John Malcolm Mitchell

“ Athens might fairly insist that the protection of the Aegean would become impossible if some of the chief islands were liable to be used as piratical strongholds, and further that it was only right that all should contribute in some way to the security which all enjoyed. The result was that, in the cases of Naxos and Thasos, for instance, the league’s resources were employed not against the Persians but against recalcitrant Greek islands, and that the Greek ideal of separate autonomy was outraged. ”

“ Thus the great attempt on the part of Athens to lead a harmonious league of free Greek states for the good of Hellas degenerated into an empire which proved intolerable to the autonomous states of Greece. Her failure was due partly to the commercial jealousy of Corinth working on the dull antipathy of Sparta, partly to the hatred of compromise and discipline which was fatally characteristic of Greece and especially of Ionian Greece, and partly also to the lack of tact and restraint shown by Athens and her representatives in her relations with the allies. ”

“ For Heraclitus the soul approaches most nearly to perfection when it is most akin to the fiery vapour out of which it was originally created, and as this is most so in death, “while we live our souls are dead in us, but when we die our souls are restored to life.” ”

“ On the other hand, of course, the system is open to the gravest abuse, and in countries like Persia, Morocco and India, the life of Moslem women and slaves is often far different from that of middle class women of European Turkey, where law is strict and culture advanced. The early age at which girls are secluded, the dulness of their surroundings, and the low moral standard which the system produces react unfavourably not only upon their moral and intellectual growth but also upon their capacity for motherhood and their general physique. ”

“ The Second League.—The conditions which led to the second Athenian or Delian Confederacy were fundamentally different, not only in virtue of the fact that the allies had learned from experience the dangers to which such a league was liable, but because the enemy was no longer an oriental power of whose future action there could be no certain anticipation, but Sparta, whose ambitious projects since the fall of Athens had shown that there could be no safety for the smaller states save in combination. ”

“ Real knowledge consists in comprehending this all-pervading harmony as embodied in the manifold of perception, and the senses are “bad-witnesses,” because they apprehend phenomena, not as its manifestation, but as “stiff and dead.” In like manner real virtue consists in the subordination of the individual to the laws of this harmony as the universal reason wherein alone true freedom is to be found. “The law of things is a law of Reason Universal (λόγος) , but most men live as though they had a wisdom of their own.” ”

“ To Aristides was mainly due the organization of the new league and the adjustment of the contributions of the various allies in ships or in money. His assessment, of the details of which we know nothing, was so fair that it remained popular long after the league of autonomous allies had become an Athenian empire. The general affairs of the league were managed by a synod which met periodically in the temple of Apollo and Artemis at Delos, the ancient centre sanctified by the common worship of the Ionians. In this synod the allies met on an equality under the presidency of Athens. ”

“ MNEMONICS (from Gr. μνᾶσθαι, remember; whence μνήμων, mindful; τὸ μνημονικόν, sc. τέχνημα, that which mechanically aids the memory) , the general name applied to devices for aiding the memory. Such devices are also described as memoria technica. The principle is to enable the mind to reproduce a relatively unfamiliar idea, and specially a series of dissociated ideas, by connecting it, or them, in some artificial whole, the parts of which are mutually suggestive. ”

“ The admission of the Thetes to the Ecclesia was an important step in the direction of democracy (for the powers which Solon gave to the Ecclesia, see Ecclesia) . But the greatest reform of Solon was undoubtedly the institution of the Heliaea (or courts of justice) . The jury were appointed by lot from all the citizens (including the Thetes) , and thus the same people elected the magistrates in the Ecclesia and subsequently tried them in the Heliaea. Hence Solon transferred the sovereign power from the areopagus and the magistrate to the citizens as a whole. ”

“ In time of war each had to provide two-thirds of its forces, and that state in whose territory the war was to take place had to equip its whole force.
The Athenian Empire is described elsewhere (Delian League, Athens) . Here it must suffice to point out that there was among the real and technical allies no true bond of interest, and that many of the states were in fact bound by close ties to members of the Peloponnesian confederacy (e.g. Potidaea to Corinth) Sparta could not only rely on voluntary co-operation but could undermine Athenian influence by posing as the champion of autonomy. ”

“ During these fourteen years the policy of Athens towards her maritime allies was, as we have seen, shortsighted and inconsistent. Alliances with various land powers, and an inability to understand the true relations which alone could unite the league, combined to alienate the allies, who could discover no reason for the expenditure of their contributions on protecting Sparta or Corinth against Thebes. ”

“ Denying any form of moral sense or conscience, he regards all the social virtues as evolved from the instinct for self-preservation, the give-and-take arrangements between the partners in a defensive and offensive alliance, and the feelings of pride and vanity artificially fed by politicians, as an antidote to dissension and chaos. Mandeville’s ironical paradoxes are interesting mainly as a criticism of the “amiable” idealism of Shaftesbury, and in comparison with the serious egoistic systems of Hobbes and Helvetius. ”

“ In fact, virtue (which he defined as “every performance by which man, contrary to the impulse of nature, should endeavour the benefit of others, or the conquest of his own passions, out of a rational ambition of being good”) is actually detrimental to the state in its commercial and intellectual progress, for it is the vices (i.e. the self-regarding actions of men) which alone, by means of inventions and the circulation of capital in connexion with luxurious living, stimulate society into action and progress. ”

“ Apollo, though interested in vegetation, is never regarded as inhabiting the lower world, his death is not celebrated in any ritual, his worship is joyous and triumphant, and finally the Amyclean Apollo is specifically the god of war and song. ”

“ Athens, as the chosen leader, and supported no doubt by the synod, enforced the contributions of ships and money according to the assessment. Gradually the allies began to weary of personal service and persuaded the synod to accept a money commutation. The Ionians were naturally averse from prolonged warfare, and in the prosperity which must have followed the final rout of the Persians and the freeing of the Aegean from the pirates (a very important feature in the league’s policy) a money contribution was only a trifling burden. ”

“ If a slave woman bears a child she is often set free and then the marriage ceremony is gone through.
The harem system is, of course, wholly inconsistent with any high ideal of womanhood. Certain misapprehensions, however, should be noticed. The depravity of the system and the vapid idleness of harem life are much exaggerated by observers whose sympathies are wholly against the system. In point of fact much depends on the individuals. In many households there exists a very high degree of mutual consideration and the standard of conduct is by no means degraded. ”

“ The Athenian contingent which was sent to aid Pausanias in the task of driving the Persians finally out of the Thraceward towns was under the command of the Athenians, Aristides and Cimon, men of tact and probity. It is not, therefore, surprising that when Pausanias was recalled to Sparta on the charge of treasonable overtures to the Persians, the Ionian allies appealed to the Athenians on the grounds of kinship and urgent necessity, and that when Sparta sent out Dorcis to supersede Pausanias he found Aristides in unquestioned command of the allied fleet. ”

“ In Attica itself Athens lost Oenoe and Oropus, and by the end of 411 only one quarter of the empire remained. In the meanwhile Tissaphernes began to play a double game with the object of wasting the strength of the combatants. Moreover Alcibiades lost the confidence of the Spartans and passed over to Tissaphernes, at whose disposal he placed his great powers of diplomacy, at the same time scheming for his restoration to Athens. He opened negotiations with the Athenian leaders in Samos and urged them to upset the democracy and establish a philo-Persian oligarchy. ”

“ Accordingly, when he denies the reality of Being, and declares Becoming, or eternal flux and change, to be the sole actuality, Heraclitus must be understood to enunciate not only the unreality of the abstract notion of being, except as the correlative of that of not-being, but also the physical doctrine that all phenomena are in a state of continuous transition from non-existence to existence, and vice versa, without either distinguishing these propositions or qualifying them by any reference to the relation of thought to experience. “Every thing is and is not” ”

“ Gradually individual cities which had formed part of the Athenian empire returned to their alliance with Athens, until the Spartans had lost Rhodes, Cos, Nisyrus, Teos, Chios, Mytilene, Ephesus, Erythrae, Lemnos, Imbros, Scyros, Eretria, Melos, Cythera, Carpathus and Delos. Sparta had only Sestos and Abydos of all that she had won by the battle of Aegospotami. At the same time no systematic constructive attempt at a renewal of empire can as yet be detected. Athenian relations were with individual states only, and the terms of alliance were various. ”

“ The very narrative even of Thucydides himself shows that the “war” was not a connected whole. It may be divided into three main periods— (1) from 431 to 421 (Lysias calls it the “Archidamian” War) , when the Peace of Nicias, not merely formally, but actually produced a cessation of hostilities; (2) from 421 till the intervention of Sparta in the Sicilian War; during these years there was no “Peloponnesian War,” and there were several years in which there was in reality no fighting at all: the Sicilian expedition was in fact a side issue ”

“ From the moment when a woman, free or slave, enters into any kind of wifely relation with a man, she has a legally enforceable right against him both for her own and for her children’s maintenance. She has absolute control over her personal property whether in money, slaves or goods ”

“ Since the middle of the 19th century familiarity with European customs and the direct influence of European administrators has brought about a certain change in the attitude of Orientals to the harem system. This movement is, however, only in its infancy, and the impression is still strong that the time is not ripe for reform. The Oriental women are in general so accustomed to their condition that few have any inclination to change it, while men as a rule are emphatically opposed to any alteration of the system. ”