Megarians

“ In 445 a revulsion of feeling led the Megarians to massacre their Athenian garrison. The Athenians retaliated by placing an embargo upon Megarian trade throughout their empire (432) , and in the Peloponnesian War, which the Megarians had consequently striven to hasten on, reduced their neighbours to misery by blockade and devastations. ”

“ And after that the herald who was sent, by name Anthemocritus, died, and it was believed that the Megarians had contrived his death, then Charinus proposed a decree against them, that there should be an irreconcilable and implacable enmity thenceforward betwixt the two commonwealths; and that if any one of the Megarians should but set his foot in Attica, he should be put to death; and that the commanders, when they take the usual oath, should, over and above that, swear that they will twice every year make an inroad into the Megarian country ”

“ The Megarians at this time privately praying aid of the Athenians, Phocion, fearing lest the Boeotians should hear of it, and anticipate them, called an assembly at sunrise, and brought forward the petition of the Megarians, and immediately after the vote had been put, and carried in their favor, he sounded the trumpet, and led the Athenians straight from the assembly, to arm and put themselves in posture. ”

“ Solon took a farther argument against the Megarians from the dead bodies, which, he said, were not buried after their fashion, but according to the Athenian; for the Megarians turn the corpse to the east, the Athenians to the west. But Hereas the Megarian denies this, and affirms that they likewise turn the body to the west, and also that the Athenians have a separate tomb for everybody, but the Megarians put two or three into one. However, some of Apollo's oracles, where he calls Salamis Ionian, made much for Solon. ”

“ Isocrates praised in Megara a domestic prosperity finer than the lust for empire which had ruined Athens and Sparta.
The Megarians shared the Greek lot at Chæronea. 199The later fate of the city is summed up in the reflections of the Roman governor, Sulpicius, who, coming from Ægina, gazed at its ruins from his vessel’s prow and argued from them the brevity of human glory.
In antiquity travellers by land made their way from Megara to Corinth either over the difficult heights of Geraneia or close along the shore of the Saronic Gulf. ”

“ Under such hard conditions the Megarians found much difficulty in supplying even the primary wants of life. [598] But their case had now, within the last few months, become still more intolerable by an intestine commotion in the city, ending in the expulsion of a powerful body of exiles, who seized and held possession of Pegæ, the Megarian port in the gulf of Corinth. Probably imports from Pegæ had been their chief previous resource against the destruction which came on them from the side of Athens ”

“ On the other hand, the Megarians, utterly denying and disowning the murder of Anthemocritus, throw the whole matter upon Aspasia and Pericles, availing themselves of the famous verses in the Acharnians, To Megara some of our madcaps ran, And stole Simaetha thence, their courtesan. Which exploit the Megarians to outdo, Came to Aspasia's house, and took off two. The true occasion of the quarrel is not so easy to find out. But of inducing the refusal to annul the decree, all alike charge Pericles. ”

“ The only known incident, wherein Athens had been brought into collision with a member of the Spartan confederacy prior to the Korkyræan dispute, was the decree passed in regard to Megara,—prohibiting the Megarians, on pain of death, from all trade or intercourse as well with Athens as with all ports within the Athenian empire. This prohibition was grounded on the alleged fact, that the Megarians had harbored runaway slaves from Athens, and had appropriated and cultivated portions of land upon the border ”

“ A number of young men sailed with Pisistratus to Colias, and taking the dress of women, whom they there seized while sacrificing to Ceres, a spy was despatched to Salamis, to inform the Megarian guard that many of the principal Athenian matrons were at Colias, and might be easily captured. The Megarians were decoyed, despatched a body of men to the opposite shore, and beholding a group in women's attire dancing by the strand, landed confusedly to seize the prize. The pretended females drew forth their concealed weapons, and the Megarians, surprised and dismayed, were cut off to a man. ”

“ I think that the Megarians won this victory when Phorbas, who held a life office, was archon at Athens [ca. 950 BCE?] . At this time Athenian offices were not yet annual, nor had the Eleans begun to record the Olympiads.
6.19.14 The Argives are said to have helped the Megarians in the engagement with the Corinthians. The treasury at Olympia was made by the Megarians years after the battle, but it is to be supposed that they had the offerings from of old, seeing that they were made by the Lacedemonian Dontas, a pupil of Dipoenus and Scyllis. ”

“ Korsiai, Siphai (with harbour) , Eutretos, and Boiotians' Fortress. The voyage past Boiotia is less than half a day's sail.
39. Megarians. After the Boiotians are the Megarian people, and their cities are: Aigosthena, [100] Pegai, [101] Geraneia Fortress, and Aris. The voyage past the land of the Megarians is 100 stadia.
40. Corinth. After the Megarians is the city and sanctuary of Corinth, Lechaion, and Isthmos. [102] The Peloponnese begins at this point. The road over the isthmus from [this] sea to the sea near us [103] is 40 stadia. The whole coast is a gulf. ”

“ Yet it is in the highest degree probable that the Athenians were indebted for the earliest form of their comic poetry to the Megarians. The Megarian comedy is ridiculed by Ecphantides, one of the early comic poets of Athens, as rude and unpolished, which circumstance alone makes its higher antiquity probable.1633 Ecphantides, whom Aristophanes, Cratinus, and others, ridicule as rough and unpolished,1634 looks down in his turn on those who had introduced comedy from Megara, and claims the merit of first seasoning the uncouth Megarian productions with Attic salt. ”

“ There is a common saying about the Megarians which may rightly be applied to all who suffer from this passion: “They build as if they are to live forever; they live as if they are to die to-morrow.” We do the same, for we do not believe the Lord’s words. ”

“ The junction of the two formed the largest Athenian force that had ever yet been seen together: there were ten thousand citizen hoplites, independent of three thousand others who were engaged in the siege of Potidæa, and three thousand metic hoplites,—besides a large number of light troops. [247] Against so large a force the Megarians could of course make no head, and their territory was all laid waste, even to the city walls. ”

“ Warned away are all informers and all men of Phasis. [230] They are bringing me the pillar on which the treaty is inscribed [231] and I shall erect it in the centre of the market, well in sight of all.
A MEGARIAN. Hail! market of Athens, beloved of Megarians. Let Zeus, the patron of friendship, witness, I regretted you as a mother mourns her son. Come, poor little daughters of an unfortunate father, try to find something to eat; listen to me with the full heed of an empty belly. Which would you prefer? To be sold or to cry with hunger. ”

“ They, being three thousand in number, were encamped on the plain, where they were damaged by the horse charging and making inroads upon them on all hands. They sent, therefore, in haste to Pausanias, demanding relief, as not being able alone to sustain the great numbers of the barbarians. Pausanias, hearing this, and perceiving the tents of the Megarians already hid by the multitude of darts and arrows, and themselves driven together into a narrow space, was at a loss himself how to aid them with his battalion of heavy-armed Lacedæmonians. ”

“ This is their history according to the Megarians themselves. But the Boeotians declare that Megareus, son of Poseidon, who dwelt in Onchestus, came with an army of Boeotians to help Nisus wage the war against Minos; that falling in the battle he was buried on the spot, and the city was named Megara from him, having previously been called Nisa.
1.39.6 In the twelfth generation after Car the son of Phoroneus the Megarians say that Lelex arrived from Egypt and became king, and that in his reign the tribe Leleges received its name. ”

“ MEGARA 1.39.4 Next to Eleusis is the district called Megaris. This too belonged to Athens in ancient times, Pylas the king having left it to Pandion. My evidence is this; in the land is the grave of Pandion, and Nisus, while giving up the rule over the Athenians to Aegeus, the eldest of all the family, was himself made king of Megara and of the territory as far as Corinth. Even at the present day the port of the Megarians is called Nisaea after him. Subsequently in the reign of Codrus the Peloponnesians made an expedition against Athens. ”

“ The Dorians of Corinth kept those of Megara, for a time, in the same kind of subjection to which Ægina was reduced by Epidaurus; and the Megarian peasantry were compelled to solemnise the obsequies of every Bacchiad with marks of respect, such as were exacted from the subjects of Sparta on the death of the king. This yoke however was cast off at an early period; and Argos assisted the Megarians in recovering their independence. Henceforth it is probable Megara assumed a more decided superiority over the hamlets of her territory, which had once been her rivals ”

“ According to some, Procne became a swallow, Philomela a nightingale, and Tereus a hawk. (Hygin. Fab. 45.) According to the Megarian tradition, Tereus, being unable to overtake the women, killed himself. The Megarians showed the tomb of Tereus in their own country, and an annual sacrifice was offered to him. Procne and Philomela, moreover, were there believed to have escaped to Attica, and to have wept themselves to death. ”

“ The secret of this was their general extraordinary success, which made them confuse their strength with their hopes.
66The same summer the Megarians in the city, pressed by the hostilities of the Athenians, who invaded their country twice every year with all their forces, and harassed by the incursions of their own exiles at Pegae, who had been expelled in a revolution by the popular party, began to ask each other whether it would not be better to receive back their exiles, and free the town from one of its two scourges. ”

“ This lion had they say devoured several Megarians and among them the king’s son Euippus: whose elder brother Timalcus had been killed by Theseus still earlier, when he went with Castor and Pollux to the siege of Aphidna. Megareus therefore promised his daughter in marriage, and the succession to the kingdom, to whoever should kill the lion of Mount Cithæron. So Alcathous (the son of Pelops) attacked the beast and slew him, and, when he became king built [Pg 81] this temple, dedicating it to Huntress Artemis and Hunter Apollo. This at any rate is the local tradition. ”

“ Some men (I do not say the city, note particularly, that I do not say the city) , some wretches, lost in vices, bereft of honour, who were not even citizens of good stamp, but strangers, have accused the Megarians of introducing their produce fraudulently, and not a cucumber, a leveret, a sucking-pig, a clove of garlic, a lump of salt was seen without its being said, "Halloa! these come from Megara," and their being instantly confiscated. Thus far the evil was not serious, and we were the only sufferers. But now some young drunkards go to Megara and carry off the courtesan Simaetha ”

“ There was also a body of Megarians under their general Helixus, a Megarian, and another body of Boeotians, with their general Coeratadas.
16The Athenians, finding presently that they could effect nothing by force, worked upon some of the inhabitants to betray the place.
17Clearchus, meanwhile, never dreaming that any one would be capable of such an act, had crossed over to the opposite coast to visit Pharnabazus; he had left everything in perfect order, entrusting the government of the city to Coeratadas and Helixus. ”

“ Ἀλλ’ ἔστιν ἡμῖν Μεγαρική τις μηχανή.
ἀντὶ τοῦ, πονηρά· διεβάλλοντο
γὰρ ἐπὶ πονηρία οἱ Μεγαρεῖς.
(Suidas (Lexicon) on the phrase μεγαρικαὶ σφίγγες says: harlots are so called, and perhaps for the same reason debauched men are entitled σφίγκται; or else from a saying current in Megara to this effect:—But we have a certain Megarian trick,—that is a knavish one. For the Megarians were ill spoken of for their knavishness) .
235 Epistle to the Romans, ch. I. vv. 24-26, 27.
236 Athanasius, Oratio contra Gentes, ch. 26. in “Opera Omnia studio Monachorum Ord. St. Benedicti.” ”

“ The people of Megara therefore, disliking this habit, and remembering their old connexion with the Achaean league, were inclined once more to renew their political alliance with it.Antigonus Gonatas, ob. B.C. 239. For the Megarians had been members of the Achaean league since the time of Antigonus Gonatas; but upon Cleomenes blockading the Isthmus, finding themselves cut off from the Achaeans they joined the Boeotians, with the consent of the former.Cleomenic war B.C. 227-221. ”

“ A sanctuary of Artemis was made by Agamemnon when he came to persuade Calchas, who dwelt in Megara, to accompany him to Troy.
1.43.2 In the Prytaneion are buried, they say, Euippus the son of Megareus and Ischepolis the son of Alcathous. Near the Prytaneion is a rock. They name it Anaclethris (Recall) , because Demeter (if the story be credible) here too called her daughter back when she was wandering in search of her. Even in our day the Megarian women hold a performance that is a mimic representation of the legend.
1.43.3 In the city are graves of Megarians. ”