The Life of Greece

by Will Durant

  The judges appear to have interrupted him at this point, and to have bidden him desist from what seemed to them insolence; but he continued in even haughtier vein.

  I would have you know that if you kill such a one as I am, you will injure yourselves more than you will injure me. . . . For if you kill me you will not easily find another like me, who, if I may use such a ludicrous figure of speech, am a sort of gadfly, given to the state by the God; and the state is like a great and noble steed who is tardy in his motions owing to his very size, and requires to be stirred into life. . . . And as you will not easily find another like me, I would advise you to spare me.41

  The sentence of guilty was pronounced upon him by the small majority of sixty; had his defense been more conciliatory it is likely that he would have been acquitted. He had the privilege of proposing an alternative penalty in place of death. At first he refused to make even this concession; but on the appeal of Plato and other friends, who underwrote his pledge, he offered to pay a fine of thirty minas ($3000). The second polling of the jury condemned him by eighty more votes than the first.42

  It still remained open to him to escape from the prison; Crito and other friends (if we may follow Plato) prepared the way with bribery,45 and probably Anytus had hoped for such a compromise. But Socrates remained himself to the last. He felt that he had but a few more years to live, and that “he relinquished only the most burdensome part of life, in which all feel their powers of intellect diminished.”46 Instead of accepting Crito’s proposal he examined it from an ethical point of view, discussed it dialectically, and played the game of logic to the end.47 His disciples visited him daily in his cell during the month between his trial and his execution, and he seems to have discoursed with them calmly until the final hour. Plato pictures him as fondling the hair and head of the young Phaedo, and saying, “Tomorrow, Phaedo, I suppose that these fair locks will be cut”—in mourning.48 Xanthippe came in tears, with their youngest child in her arms; he comforted her, and asked Crito to have her escorted home. “You die undeservedly,” said an ardent disciple; “Would you, then,” Socrates answered, “have me deserve death?”49

  After he was gone, says Diodorus,50 the Athenians regretted their treatment of him, and put his accusers to death. Suidas makes Meletus die by public stoning.51 Plutarch varies the tale: the accusers became so unpopular that no citizen would light their fires, or answer their questions, or bathe in the same water with them; so that they were at last driven in despair to hang themselves.52 Diogenes Laertius reports that Meletus was executed, Anytus exiled, and a bronze statue put up by Athens in memory of the philosopher.53 We do not know if these stories are true.*

  The Golden Age ended with the death of Socrates. Athens was exhausted in body and soul; only the degradation of character by prolonged war and desperate suffering could explain the ruthless treatment of Melos, the bitter sentence upon Mytilene, the execution of the Arginusae generals, and the sacrifice of Socrates on the altar of a dying faith. All the foundations of Athenian life were disordered: the soil of Attica had been devastated by the Spartan raids, and the slow-growing olive trees had been burned to the ground; the Athenian navy had been destroyed, and control of trade and the food supply had been lost; the state treasury was empty, and private fortunes had been taxed almost to extinction; two thirds of the citizen body had been killed. The damage done to Greece by the Persian invasions could not compare with the destruction of Greek life and property by the Peloponnesian War. After Salamis and Plataea Greece was left poor, but exalted with courage and pride; now Greece was poor again, and Athens had suffered a wound to her spirit which seemed too deep to be healed.

  Two things sustained her: the restoration of democracy under men of judgment and moderation, and the consciousness that during the last sixty years, even during the War, she had produced such art and literature as surpassed the like product of any other age in the memory of man. Anaxagoras had been exiled and Socrates had been put to death; but the stimulus that they had given to philosophy sufficed to make Athens henceforth, and despite herself, the center and summit of Greek thought. What before had been formless tentatives of speculation were now to mature into great systems that would agitate Europe for centuries to come; while the haphazard provision of higher education by wandering Sophists was to be replaced by the first universities in history—universities that would make Athens, as Thucydides had prematurely called her, “the school of Hellas.” Through the bloodshed and turmoil of conflict the traditions of art had not quite decayed; for many centuries yet the sculptors and architects of Greece were to carve and build for all the Mediterranean world. Out of the despair of her defeat Athens lifted herself with startling virility to new wealth, culture, and power; and the autumn of her life was bountiful.

  BOOK IV

  THE DECLINE AND FALL OF GREEK FREEDOM

  399-322 B.C.

  CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE FOR BOOK IV

  B.C.

  399-60:

  Agesilaus king at Sparta

  397:

  War between Syracuse and Carthage

  396:

  Aristippus of Cyrene and Antisthenes of Athens, philosophers

  395:

  Athens rebuilds the Long Walls

  394:

  Battles of Coronea and Cnidus

  ? 393:

  Plato’s Apology; Xenophon’s Memorabilia; Aristophanes’ Ecclesiazusae

  391-87:

  Dionysius subjugates south Italy

  391:

  Isocrates opens his school

  390:

  Evagoras Hellenizes Cyprus

  387:

  Peace of Antalcidas, or King’s Peace; Plato visits Archytas of Taras, mathematician, and Dionysius I

  386:

  Plato founds the Academy

  383:

  Spartans occupy Cadmeia at Thebes

  380:

  Isocrates’ Panegyricus

  379:

  Pelopidas and Melon liberate Thebes

  378-54:

  Second Athenian Empire

  375:

  Theaetetus, mathematician

  372:

  Diogenes of Sinope, philosopher

  371:

  Epaminondas victorious at Leuctra

  370:

  Diocles of Euboea, embryologist; Eudoxus of Cnidus, astronomer

  367-57:

  Dionysius II dictator at Syracuse; Dion plans reforms

  367:

  Plato visits Dionysius II

  362:

  Epaminondas wins and dies at Mantinea

  361:

  Plato’s third visit to Syracuse

  360:

  Praxiteles of Athens and Scopas of Paros, sculptors; Ephorus of Cyme and Theopompus of Chios, historians

  359:

  Philip II regent in Macedonia

  357-46:

  War between Athens and Macedonia

  357-46:

  Exile of Dionysius II

  356-46:

  Second Sacred War

  356:

  Birth of Alexander the Great; burning of second temple at Ephesus; Isocrates’ On the Peace

  355:

  Isocrates’ Areopagiticus

  B.C.

  354:

  Assassination of Dion

  353-49:

  The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus

  351:

  Demosthenes’ Philippic I

  349:

  Philip attacks Olynthus; Demosthenes’ Olynthiacs I and II

  348:

  Heracleides of Pontus, astronomer; Speusippus succeeds Plato as head of the Academy

  346:

  Demosthenes’ On the Peace; Isocrates’ Letter to Philip

  344:

  Timoleon rescues Syracuse; Demosthenes’ Philippic II

  343:

  Trial and acquittal of Aeschines

  342-38:

  Aristotle tutor of Alexander

  340:

  Timoleon defeats the Carthaginians

/>   338:

  Philip defeats Athenians at Chaeronea; death of Isocrates

  336:

  Assassination of Philip; accession of Alexander and Darius III

  335:

  Alexander burns down Thebes, and begins his Persian campaigns

  334:

  Aristotle opens the Lyceum; battle of the Granicus; choragic monument of Lysicrates

  333:

  Battle of Issus

  332:

  Siege and capture of Tyre; surrender of Jerusalem; foundation of Alexandria

  331:

  Battle of Gaugamela (Arbela); Alexander at Babylon and Susa

  330:

  Apelles of Sicyon, painter; Lysippus of Argos, sculptor; Aeschines’ Against Ctesiphon; Demosthenes’ On the Crown

  329-8:

  Alexander invades central Asia

  327:

  Deaths of Cleitus and Callisthenes

  327-5:

  Alexander in India

  325:

  Voyage of Nearchus

  324:

  Exile of Demosthenes

  323:

  Death of Alexander; Lamian War

  322:

  Deaths of Aristotle, Demosthenes, and Diogenes

  CHAPTER XIX

  Philip

  I. THE SPARTAN EMPIRE

  SPARTA now assumed for a spell the naval mastery of Greece, and offered to history another tragedy of success brought low by pride. Instead of the freedom which she had promised to the cities once subject to Athens, she levied upon them an annual tribute of a thousand talents ($6,000,000), and established in each of them an aristocratic rule controlled by a Lacedaemonian harmost, or governor, and supported by a Spartan garrison. These governments, responsible only to the distant ephors, practiced such corruption and tyranny that soon the new empire was hated more intensely than the old.

  In Sparta itself the influx of money and gifts from oppressed cities and obsequious oligarchs strengthened the internal forces that had long been leading to decay. By the fourth century the ruling caste had learned how to add private luxury to public simplicity, and even the ephors had ceased, except in outward show, to observe the Lycurgean discipline. Much of the land, by dowries and bequests, had fallen into the hands of women; and the wealth so accumulated gave to the Spartan ladies—free from the care of male children—an ease of life and morals hardly befitting their name.1 The repeated division of some estates had impoverished many families to a point where they could no longer contribute their quota to the public mess, and therefore lost the rights of citizenship; while the formation of large properties through intermarriage and legacies had created in the few remaining “Equals” a provocative concentration of wealth.* “Some Spartans,” Aristotle writes, “own domains of vast extent, the others have nearly nothing; all the land is in the hands of a few.”3 The disfranchised gentry, the excluded Perioeci, and the resentful Helots made a population too restless and hostile to permit the government to engage, on any large scale of space or time, in those external military operations which imperial rule required.

  Meanwhile civil war among the Persians was affecting the fortunes of Greece. In 401 the younger Cyrus rebelled against his brother Artaxerxes II, enlisted Sparta’s aid, and recruited an army from the thousands of Greek and other mercenaries left idle in Asia by the sudden termination of the Peloponnesian War. The two brothers met at Cunaxa, between the converging Tigris and Euphrates; Cyrus was defeated and slain, and all of his army was captured or destroyed except a contingent of twelve thousand Greeks whose quickness of mind and foot enabled them to escape into the interior of Babylonia. Hunted by the King’s forces, the Greeks chose, in their rough democratic way, three generals to lead them to safety. Among these was Xenophon, once a pupil of Socrates, now a young soldier of fortune, destined to be remembered above all by the Anabasis, or Ascent, in which he later described with engaging simplicity the long “Retreat of the Ten Thousand” up along the Tigris and over the hills of Kurdistan and Armenia to the Black Sea. It was one of the great adventures in human history. We are amazed at the inexhaustible courage of these Greeks, fighting their way on foot, day by day for five months, through two thousand miles of enemy country, across hot and foodless plains, and over perilous mountain passes covered with eight feet of snow, while armies and guerrilla bands attacked them in the rear and in front and on either flank, and hostile natives used every device to kill them, or mislead them, or bar their way. As we read this fascinating story, made so dull for us in youth by the compulsion to translate it, we perceive* that the most important weapon for an army is food, and that the skill of a commander lies as much in finding supplies as in organizing victory. More of these Greeks died from exposure and starvation than from battle, though the battles were as numerous as the days. When at last the 8600 survivors sighted the Euxine at Trapezus (Trebizond), their hearts overflowed.

  As soon as the vanguard got to the top of the mountains, a great cry went up. And when Xenophon and the rear guard heard it they imagined that other enemies were attacking in front—for enemies were following behind them. . . . They pushed ahead to lend aid, and in a moment they heard the soldiers shouting, “The sea! the sea!” and passing the word along. Then all the troops of the rear guard likewise broke into a run, and the pack animals began racing ahead. . . . And when all had reached the summit, then indeed they fell to embracing one another, and generals and captains as well, with tears in their eyes.

  For this was a Greek sea, and Trapezus a Greek city; they were safe now, and could rest without fear of death surprising them in the night. The news of their exploit resounded proudly through old Hellas, and encouraged Philip, two generations later, to believe that a well-trained Greek force could be relied upon to defeat a Persian army many times its size. Unwittingly Xenophon opened the way for Alexander.

  Perhaps this influence was already felt by Agesilaus, who in 399 had succeeded to the throne of Sparta. Persia might have been persuaded to overlook Sparta’s aid to Cyrus. But to the ablest of the Spartan kings a war with Persia seemed only an interesting adventure, and he set out with a small force to free all Greek Asia from Persian rule.* When Artaxerxes II learned that Agesilaus was easily defeating all Persian troops sent against him, he dispatched messengers with abundant gold to Athens and Thebes to bribe these cities into declaring war upon Sparta.6 The effort readily succeeded, and after nine years of peace the conflict between Athens and Sparta was renewed. Agesilaus was recalled from Asia to meet, and barely defeat, the combined forces of Athens and Thebes at Coronea; but in the same month the united fleets of Athens and Persia under Conon destroyed the Spartan navy near Cnidus, and put an end to Sparta’s brief domination of the seas. Athens rejoiced, and set to work energetically, with funds supplied by Persia, to rebuild her Long Walls. Sparta defended herself by sending an envoy, Antalcidas, to the Great King, offering to surrender the Greek cities of Asia to Persian rule if Persia would enforce among the mainland Greeks a peace that would protect Sparta. The Great King agreed, withdrew his financial support from Athens and Thebes, and compelled all parties to sign at Sardis (387) the “Peace of Antalcidas,” or the “King’s Peace.” Lemnos, Imbros, and Scyros were conceded to Athens, and the major Greek states were guaranteed autonomy; but all the Greek cities of Asia, along with Cyprus, were declared the property of the King. Athens signed under protest, knowing that this was the most disgraceful event in Greek history. For a generation all the fruits of Marathon were lost; the Greek states of the mainland remained free in name, but in effect the power of Persia had engulfed them. All Greece looked upon Sparta as a traitor, and waited eagerly for some nation to destroy her.

  II. EPAMINONDAS

  As if to strengthen this feeling, Sparta assumed the authority to interpret and enforce the King’s Peace among the Greek states. To weaken Thebes she insisted that the Boeotian Confederacy violated the autonomy clause of the treaty, and must be dissolved. With this excuse the Spartan army set up in many Boeotian cities oliga
rchic governments favorable to Sparta and in several cases upheld by Spartan garrisons. When Thebes protested, a Lacedaemonian force captured her citadel, the Cadmeia, and established an oligarchy subject to Spartan domination. The crisis aroused Thebes to unwonted heroism. Pelopidas and six companions assassinated the four “Laconizing” dictators of Thebes, and reasserted Theban liberty. The Confederacy was reorganized, and named Pelopidas its leader, or boeotarch. Pelopidas called to his aid his friend and lover Epaminondas, who trained and led the army that reduced Sparta to her ancient isolation.