Mosaics of Grecian History Part 30

Seems he not a G.o.d? The words he speaks are big with instant fate.

He hath come from far Euphrates, and from Tigris' rus.h.i.+ng tide, To subdue the strength of Athens, to chastise the Spartan's pride; He hath come with countless armies, gathered slowly from afar, From the plain, and from the mountain, marshalled ranks of motley war; From the land and from the ocean, that the burdened billows groan, That the air is black with banners, which great Xerxes calls his own.

Soothly he hath n.o.bly ridden o'er the fair fields, o'er the waste, As the earth might bear the burden, with a weighty-footed haste; He hath cut in twain the mountain, he hath bridged the rolling main, He hath lashed the flood of Hel'le, bound the billow with a chain; And the rivers shrink before him, and the sheeted lakes are dry, From his burden-bearing oxen, and his hordes of cavalry; And the gates of Greece stand open; Ossa and Olympus fail; And the mountain-girt aemo'nia spreads the river and the gale.

Stood nor man nor G.o.d before him; he hath scoured the Attic land, Chased the valiant sons of Athens to a barren island's strand; He hath hedged them round with triremes, lines on lines of bristling war; He hath doomed the prey for capture; he hath spread his meshes far; And he sits sublimely seated on a throne with pride elate, To behold the victim fall beneath the sudden swooping Fate.

Then follows an account of the nations which formed the Persian hosts, their arrangement to entrap the Greeks, who were thought to be meditating flight, the patriotic enthusiasm of the latter, the naval battle which followed, and the disastrous defeat of the Persians, the poem closing with the following satirical address to Xerxes:

Wake thee! wake thee! blinded Xerxes! G.o.d hath found thee out at last; Snaps thy pride beneath his judgment, as the tree before the blast.

Haste thee! haste thee! speed thy couriers--Persian couriers travel lightly-- To declare thy stranded navy, that by cruel death unsightly Dimmed thy glory. Hie thee! hie thee! hence, even by what way thou camest, Dwarfed to whoso saw thee mightiest, and where thou wert fiercest, tamest!

Frost and fire shall league together, angry heaven to earth respond, Strong Poseidon with his trident break thy impious-vaunted bond; Where thou pa.s.sed, with mouths uncounted, eating up the famished land, With few men a boat shall ferry Xerxes to the Asian strand.

Haste thee! haste thee! they are waiting by the palace gates for thee; By the golden gates of Susa eager mourners wait for thee.

Haste thee! where the guardian elders wait, a h.o.a.ry-bearded train; They shall see their king, but never see the sons they loved, again.

Where thy weeping mother waits thee, Queen Atossa waits to see Dire fulfilment of her troublous, vision-haunted sleep in thee.

She hath dreamt, and she shall see it, how an eagle, cowed with awe, Gave his kingly crest to pluck before a puny falcon's claw.

Haste thee! where the mighty shade of great Darius through the gloom Rises dread, to teach thee wisdom, couldst thou learn it, from the tomb.

There begin the sad rehearsal, and, while streaming tears are shed, To the thousand tongues that ask thee, tell the myriads of thy dead!

THE BATTLE OF PLATae'A.

When Xerxes returned to his own dominions he left his general, Mardo'nius, with three hundred thousand men, to complete, if possible, the conquest of Greece. Mardonius pa.s.sed the winter in Thessaly, but in the following summer his army was totally defeated, and himself slain, in the battle of Plataea. Two hundred thousand Persians fell here, and only a small remnant escaped across the h.e.l.lespont. We extract from BULWER'S Athens the following eloquent description of this battle, both for the sake of its beauty and to show the effect of the religion of the Greeks upon the military character of the people. Mardonius had advanced to the neighbor-hood of Plataea, when he encountered that part of the Grecian army composed mostly of Spartans and Lacedaemonians, commanded by Pausa'nias, and numbering about fifty thousand men.

The Athenians had previously fallen back to a more secure position, where the entire army had been ordered to concentrate; and Pausanias had but just commenced the retrograde movement when the Persians made their appearance.

BULWER says: "As the troops of Mardonius advanced, the rest of the Persian armament, deeming the task was now not to fight but to pursue, raised their standards and poured forward tumultuously, without discipline or order. Pausanias, pressed by the Persian line, lost no time in sending to the Athenians for succor. But when the latter were on their march with the required aid, they were suddenly intercepted by the Greeks in the Persian service, and cut off from the rescue of the Spartans.

"The Spartans beheld themselves thus unsupported with considerable alarm. Committing himself to the G.o.ds, Pausanias ordained a solemn sacrifice, his whole army awaiting the result, while the shafts of the Persians poured on them near and fast. But the entrails presented discouraging omens, and the sacrifice was again renewed. Meanwhile the Spartans evinced their characteristic fort.i.tude and discipline--not one man stirring from the ranks until the auguries should a.s.sume a more favoring aspect; all hara.s.sed, and some wounded by the Persian arrows, they yet, seeking protection only beneath their broad bucklers, waited with a stern patience the time of their leader and of Heaven. Then fell Callic'rates, the stateliest and strongest soldier in the whole army, lamenting not death, but that his sword was as yet undrawn against the invader.

"And still sacrifice after sacrifice seemed to forbid the battle, when Pausanias, lifting his eyes, that streamed with tears, to the Temple of Juno, that stood hard by, supplicated the G.o.ddess that, if the fates forbade the Greeks to conquer, they might at least fall like warriors; and, while uttering this prayer, the tokens waited for became suddenly visible in the victims, and the augurs announced the promise of coming victory. Therewith the order of battle ran instantly through the army, and, to use the poetical comparison of Plutarch, the Spartan phalanx suddenly stood forth in its strength like some fierce animal, erecting its bristles, and preparing its vengeance for the foe. The ground, broken into many steep and precipitous ridges, and intersected by the Aso'pus, whose sluggish stream winds over a broad and rushy bed, was unfavorable to the movements of cavalry, and the Persian foot advanced therefore on the Greeks.

"Drawn up in their ma.s.sive phalanx, the Lacedaemonians presented an almost impenetrable body--sweeping slowly on, compact and serried--while the hot and undisciplined valor of the Persians, more fortunate in the skirmish than the battle, broke itself in a thousand waves upon that moving rock. Pouring on in small numbers at a time, they fell fast round the progress of the Greeks --their armor slight against the strong pikes of Sparta--their courage without skill, their numbers without discipline; still they fought gallantly, even when on the ground seizing the pikes with their naked hands, and, with the wonderful agility that still characterizes the Oriental swordsmen, springing to their feet and regaining their arms when seemingly overcome, wresting away their enemies' s.h.i.+elds, and grappling with them desperately hand to hand.

"Foremost of a band of a thousand chosen Persians, conspicuous by his white charger, and still more by his daring valor, rode Mardonius, directing the attack--fiercer wherever his armor blazed.

Inspired by his presence the Persians fought worthily of their warlike fame, and, even in falling, thinned the Spartan ranks.

At length the rash but gallant leader of the Asiatic armies received a mortal wound--his skull was crushed in by a stone from the hand of a Spartan. His chosen band, the boast of the army, fell fighting around him, but his death was the general signal of defeat and flight. Enc.u.mbered by their long robes, and pressed by the relentless conquerors, the Persians fled in disorder toward their camp, which was secured by wooden intrenchments, by gates, and towers, and walls. Here, fortifying themselves as they best might, they contended successfully, and with advantage, against the Lacedaemonians, who were ill skilled in a.s.sault and siege.

"Meanwhile the Athenians gained the victory on the plains over the Greek allies of Mardonius, and now joined the Spartans at the camp. The Athenians are said to have been better skilled in the art of siege than the Spartans; yet at that time their experience could scarcely have been greater. The Athenians were at all times, however, of a more impetuous temper; and the men who had 'run to the charge' at Marathon were not to be baffled by the desperate remnant of their ancient foe. They scaled the walls; they effected a breach through which the Tege'ans were the first to rush; the Greeks poured fast and fierce into the camp. Appalled, dismayed, stupefied by the suddenness and greatness of their loss, the Persians no longer sustained their fame; they dispersed in all directions, falling, as they fled, with a prodigious slaughter, so that out of that mighty armament scarce three thousand effected an escape."

But the final overthrow of the Persian hosts on the battle-field of Plataea has an importance far greater than that of the deliverance of the Greeks from immediate danger. Perhaps no other event in ancient history has been so momentous in its consequences; for what would have been the condition of Greece had she then become a province of the Persian empire? The greatness which she subsequently attained, and the glory and renown with which she has filled the earth, would never have had an existence. Little Greece sat at the gates of a continent, and denied an entrance to the gorgeous barbarism of Asia. She determined that Europe should not be Asiatic; that civilization should not sink into the abyss of unmitigated despotism. She turned the tide of Persian encroachment back across the h.e.l.lespont, and Alexander only followed the refluent wave to the Indus.

"'Twas then," as SOUTHEY says,

"The fate Of unborn ages hung upon the fray: T'was at Plataea, in that awful hour When Greece united smote the Persian's power.

For, had the Persian triumphed, then the spring Of knowledge from that living source had ceased; All would have fallen before the barbarous king-- Art, Science, Freedom: the despotic East, Setting her mark upon the race subdued, Had stamped them in the mould of sensual servitude."

Furthermore, on this subject we subjoin the following reflections from the author previously quoted:

"When the deluge of the Persian arms rolled back to its Eastern bed, and the world was once more comparatively at rest, the continent of Greece rose visibly and majestically above the rest of the civilized earth. Afar in the Latian plains the infant state of Rome was silently and obscurely struggling into strength against the neighboring and petty states in which the old Etrurian civilization was rapidly pa.s.sing into decay. The genius of Gaul and Germany, yet unredeemed from barbarism, lay scarce known, save where colonized by Greeks, in the gloom of its woods and wastes.

"The ambition of Persia, still the great monarchy of the world, was permanently checked and crippled; the strength of generations had been wasted, and the immense extent of the empire only served yet more to sustain the general peace, from the exhaustion of its forces. The defeat of Xerxes paralyzed the East. Thus Greece was left secure, and at liberty to enjoy the tranquillity it had acquired, and to direct to the arts of peace the novel and amazing energies which had been prompted by the dangers and exalted by the victories of war."

On the very day of the battle of Plataea the remains of the Persian fleet which had escaped at Salamis, and which had been drawn up on sh.o.r.e at Myc'a-le, on the coast of Ionia, were burned by the Grecians; and Tigra'nes, the Persian commander of the land forces, and forty thousand of his men, were slain. This was the first signal blow struck by the Greek at the power of Persia on the continent. "Lingering at Sardis," says BULWER, "Xerxes beheld the scanty and exhausted remnants of his mighty force, the fugitives of the fatal days of Mycale and Plataea. The army over which he had wept in the zenith of his power had fulfilled the prediction of his tears; and the armed might of Media and Egypt, of Lydia and a.s.syria, was now no more!"

In one of the comedies of the Greek poet ARISTOPH'ANES, ent.i.tled The Wasps, which is designed princ.i.p.ally to satirize the pa.s.sion of the Athenians for the excitement of the law courts, there occurs the following episode, that has for its basis the activity of the Athenians at the battle of Plataea. We learn from this episode that the appellation, the "Attic Wasp," had its origin in the venomous persistence with which the Athenians, swarming like wasps, stung the Persians in their retreat, after the defeat of Mardonius. Occurring in a popular satirical comedy, it also shows how readily any allusion to the famous victories of Greece could be made to do service on popular occasions--an allusion that the dramatist knew would awaken in the popular heart great admiration for him and his work:

With torch and brand the Persian horde swept on from east to west, To storm the hives that we had stored, and smoke us from our nest; Then we laid our hand to spear and targe, and met him on his path; Shoulder to shoulder, close we stood, and bit our lips for wrath.

So fast and thick the arrows flew, that none might see the heaven, But the G.o.ds were on our side that day, and we bore them back at even.

High o'er our heads, an omen good, we saw the owlet wheel, And the Persian trousers in their backs felt the good Attic steel.

Still as they fled we followed close, a swarm of vengeful foes, And stung them where we chanced to light, on cheek, and lip, and nose.

So to this day, barbarians say, when whispered far or near, More than all else the ATTIC WASP is still a name of fear.

--Trans. by W. LUCAS COLLINS.

CHAPTER X.

THE RISE AND GROWTH OF THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE.

I. THE DISGRACE AND DEATH OF THEMISTOCLES.

Six years after the battle of Plataea the career of Xerxes was terminated by a.s.sa.s.sination, and his son, Artaxerxes Longim'a.n.u.s, succeeded to the throne. In the mean time Athens had been rebuilt and fortified by Themistocles, and the Piraeus (the port of Athens) enclosed within a wall as large in extent as that of Athens, but of greater height and thickness. But Themistocles, by his selfish and arbitrary use of power, provoked the enmity of a large body of his countrymen; and although he was acquitted of the charge of treasonable inclinations toward Persia, popular feeling soon after became so strong against him that he was condemned to exile by the same process of ostracism that he had directed against Aristides, and he retired to Argos (471 B.C.) Some time before this a Grecian force, composed of Athenians under Aristides, and Cimon the son of Miltiades, and Spartans under Pausanias the victor of Plataea, waged a successful war upon the Persian dependencies of the aegean, and the coasts of Asia Minor. The Ionian cities were aided in a successful revolt, and Cyprus and Byzantium--the latter now Constantinople--fell into the hands of the Grecians. Pausanias, who was at the head of the whole armament, now began to show signs of treasonable conduct, which was more fully unfolded by a communication that he addressed to the Persian court, seeking the daughter of Xerxes in marriage, and promising to bring Sparta and the whole of Greece under Persian dominion.

When news of the treason of Pausanias reached Sparta, he was immediately recalled, and, though no definite proof was at first furnished against him, his guilt was subsequently established, and he perished from starvation in the Temple of Minerva, whither he had fled for refuge, and where he was immured by the eph'ors.

The fate of Pausanias involved that of Themistocles. In searching for farther traces of the former's plot some correspondence was discovered that furnished sufficient evidence of the complicity of Themistocles in the crime, and he was immediately accused by the Spartans, who insisted upon his being punished. The Athenians sent amba.s.sadors to arrest him and bring him to Athens; but Themistocles fled from Argos, and finally sought refuge at the court of Persia. He died at Magne'sia, in Asia Minor, which had been appointed his place of residence by Artaxerxes, and a splendid monument was raised to his memory; but in the time of the Roman empire a tomb was pointed out by the sea-side, within the port of Piraeus, which was generally believed to contain his remains, and of which the comic poet PLATO thus wrote:

By the sea's margin, on the watery strand, Thy monument, Themistocles, shall stand.

By this directed to thy native sh.o.r.e, The merchant shall convey his freighted store; And when our fleets are summoned to the fight Athens shall conquer with thy tomb in sight.

--Trans. by c.u.mBERLAND.

Although "the genius of Themistocles did not secure him from the seductions of avarice and pride, which led him to sacrifice both his honor and his country for the tinsel of Eastern pomp,"

yet, as THIRLWALL says, "No Greek had then rendered services such as those of Themistocles to the common country; and no Athenian, except Solon, had conferred equal benefits on Athens.

He had first delivered her from the most imminent danger, and then raised her to the pre-eminence on which she now stood. He might claim her greatness; and even her being, as his work."

The following tribute to his memory is from the pen of TULLIUS GEM'INUS, a Latin poet:

Greece be thy monument; around her throw The broken trophies of the Persian fleet; Inscribe the G.o.ds that led the insulting foe, And mighty Xerxes, at the tablet's feet.

There lay Themistocles; to spread his fame A lasting column Salamis shall be; Raise not, weak man, to that immortal name The little records of mortality.

--Trans. by MERIVALE.

II. THE RISE AND FALL OF CIMON.

Foremost among the rivals of Themistocles in ability and influence, was Cimon, the son of Miltiades. In his youth he was inordinately fond of pleasure, and revealed none of those characteristics for which he subsequently became distinguished. But his friends encouraged him to follow in his father's footsteps, and Aristides soon discovered in him a capacity and disposition that he could use to advantage in his own antagonism to Themistocles. To Aristides, therefore, Cimon was largely indebted for his influence and success, as well as for his mild temper and gentle manners.

Reared by his care, of softer ray appears Cimon, sweet-souled; whose genius, rising strong, Shook off the load of young debauch; abroad The scourge of Persian pride, at home the friend Of every worth and every splendid art; Modest and simple in the pomp of wealth.