assembly. The ephors accompanied the kings in war and directed their actions; guided the deliberations of the council of nobles and the assembly of freemen; superintended the education of children; and exercised a general oversight of the private life of citizens. The ephors had such absolute control over the lives and property of the Spartans that we may describe their rule as socialistic and select Sparta as an example of ancient state socialism. Nowhere else in the Greek world was the welfare of the individual man so thoroughly subordinated to the interests of the society of which he formed a unit. Spartan education had a single purpose to produce good soldiers and obedient citizens. A sound body formed the The Spartan first essential. A father was required to submit boy his son, soon after birth, to an inspection by the elders of his tribe. If they found the child puny or ill-shaped, they ordered it to be left on the mountain side, to perish from exposure. At the age of seven a boy was taken from his parents' home and placed in a military school. Here he was trained in marching, sham fighting, and gymnastics. He learned to sing warlike songs and in conversation to express himself in the fewest possible words. Spartan brevity of speech became proverbial. Above all he learned to endure hardship without complaint. He went barefoot and wore only a single garment, winter and summer. He slept on a bed of rushes. Every year he and his comrades had to submit to a flogging before the altar of the goddess Artemis, and the hero was the lad who could bear the whipping longest without giving a sign of pain. It is said that boys sometimes died under the lash rather than utter a cry. Such ordeals are still a feature of savage life to-day. The adult On reaching the age of twenty the youth was considered a warrior. He did not live at home, but passed his time in barracks, as a member of a military mess to which he contributed his proper share of food, wine, and money. At the age of thirty years the young Spartan became a full citizen and a member of the popular assembly. He was then compelled to marry in order to raise children for the state. But marriage did not free him from attendance at the public meals, the drill ground, and the gymnasium. A Spartan, in fact, enjoyed little home life until his sixtieth year, when he became an elder and retired from actual service. tan soldiery This exclusive devotion to military pursuits accomplished its object. The Spartans became the finest soldiers of antiquity. "All the rest of the Greeks," says an ancient Excellence writer, "are amateurs; the Spartans are profes- of the Sparsionals in the conduct of war." Though Sparta never produced great thinkers, poets, or artists, her military strength made her the bulwark of Greece against foreign foes. The time was to come when Greece, to retain her liberties, would need this disciplined Spartan soldiery." 28. The Growth of Athens (to 500 B.C.) The district of Attica, though smaller than our smallest American commonwealth, was early filled with a number of independent city-states. It was a great step in Athens as a advance when, long before the dawn of Greek city-state history, these tiny communities were united with Athens. The inhabitants of the Attic towns and villages gave up their separate governments and became members of the one citystate of Athens. Henceforth a man was a Athenian citizen, no matter in what part of Attica he lived. At an earlier period, perhaps, than elsewhere in Greece, monarchy at Athens disappeared before the rising power of the nobles. The rule of the nobility bore harshly on Oppressive the common people. Popular discontent was rule of the especially excited at the administration of justice. There were at first no written laws, but only the long-established 1 Xenophon, Polity of the Lacedæmonians, 13. nobles : The Spartans believed that their military organization was the work of a great reformer and law-giver named Lycurgus. He was supposed to have lived early in the ninth century B.C. We do not know anything about Lycurgus, but we do know that some existing primitive tribes, for instance, the Masai of East Africa, have customs almost the same as those of ancient Sparta. Hence we may say that the rude, even barbarous, Spartans only carried over into the historic age the habits of life which they had formed in prehistoric times. customs of the community. Since all the judges were nobles, they were tempted to decide legal cases in favor of their own class. The people, at length, began to clamor for a written code. They could then know just what the laws were. 621 B.C. After much agitation an Athenian named Draco was employed to write out a code for the state. The laws, as published, were Draco's code, very severe. The penalty for most offenses, even the smallest theft, was death. The Athenians used to declare that the Draconian code had been written, "not in ink, but in blood." Its publication, however, was a popular triumph and the first step toward the establishment of Athenian democracy. Legislation of Solon, 594-593 B.C. The second step was the legislation of Solon. This celebrated Athenian was accounted among the wisest men of his age. The people held him in high honor and gave him power to make much-needed reforms. At this time the condition of the Attic peasants was deplorable. Many of them had failed to pay their rent to the wealthy landowners, and according to the old custom were being sold into slavery. Solon abolished the custom and restored to freedom all those who had been enslaved for debt. He also limited the amount of land which a noble might hold. By still another law he admitted even the poorest citizens to the popular assembly, where they could vote for magistrates and judge of their conduct after their year of office was over. By giving the common people a greater share in the government, Solon helped forward the democratic movement at Athens. Tyranny of Pisistratus, 560-527 B.C. Solon's reforms satisfied neither the nobility nor the commons. The two classes continued their rivalry until the disorder of the times enabled an ambitious politician to gain supreme power as a tyrant.1 He was Solon's own nephew, a noble named Pisistratus. The tyrant ruled with moderation and did much to develop the Athenian city-state. He fostered agriculture by dividing the lands of banished nobles among the peasants. His alliances with neighboring cities encouraged the rising commerce of Athens. The 1 See page 82. city itself was adorned with handsome buildings by architects and sculptors whom Pisistratus invited to his court from all parts of Greece. Reforms of 508-507 B.C. Pisistratus was succeeded by his two sons, but the Athenians did not take kindly to their rule. Before long the tyranny came to an end. The Athenians now found a leader in a noble named Clisthenes, who proved to be an able Clisthenes, statesman. He carried still further the democratic movement begun by Draco and Solon. One of his reforms extended Athenian citizenship to many foreigners and emancipated slaves ("freedmen") then living in Attica. This liberal measure swelled the number of citizens and helped to make the Athenians a more progressive people. Clisthenes, it is said, also established the curious arrangement known as ostracism. Every year, if necessary, the citizens were to meet in assembly and to vote against any persons whom they thought dangerous to the state. If as many as six thousand votes were cast, the man who received the highest number of votes had to go into honorable exile for ten years. Though ostracism was intended as a precaution against tyrants, before long it came to be used to remove unpopular politicians. There were still some steps to be taken before the rule of the people was completely secured at Athens. But, in the main, the Athenians by 500 B.C. had established a truly Athens a democratic government, the first in the history of democratic the world. The hour was now rapidly approaching when this young and vigorous democracy was to show forth its worth before the eyes of all Greece. state 29. Colonial Expansion of Greece (about 750-500 B.C.) While Athens, Sparta, and their sister states were working out the problems of government, another signifi- The great age cant movement was going on in the Greek world. of colonizaThe Greeks, about the middle of the eighth century B.C., began to plant numerous colonies along the shores of tion The name of an individual voted against was written on a piece of pottery (Greek ostrakon), whence the term ostracism. See the illustration, page 97. the Mediterranean and of the Black Sea. The great age of colonization covered more than two hundred years.1 founding colonies Several reasons led to the founding of colonies. Trade was an important motive. The Greeks, like the Phoenicians, could Reasons for realize large profits by exchanging their manufactured goods for the food and raw materials of other countries. Land hunger was another motive. The poor soil of Greece could not support many inhabitants and, when population increased, emigration afforded the only means of relieving the pressure of numbers. A third motive was political and social unrest. Greek cities at this period contained many men of adventurous disposition who were ready to seek in foreign countries a refuge from the oppression of nobles or tyrants. They hoped to find in their new settlements more freedom than they had at home. A Greek colony was not simply a trading post; it was a center of Greek life. The colonists continued to be Greeks in customs, Character of language, and religion. Though quite independent the Greek colony of the parent state, they always regarded it with reverence and affection: they called themselves "men away from home." Mother city and daughter colony traded with each other and in time of danger helped each other. A symbol of this unity was the sacred fire carried from the public hearth of the old community to the new settlement. Colonization and east The Greeks planted many colonies on the coast of the northern Ægean and on both sides of the long passage between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Their most in the north important colony was Byzantium, upon the site where Constantinople now stands. They also made settlements along the shores of the Black Sea. The cities founded here were centers from which the Greeks drew their supplies of fish, wood, wool, grain, metals, and slaves. The immense profits to be gained by trade made the Greeks willing to live in a cold country so unlike their own and among barbarous peoples. The western lands furnished far more attractive sites for 2 See page 49. 1 See the map facing page 50. |