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carry everything before them; but there was no fear of such united action on the part of these tattooed savages, whose roving and desultory warfare was only once interrupted by the abortive expedition of the Odrysian Sitalkes. The Thrakian was a mere ruffian who bought his wives, allowed his children to herd together like beasts, and then sold them into slavery.

The coast line of the regions occupied by these savages was dotted with Hellenic settlements. Foremost in the enterprise was, it is said, the Euboian city of Chalkis, which had founded the earliest colony in Sicily; and the whole of the country south of a line drawn between Thermê and Stageiros received the name of Chalkidike in attestation of her activity. This territory of Chalkidike is cut off from the country to the north by a range of mountains sloping down to two of the three peninsulas which run out into the sea between the Thermaic and the Strymonic gulfs. On the easternmost of these projections calle Aktê the magnificent mass of Athos, casting its shadow as far as the island of Lemnos, rises sheer from the coast to a height exceeding six thousand feet. The intermediate peninsula, though thickly wooded like that of Aktê, still has more of open ground; and on these spaces rose among other Chalkidian cities the towns of Torônê near the end of the peninsula and of Olynthos at the head of the Toronaic gulf. At the neck of the third or Pallenian peninsula stood the Corinthian city of Potidaia, while the peninsula itself contained Skiônê, Mendê, Sanê, and other towns.

The opening of Egypt to Greek trade by Psammitichos gave that impulse to Hellenic colonisation in Africa which raised up to the east of the great Syrtis a city not unworthy to be the rival of Carthage. Placed on a mountain terrace nearly two thousand feet in height, and commanding from a distance of ten miles a vast sweep of the sea, Kyrênê had in the loftier hills which rose behind it a source of wealth more precious than the richness of the most fertile soil. With water even poor soils will yield marvellously under an African sun; and that boon, abundantly secured to Kyrênê by the constant vapours and rains condensed and precipitated by these beneficent mountains, carried the colony to a height of prosperity reached by no other African city except the mighty Phenician colony of Carthage.

This great city had been compelled to put down Hellenic incroachment in Africa. The same task awaited her in Sicily

calling for greater efforts on her part and involving a risk of more serious failure.

But the rivalry of Carthage had little effect in repressing those innate vices of the Greek character which seemed to gain strength in new soil. The Greek colonies in Sicily exhibit generally the same transitions from oligarchical government to tyranny which mark the history of the parent country during the generations preceding the Persian wars. The great power and prosperity attained by many of these Greek cities in Sicily, in spite of everlasting feuds and frequent revolutions, furnish sufficient evidence of the extraordinary advantages which they enjoyed in the soil, the climate, and the physical resources of the country.

Among the despots who rose to power in these cities the most prominent was Gelon, despot of Syracuse, and virtually master of all Sicily east of a line drawn from the borders of Messênê to those of Akragas. The efforts of this energetic leader had succeeded in pushing the Carthaginians back to the west of a line drawn between the Greek cities of Himera on the northern and Selinous on the south-western coast of the island. Within this line the Carthaginians retained only the settlements of Motyê, Panormos, and Soloeis (Soluntum); and although their policy thus far had been to avoid all wars, the rapid aggrandisement of Gelon made them fear that without a vigorous effort they would lose their hold even on this western corner of the island.

We shall find that but little trust can be placed in the minute details of the battles fought during the Persian war at Thermopylai, Salamis, Plataia, or Mykalê. We are even less justified in giving credit to the narrative of the battle which, fought, it is said, on the very day of the fight at Salamis, left Gelon, by the utter defeat of the Carthaginian Hamilkar, master, for the time, of all Sicily. Hamilkar, it is said, was never seen again after the fight. The whole field was searched with minute care by the order of Gelon, but his body could not be found; and Herodotos was inclined to put faith in an alleged Carthaginian tradition that during the battle Hamilkar stood by a huge altar on which he was sacrificing whole beasts as victims, and that on seeing the day going against him he leaped into the consuming fires. The historian adds that his countrymen raised monuments to his memory in all their colonies as well as in Carthage itself and worshipped him as a

god. If this be true, it is of itself conclusive evidence that his defeat was not so overwhelming as his enemies would have it, and that on the day of battle the general did something more than roast flesh to appease the hunger of Moloch. It was not the habit of Carthaginians to venerate men who brought their country to the verge of ruin.

If the defeated Hamilkar was worshipped by his countrymen, the victorious Gelon deserved at least equal honours. He too was venerated as a hero, when a few months after his great triumph he died of dropsy. After his death the history of the Greek cities in Sicily falls back into the old round of faction, revolution, and war; and in eighteen years his dynnsty had become a thing of the past. We have now to see how and with what results, on soil not much more promising at the first, the seeds of law, order, and freedom were sown at Athens.

CHAPTER IX.

EARLY CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF ATHENS.

LIKE the constitution of England, the full developement of Athenian democracy was the work of ages. Like the English constitution, it was also the fruit of long and arduous struggles, slowly ripened as the people awoke more and more to that consciousness of law and order which can be fully awakened only among men who feel that the law which they obey is their own law and that they obey it because it aims more and more at being in accordance with a justice and righteousness. higher than that of man.

The undoubted existence down to the time of Kleisthenes (a period preceding by only a few years the battle of Marathon) of a subdivision by clans and houses takes us back, as we have already seen, almost to the earliest form of human society.. Whatever may have been the origin and meaning of the names which have been variously assigned to the Athenian tribes, the evidence already reviewed (Chapter II.) seems to leave it certain. that the point of starting was from the house or family upwards, and not from the larger division downwards. We have here in fact the same growth as that of the English families into tithings, hundreds, and shires-a division which preceded and

CH. IX. Early Constitutional History of Athens. 33

survived the several kingdoms into which the country was from time to time parcelled out. Nor can we question that the principle underlying this grouping was one of blood and of religion, which could take no reckoning of those who were not sprung from the same stock.

We are still on doubtful ground when we come to the story of the settlement of Attica as related by Thucydides. Of the Theseus who is said to have made Athens the seat of a central government which superseded the independent action of a set of voluntarily confederated boroughs or cities, our knowledge comes only from the stories which tell us of his marvellous childhood, of the discovery of his father's weapons under the great stone, of his battle with the Minotauros and his stealing of Helen, the fatal sister of the Dioskouroi. Still, although we may not regard the narrative as history, we are not free to say that no such change ever took place. It is far more likely that it did; and if it be historical, this consolidation of the Attic Demoi into a single state would answer to the gradual absorption of the several English kingdoms under the sovereignty of the chiefs of Wessex.

But every confederation implies a council; and Aryan history generally furnishes ample evidence that the several combinations of families into a tribe and of tribes into a city would result in a subordination of the councils representing the clans and houses to the great council of the state. This council at Athens was that of Areiopagos, known at first simply as Boulê, the Council, which with the magistrates included in it inherited the large and undefined powers belonging of right first to the master of the family, then to the chief of the clan, and lastly to the king.

The whole course of Athenian history seems to attest the gradual restriction of the powers of this body, which continued to retain its jurisdiction in cases of homicide long after it had been deprived of its legislative and administrative functions. The basis of its power was distinctly religious, and the power itself was necessarily exercised inflexibly. It was not competent for the Areiopagos to draw distinctions between the guilt of one homicide and that of another. There could be but one doom for all who were judged guilty of having shed blood, whether they might plead accident by way of excuse, or urge provocation by way of palliating the offence. The hardness of

D

the Drakonian laws has passed into a proverb; but if we give credit to the tradition, it was a movement in the way of lenity, not of severity, when Drakon made the distinctions demanded by equity, and ordained that the court of the Ephetai, fifty-one in number, should sit in different places to adjudicate in different cases of homicide according to their complexion or to the plea urged by the criminal.

That the rule of the Eupatrids exercised through this council and the College of Archons would be both harsh and irksome, is no more than what we might expect; and it was as likely that efforts to control or change it might come from those who wished to set up a despotism as from those who wished to introduce a democracy. Of the attempt of Kylon to seize the Akropolis, as it is said, for the former purpose, the chief importance lies in the use made of it by the Spartans to counteract the influence of Perikles before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian war, as it had been employed in like sort against Kleisthenes. It is as likely that a vain attempt to erect a despotism should have been made by Kylon as that the exploit should have been achieved by Peisistratos. But the story itself is told with singular contradictions. In the more full report of Thucydides, Kylon, aided by his father-in-law Theagenes, tyrant of Megara, succeeds in occupying the Akropolis, and is foiled only by a lack of the food needed to withstand a long siege, the blockade being entrusted to the nine archons, who at that time had virtually, we are told, the whole administration of the state. But according to this version Kylon and his brother escaped, and only his followers were slain in violation of the pledges given. In short, with such evidence as we have before us, we cannot safely accept more than the fact of the conspiracy and its failure; nor, although in its details the tradition is manifestly untrustworthy, can we question that in the opinion of the people the Alkmaionids were permanently tainted for their bad faith in this affair.

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