony, ivory, and all the materials of the useful as well as of the agreeable arts; they imported the luxuries of Italy, Sicily, Cyprus, Lydia, Pontus, and Peloponnesus; experience had improved their skill in working the silver mines of Mount Laurium; they had lately opened the valuable marble veins in Mount Pentelicus; the honey of Hymettus became important in domestic use and foreign traffic; the culture of their olives (oil being long their staple commodity, and the only production of Attica which Solon allowed them to export) must have improved with the general improvement of the country in arts and agriculture, especially under the active administration of Pericles, who liberally let loose the public treasure to encourage every species of industry.

‘But if that minister promoted the love of action, he found it necessary at least to comply with, if not to excite, the extreme passion for pleasure which then began to distinguish his countrymen. The people of Athens, successful in every enterprise against their foreign as well as domestic enemies, seemed entitled to reap the fruits of their dangers and victories. For the space of at least twelve years preceding the war of Peloponnesus, their city afforded a perpetual scene of triumph and festivity. Dramatic entertainments, to which they were passionately addicted, were no longer performed in slight, unadorned edifices, but in stone or marble theatres, erected at great expense, and embellished with the most precious productions of nature and of art. The treasury was opened, not only to supply the decorations of this favorite amusement, but to enable the poorer citizens to enjoy it, without incurring any private expense; and thus, at the cost of the state, or rather of its tributary allies and colonies, to feast and delight their ears and fancy with the combined charms of music and poetry. The pleasure of the eye was peculiarly consulted and gratified in the architecture of theatres and other ornamental buildings; for as Themistocles had strengthened, Pericles adorned, his native city; and unless the concurring testimony of antiquity was illustrated in the Parthenon, or Temple of Minerva, and other existing remains worthy to be immortal, it would be difficult to believe that in the space of a few years there could have been created those numerous, yet inestimable wonders of art, those temples, theatres, statues, altars, baths, gymnasia, and porticoes, which, in the language of ancient panegyric, rendered Athens the eye and light of Greece.

‘Pericles was blamed for thus decking one favorite city, like a vain voluptuous harlot, at the expense of plundered provinces; but it would have been fortunate for the Athenians if their extorted wealth had not been employed in more perishing, as well as more criminal, luxury. The pomp of religious solemnities, which were twice as numerous and costly in Athens as in any other city of Greece—​the extravagance of entertainments and banquets, which on such occasions always followed the sacrifices—​exhausted the resources, without augmenting the glory, of the republic. Instead of the bread, herbs, and simple fare recommended by the laws of Solon, the Athenians, soon after the eightieth Olympiad, availed themselves of their extensive commerce to import the delicacies of distant countries, which were prepared with all the refinements of cookery. The wines of Cyprus were cooled with snow in summer; in winter, the most delightful flowers adorned the tables and persons of the wealthy Athenians. Nor was it sufficient to be crowned with roses, unless they were likewise anointed with the most precious perfumes. Parasites, dancers, and buffoons, were a usual appendage of every entertainment. Among the weaker sex, the passion for delicate birds, distinguished by their voice or plumage, was carried to such excess, as merited the name of madness. The bodies of such youths as were not peculiarly addicted to hunting and horses, which began to be a prevailing taste, were corrupted by a lewd style of living; while their minds were still more polluted by the licentious philosophy of the sophists. It is unnecessary to crowd the picture, since it may be observed, in one word, that the vices and extravagances which are supposed to characterize the declining ages of Greece and Rome, took root in Athens during the administration of Pericles, the most splendid and most prosperous in the Grecian annals.’

During this period flourished Æschylus and Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes, dramatists; Pindar, a lyrical poet; Herodotus and Thucydides, historians; Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and Socrates, philosophers (reasoners upon the nature of the human mind, and upon man’s immortal destiny). In this period also, under the administration of Pericles (from 458 to 429 B. C.), sculpture and architecture attained their perfection. It was then that Phidias executed those splendid works, statues of the gods and goddesses, which excited the admiration of the world, and which succeeding artists have in vain endeavored to rival. While Athens had extended its power over a great part of the coasts of the Ægean Sea, and increased its trade and commerce by every available means, it had also become a city of palaces and temples, whose ruins continue to be the admiration of ages for their grandeur and beauty. It is understood that the Greeks had acquired their knowledge of architecture from the Egyptians; but they greatly excelled them in the elegance of their designs, and are in a great measure entitled to the character of inventors in the art. The beauty of the Corinthian pillar, for example, has never been excelled either in ancient or modern times.

After the surrender of Athens to the Spartans (404 B. C.), the democratic constitution was abolished, and the government was intrusted to thirty persons, whose rapacious, oppressive, and bloody administration ere long procured them the title of the Thirty Tyrants. The ascendancy of these intruders was not, however, of long duration. Conon, assisted privately by the Persians, who were desirous of humiliating the Spartans, expelled the enemy, and reëstablished the independence of his country. About seventy years later a new source of agitation throughout Greece was caused by the warlike projects of Alexander, king of Macedon, usually styled.

Alexander the Great. This intrepid and ambitious soldier was the son of Philip, king of Macedon, a small territory adjacent to the Grecian states, from which it had originally received a knowledge of arts and learning. Alexander was born in the year 356 B. C., and by his father was committed to the charge of the philosopher Aristotle to be educated; a duty which was faithfully fulfilled. By the assassination of Philip, Alexander was called to the throne of Macedon while yet only twenty years of age, and immediately had an opportunity of displaying his great warlike abilities in conducting an expedition into Greece, which was attended with signal success, and procured for him the honor of succeeding his father as commander-in-chief of the Grecian states. He now carried out a design which had been formed by Philip, to subdue Persia and other countries in Asia. In the spring of 334 B. C., he crossed over to the Asiatic coast, with an army of 30,000 foot and 5000 horse, thus commencing the most important military enterprise which is narrated in the pages of ancient history. Alexander marched through Asia Minor, and in successive encounters completely conquered the armies of Persia; but the whole history of his progress is but an account of splendid victories. During a space of about seven or eight years, he conquered Persia, Assyria, Egypt, Babylonia, and, in fact, became master of nearly all the half-civilized countries in Asia and Africa. It does not appear that Alexander had any motive for this wide-spread overthrow of ancient and remote sovereignties, excepting that of simple ambition, or desire of conquest, with perhaps the indefinite idea of improving the social condition of the countries which he overran. From various circumstances in his career, it is apparent that he never contemplated the acquisition of wealth or of praise, except such as could be shared with his soldiers, for whom he displayed a most paternal affection.

The extraordinary career of Alexander was suddenly cut short by death. At Babylon, while engaged in extensive plans for the future, he became sick, and died in a few days, 323 B. C. Such was the end of this conqueror, in his thirty-second year, after a reign of twelve years and eight months. He left behind him an immense empire, which, possessing no consolidated power, and only loosely united by conquest, became the scene of continual wars. The generals of the Macedonian army respectively seized upon different portions of the empire, each trusting in his sword for an independent establishment. The greedy struggle for power finally terminated in confirming Ptolemy in the possession of Egypt; Seleucus in Upper Asia; Cassander in Macedon and Greece; while several of the provinces in Lower Asia fell to the share of Lysimachus.

CONCLUDING PERIOD OF GREEK HISTORY.

At the death of Alexander, the Athenians considered it a fit opportunity to emancipate themselves from the ascendancy of Macedon; but without success. Demosthenes, one of the most eminent patriots and orators of Athens, on this occasion, to avoid being assassinated by order of Antipater, the Macedonian viceroy, killed himself by swallowing poison; and his compatriot Phocion was shortly afterwards put to death by his own countrymen, the Athenians, in a mad outbreak of popular fury. Greece cannot be said to have produced one great man after Phocion; and this deficiency of wise and able leaders was doubtless one chief cause of the insignificance into which the various states, great and small, sunk after this epoch.

The ancient history of Greece, as an independent country, now draws to a close. Achaia, hitherto a small, unimportant state, having begun to make some pretensions to political consequence, excited the enmity of Sparta, and was compelled to seek the protection of Philip, the ruling prince of Macedon. Philip took the field against the Spartans, and their allies the Ætolians, and was in a fair way of subjecting all Greece, by arms and influence, when he ventured on the fatal step of commencing hostilities against the Romans. This measure consummated the ruin of Greece, as well as that of Macedon. The Romans warred with Philip till the end of his life (175 B. C.), and continued the contest with his son Perseus, whom they utterly defeated, and with whom ended the line of the kings of Macedon. In a few years the once illustrious and free republics of Greece were converted into a Roman province, under the name of Achaia (146 B. C.).

Thus terminates the fourth and last period of Greek history, during which flourished several eminent writers and philosophers, among whom may be numbered Theocritus, a pastoral poet; Xenophon, Polybius, Diodorus Siculus, Dionysius Halicarnassus, Plutarch, and Herodian, historians; Demosthenes, an orator; and Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, and Epicurus, philosophers; also Zeuxis, Timanthes, Pamphilus, Nicias, Appelles, and Eupompus, painters; and Praxiteles, Polycletus, Camachus, Naucides, and Lysippus, sculptors.

In the condition of a humble dependency of Rome, and therefore following the fate of that empire, Greece remained for upwards of four succeeding centuries; but although of little political importance, it still retained its preëminence in learning. Enslaved as the land was, it continued to be the great school of the time. As Greece had formerly sent her knowledge and arts over the East by the arms of one of her own kings, she now diffused them over the western world under the protection of Rome. Athens, which was the emporium of Grecian learning and elegance, became the resort of all who were ambitious of excelling either in knowledge or the arts; statesmen went thither to improve themselves in eloquence; philosophers to learn the tenets of the sages of Greece; and artists to study models of excellence in building, statuary, or painting; natives of Greece were also found in all parts of the world, gaining an honorable subsistence by the superior knowledge of their country. That country in the meantime was less disturbed by intestine feuds than formerly, but was not exempt from the usual fate of conquests, being subject to the continual extortions of governors and lieutenants, who made the conquered provinces the means of repairing fortunes which had been broken by flattering the caprices of the populace at home.

The period of the independence of Greece, during which all those great deeds were performed which have attracted the attention of the world, may be reckoned from the era of the first Persian war to the conquest of Macedon, the last independent Greek state, by the Romans. This period, as we have seen, embraced little more than 300 years. It is not, therefore, from the duration of the independent political power of the Grecian states that their celebrity arises. Even the patriotism of their soldiers, and the devoted heroism of Thermopylæ and Marathon, have been emulated elsewhere without attracting much regard; and we must therefore conclude that it is chiefly from the superiority of its poets, philosophers, historians, and artists, that the importance of the country in the eyes of modern men arises. The political squabbles of the Athenians are forgotten; but the moral and intellectual researches of their philosophers, and the elegant remains of their artists, possess an undying fame.

HISTORY OF ROME.

About the year 754 B. C., at that point of Central Italy, nearly fifteen miles from the Tuscan Sea, where the Anio joins the Tiber, there stood on a height, called the Palatine Mount, a little village named Roma, the centre of a small township, consisting probably of 5000 or 6000 inhabitants, all of them husbandmen and shepherds. This Rome was one of the border townships of Latium, a territory of fertile and undulating table-land extending from the Tiber to the Liris, and from the sea-coast to the hills of the interior. The whole surface of Latium was under diligent cultivation, and was covered with villages similar to Rome, which together constituted what was called the Latin nation.

Rome, we have said, was a frontier township of Latium. It was situated precisely at that point where the territories of Latium adjoined those of two other nations—​of the Sabines, a hardy Oscan race of shepherds inhabiting the angular district between the Anio and the Tiber; and of the Etruscans, a remarkable people, of unknown but probably Oriental origin, who had arrived in the north of Italy some centuries later than the Pelasgians, and conquering all before them, whether Pelasgians or Oscans, by the force of superior civilization, had settled chiefly in the region between the Arnus and the Tiber, corresponding to modern Tuscany. Between these three races—​Oscans, Pelasgians and Etruscans—​either apart, or in various combinations, all Italy, with the exception perhaps of some portions near the Alps, was divided: the Oscan predominating in the interior; the Pelasgians or rather Pelasgo-Oscans, along the coasts, as in Latium; and the Etruscans in the parts above-mentioned. While the Italian peninsula was thus occupied but by three great races or main stocks; the political divisions or nations into which it was parceled out were so numerous, however, that it would be scarcely possible to give a complete list of them.

Situated so near to the Sabine and Etruscan frontiers, an intercourse, sometimes friendly and sometimes hostile, must naturally have been carried on between the Latins of Rome and the Sabines and Etruscans, with whom they were in contact. A chain of events, which history cannot now trace, but which is indicated in a poetic manner by a number of early Roman legends, led to the incorporation of Rome with two neighboring towns—​one of them a small dependency of the Etruscans, situated on the Cælian Hill, and probably named Lucerum; another a Sabine village on the Quirinal Hill, called Quirium. The Etruscans, or Etrusco-Latins as they seem rather to have been, of Lucerum, were received on a subordinate footing; the Sabines of Quirium on one of equality; but the joint city continued to bear its old name of Roma. The population of this new Rome consisted, therefore, of three tribes—​the ancient Romans, who called themselves Ramnes; the Sabines of Quirium, who called themselves Tities; and the Etrusco-Latins of Lucerum, who were named Luceres.

ORIGINAL ROMAN CONSTITUTION—​EARLY HISTORY UNDER THE KINGS—​ORIGIN OF THE PLEBEIANS.

With the enlargement of the population of Rome by the addition of these new masses of citizens, a change of the constitution became of course necessary. The following seems to have been the form ultimately assumed:—​Governed by a common sovereign, eligible by the whole community from one of the superior tribes—​the Ramnes and the Tities—​the three tribes intrusted the conduct of their affairs to a senate composed of 200 members, 100 of whom represented the gentes of the Ramnes, and 100 the gentes of the Tities. The Luceres as an inferior tribe, were not represented in the senate; and their political influence was limited to the right to vote with the other two tribes in the general assemblies of the whole people.

In these general assemblies, or Comitia, as they were called, the people voted; not individually, nor in families, nor in gentes, but in divisions called Curix or Curies; the Curia being the tenth part of a tribe, and including, according to the ancient system of round numbers, ten gentes. Thus the entire Populus Romanus, or Roman people, of this primitive time, consisted of thirty curies—​ten curies of Ramnes, ten of Tities, and ten of Luceres: the ten curies of each tribe corresponding to 100 gentes, and the thirty curies together making up 300 gentes. As the Luceres were an inferior tribe, their gentes were called Gentes Minores, or Lesser Houses; while those of the Ramnes and Tities were called Gentes Majores or Greater Houses. The assembly of the whole people was called the Comitia Curiatia, or meeting of curies. After a measure had been matured by the king and senate, it was submitted to the whole people in their curies, who might accept or reject, but could not alter, what was thus proposed to them. An appeal was also open to the curies against any sentence of the king, or of the judges nominated by him in his capacity of supreme justiciary. The king, moreover, was the high priest of the nation in peace, as well as the commander-in-chief during war. The 300 gentes furnished each a horseman, so as to constitute a body of cavalry; the mass of the people forming the infantry. The right of assembling the senate lay with the king, who usually convened it three times a month.

Such was ancient Rome, as it appears to the historic eye endeavoring to penetrate the mists of the past, where at first all seems vague and wavering. The inquirer to whom we owe the power to conceive the condition of ancient Rome, so far as that depended on political institutions, was the celebrated German historian Niebuhr. Not so, however, did the Romans conceive their own early history. In all ancient communities, it was a habit of the popular imagination, nay, it was part of the popular religion, to trace the fortunes of the community to some divine or semi-divine founder; whose exploits, as well as those of his heroic successors, formed the subject of numerous sacred legends and ballads. Now, it was part of the Roman faith that their city had been founded at a point of time corresponding with B. C. 754, by twin brothers of miraculous birth, called Romulus and Remus, whose father was the war god Mars, and their mother a vestal virgin of the line of the Alban kings, the progeny of the great Æneas.

Romulus, according to this legend, surviving his brother Remus, became the king of the village of shepherds which he had founded on the Palatine; and it was in his reign that those events took place which terminated in the establishment of the triple community of the Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres. Setting out with Romulus, the Romans traced the history of their state through a series of legends relating to six kings his successors, whose characters, and the lengths of their reigns, are all duly determined. Of this traditionary succession of seven kings, extending over a period of 245 years (B. C. 754–509), history can recognize with certainty the existence of only the two or three latest. It is possible, however, to elicit out of the legends a glimmering of the actual history of the Roman state during these imaginary reigns.

Possessed, as all our information respecting the Romans in later times justifies us in supposing, of an unusual degree of that warlike instinct which was so rampant among the early tenants of our globe, the shepherd farmers of Rome were incessantly engaged in raids on their Latin, Etruscan, and Sabine neighbors. Strong-bodied, valiant, and persevering, as we also know them to have been, they were, on the whole, successful in these raids; and the consequence was, a gradual extension of their territory, particularly on the Latin side, by the conquest of those who were weaker than themselves. After each conquest, their custom was to deprive the conquered community of a part of their lands, and also of their political independence, annexing them as subjects to the Populus Romanus. The consequence was a gradual accumulation round the original Populus, with its 300 Houses, of a subject-population, free-born, and possessing property, but without political influence. This subject-population, the origin of which is dated by the legends from the reign of Ancus Martius, the fourth king from Romulus, received the name of the Plebs, a word which we translate ‘common people,’ but which it would be more correct, in reference to these very ancient times, to translate ‘conquered people.’ Besides the plebs, the Roman community received another ingredient in the persons called Clients; strangers, that is, most of them professing mechanical occupations, who, arriving in Rome, and not belonging to a gens, were obliged, in order to secure themselves against molestation, to attach themselves to some powerful citizen willing to protect them, and called by them Patronus, or Patron. About six centuries before Christ, therefore, the population of the growing township of Roma may be considered as having consisted of four classes: 1st, The populus, or patricians, a governing class, consisting of a limited number of powerful families, holding themselves aloof from the rest of the community, not intermarrying with them, and gradually diminishing in consequence; 2d, The plebs, or plebeians, a large and continually-increasing subject-population, of the same mixed Etrusco-Sabine-Latin blood as the populus, but domineered over by them by right of conquest; 3d, The clients, a considerable class, chiefly occupied in handicraft professions in the town, while the populus and the plebs confined themselves to the more honorable occupation, as it was then esteemed, of agriculture; and 4th, The slaves or servi, whether belonging to patricians, plebeians, or clients—​a class who were valued along with the cattle.

The increasing numbers of the plebs, the result of fresh wars, and the value of their services to the community, entitled them to possess, and emboldened them to claim, some political consideration. Accordingly, in the reign of Tarquinius Priscus, the fifth of the legendary kings, and in whose reputed Etruscan lineage historians fancy that they can discern a time when Etruscan influence, if not Etruscan arms, reigned paramount in Rome, a modification of the original constitution took place. A number of the richest plebeian families were drafted into the populus, to supply the blanks caused by the dying out of many of the ancient gentes of the Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres; and at the same time the number of senators was increased to 300, by the admission of the Luceres to the same rights as the other two tribes. Even this modification was insufficient; and in order to do justice to the claims of the plebs, Servius Tullius, the successor of Tarquinius, and who is gratefully celebrated in Roman history as ‘the King of the Commons,’ proposed and effected an entire renovation of the political system of the state. His first reform consisted in giving the plebs a regular internal organization for its own purposes, by dividing it into thirty tribes or parishes—​four for the town, and twenty-six for the country—​each provided with an officer or tribe convener called the Tribune, as well as with a detailed machinery of local government; and all permitted to assemble in a general meeting called the Comitia Tributa, to discuss matters purely affecting the plebs. But this was not all. To admit the plebs to a share in the general legislative power of the community, he instituted a third legislative body, called the Comitia Centuriata, in addition to the two—​the senate and the comitia curiata—​already existing. The comitia centuriata was an assembly of the whole free population of the Roman territory—​patricians, plebeians, and clients—​arranged, according to the amount of their taxable property, in five classes, which again were subdivided into 195 bodies, called Centuries, each century possessing a vote, but the centuries of the rich being much smaller than those of the poor, so as to secure a preponderance to wealth. The powers of the comitia centuriata were similar to those of the comitia curiata under the former system. They had the right to elect supreme magistrates, and to accept or reject a measure referred to them by the king and senate. The comitia curiata, however, still continued to be held; and a measure, even after it had passed the comitia centuriata, had still to be approved by the curies ere it could become a law. Notwithstanding this restriction, the constitution of Servius Tullius was a great concession to the popular spirit, as it virtually admitted every free individual within the Roman territory to a share in the government.

An attempt on the part of Tarquinius Superbus, the successor of Servius Tullius, to undo the reforms of his predecessor, and to establish what the ancients called a tyranny, or a government of individual will, led to the expulsion of him and his family, and to the abolition of the kingly form of government at Rome, B. C. 509, or in the year of the city 245. Instead of a king, two annual magistrates called Consuls were appointed, in whom were vested all the kingly functions, with the exception of the pontifical, for which special functionaries were created. Otherwise, the Servian constitution remained in full operation.

THE COMMONWEALTH TO THE GAULISH INVASION—​STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE PATRICIANS AND PLEBEIANS.

After the expulsion of the kings, the little republic had to struggle through many difficulties arising from the attacks of the neighboring nations, incited thereto by the Tarquinii. Ten of the twenty-six rural parishes were torn away in the contest—​a loss equivalent to a full third part of the Roman territory. It would have required a prophetic eye to foresee that, of all the states into which Italy was then divided, this little struggling republic was to obtain the preëminence. One would have been disposed to promise the supremacy of the peninsula rather to the cultured and large-brained Etruscans, already masters of the north of Italy; to the hardy and valiant Samnites, who were fast overspreading the southern interior; or, most probably of all, to the Greeks, who, after adding Sicily to the empire of their gifted race, were rapidly establishing colonies on the southern coasts of the peninsula. Nay, clustered round the Roman territories there were various petty states, any one of which might have appeared a match for Rome—​the Latins, the Æquians, the Volcians, the Hernicans, the Sabines, and the Etruscans of Veii on the right bank of the Tiber. Who could have predicted that, bursting this cincture of nations, the men of the Tiber would overspread the peninsula, and, by the leavening influence of their character and institutions, throw first it and then all Europe, into fermentation?

It required a period of 119 years (B. C. 509–390) to enable the Romans to burst the chain of petty nations—​Latins, Volscians, Vejentes, etc.—​which girdled in their strength. This was a period of almost incessant warfare; the last glorious act of which was the siege and capture of Veii by the hero Camillus, B. C. 395, or in the year of the city 359. By this capture part of Etruria was added to the Roman dominions, and the influence of the state considerably extended on all sides. This conquest, as well as the career of victory against Æquians, Volscians, etc., which had preceded it, was greatly facilitated by a confederacy, offensive and defensive, which had subsisted between the Romans and the adjacent nations of the Latins and the Hernicans from the year of the city 268, the twenty-third year after the expulsion of the kings, when it had been established by the instrumentality of an able patrician named Spurius Cassius, who was three times, in cases of difficulty, elected to the consulship. This confederacy with two powerful nations had insured the stability of the infant republic against all assaults.

The second consulship of Spurius Cassius (year of Rome 261, or B. C. 493) had also been remarkable as the epoch of a formidable civic tumult—​the first of that long series of struggles between the patricians and the plebeians which constitutes the most interesting portion of the annals of the early Commonwealth. Not long after the expulsion of the kings, the patrician gentes had begun to show a disposition to tamper with the Servian constitution, or at least to prevent the plebs from obtaining more power than they already possessed. The principal instrument by which they were able to cripple the energies of the plebs was the operation of the law of debt. In primitive Rome, as in other ancient states, an insolvent debtor was liable to be seized by his creditor, and kept in chains, or made to work as his slave. Now, such had been the distress of the first years of the republic, that multitudes of the plebeians, deprived, by the casualties of war, of their little properties, had been obliged, in order to preserve the lives of their families, to become debtors to the patricians, the exclusive proprietors of the state lands. Hundreds had, in consequence, fallen into a condition of slavery; and many more, fearing to offend their patrician creditors by opposing their designs, had become mere ciphers in the comitia centuriata. In short, the plebs, as a body, were disintegrated and disheartened. Some instances of oppression, more flagrant than ordinary, led to an outbreak, and a clamor for the abolition of all existing debts; and to enforce their demands, the plebeians adopted a method of agitation which seems singular enough to our modern conceptions; they, or at least such of them as were in arms for military service, retired in a mass from the city at a time when it was threatened with invasion, and encamped on a hill near, declaring they would starve sooner than live in such a place as Rome was. The government was thus reduced to a dead lock; Spurius Cassius was chosen consul by the patricians; and by his instrumentality an arrangement was come to, by which the demands of the commons were conceded, existing debts abolished, a treaty of mutual obligation for the future agreed to between the populus and the plebs as between two independent communities, and a new office instituted, under the title of the Tribuneship of the Common People, for the express purpose of protecting the interests of the plebs. The commons then returned to the city; two tribunes of the people were appointed; and their number was subsequently increased first to five, and afterwards to ten. No one could have foreseen how important this office would become.

Not content with alleviating the temporary distresses of the plebeians, Spurius Cassius wished permanently to ameliorate their condition; and accordingly, in his third consulship, in the year of the city 268, or B. C. 486, he boldly proposed and carried what was called an Agrarian Law. It is absolutely necessary that the reader of Roman history should understand this term. According to the early Roman constitution, the lands acquired in war became the property of the whole populus, or body of patricians, in common. Portions of the conquered lands might be purchased from the state by rich persons; and in such cases the purchaser, whether patrician or plebeian, became absolute owner. Usually, however, the lands were not sold, but were annexed to the unallotted property already belonging to the populus. With regard to this state land, a very curious system prevailed. Any patrician (but none else) was allowed to occupy and cultivate as much of it as he chose, on condition of paying to the state a tithe of the annual produce if it were arable land, and a fifth if it were laid out in oliveyards or vineyards. The land thus occupied did not, by right of possession, become the property of the individual: he was liable to be turned out of it at the pleasure of the state—​his landlord; and it was entirely at his own risk that he laid out capital in improving it. As, however, it rarely happened that an individual was ejected from land which he had thus occupied, large tracts of the state land were speedily occupied by enterprising patricians. Such being the plan of distribution, it is evident that in the state lands, occupied and unoccupied, the government possessed a constant fund upon which they could draw in cases of emergency. By selling portions of it, they could raise money; and by assigning portions of it to indigent families, they could permanently provide for them. Several times, it appears, this had been done in the case of indigent plebeian families; and the agrarian law of Spurius Cassius was simply a proposal that—​a large accession to the state lands having just taken place—​the government should seize the opportunity to provide for the distressed plebeians, by apportioning them small portions of these state lands. To the plebeians this proposal was exceedingly agreeable; not so, however, to the patricians, who possessed the right of occupying and farming as much of the public territory as they chose, but who lost that right from the moment that the land was apportioned by the state. The patricians, accordingly, resisted the proposal with all their might; and Spurius Cassius having carried it notwithstanding, they caused him to be impeached and put to death as soon as his consulship had expired.

After this event, the patricians renewed their efforts to suppress the plebs, proceeding so far as to transfer the right of electing the consuls from the centuries to the purely patrician body of the curies. The plebeians, however, behaved resolutely, asserting their rights through their tribunes, and by clamors in the comitia tributa, where none but plebeians had a right to take a part. In the year of the city 271, or B. C. 483, they regained the power of choosing one of the consuls; and in the year 283, or B. C. 471, they wrung from the patricians the right of electing their tribunes in their own comitia tributa, instead of the centuries, at the same time obtaining the right to discuss in the comitia tributa affairs affecting the whole Commonwealth. Other concessions followed; and at length, in the year 292, or B. C. 462, a tribune named Caius Terentilius Harsa was so bold as to propose a complete revision of the constitution in all its parts. It was not desirable, he said, that the old distinction between populus and plebs, which had originated in war, should be longer kept up; let, therefore, a revision of the whole body of the laws be undertaken, with a view to put the plebeians on a legal equality with the patricians, and let some more limited form of supreme magistracy be substituted for the consulship. After a protracted opposition, this proposal resulted, in the year 303, or B. C. 452, in the appointment of the famous First Decemvirate; a board of ten patricians, who were to revise the entire body of the laws, as well as the political machinery of the state, superseding in the meantime all other authority. The digest of Roman law prepared by these decemvirs became the foundation of all subsequent jurisprudence among the Romans; the amendments which they effected on the old laws were favorable to the plebeians. The principal constitutional changes which they carried out were the incorporation of patricians and clients with the plebeian tribes; the investment of the centuries with the powers of an ultimate court of appeal; and the substitution of the decemviral office, of which they themselves were an example, for the consulship, five of the decemvirs to be plebeians. This last change, however, was of short duration; for the second decemvirate was brought to an end by its own depravity. Compelled, by a new secession of the commons, to abdicate, the decemvirs of 305 were succeeded by two popular consuls, under whose auspices several important privileges were obtained for the plebeians, the most important of which was a law conferring on a plebiscitum, or resolution of the tribes, the right to become law on receiving the sanction of the patricians, thus enabling the whole people to originate measures as well as the senate. In 310, the plebeians mustered courage to demand that one of the consuls should thenceforward be chosen from their order. To divert them from this, the patricians yielded to another demand—​the repeal of the law prohibiting intermarriage between the two orders. The plebeians, however, still persisting in their demand regarding the consulship, the patricians, in 311, offered a compromise, which consisted in breaking down the supreme authority, hitherto concentrated in the consulship, into three offices—​the Censorship, the Quæstorship, and the Military Tribunate—​with consular powers. The censors were to be two in number, chosen for a period of five years, by the curies from among the patricians, subject to the approval of the centuries. The ostensible duty of the censors was the administration of the public revenues; but as they were intrusted with the task of determining the rank of every citizen, and of rating his taxable property, their power was, in reality, enormous. To watch over the moral conduct of the citizens, and to degrade such senators or knights as disgraced their order, were parts of their understood duty. The quæstors, two in number, were to keep the public accounts; they were likewise to be patricians, but were to be chosen by the centuries. Regarding the third office, the military tribunate, the plebeians were to have the option of this office, consisting of an indefinite number of persons of somewhat less dignity than the consuls, but to be chosen by the centuries from either order indiscriminately, or of consuls to be chosen, as before, from among the patricians only.

This compromise having been accepted, the period from 311 to 350 was one of incessant agitation on the part of the plebeians, of incessant opposition on the part of the patricians, of incessant shifting between the consulship and the military tribunate, according as the patricians or the plebeians were the stronger. On the whole, however, the plebeians gained ground. In 321, the active authority of the censors was limited to eighteen months out of the five years for which they were appointed. In 328, the tribes obtained the right of deliberating on questions of peace and war. In 334, the number of the quæstors was increased to four, to be chosen indiscriminately from either order. Lastly, in 350, or B. C. 404, the system of payment for military service became common. During these forty years the patricians had frequently had recourse to the expedient of appointing a Dictator, or supreme magistrate, with unlimited authority for six months. Such an appointment almost always proved a temporary check to the political advancement of the plebeians. In cases of difficulty also, arising from external danger, it was usual to appoint some able man dictator; and it was at such a juncture, in the year 359, that, determined to bring the siege of Veii to a close, the Romans appointed Camillus to this high office.

The siege of Veii having terminated so successfully, the Romans were prepared to resume their career of conquest without, and their political agitations within, when both the one and the other received a check from an unexpected quarter. Some cause, now unknown, had thrown the Gauls, or Celtic populations inhabiting the western portion of Central Europe, into commotion; and bursting from their native haunts, a mass of these savages crossed the Alps in quest of plunder and settlements, established a permanent abode in the country adjacent to the Po, and pushed their destructive way through almost the whole length of the peninsula. Rome suffered more severely than any other city. For several months (364–5, or B. C. 390–89) it was in the possession of the savages—​its rightful inhabitants, routed in the battle, having dispersed themselves for safety through the surrounding country. At length, however, the Gauls were bribed to return to their homes in the north, leaving Rome in ruins.