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 Another Random Document on
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of the conquerors finally approached her borders. But Attica was far
too small and unproductive to retain the mass of fugitives as
permanent settlers. So the movement was finally turned towards the
islands of the Ægean and the coast of Asia Minor. According to
tradition there had already been an Archæan (or Æolian) migration
to Lesbos and Tenedos, from whence the Mysian coast and Troas
were later colonised.
The most important Ionian colonies in the east were in the
Cyclades, at Miletus, and at Ephesus. As their power continued to
grow, the Ionians gradually Hellenised a broad strip of coast and in
the river valleys pushed out a considerable distance to the eastward.
The Dorians also followed the movement of the other Greeks to
the islands and to Asia. Their most important occupations were
Crete, Rhodes, and a small portion of the southern coast of Caria,
including the cities of Cnidus and Halicarnassus.
By the first half of the eighth century b.c., the Greek world had
acquired the aspect which it retained for several centuries. The
nation had greatly increased its territory by colonisation. But the
district now called Thessaly was in possession of a race that showed
little capacity to develop beyond a vigorous and pleasure-loving
feudalism; and the Greeks of Epirus and the valley of the Achelous
had been for several centuries shut out from the evolution into
Hellenism. So apart from the newly risen power of the Bœotians, the
future of Greece rested upon the two races that had been but little
named in the Achæan period. The Dorians had become a great
people. Argos had at first been the leading power of the
Peloponnesus, both in religion and in politics. The Doric canton in
the valley of the Upper Eurotas had made but slow and difficult
progress, until, at the close of the ninth and beginning of the eighth
century, that remarkable military and political consolidation was
completed which is connected with the name of Lycurgus. This was
the starting-point of a growth of Spartan power in consequence of
which before the end of the eighth century the balance of Doric
power was to pass from Argos to the south of the Peloponnesus.
 Among the Ionians the Asiatic branch long remained the more
important. The Ionian Greeks of the Ægean and of the Lydio-Carian
coast, through their direct contact with the Orient, introduced to the
Greek world new elements of culture of a varied character. Of a
friendly and adaptable nature, they were specially fitted to be the
traders and mariners of Greek nationality. Politically they became
pre-eminently the democratic element of the nation, although there
were powerful aristocratic groups among them. But with them the
tendency appears stronger than among the other Greeks to allow full
scope to personality, individual right, individual liberty, and individual
activity beside, and even in opposition to the common interest.
The Asiatic Achæans appear in the historical period only under the
name of Æolians. This name also came to be applied to those
members of the Greek nation in Europe that could not be counted
among either Dorians or Ionians.
The common name borne by the Greeks after the completion of
the migrations is that of Hellenes. All the members of the various
branches exhibit the Hellenic character, though only a few
communities developed it in so ideal a form as the Athenians at the
height of their historical greatness. A beautiful heritage of all
Hellenes was their appreciation and enjoyment of art—of poetry and
music as well as the plastic arts. A warm feeling not only for the
beautiful, but for the ideal and the noble,—among the best elements
also for right and harmoniously developed life,—and a fine taste in
art and in ethical perception have never been denied the Greeks.
They were, moreover, at all periods characterised by a quick
intellectual receptivity and an incomparable union of glowing fancy,
brilliant intelligence, and sharp understanding. But mighty passion
was coupled with all this. Party spirit and furious party hatred ran
through all Greek history. The proud Greek self-assertion often
degenerates into boundless presumption. Cruelty in war, even
towards Greeks themselves, cunning and treachery, harsh self-
interest and reckless greed are traits that mar the brilliant figure of
Hellenism long before the Roman and Byzantine times.b
 ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY OF ATHENS

In that part of earth termed by the Greeks Hellas, and by the

Romans Græcia, a small tract of land known by the name of Attica
extends into the Ægean Sea—the southeast peninsula of Greece. In
its greatest length it is about sixty, in its greatest breadth about
twenty-four, geographical miles. In shape it is a rude triangle,—on
two sides flows the sea—on the third, the mountain range of Parnes
and Cithæron, divides the Attic from the Bœotian territory. It is
intersected by frequent but not lofty hills, and compared with the
rest of Greece, its soil, though propitious to the growth of the olive,
is not fertile or abundant. In spite of painful and elaborate culture,
the traces of which are yet visible, it never produced a sufficiency of
corn to supply its population; and this, the comparative sterility of
the land, may be ranked among the causes which conduced to the
greatness of the people. The principal mountains of Attica are, the
Cape of Sunium, Hymettus renowned for its honey, and Pentelicus
for its marble; the principal streams which water the valleys are the
capricious and uncertain rivulets of Cephisus and Ilissus—streams
breaking into lesser brooks, deliciously pure and clear. The air is
serene, the climate healthful, the seasons temperate. Along the hills
yet breathe the wild thyme and the odorous plants which,
everywhere prodigal in Greece, are more especially fragrant in that
lucid sky—and still the atmosphere colours with peculiar and various
tints the marble of the existent temples and the face of the
mountain landscapes.
Even so early as the traditional appearance of Cecrops amongst
the savages of Attica, the Pelasgians in Arcadia had probably
advanced from the pastoral to the civil life; and this, indeed, is the
date assigned by Pausanias to the foundation of that ancestral
Lycosura, in whose rude remains (by the living fountain and the
waving oaks of the modern Diaphorte) the antiquary yet traces the
fortifications of “the first city which the sun beheld.” It is in their
buildings that the Pelasgi have left the most indisputable record of
their name. Their handwriting is yet upon their walls! A restless and
various people—overrunning the whole of Greece, found northward
in Dacia, Illyria, and the country of the Getæ, colonising the coasts
of Ionia, and long the master-race of the fairest lands of Italy—they
have passed away amidst the revolutions of the elder earth, their
ancestry and their descendants alike unknown.
The proofs upon which rest the reputed arrival of Egyptian
colonisers, under Cecrops, in Attica, have been shown to be slender,
the authorities for the assertion to be comparatively modern, the
arguments against the probability of such an immigration in such an
age, to be at least plausible and important. The traditions speak of
them with gratitude as civilisers, not with hatred as conquerors.
Assisting to civilise the Greeks, they then became Greeks; their
posterity merged and lost amidst the native population.
Perhaps in all countries, the first step to social improvement is in
the institution of marriage, and the second is the formation of cities.
As Menes in Egypt, as Fohi in China, so Cecrops at Athens is said
first to have reduced into sacred limits the irregular intercourse of
the sexes, and reclaimed his barbarous subjects from a wandering
and unprovidential life, subsisting on the spontaneous produce of no
abundant soil. High above the plain, and fronting the sea, which,
about three miles distant on that side, sweeps into a bay peculiarly
adapted for the maritime enterprises of an earlier age, we still
behold a cragged and nearly perpendicular rock. In length its
superficies is about eight hundred, in breadth about four hundred,
feet. Below, on either side, flow the immortal streams of the Ilissus
and Cephisus. From its summit you may survey here the mountains
of Hymettus, Pentelicus, and, far away, “the silver bearing Laurium”;
below, the wide plain of Attica, broken by rocky hills—there, the
islands of Salamis and Ægina, with the opposite shores of Argolis,
rising above the waters of the Saronic Bay. On this rock the
supposed Egyptian is said to have built a fortress, and founded a
city; the fortress was in later times styled the Acropolis, and the
place itself, when the buildings of Athens spread far and wide
beneath its base, was still designated πόλις, or the City. By degrees
we are told that he extended, from this impregnable castle and its
adjacent plain, the limit of his realm, until it included the whole of
Attica, and perhaps Bœotia. It is also related that he established
eleven other towns or hamlets, and divided his people into twelve
tribes, to each of which one of the towns was apportioned—a
fortress against foreign invasion, and a court of justice in civil
disputes.
If we may trust to the glimmering light which, resting for a
moment, uncertain and confused, upon the reign of Cecrops, is
swallowed up in all the darkness of fable during those of his reputed
successors, it is to this apocryphal personage that we must refer the
elements both of agriculture and law. He is said to have instructed
the Athenians to till the land, and to watch the produce of the
seasons; to have imported from Egypt the olive tree, for which the
Attic soil was afterwards so celebrated, and even to have navigated
to Sicily and to Africa for supplies of corn. That such advances, from
a primitive and savage state, were not made in a single generation,
is sufficiently clear. With more probability, Cecrops is reputed to have
imposed upon the ignorance of his subjects and the license of his
followers, the curb of impartial law, and to have founded a tribunal
of justice (doubtless the sole one for all disputes), in which after-
times imagined to trace the origin of the solemn Areopagus.c

KING ÆGEUS

The fortress, which Cecrops made his residence, was from his own
name called Cecropia, and was peculiarly recommended to the
patronage of the Egyptian goddess whom the Greeks worshipped by
the name of Athene, and the Latins of Minerva. Many, induced by
the neighbourhood of the port, and expecting security both from the
fortress and from its tutelary deity, erected their habitations around
the foot of the rock; and thus arose early a considerable town,
which, from the name of the goddess, was called Athenai, or, as we
after the French have corrupted it, Athens.
 This account of the rise of Athens, and of the origin of its
government, though possibly a village and even a fortress may have
existed there before Cecrops, is supported by a more general
concurrence of traditional testimony, and more complete consonancy
to the rest of history, than is often found for that remote age. The
subsequent Attic annals are far less satisfactory. Strabo declines the
endeavour to reconcile their inconsistencies; and Plutarch gives a
strong picture of the uncertainties and voids which occurred to him
in attempting to form a history from them. “As geographers,” he
says, “in the outer parts of their maps distinguish those countries
which lie beyond their knowledge with such remarks as these, All
here is dry and desert sand, or marsh darkened with perpetual fog,
or Scythian cold, or frozen sea; so of the earliest history we may say,
All here is monstrous and tragical land, occupied only by poets and
fabulists.” If such apology was reckoned necessary by Plutarch for
such an account as could in his time be collected of the life of
Theseus, none can now be wanting for omitting all disquisition
concerning the four or seven kings, for even their number is not
ascertained, who are said to have governed Attica from Cecrops to
Ægeus, father of that hero. The name of Amphictyon, indeed, whose
name is in the list, excites a reasonable curiosity: but as it is not in
his government of Athens that he is particularly an object of history,
farther mention of him may best be reserved for future opportunity.
Various, uncertain, and imperfect, then, as the accounts were
which passed to posterity concerning the early Attic princes, yet the
assurance of Thucydides may deserve respect, that Attica was the
province of Greece in which population first became settled, and
where the earliest progress was made toward civilisation. Being
nearly peninsular, it lay out of the road of emigrants and wandering
freebooters by land; and its rocky soil, supporting few cattle,
afforded small temptation to either. The produce of tillage was of
less easy removal; and the gains of commerce were secured within
fortifications. Attica therefore grew populous, not only through the
safety which the natives thus enjoyed, but by a confluence of
strangers from other parts of Greece; for when either foreign
invasion or intestine broil occasioned anywhere the necessity of
emigration, Athens was the resort in highest estimation not only as a
place of the most permanent security, but also as strangers of
character, able by their wealth or their ingenuity to support
themselves and benefit the community, were easily admitted to the
privilege of citizens.
But, as population increased, the simple forms of government and
jurisprudence established by Cecrops were no longer equal to their
purpose. Civil wars arose; the country was invaded by sea:
Erechtheus, called by later authors Erichthonius, and by the poets
Son of the Earth, acquired the sovereignty, bringing, according to
some not improbable reports, a second colony from Egypt.[9]
Eumolpus, with a body of Thracians, about the same time
established himself in Eleusis. When, a generation or two later,
Ægeus, contemporary with Minos, succeeded his father Pandion in
the throne, the country seems to have been well peopled, but the
government ill constituted and weak. Concerning this prince,
however, and his immediate successor, tradition is more ample; and
though abundantly mixed with fable, yet in many instances
apparently more authentic than concerning any other persons of
their remote age. Plutarch has thought a history of Theseus, son of
Ægeus, not unfit to hold a place among his parallel lives of the great
men of Greece and Rome; and his account appears warranted in
many points by strong corresponding testimony from other ancient
authors of various ages. The period also is so important in the
annals of Attica, and the reports remaining altogether go so far to
illustrate the manners and circumstances of the times, that it may be
proper to allow them some scope in narration.
Ægeus, king of Athens, though an able and spirited prince, yet, in
the divided and disorderly state of his country, with difficulty
maintained his situation. When past the prime of life he had the
misfortune to remain childless, though twice married; and a faction
headed by his presumptive heirs, the numerous sons of Pallas his
younger brother, gave him unceasing disturbance. Thus urged, he
went to Delphi to implore information from the oracle how the
blessing of children might be obtained. Receiving an answer which,
like most of the oracular responses, was unintelligible, his next
concern was to find some person capable of explaining to him the
will of the deity thus mysteriously declared. Among the many
establishments which Pelops had procured for his family throughout
Peloponnesus was the small town and territory of Trœzen on the
coast opposite to Athens, which he placed under the government of
his son Pittheus. Ægeus applied to that prince; who was not only in
his own age eminent for wisdom, but of reputation remaining even
in the most flourishing period of Grecian philosophy; yet so little was
he superior to the ridiculous, and often detestable superstition of his
time that, in consequence of some fancied meaning in the oracle,
which even the superstitious Plutarch confesses himself unable to
comprehend, he introduced his own daughter Æthra to an illicit
commerce with Ægeus. Perhaps it may be allowed to conjecture that
the commerce was unknown to the Trœzenian prince till the
consequence became evident, and that the interpretation of the
oracle was an ensuing resource to obviate disgrace.
The affairs of Attica being in great confusion required the return of
Ægeus. His departure from Trœzen is marked by an action which, to
persons accustomed to consider modern manners only, may appear
unfit to be related but in a fable, yet is so consonant to the manners
of the times, and so characteristical of them, as to demand the
notice of the historian. He led Æthra to a sequestered spot where
was a small cavity in a rock. Depositing there a hunting-knife and a
pair of sandals, he covered them with a marble fragment of
enormous weight; and then addressing Æthra, “If,” said he, “the
child you now bear should prove a boy, let the removal of this stone
be one day the proof of his strength; when he can effect it, send
him with the tokens underneath to Athens.”
Pittheus, well knowing the genius and the degree of information of
his subjects and fellow-countrymen, thought it not too gross an
imposition to report that his daughter was pregnant by the god
Poseidon, or, as we usually call him with the Latins, Neptune,
esteemed the tutelary deity of the Trœzenians. A similar expedient
seems indeed to have been often successfully used to cover the
disgrace which, even in those days, would otherwise attend such
irregular amours in a lady of high rank, though women of lower
degree appear to have derived no dishonour from concubinage with
their superiors. Theseus was the produce of the singular connection
of Æthra with Ægeus. He is said to have been carefully educated
under the inspection of his grandfather, and to have given early
proofs of uncommon vigour both of body and mind. On his attaining
manhood, his mother, in pursuance of the injunction of Ægeus,
unfolded to him the reality of his parentage, and conducted him to
the rock where his father’s tokens were deposited. He removed the
stone which covered them, with a facility indicating that superior
bodily strength so necessary in those days to support the
pretensions of high birth; and thus encouraged she recommended to
him to carry them to Ægeus at Athens. This proposal perfectly suited
the temper and inclination of Theseus; but when he was farther
advised to go by sea on account of the shortness and safety of the
passage, piracy being about this time suppressed by the naval power
of Minos, king of Crete, he positively refused.

THESEUS

The age of Theseus was the great era of those heroes, to whom
the knights errant of the Gothic kingdoms afterwards bore a close
resemblance. Hercules was his near kinsman. The actions of that
extraordinary personage are reported to have been for some years
the subject of universal conversation, and both an incentive and a
direction to young Theseus in the road to fame. After having
destroyed the most powerful and atrocious freebooters throughout
Greece, Hercules, according to Plutarch, was gone into Asia; and
those disturbers of civil order, whom his irresistible might and severe
justice had driven to conceal themselves, took advantage of his
absence to renew their violences. Being not obscure and vagabond
thieves, but powerful chieftains, who openly defied law and
government, the dangers to be expected from them were well
known at Trœzen. Theseus however persevered in his resolution to
go by land; alleging that it would be shameful, if, while Hercules was
traversing earth and sea to repress the common disturbers of
mankind, he should avoid those at his door, disgracing his reputed
father by an ignominious flight over his own element, and carrying
to his real father, for tokens, a bloodless weapon and sandals
untrodden, instead of giving proofs of his high birth by actions
worthy of it.
Proceeding in his journey he found every fastness occupied by
men who, like many of the old barons of the Western European
kingdoms, gave protection to their dependants, and disturbance to
all beside within their reach, making booty of whatever they could
master. His valour, however, and his good fortune procuring him the
advantage in every contest carried him safe through all dangers;
though he found nothing friendly till he arrived on the bank of the
river Cephisus in the middle of Attica. Some people of the country
meeting him there saluted him in the usual terms of friendship to
strangers. Judging himself then past the perils of his journey, he
requested to have the accustomed ceremony of purification from
blood performed, that he might properly join in sacrifices and other
religious rites. The courteous Atticans readily complied, and then
entertained him at their houses. An ancient altar, said to have been
erected in commemoration of this meeting, dedicated to Jupiter with
the epithet of Meilichius, the friendly or kind, remained to the time
of Pausanias.
When Theseus arrived at Athens, Ægeus, already approaching
dotage, was governed by the Colchian princess Medea, so famous in
poetry, who flying from Corinth had prevailed on him to afford her
protection. Theseus, as an illustrious stranger invited to a feast, on
drawing his hunting-knife, as it seems was usual, to carve the meat
before him, was recognised by Ægeus. The old king immediately
rising embraced him, acknowledged him before the company for his
son, and afterward summoning an assembly of the people presented
Theseus as their prince. The fame of exploits suited, as those of
Theseus, to acquire popularity in that age had already prepossessed
the people in his favour; strong marks of general satisfaction
followed. But the party of the sons of Pallas was powerful: their
disappointment was equally great and unexpected; and no hope
remaining to accomplish their wishes by other means, they withdrew
from the city, collected their adherents, and returned in arms. The
tide of popular inclination, however, now ran so strongly in favour of
Theseus that some even of their confidants gave way to it. A design
to surprise the city was discovered; part of their troops were in
consequence cut off, the rest dispersed; and the faction was
completely quelled.
Quiet being thus restored to Athens, Theseus was diligent to
increase the popularity he had acquired. Military fame was the
means to which his active spirit chiefly inclined him; but, as the state
had now no enemies, he exercised his valour in the destruction of
wild beasts, and, it is said, added not a little to his reputation by
delivering the country from a savage bull, which had done great
mischief in the neighbourhood of Marathon.
An opportunity however soon offered for Theseus to do his
country more essential service, and to acquire more illustrious fame.
The Athenians, in a war with Minos, king of Crete, had been reduced
to purchase peace of that powerful monarch by a yearly tribute of
seven youths and as many virgins. Coined money was not common
till some centuries after his age; and slaves and cattle were not only
the principal riches, but the most commodious and usual standards
by which the value of other things was determined. A tribute of
slaves therefore was perhaps the most convenient that Minos could
impose; Attica maintaining few cattle, and those being less easily
transported. The burden however could not but cause much
uneasiness among the Athenians; so that the return of the Cretan
ship at the usual time to demand the tribute excited fresh and loud
murmurs against the government of Ægeus. Theseus took an
extraordinary step, but perfectly suited to the heroic character which
he affected, for appeasing the popular discontent. The tributary
youths and virgins had been hitherto drawn by lot from the body of
the people; who might however apparently send slaves, if they had
or could procure them, instead of persons of their own family. But
Theseus offered himself. Report went that those unfortunate victims
were thrown into the famous labyrinth built by Dædalus, and there
devoured by the Minotaur, a monster, half-man and half-bull. This
fable was probably no invention of the poets who embellished it in
more polished ages: it may have been devised at the time, and even
have found credit among a people of an imagination so lively, and a
judgment so uninformed, as were then the Athenians. The offer of
Theseus therefore, really magnanimous, appeared an unparalleled
effort of patriotic heroism.
Ancient writers, who have endeavoured to investigate truth among
the intricacies of fabulous tradition, tell us that the labyrinth was a
fortress where prisoners were usually kept, and that a Cretan
general, its governor, named Taurus, which in Greek signifies a bull,
gave rise to the fiction of the Minotaur. The better testimony from
antiquity however asserts that Theseus was received by Minos more
agreeably to the character of a great and generous prince than of a
tyrant who gave his captives to be devoured by monsters. But during
this, the flourishing age of Crete, letters were, if at all known, little
used in Greece. In after-times, when the Athenians bore the sway in
literature, their tragedians, flattering vulgar prejudices, exhibited
Minos in odious colours; and through the popularity of their
ingenious works their calumnious misrepresentations, as Plutarch
has observed, overbore the eulogies of the elder poets, even of
Hesiod and Homer. Thus the particulars of the adventures of
Theseus in Crete, and of his return to Athens, have been so
disguised that even to guess at the truth is difficult. For these early
ages Homer is our best guide; but he has mixed mythology with his
short notice of the adventure of Theseus in Crete.
A rational interpretation nevertheless is obvious. Minos, surprised
probably at the arrival of the Athenian prince among the tributary
slaves, received him honourably, became partial to his merit, and
after some experience of it gave him his daughter Ariadne in
marriage. In the voyage toward Athens the princess being taken
with sudden sickness was landed in the island of Naxos, where
Bacchus was esteemed the tutelary deity; and she died there. If we
add the supposition that Theseus, eager to communicate the news
of his extraordinary success, or urged by public duty, proceeded on
his voyage while the princess was yet living, no further foundation
would be wanting for the fables which have made these names so
familiar. Theseus however, according to what with most certainty
may be gathered from Athenian tradition, freed his country from
further payment of the ignominious and cruel tribute.
This achievement, by whatsoever means effected, was so bold in
the undertaking, so complete in the success, so important and so
interesting in the consequences, that it deservedly raised Theseus to
the highest popularity among the Athenians. Sacrifices and
processions were instituted in honour of it, and were continued while
the Pagan religion had existence in Athens. The vessel in which he
made his voyage was yearly sent in solemn pomp to the sacred
island of Delos, where rites of thanksgiving were performed to
Apollo. Through the extreme veneration in which it was held, it was
so anxiously preserved that in Plato’s time it was said to be still the
same vessel; though at length its frequent repairs gave occasion to
the dispute, which became famous among the sophists, whether it
was or was not still the same. On his father’s death the common
voice supported his claim to the succession, and he showed himself
not less capable of improving the state by his wisdom than of
defending it by his valour.
The twelve districts into which Cecrops had divided Attica were
become so many nearly independent commonwealths, with scarcely
any bond of union but their acknowledgment of one chief, whose
authority was not always sufficient to keep them from mutual
hostilities. The inconveniences of such a constitution were great and
obvious, but the remedy full of difficulty. Theseus, however,
undertook it; and effected that change which laid the foundation of
the following glory of Athens, while it ranks him among the most
illustrious patriots that adorn the annals of mankind. Going through
every district, with that judicial authority which in the early state of
all monarchical governments has been attached to the kingly office,
and with those powers of persuasion which he is said largely to have
possessed, he put an end to civil contest. He proposed then the
abolition of all the independent magistracies, councils, and courts of
justice, and the substitution of one common council of legislation,
and one common system of judicature. The lower people readily
acceded to his measures. The rich and powerful, who shared among
them the independent magistracies, were more inclined to
opposition. To satisfy these, therefore, he offered, with a
disinterestedness of which history affords few examples, to give up
much of his own power; and, appropriating to himself only the cares
and dangers of royalty, to share with his people authority, honour,
wealth, all that is commonly most valued in it. Few were inclined to
resist so equitable and generous a proposal: the most selfish and
most obstinate dared not. Theseus therefore proceeded quietly to
new-model the commonwealth.[10]
The dissolution of all the independent councils and jurisdictions in
the several towns and districts, and the removal of all the more
important civil business to Athens, was his first measure. He wisely
judged that the civil union, so happily effected, would be incomplete,
or at least unstable, if he did not cement it by union in religion. He
avoided however to shock rooted prejudices by any abolition of
established religious ceremonies. Leaving those peculiar to each
district as they stood, he instituted, or improved and laid open for all
in common, one feast and sacrifice, in honour of the goddess
Athene, or Minerva, for all inhabitants of Attica. This feast he called
Panathenæa, the feast of all the Athenians or people of Minerva;
and thenceforward apparently all the inhabitants of Attica,
esteeming themselves unitedly under the particular protection of
that goddess, uniformly distinguished themselves by a name formed
from hers; for they were before variously called from their race,
Ionians; from their country, Atticans; or from their princes,
Cranaans, Cecropians, or Erechtidæ. To this scheme of union,
conceived with a depth of judgment, and executed with a
moderation of temper, rarely found in that age, the Athenians may
well be said to owe all their after greatness. Otherwise Attica, like
Bœotia and other provinces, whose circumstances will come
hereafter under notice, would probably have contained several little
republics, united only in name; each too weak to preserve dignity, or
even to secure independency to its separate government; and
possessing nothing so much in common as occasions for perpetual
disagreement.
A share in the legislature, extended to all, insured civil freedom to
all; and no distinction prevailed, as in other Grecian provinces,
between the people of the capital and those of the inferior towns;
but all were united under the Athenian name in the enjoyment of
every privilege of Athenian citizens. When his improvements were
completed, Theseus, according to the policy which became usual for
giving authority to great innovations and all uncommon
undertakings, is said to have procured a declaration of divine
approbation from the prophetical shrine of Delphi.
Thus the province of Attica, containing a triangular tract of land
with two sides about fifty miles long, and the third forty, was
moulded into a well-united and well-regulated commonwealth,
whose chief magistrate was yet hereditary, and retained the title of
king. In consequence of so improved a state of things, the Athenians
began the first of all the Greeks to acquire more civilised manners.
Thucydides remarks that they were the first who dropped the
practice, formerly general among the Greeks, of going constantly
armed; and who introduced a civil dress in contradistinction to the
military. This particularity, if not introduced by Theseus, appears to
have been not less early, since it struck Homer, who marks the
Athenians by the appellation of long-robed Ionians. If we may credit
Plutarch, Theseus coined money; which was certainly rare in Greece
two centuries after.
The rest of the history of Theseus affords little worthy of notice. It
is composed of a number of the wildest adventures, many of them
consistent enough with the character of the times, but very little so
with what is related of the former part of his life. It seems indeed as
if historians had inverted the order of things; giving to his riper years
the extravagance of youth, after having attributed to his earliest
manhood what the maturest age seldom has equalled. Whether this
should be attributed altogether, or in any part, to the fancy which
afterward prevailed among philosophical writers to mix mythology
with history, will be rather for the dissertator than the historian to
inquire. Theseus however, it may be proper to observe, is said to
have lost in the end all favour and all authority among the
Athenians; and though his institutions remained in vigour, to have
died in exile. After him, Menestheus, a person of the royal family,
acquired the sovereignty, and commanded the Athenian troops in
the Trojan War.d
According to some historians, Theseus, however explained,
deserves no credit for the Athenian union, since at the time this
union took place, Theseus was not even a national hero but only a
local and minor god worshipped about Marathon.

RISE OF POPULAR LIBERTY

We may perhaps safely conclude from analogy, that, even while

the power of the nobles was most absolute, a popular assembly was
not unknown at Athens; and the example of Sparta may suggest a
notion of the limitations which might prevent it from endangering
the privileges of the ruling body. So long as the latter reserved to
itself the office of making, or declaring, of interpreting, and
administering the laws, as well as the ordinary functions of
government, it might securely entrust many subjects to the decision
of the popular voice. Its first contests were waged, not with the
people, but with the kings.
Even in the reign of Theseus himself the legend exhibits the royal
power as on the decline. Menestheus, a descendant of the ancient
kings, is said to have engaged his brother nobles in a conspiracy
against Theseus, which finally compelled him and his family to go
into exile, and placed Menestheus on the throne. After the death of
this usurper indeed the crown is restored to the line of Theseus for
some generations. But his descendant Thymœtes is compelled to
abdicate in favour of Melanthus, a stranger, who has no claim but his
superior merit. After the death of Codrus, the nobles, taking
advantage perhaps of the opportunity afforded by the dispute
between his sons, are said to have abolished the title of king, and to
have substituted for it that of archon. This change however seems to
have been important, rather as it indicated the new, precarious
tenure by which the royal power was held, than as it immediately
affected the nature of the office. It was indeed still held for life; and
Medon, the son of Codrus, transmitted it to his posterity, though it
would appear that, within the house of the Medontids, the
succession was determined by the choice of the nobles. It is added
however, that the archon was deemed a responsible magistrate,
which implies that those who elected had the power of deposing
him; and consequently, though the range of his functions may not
have been narrower than that of the king’s, he was more subject to
control in the exercise of them. This indirect kind of sway, however,
did not satisfy the more ambitious spirits; and we find them steadily,
though gradually, advancing towards the accomplishment of their
final object—a complete and equal participation of the sovereignty.
After twelve reigns, ending with that of Alcmæon,[11] the duration
of the office was limited to ten years; and through the guilt or
calamity of Hippomenes, the fourth decennial archon,[12] the house
of Medon was deprived of its privilege, and the supreme magistracy
was thrown open to the whole body of the nobles. This change was
speedily followed by one much more important. When Tlesias, the
successor of Eryxias, had completed the term which his predecessor
had left unfinished, the duration of the archonship was again
reduced to a single year; and at the same time its branches were
severed, and distributed among nine new magistrates.
Among these, the first in rank retained the distinguishing title of
The Archon, and the year was marked by his name. He represented
the majesty of the state, and exercised a peculiar jurisdiction—that
which had belonged to the king as the common parent of his people,
the protector of families, the guardian of orphans and heiresses, and
of the general rights of inheritance. For the second archon the title
of king, if it had been laid aside, was revived, as the functions
assigned to him were those most associated with ancient
recollections. He represented the king as the high priest of his
people; he regulated the celebration of the mysteries and the most
solemn festivals; decided all causes which affected the interests of
religion, and was charged with the care of protecting the state from
the pollution it might incur through the heedlessness or impiety of
individuals. The third archon bore the title of polemarch, and filled
the place of the king, as the leader of his people in war, and the
guardian who watched over its security in time of peace. Connected
with this character of his office was the jurisdiction he possessed
over strangers who had settled in Attica under the protection of the
state, and over freedmen. The remaining six archons received the
common title of thesmothetes, which literally signifies legislators,
and was probably applied to them, as the judges who determined
the great variety of causes which did not fall under the cognisance of
their colleagues; because, in the absence of a written code, those
who declare and interpret the laws may be properly said to make
them.
These successive encroachments on the royal prerogatives, and
the final triumph of the nobles, are almost the only events that fill
the meagre annals of Attica for several centuries. Here, as
elsewhere, a wonderful stillness suddenly follows the varied stir of
enterprise and adventure, and the throng of interesting characters,
that present themselves to our view in the heroic age. Life seems no
longer to offer anything for poetry to celebrate, or for history to
record. Are we to consider this long period of apparent tranquillity,
as one of public happiness, of pure and simple manners, of general
harmony and content, which has only been rendered obscure by the
absence of the crimes and the calamities which usually leave the
deepest traces in the page of history? We should willingly believe
this, if it were not that, so far as the veil is withdrawn which
conceals the occurrences of this period from our sight, it affords us
glimpses of a very different state of things. In the list of the
magistrates who held the undivided sovereignty of the state, the
only name with which any events are connected is that of
Hippomenes, the last archon of the line of Codrus. It was made
memorable by the shame of his daughter, and by the extraordinary
punishment which he inflicted on her and her paramour. Tradition
long continued to point out as accursed ground the place where she
was shut up to perish from hunger, or from the fury of a wild horse,
the companion of her confinement. The nobles, glad perhaps to
seize an opportunity so favourable to their views, deposed
Hippomenes, and razed his house to the ground.
This story would seem indeed to indicate the austerity, as well as
the hardness, of the ancient manners: but on the other hand we are
informed, that the father had been urged to this excess of rigour by
the reproach that had fallen upon his family from the effeminacy and
dissoluteness of its members. Without however drawing any
inference from this isolated story, we may proceed to observe, that
the accounts transmitted to us of the legislation of Draco, the next
epoch when a gleam of light breaks through the obscurity of the
Attic history, do not lead us to suppose that the people had enjoyed
any extraordinary measure of happiness under the aristocratical
government, or that their manners were peculiarly innocent and
mild.

DRACO, THE LAWGIVER

The immediate occasion which led to Draco’s

[ca. 650-600 b.c.] legislation is not recorded, and even the
motives which induced him to impress it with
that character of severity to which it owes its chief celebrity, are not
clearly ascertained. We know however that he was the author of the
first written laws of Athens: and as this measure tended to limit the
authority of the nobles, to which a customary law, of which they
were the sole expounders, opposed a much feebler check, we may
reasonably conclude that the innovation did not proceed from their
wish, but was extorted from them by the growing discontent of the
people. On the other hand, Draco undoubtedly framed his code as
much as possible in conformity to the spirit and the interests of the
ruling class, to which he himself belonged; and hence we may fairly
infer that the extreme rigour of its penal enactments was designed
to overawe and repress the popular movement which had produced
it.
Aristotle observes that Draco made no change in the constitution;
and that there was nothing remarkable in his laws, except the
severity of the penalties by which they were enforced. It must
however be remembered that the substitution of law for custom, of
a written code for a fluctuating and flexible tradition, was itself a
step of great importance; and we also learn that he introduced some
changes in the administration of criminal justice, by transferring
causes of murder, or of accidental homicide, from the cognisance of
the archons to the magistrates called ephetes; though it was not
clear whether he instituted, or only modified or enlarged, their
jurisdiction. Demades was thought to have described the character
of his laws very happily, when he said that they were written not in
ink, but in blood. He himself is reported to have justified their
severity, by observing that the least offences deserved death, and
that he could devise no greater punishment for the worst. This
sounds like the language of a man who proceeded on higher
grounds than those of expediency, and who felt himself bound by his
own convictions to disregard the opinions of his contemporaries. Yet
it is difficult to believe, that Draco can have been led by any
principles of abstract justice, to confound all gradations of guilt, or,
as has been conjectured with somewhat greater probability, that,
viewing them under a religious rather than a political aspect, he
conceived that in every case alike they drew down the anger of the
gods, which could only be appeased by the blood of the criminal.
It seems much easier to understand how the ruling class, which
adopted his enactments, might imagine that such a code was likely
to be a convenient instrument in their hands, for striking terror into
their subjects, and stifling the rising spirit of discontent, which their
cupidity and oppression had provoked. We are however unable to
form a well-grounded judgment on the degree in which equity may
have been violated by his indiscriminate vigour; for though we read
that he enacted the same capital punishment for petty thefts as for
sacrilege and murder, still as there were some offences for which he
provided a milder sentence, he must have framed a kind of scale,
the wisdom and justice of which we have no means of estimating.
The danger which threatened the nobles at
[ca. 630 b.c.] length showed itself from a side on which they
probably deemed themselves most secure.
Twelve years after Draco’s legislation, a conspiracy was formed by
one of their own number for overthrowing the government. Cylon,
the author of this plot, was eminent both in birth and riches. His
reputation, and still more his confidence in his own fortune, had
been greatly raised by a victory at the Olympic games; and he had
further increased the lustre and influence of his family by an alliance
with Theagenes, the tyrant of Megara, whose daughter he married.
This extraordinary prosperity elated his presumption, and inflamed
his ambition with hopes of a greatness, which could only be attained
by a dangerous enterprise. He conceived the design of becoming
master of Athens. He could reckon on the cordial assistance of his
father-in-law, who, independently of their affinity, was deeply
interested in establishing at Athens a form of government similar to
that which he himself had founded at Megara; and he had also, by
his personal influence, insured the support of numerous friends and
adherents. Yet it is probable that he would not have relied on these
resources, and that his scheme would never have suggested itself to
his mind, if the general disaffection of the people toward their rulers,
the impatience produced by the evils for which Draco had provided
so inadequate a remedy, and by the irritating nature of the remedy
itself, and the ordinary signs of an approaching change, the need of
which began to be universally felt, had not appeared to favour his
aims.
 At this period scarcely any great enterprise was undertaken in
Greece without the sanction of an oracle; yet we cannot but feel
some surprise, when we are informed by Thucydides, that Cylon
consulted the Delphic god on the means by which he might
overthrow the government of his country, and still more at the
answer he is said to have received: that he must seize the citadel of
Athens during the principal festival of Zeus. Cylon naturally
interpreted the oracle to mean the Olympic games, the scene of his
glory; and Thucydides thinks it worth observing, that the great Attic
festival in honour of the same god occurred at a different season. At
the time however which appeared to be prescribed by his infallible
counsellor, Cylon proceeded to carry his plan into effect. With the aid
of a body of troops furnished by Theagenes, and of his partisans, he
made himself master of the citadel. Cylon and his friends soon found
themselves besieged by the forces which the government called in
from all parts of the country. When the provisions were all spent,
and some had died of hunger, the remainder abandoned the defence
of the walls, and took refuge in the temple of Athene.
The archon Megacles and his colleagues, seeing them reduced to
the last extremity of weakness, began to be alarmed lest the
sanctuary should be profaned by their death. To avoid this danger,
they induced them to surrender on condition that their lives should
be spared. Thucydides simply relates that the archons broke their
promise, and put their prisoners to death when they had quitted
their asylum, and that some were even killed at the altars of the
“dread goddesses,” as the Eumenides, or Furies, were called, to
which they had fled in the tumult. Plutarch adds a feature to the
story, which seems too characteristic of the age to be considered as
a later invention. More effectually to insure their safety, the
suppliants, before they descended from the citadel, fastened a line
to the statue of Minerva, and held it in their hands, as they passed
through the midst of their enemies. But the line chancing to break as
they were passing by the sanctuary of the Eumenides, Megacles,
with the approbation of his colleagues, declared that they were no
longer under the safeguard of the goddess, who had thus visibly
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