Early European History Part 19

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 n.o.ble might hold. By still another law he admitted even the poorest citizens to the popular a.s.sembly, 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 n.o.bility nor the commons. The two cla.s.ses continued their rivalry until the disorder of the times enabled an ambitious politician to gain supreme power as a tyrant. [24] He was Solon's own nephew, a n.o.ble 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 n.o.bles among the peasants.

His alliances with neighboring cities encouraged the rising commerce of Athens. The city itself was adorned with handsome buildings by architects and sculptors whom Pisistratus invited to his court from all parts of Greece.

REFORMS OF CLISTHENES, 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 n.o.ble named Clisthenes, who proved to be an able statesman. He carried still further the democratic movement begun by Draco and Solon. One of his reforms extended Athenian citizens.h.i.+p to many foreigners and emanc.i.p.ated 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 a.s.sembly 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. [25] Though ostracism was intended as a precaution against tyrants, before long it came to be used to remove unpopular politicians.

ATHENS A DEMOCRATIC STATE

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 democratic government, the first in the history of 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.

29. COLONIAL EXPANSION OF GREECE (ABOUT 750-500 B.C.)

THE GREAT AGE OF COLONIZATION

While Athens, Sparta, and their sister states were working out the problems of government, another significant movement was going on in the Greek world. The Greeks, about the middle of the eighth century B.C., began to plant numerous colonies along the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean and of the Black Sea. The great age of colonization covered more than two hundred years. [26]

REASONS FOR FOUNDING COLONIES

Several reasons led to the founding of colonies. Trade was an important motive. The Greeks, like the Phoenicians, [27] could 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 n.o.bles or tyrants. They hoped to find in their new settlements more freedom than they had at home.

CHARACTER OF THE GREEK COLONY

A Greek colony was not simply a trading post; it was a center of Greek life. The colonists continued to be Greeks in customs, language, and religion. Though quite independent 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 IN THE NORTH AND EAST

The Greeks planted many colonies on the coast of the northern Aegean and on both sides of the long pa.s.sage between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Their most important colony was Byzantium, upon the site where Constantinople now stands. They also made settlements along the sh.o.r.es 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.

COLONIZATION IN THE WEST

The western lands furnished far more attractive sites for colonization.

The Greeks could feel at home in southern Italy, where the genial climate, pure air, and sparkling sea recalled their native land. At a very early date they founded c.u.mae, on the coast just north of the bay of Naples.

Emigrants from c.u.mae, in turn, founded the city of Neapolis (Naples), which in Roman times formed a home of Greek culture and even to-day possesses a large Greek population. To secure the approaches from Greece to these remote colonies, two strongholds were established on the strait of Messina: Regium (modern Reggio) on the Italian sh.o.r.e and Messana (modern Messina) on that of Sicily. Another important colony in southern Italy was Tarentum (modern Taranto).

[Ill.u.s.tration: "TEMPLE OF NEPTUNE," PAESTUM Paestum, the Greek Poseidonia, was a colony of Sybaris The malarial atmosphere of the place led to its desertion in the ninth century of our era. Hence the buildings there were not used as quarries for later structures. The so called "Temple of Neptune" at Paestum is one of the best preserved monuments of antiquity.]

THE SICILIAN COLONIES

Greek settlements in Sicily were mainly along the coast. Expansion over the entire island was checked by the Carthaginians, who had numerous possessions at its western extremity. The most celebrated colony in Sicily was Syracuse, established by emigrants from Corinth. It became the largest of Greek cities.

OTHER MEDITERRANEAN COLONIES

In Corsica, Sardinia, and on the coast of Spain Carthage also proved too obstinate a rival for the Greeks to gain much of a foothold. The city of Ma.s.silia (Ma.r.s.eilles), at the mouth of the Rhone, was their chief settlement in ancient Gaul. Two colonies on the southern sh.o.r.e of the Mediterranean were Cyrene, west of Egypt, and Naucratis, in the Delta of the Nile. From this time many Greek travelers visited Egypt to see the wonders of that strange old country.

RESULTS OF COLONIZATION

Energetic Greeks, the greatest colonizers of antiquity, thus founded settlements from the Black Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. "All the Greek colonies" says an ancient writer, "are washed by the waves of the sea, and, so to speak, a fringe of Greek earth is woven on to foreign lands."

[28] To distinguish themselves from the foreigners, or "barbarians," [29]

about them, the Greeks began to call themselves by the common name of h.e.l.lenes. h.e.l.las, their country, came to include all the territory possessed by h.e.l.lenic peoples. The life of the Greeks, henceforth, was confined no longer within the narrow limits of the Aegean. Wherever rose a Greek city, there was a scene of Greek history.

30. BONDS OF UNION AMONG THE GREEKS

LANGUAGE AS A UNIFYING FORCE

The Greek colonies, as we have seen, were free and independent. In Greece itself the little city-states were just as jealous of their liberties.

Nevertheless ties existed, not of common government, but of common interests and ideals, which helped to unite the scattered sections of the Greek world. The strongest bond of union was, of course, the one Greek speech. Everywhere the people used the same beautiful and expressive language. It is not a "dead" language, for it still lives in modified form on the lips of nearly three million people in the Greek peninsula, throughout the Mediterranean, and even in remote America.

LITERATURE AS UNIFYING FORCE; HOMER

Greek literature, likewise, made for unity. The _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ were recited in every Greek village for centuries. They formed the princ.i.p.al textbook in the schools; an Athenian philosopher calls Homer the "educator of h.e.l.las." It has been well said that these two epics were at once the Bible and the Shakespeare of the Greek people.

RELIGION AS A UNIFYING FORCE; AMPHICTYONIES

Religion formed another bond of union. Everywhere the Greeks wors.h.i.+ped the same G.o.ds and performed the same sacred rites. Religious influences were sometimes strong enough to bring about federations known as amphictyonies, or leagues of neighbors. The people living around a famous sanctuary would meet to observe their festivals in common and to guard the shrine of their divinity. The Delphic amphictyony was the most noteworthy of these local unions. It included twelve tribes and cities of central Greece and Thessaly. They established a council, which took the shrine of Apollo under its protection and superintended the athletic games at Delphi.

A NEW AGE

The seventh and sixth centuries before Christ form a noteworthy epoch in Greek history. Commerce and colonization were bringing their educating influence to bear upon the Greeks. h.e.l.lenic cities were rising everywhere along the Mediterranean sh.o.r.es. A common language, literature, and religion were making the people more and more conscious of their unity as opposed to the "barbarians" about them.

THE GREEK WORLD, 500 B.C.

Greek history has now been traced from its beginnings to about 500 B.C. It is the history of a people, not of one country or of a united nation. Yet the time was drawing near when all the Greek communities were to be brought together in closer bonds of union than they had ever before known.

STUDIES

1. On the map facing page 66 see what regions of Europe are less than 500 feet above sea level; less than 3000 feet; over 9000 feet.

2. Why was Europe better fitted than Asia to develop the highest civilization? Why not so well fitted as Asia to originate civilization?

3. "The tendency of mountains is to separate, of rivers to unite, adjacent peoples." How can you justify this statement by a study of European geography?

4. Why has the Mediterranean been called a "highway of nations"?

5. Locate on the map several of the natural entrances into the basin of the Mediterranean.

6. At what points is it probable that southern Europe and northern Africa were once united?