Suggestions For Written Work
Why would a Greek wish to stay in his own country?
Some one tells the Dorians about the country lying to the south.
A Spartan boy tells another boy about his life.
A visit to Arcadia.
The Early Days of Athens: They Laws of Solon
Sparta was the chief state of the Peloponnesus, and even north of the Peloponnesus she began to be looked upon as the leading state of Greece. Her great rival was Attica. Attica was a peninsula about eighty miles long, bounded by mountains on the north and west. There were a few rivers, but even the largest had a way of running dry in warm weather. The soil was scanty and barren. A Greek could make a good meal of a piece of bread, a cup of wine, and a handful of olives; but even these could not be obtained in Attica nearly so easily as in the neighboring state, Bœotia, for to produce them, the ground had to be cultivated with great care. There was one advantage, however, that made up for these disadvantages, and that was the fine climate. Attica was warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer than Bœotia. The air was so pure that distant objects could be seen far more distinctly than elsewhere. The heavens were so bright and clear that it was a pleasure to gaze up into them; and even if the mountains were somewhat barren, the sunset skies were so glowing that the delicate outlines of the peaks traced upon them were wonderfully beautiful. The people were Ionians. They said proudly, "No foreign conquerors have ever overcome us. We are sprung from the soil itself." This is why the Athenian women liked to wear ornaments in the form of a cicada,—because it was believed that the cicada was born of the earth.
VIEW OF REGION AROUND ATHENS.
Not much was known of Attica in the earliest times; but there were no Greek slaves in the state, the belief was probably true that it had never been conquered by foreigners, but had been formed by a union of people of the same race. The Greeks believed that this union had been brought about by the hero Theseus, who was once their king; and there were stories without number of his exploits. He was declared not only to have killed the Minotaur, but to have gone on a warlike expedition with Heracles, and to have sailed in the Argo in quest of the Golden Fleece. It is said that as a young man he dressed so foppishly, with his elegant robes, his jewels, and his perfumes, that one day as he was passing some workmen they first stared, then laughed and said, "That young girl is old enough to be married; how happens it that she is running about the streets alone?" Theseus heard this speech, and to show that he was something more than a dandy, he stopped a cart that was going by, unyoked the oxen, and tossed them over a temple.
THE THESEUM AS IT IS TO-DAY.
(TEMPLE IN ATHENS WHERE, ACCORDING TO LEGEND, THE REMAINS OF THESEUS WERE BURIED)
When he came to be king, the stories say that he invited not only people dwelling in Attica, but even strangers, to make homes for themselves in Athens. The city was then only a cluster of little houses on a great mass of rock with a wide, flat top; but it was a very safe place, for it would not be easy for enemies to make their way up the rock and into the city. Theseus was not greedy of power, for when the inhabitants of the other parts of Attica hesitated to agree to be ruled by a court in Athens, he said to them, "If you will do this, I will give up my rights. You shall be king as much as I, save that I shall watch over the laws, and if there is a war, I shall command the army." It is no wonder that they yielded to so generous a prince. Theseus set up a pillar to show just where the limits of Attica began. Then he established splendid festivals in honor of the union of the Attic villages.
The next great king, according to the legends, was Codrus. He had reigned peacefully for some time when trouble came upon him. The Spartans and some other Dorians united to attack Athens, and encamped before the walls of the city. They were in the best of spirits, for the oracle had said, "If you spare the life of Codrus, you will be sure of victory." Of course they would spare the life of Codrus,—that was a small price to pay for victory,—and soon Athens would be theirs. If they had known what sort of man King Codrus was, they would not have been quite so jubilant. A friend of his who lived at Delphi told him what the oracle had said; and in a moment the brave king had made up his mind what to do. He dressed himself like a wood-chopper, slipped out of the city gates, and went where he was sure to meet some of the Dorians. Soon he came upon two of them. He struck one with his axe and killed him. Then the other one killed Codrus. By this time the Athenians had learned that their king had died for them, and they sent a messenger to beg for his body. The Dorians were terrified when they learned what they had done. "It is of no use to attack Athens," they said, "for the gods will be against us"; and so they turned about and marched over the Isthmus of Corinth and back to the Peloponnesus, and Athens was saved. The Athenians were so grateful that they declared their city should never have another king, that the title should always remain sacred to the patriot Codrus.
There were later kings, nevertheless, but they had to share their authority with eight other men called archons, or rulers, until at last the king-archon did little more than offer up the state sacrifices to the gods. All the nine archons together had not nearly so much power as a famous council, called the Areopagus because it met on the Hill of Mars, or Ares, which made all the laws and tried men accused of crime.
This seems like a good plan for a government, but there was one thing that made it extremely unfair, namely, that all these archons and councilors were nobles, or Eupatrids, that is, men of high birth. They were generally wealthy, and they made laws which were convenient and comfortable for the rich, but which bore hard upon the poor. The government, then, was an oligarchy, or rule of the few; and an oligarchy is seldom fair to all the people. Some of the poorer men of Attica lived on the estates of the Eupatrids, and if they did not pay their rent, the owners of the estates had the right to sell them and their families as slaves. Even those who had little farms of their own were not much better off, for many of them had been obliged to borrow money of the nobles, which they had little hope of paying. Therefore, on many of the farms a pillar was set up on which was cut the amount that the farmer owed and the name of the man to whom the farm was mortgaged. Sometimes the poor farmers became so discouraged that they sold their children as slaves to try to pay even the interest on these harassing mortgages. The Eupatrids enjoyed themselves, but it is no wonder that the poorer people became more and more miserable. Some went away as colonists, and those who remained were greatly dissatisfied.
MARS HILL, WHERE THE AREOPAGUS HELD ITS SESSIONS.
At last even the comfortable Eupatrids saw that something must be done to quiet the troubles. One thing that the people found especially unjust was that the laws had never been published, and if a Eupatrid took away their property, they had no way of knowing whether he was acting lawfully or unlawfully. "If we publish the laws, they will be satisfied," thought the nobles; and they chose a Eupatrid named Draco to put together what they had generally agreed to call the laws, and revise them. Long after the time of Draco, the laws had become so much milder that people said his had been "written in blood," but they were really more reasonable than the unwritten laws that had been in force before his day. Moreover, his code gave far greater power to the people who were not nobles, "the Many," as the Eupatrids called them; for it declared that the magistrates need not be Eupatrids, but might be chosen from the members of the Ecclesia, or general assembly, who received a certain income from land. The code even allowed the Ecclesia to choose them. This was a great gain to "the Many," for every man who was able to provide himself with weapons for battle had a right to belong to the Ecclesia.