GREECE. (HISTORY.) 



527 



primes, among which the Olympic were the most 

 distinguished, the insLitution, or rather revival of 

 which, 776 B. C., furnished the Greeks with a chro- 

 nological era. (See Epoch.) From this time, Athens 

 and Sparta began to surpass the other states of 

 Greece in power and importance. At the time of 

 tiie Persian war, Greece had already made important 

 advances in civilization. Besides the art of poetry, 

 we find that philosophy began to be cultivated 600 

 B. C., and even earlier in Ionia and Lower Italy 

 than in Greece Proper. Statuary and painting were 

 in a flourishing condition. The important colonies 

 of Massilia (Marseilles), in Gaul, and Agrigentum, in 

 Sicily, were founded. Athens was continually ex- 

 tending her commerce, and established important 

 commercial posts in Thrace. In Asia Minor, the 

 Grecian colonies were brought under the dominion 

 of the Lyilian Croesus, and soon after under that 

 of Cyrus. Greece itself was threatened with a 

 similar fate by the Persian kings Darius and Xerxes. 

 Then the heroic spirit of the free Greeks showed 

 itself in its great brilliancy. Athens and Sparta 

 almost alone withstood the vast armies of the Per- 

 sian, and the battles of Marathon, Thermopylae, and 

 Plataca, as well as the sea fights at Artemisium, 

 Salamis, and Mycale, taught the Persians that the 

 Greeks were not to be subdued by them. Athens 

 now exceeded all the other states in splendour and 

 in power. The supremacy which Sparta had hitherto 

 maintained, devolved on this city, whose commander, 

 Cimon, compelled the Persians to acknowledge the 

 independence of Asia Minor. Athens was also the 

 centre of the arts and sciences. The Peloponnesian 

 war now broke out, Sparta being no longer able to 

 endure the overbearing pride of Athens. This war 

 devastated Greece, and enslaved Athene, until Thra- 

 sybulus again restored its freedom ; and, for a short 

 time, Sparta was compelled, in her turn, to bend 

 before the Theban heroes Epaminondas and Pelopi- 

 das. In spite of these disturbances, poets, philoso- 

 phers, artists, and statesmen, continued to arise, 

 commerce flourished, and manners and customs were 

 carried to the highest degree of refinement. But 

 that unhappy period had now arrived, when the 

 Greeks, ceasing to be free, ceased to advance in 

 civilization. A kingdom, formed by conquest, had 

 grown up on the north of Greece, the ruler of which, 

 Philip, united courage with cunning. The dissen- 

 sions which prevailed among the different states, 

 afforded him an opportunity to execute his ambitious 

 plans, and the battle of Chaeronea, 338 B. C., gave 

 Macedonia the command of all Greece. In vain did 

 the subjugated states hope to become free after his 

 death. The destruction of Thebes was sufficient to 

 subject all Greece to the young Alexander. This 

 prince, as generalissimo of the Greeks, gained the 

 most splendid victories over the Persians. An at- 

 tempt to liberate Greece, occasioned by a false 

 report of his death, was frustrated by Antipater. 

 The Lamian war, after the death of Alexander, was 

 equally unsuccessful. Greece was now little better 

 than a Macedonian province. Luxury had enervated 

 the aucient courage and energy of the nation. At 

 length, most of the states of Southern Greece, Sparta, 

 and ^Etolia excepted, concluded the Achaean league, 

 for the maintenance of their freedom against the 

 Macedonians. A dispute having arisen between this 

 league and Sparta, the latter applied to Macedonia 

 for help, and was victorious. But this friendship 

 was 1 soon fatal, for it involved Greece in the contest 

 between Philip and the Romans, who, at first, in- 

 deed, restored freedom to the Grecian states, while 

 they changed ^Etolia, and soon after Macedonia, into 

 Roman provinces ; but they afterwards began to ex- 

 cite dissensions in the Achaean league, interfered in 



the quarrels of the Greeks, and finally compelled 

 them to take up arms to maintain their freedom. So 

 unequal a contest could not long remain undecided : 

 the capture of Corinth, 146 B.C., placed the Greeks 

 in the power of the Romans. During the whole pe- 

 riod which elapsed between the battle of Chjeronea 

 and the destruction of Corinth by the Romans, the 

 arts and sciences nourished among the Greeks ; in- 

 deed, the golden age of the arts was in the time of 

 Alexander. The Grecian colonies were yet in a 

 more flourishing condition than the mother country ; 

 especially Alexandria, in Egypt, became the seat of 

 learning. As they, also, in process of time, fell un- 

 der the dominion of the Romans, they became, like 

 their mother country, the instructers of their con- 

 querors. In the time of Augustus, the Greeks lost 

 even the shadow of their former freedom, and ceased 

 to be an independent people, although their lan- 

 guage, manners, customs, learning, arts, and taste 

 spread over the whole Roman empire. The character 

 of the nation was now sunk so low, that the Romans 

 esteemed a Greek as the most worthless of creatures. 

 Asiatic luxury had wholly corrupted them ; their an- 

 cient love of freedom and independence was extin- 

 guished ; and a mean servility was substituted in its 

 place. At the beginning of the fourth century, the 

 nation scarcely showed a trace of the noble charac- 

 teristics of their fathers. The barbarians soon after 

 began their ruinous incursions into Greece. Besides 

 the well known works on the history of Greece, by 

 Mitford, Gillies, Barthelemy (Anacharsis), &c., we 

 would mention Clinton's Fasti Hellenici (Oxford, 

 1824), an important work on the political and literary 

 chronology of Greece, from the 55th to the 124th 

 Olympiad ; and Wachsmuth's Hellenische Alterthum 

 skunde (\ vol., Halle, 1826) ; also Heeren's Politics 

 of Ancient Greece (translated, Boston, 1824). 



The principal traits in the character of the ancient 

 Greeks, were simplicity and grandeur. The Greek 

 was his own instructer, and if he learned any thing 

 from others, he did it with freedom and independ- 

 ence. Nature was his great model, and in his native 

 land she displayed herself in all her charms. The 

 uncivilized Greek was manly and proud, active and 

 enterprising, violent both in his hate and in his love. 

 He esteemed and exercised hospitality towards stran- 

 gers and countrymen. These features of the Gre- 

 cian character had an important influence on the reli- 

 gion, politics, manners, and philosophy of the nation. 

 The gods of Greece were not, like those of Asia, sur- 

 rounded by a holy obscurity ; they were human in 

 their faults and virtues, but were placed far above 

 mortals. They kept up an intercourse with men ; 

 good and evil came from their hands ; all physical and 

 moral endowments were their gift. The moral sys- 

 tem of the earliest G reeks taught them to honour the 

 gods by an exact observance of customs ; to hold the 

 rights of hospitality sacred, and even to spare mur- 

 derers, if they fled to the sanctuaries of the gods for 

 refuge. Cunning and revenge were allowed to be 

 practised against enemies. No law enforced contin- 

 ence. The power of the father, of the husband, or 

 the brother, alone guarded the honour of the female 

 sex, who therefore lived in continual dependence. 

 The loss of virtue was severely punished, but the se- 

 ducer brought his gifts and offerings to the gods, as 

 if his conduct had been guiltless. The security of 

 domestic life rested entirely on the master of the fa- 

 mily. From these characteristic traits of the earliest 

 Greeks, originated, in the sequel, the peculiarities of 

 their religious notions, their love of freedom and sic- 

 tion, their taste for the beautiful and the grand, and 

 the simplicity of their manners. The religion of the 

 Greeks was ntt so much mingled with superstition as 

 that of the Romans ; thus, tor example, they were 



