Aetolians

“ It was well known to them all, that in the several states the principal people, particularly those of the best characters, were disposed to maintain the Roman alliance, and well pleased with the present state of affairs; but that the populace, and especially such as were not content with their position, wished for a general revolution. The Aetolians, at one day's sitting, formed a scheme, the very conception of which argued not only boldness, but impudence,--that of making themselves masters of Demetrias, Chalcis, and Lacedaemon. ”

“ The nation of the Aetolians shall uphold sincerely and honestly the majesty and dominion of the Roman people; they shall not suffer to pass through their territories or in any way assist any army which may be led against the friends and allies of Rome; they shall count the enemies of Rome as their enemies and bear arms against them and wage war against them equally with Rome ”

“ The Aetolians had for long been dissatisfied with peace and with an outlay limited to their own resources, as they had been accustomed to live on their neighbours, and required abundance of funds, owing to that natural covetousness, enslaved by which they always lead a life of greed and aggression, like beasts of prey, with no ties of friendship but regarding everyone as an enemy. ”

“ The Curetes and the Aetolians were fighting and killing one another round Calydon—the Aetolians defending the city and the Curetes trying to destroy it. For Diana of the golden throne was angry and did them hurt because Oeneus had not offered her his harvest first-fruits. ”

“ As soon as ever the season of the year made navigation safe he should fill the whole of Greece with arms and men and horses and encircle its coasts with his fleets; he would shrink from no toil or danger till he had delivered Greece from the yoke of Roman dominion and made Aetolia her foremost State. Supplies of every description would accompany his armies from Asia; for the time being it must be the care of the Aetolians to furnish his troops with an abundant supply of corn and other provisions at a reasonable price. ”

“ This was just the case with the Aetolians. As long as they were left to themselves, no people in Greece were more loyal to you or more staunch in supporting your active measures. But when Thoas and Dicaearchus brought a storm from Asia, and Mnestas and Damocritus from Europe, and, disturbing the calm of the Aetolian masses, compelled 289 them to become reckless of what they said or did,—then indeed their good disposition gave way to bad, and while intending to do mischief to you they really inflicted damage upon themselves. ”

“ This was the reward which the allies of the Aetolians at that time usually got: not only to be deserted at the hour of utmost need in the most barefaced way, but, by being plundered as well as betrayed, to suffer at the hands of their allies exactly what they had a right to expect from a victorious enemy. But the people of Typaneae surrendered their city to Philip; as also did the inhabitants of Hypana. ”

“ In 191 they supported Antiochus badly, and by their slackness in the defence of Thermopylae made his position in Greece untenable. Having thus isolated themselves the Aetolians stood at bay behind their walls against the Romans, who refused all compromises, and, after the general surrender in 189, restricted the league to Aetolia proper and assumed control over its foreign relations. In 167 the country suffered severely from the intrigues of a philo-Roman party, which caused a series of judicial murders and the deportation of many patriots to Italy. ”

“ Were we so inclined, many and mighty are our prohibitions; first and chiefly, our temples burnt and overthrown, urging us not to alliance, but to revenge. Next, the whole race of Greece has one consanguinity and one tongue, and common are its manners, its altars, and its gods base indeed, if Athenians were of these the betrayers. Lastly, learn now, if ye knew it not before, that, while one Athenian shall survive, Athens allies herself not with Xerxes. ”

“ Athens once more became, for a short time, the chief centre of European culture. Herodes Atticus, that remarkable figure who traced his descent to the very beginnings of Athenian history and the semi-mythical Aeacidae of Aegina, and who was consul of Rome under Antoninus Pius, had taken up his permanent residence in his native town, and devoted his vast wealth to the architectural embellishment of Athens, and to a munificent patronage of letters. ”

“ Your eyes rest on modern Athens all built in white stone, and extensive and handsome in a setting of mountains and sea, but the heart refuses to travel with the eyes. The heart remains in the ancient city, and there, somehow, is perfect happiness, and it is a place in which to abide.
Not without some sacred thought does one place one's feet upon the bare rock where walked the bright spirits of ancient Athens. The morning sun of Europe, the dawning vision of all that we Europeans could be or mean, dawns again in the soul. ”

“ While Sparta, as we have seen, remained content with the wisdom indigenous to her soil, scanty and imperfect as it was, Athens converted herself into one vast mart, whither every man who had anything new to communicate hastened eagerly, and found the sure reward of his ingenuity. Philosophers, sophists, geometricians, astronomers, artists, musicians, actors, from all parts of Greece and her most distant colonies, flocked to Athens to obtain from its quick-sighted, versatile, impartial, and most generous people that approbation which in the ancient world constituted fame. ”

“ And they took care to preserve the same number of men and women through all time, being so many as were required for warlike purposes, then as now—that is to say, about twenty thousand. Such were the ancient Athenians, and after this manner they righteously administered their own land and the rest of Hellas; they were renowned all over Europe and Asia for the beauty of their persons and for the many virtues of their souls, and of all men who lived in those days they were the most illustrious. ”

“ The Athenian community, through its political eminence, its intellectual character, so original and diversified, its culture,—such that almost every citizen was qualified for civil office,—has no parallel in history. It is the elevation, not of a select class of the citizens, but of the whole society, which gives to Athens its unique distinction. Public spirit and enterprise, which made her navy dominant in the Aegean and over the sea-coast of Asia Minor, went hand in hand with delight in eloquence and in the creations of genius. ”

“ And this, the Athens of poetry and art, is but another aspect of the Athens of political history. The same individuality, the same free and passionate energy that worked in the hearts of her sculptors and her poets, moulded also and inspired her city life. In contradistinction to the stern and rigid discipline of Sparta, the Athenian citizen displayed the resource, the versatility and the zeal that only freedom and self- reliance can teach. ”

“ With the Athenians philosophy was not a thing apart from the occupations of life and the events of history—it was not the monopoly of a few studious minds, but was cultivated as a fashion by the young and the well-born, the statesman, the poet, the man of pleasure, the votary of ambition 250. It was inseparably interwoven with their manners, their pursuits, their glory, their decay. The history of Athens includes in itself the history of the human mind. ”

“ LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 283 Athenians were not cruel and sanguinary by nature ; but a reckless severity, when there was a question of maintaining principles which they thought necessary to their existence, was implanted deeply in their character ; and circumstances too often impelled them to employ it against their allies. The Athenian policy of compelling so many cities to contribute their wealth in order to make Athens the focus of art and cultivation, was indeed accompanied with pride and selfish patriotism. ”

“ This is the gift of Athens to man. Her freedom and her power have been annihilated for more than twenty centuries; her people have degenerated into timid slaves; [Footnote: But this is not the character of the Athenians of the present day.] her language into a barbarous jargon; her temples have been given up to the successive depredations of Romans, Turks, and Scotchmen; but her intellectual empire is imperishable. And, when those who have rivaled her greatness shall have shared her fate; when civilization and knowledge shall have fixed their abode in distant continents ”

“ But next—this being the most convincing argument to an Aetolian—he pictured to him the great booty that they would get from Messenia, the country being without warning of invasion and being the only one in Greece that the Cleomenic war had spared. Finally he dwelt on the popularity they themselves would gain in Aetolia. ”

“ But that unruly Athens, where fools decided the gravest questions of polity and right and wrong, where it was not safe to be just, and where property, which you had garnered up by the thrift and industry of to-day, might be wrung from you by the caprices of the mob to-morrow,—that very Athens probably secured the greatest human happiness and nobleness of its era, invented art, and sounded for us the depths of philosophy: God lent to it the noblest intellects, and it flashes to-day the torch that gilds yet the mountain-peaks of civilization. ”

“ The Athenians were a totally different people. The leading classes in their commonwealth were cultivated, intellectual, and refined. The city of Athens was renowned for the splendor of its architecture, its temples, its citadels, its statues, and its various public institutions, which in subsequent times made it the great intellectual center of Europe. ”

“ Yet Athens stood for the whole of the civilised world as a token of might, wealth, and culture, united in a city of limited dimensions, situated in the midst of natural surroundings not wholly kindly for the development of tillage. The Athenians, descendants of tribes of the North, and of the old race of Pelasgians, were a vigorous, adventurous, and highly intelligent race when western Europe was inhabited by rude primitive tribes. Long before the introduction of Christianity in the East, Athens was a beacon-light of religious and ethical culture. ”

“ We must now return to Athens for awhile, and with amazement behold the people there when news of the affair of Notion reached them, and see a piteous spectacle,—one of the most piteous that is recorded in the pages of history,—an exhibition of the inconstancy, the childish instability, of this great people, for the sake of whom their greatest citizen had refused a crown. ”

“ In justice to the Athenians it must be said that Romans are not always specialists upon the Forum, nor Londoners upon the Tower. She found, however, a local doctor to conduct her round the town: he told her that he belonged to the family of Perikles. Those of us who have travelled in Greece have been introduced to other descendants of the great Athenian statesman. The Swedish lady liked Athens. “The town,” she wrote, “is better than any of the others. There are some very pretty houses, [411] Greek as well as Turkish.” ”

“ History.—The ideals of Athens—educational, political, and moral—were in direct contrast to those of Sparta. At Athens, love of liberty, love of knowledge, and love of beauty went hand in hand. Though the body was not neglected, as is proved by the beautiful types of manhood preserved for us in Athenian art, the Athenians believed that the truest beauty was to be reached only by the development of the mind. ”

“ In the solemn procession all classes of Athenians were represented: noble maidens, bearing baskets with offerings for the sacrifice; youths with offerings, and youths on horseback; chariots; grave elders and priests; and cattle for the sacrifice. Aliens, too, were there, for it was not only Athens that was symbolized, but the Athenian Empire; symbol of what Athens hoped would be a united Greece. It is very difficult to distinguish between Athenian patriotism and religion. To the Athenian, the city was Athena, and Athena the city, and the Parthenon was the crown of both. ”

“ The other great Italic philosophers just named, living, as we have seen, in the previous century, can scarcely have thought of Athens as a centre of Greek thought. Indeed, the very fact that these men lived in Italy made that peninsula, rather than the mother-land of Greece, the centre of Hellenic influence. ”

“ And so, in spite of her subordinate position in the background, the Athenian woman was of real influence in Athens. She reigned supreme in the household, and as her sons grew up, they recognized in her those qualities which every Greek and especially the Athenian, was taught to value so highly: that quiet courage which by its very steadfastness overcomes all the little anxieties and annoyances of daily life; and that self-control and self-mastery which, putting self in the background, sets free the individual for service to others. ”

“ The history of Athens includes in itself the history of the human mind. Science and art—erudition and genius—all conspired—no less than the trophies of Miltiades, the ambition of Alcibiades—the jealousy of Sparta—to the causes of the rise and fall of Athens. ”

“ The most simple explanation is, that the Athenian of those days saw magnificent possibilities of fame and power before him. It was possible, even probable, that Athens might become the queen city of the western world, whose commands would be obeyed from Sicily to the shores of the Euxine. In that case the men who had made Athens would have a harvest of immortal glory, and if they lived to see their work done, would be the most enviable of men, rewarded by praise, wealth, and power. ”