T

HE Pelasgi are believed to have been the most ancient inhabitants of Greece, though Thessaly and Arcadia are only known as their authenticated dwelling-places. They were a peaceful, agricultural people, holding a religious faith founded on the worship of nature, wherein the Chthonic gods, particularly Demeter or mother-earth; Dionysus, the creator of wine; Zeus, giver of oracles, the god of nature, with his wife Dione, in the shady forest sanctuary at Dodona; and the mysterious Cabeiri, who were the active, fertilizing powers working in the interior of nature, all received divine veneration, though they had neither image nor bodily form. Evidences of the civilization of the Pelasgi are seen in the ruins of ancient times and royal citadels, and the traces and remains of waterworks, dams, and canals, as well as in the indestructible Cyclopean walls, built up of rough masses of stone, or square blocks without mortar, in the Peloponnesus, and other parts.

The Pelasgi were either driven out or subjugated by the warlike Hellénes, who gradually subjugated the whole of Greece to their power. These Hellénes are divided into three tribes: the Dorians, in Peloponnesus; the Ionians, in Attica and the islands; and the Eolians, in Boetia and other States. They distinguished themselves at an early period by great warlike achievements, and by founding cities and foreign colonies. It is in the poetical legends of the twelve labors of Hercules, of the voyage of the Athenian hero Theseus to the sea-ruling Crete, and of the daring Argonautic expedition, that the first traces of historical facts are preserved, distorted and obscured, as they may be, by a mass

of fables. The Thessalian Jason, with the most renowned heroes of his time-Hercules, Theseus, Castor and Pollux from Lacedæmon, and the Thracian musician Orpheus-undertook the Argonautic expedition, in the ship Argo, to the distant land of Colchis, on the east coast of the Black Sea, for the purpose of obtaining the Golden Fleece, which, as the legend reported, Phryxus, the son of the Thessalian king, had years before suspended there, and which was watched over by a sleepless dragon. This Phryxus and his sister Helle had a wicked. step-mother who entertained sinister designs against their lives. Their departed mother, Néphele, the goddess of clouds, appeared to her two children, and presented them with a marvellous ram, which conveyed them across the sea; Helle, however, fell off, and was drowned on the spot which has since received from her the name of Hellespont. Phryxus reached the land and sacrificed the ram. Jason and his companions arrived at Colchis after a difficult voyage; completed their undertaking by the aid of the sorceress Medea, daughter of the king of the country, and returned home with their spoil. But the Argonauts had numerous wonderful adventures and perils to encounter on their return, which formed the groundwork for many a poetical and fascinating legend. The early commercial intercourse between the Eolic race and the inhabitants of the distant Asiatic coast, appears to be symbolized by this history of the Argonautic expedition.

The history of Greece for a period of three hundred years preceding the Trojan war is intermixed with fables, but contains, at the same time, many facts entitled to credit as authentic. Erecthus or Ericthonius, either a Greek who had visited Egypt, or the leader of a new Egyptian colony, cultivated

the plains of Eleusis, and instituted the Eleusinean mysteries, in imitation of the Egyptian games of Isis, if not, indeed, of the Jewish feast of Tabernacles. These mysteries were of a religious and moral nature, covering the doctrines of the unity of God, the immortality of the soul, and a future state of reward and punishment.

Theseus laid the foundation of the grandeur of Attica, by uniting its twelve cities, and giving them a common constitution, 1257 B.C.

The first great enterprise of the Greeks was the Argonautic expedition, already related, 1263 B.C. The expedition was both a military and a mercantile adventure, and was singularly bold for the times. in which it was undertaken, its object being to open up the commerce of the Euxine Sea. The astronomer, Chiron, directed the plan of the voyage, and formed, for the use of the mariners, a scheme of the constellations, fixing with accuracy the solstitial and equinoctial points. Sir Isaac Newton has founded his emendation of the Ancient Chronology on a calculation of the regular procession of the equinoxes from this period to the present, as well as on an estimate of the medium length of human generations.

The greatest event of the Greek heroic age is the celebrated Trojan war. In Ilium, or Troy, on the northwest coast of Asia Minor, reigned King Priamus, over a rich and cultivated people. His youngest son, Paris, carried off Helen, wife of the Lacedæmonian King, Menelaus, who had hospitably received him. The injured husband summoned the princes of Greece to undertake an expedition to revenge the affront. This expedition shortly after took place, under the command of Agamemnon of Mycénæ, brother of Menelaus, and with the assistance of the most renowned warriors of Greece. Achilles and his friend Patroclus from Thessaly, the subtle Ulysses from Ithaca, Diomedes from Argus, the sage Nestor from Pylos, Ajax, and many others, were among the number. The army, having embarked in a vast fleet, sailed for the Asiatic coast from the seaport town of Aulis, where Agamemnon had devoted his daughter as a sacrifice to Diana. They found, however, the Trojans, especially Hector, son of Prian, and Æneas, such valiant opponents, that it was only after ten years struggle that the city was at length taken and destroyed by an artifice of the wily Ulysses, namely, a gigantic

But

wooden horse, reared against the walls, whose belly was filled with armed men. Priam and most of his subjects fell either in battle or at the destruction of the city, the rest were carried away as slaves. the victors came in for their share of misfortune. Achilles, Patroclus, and many others, found an early grave in Ilium. Agamemnon, after a perilous voyage home, was murdered at the instigation of his faithless wife, Clytemnestra; and Ulysses, tossed by tempests, wandered for ten years to inhospitable shores, over islands and seas, before it was permitted him again to see his faithful wife, Penelope, and his son, Telemachus, and to purge his home of the audacious suitors who were contending for the hand of his spouse, and who in the meanwhile were feasting themselves on his property.

Military expeditions at this time were carried on only in the spring and summer. The science of military tactics was then utterly unknown, every battle being a multitude of single combats. The soldier had no pay but his share of the booty, which was divided by the chiefs. The weapons of war were the sword, the bow, the javelin, the club, the hatchet and the sling. A helmet of brass, an enormous shield, a cuirass and buskin, were the weapons of defence.

The Trojan war formed two legendary cycles, from which the materials of heroic or epic poetry have usually been selected. The first and greatest poet who has employed these legends in the construction of an immortal work was Homer, who, according to tradition, was a blind singer, whose life was so obscure, that, even in ancient times, seven cities contended for the honor of having given him birth. The two great heroic poems that pass under his name are the Iliad, in which the battles that took place before Troy in the last year of the siege are described, and the Odyssey, in which are sung the fate and adventures of Ulysses and his companions, on and around Sicily in the Western sea. These poems were at first circulated from mouth to mouth -although the art of writing was practiced in Egypt long before Homer's day, and the Greeks. could hardly have omitted picking it up-and portions of them were committed to memory, and recited by wandering singers, known as Rhapsodists. The hexameter measure derived from Homer was from this time made use of in epic poetry.

About eighty years after the taking of Troy

began the war of the Heraclidæ. Hercules, the son of Amphitryon, sovereign of Mycenae, was banished from his country with all his family, while his crown was possessed by an usurper. His descendants, after the period of a century, returned to Peloponnesus, and, subduing all their enemies, took possession of the states of Mycena, Argos and Lacedæmon.

A long period of civil war and bloodshed succeeded, and Greece, divided among a number of petty tyrants, suffered equally the miseries of oppression and anarchy. The commencement of the Athenian Republic dates from about B.c. 1068. It was at this time that the Greeks began to colonize. A large body of Æolians from Peloponnesus founded twelve cities in the lower Asia, of which Smyrna was the most considerable. A band of Ionian exiles built Ephesus and other towns, giving to their new settlements the name of their native country Ionia. The Dorians sent off colonies to Italy and Sicily. The mother country considered its colonies as emancipated children. These speedily attained to eminence and splendor, rivalling and surpassing their parent states, and the example of their prosperity, which was attributed to the freedom of their governments, incited the states of Greece, oppressed by a number of petty despots, to put an end to the regal government and try the experiment of a popular constitution. Athens and Thebes gave the first examples, which were soon followed by the rest.

These infant Republics demanded new laws; and it was necessary that some enlightened citizen should arise, who had discernment to perceive what system of legislation was most adapted to the character of his native state; who had abilities to compile such a system, and sufficient authority with his countrymen to recommend and enforce it. Such men were the Spartan Lycurgus and the Athenian Solon.

It was B.C. 884 that Lycurgus remodelled the constitution of his country. He instituted a senate election of twenty-eight members, whose office was to preserve a just balance between the power of the king and that of the people. The kings presided in the senate, but they could plan no enterprise without the consent of a council of the citizens. Lycurgus bent his attention most particularly to the regulation of manners; and one great maxim

pervaded his whole system: "Luxury is the bane of Society."

He divided the territory of the Republic into 39,000 equal portions, among the whole of its free citizens. He substituted iron money for gold and silver, abolished all useless acts, and excluded the visitings of strangers. The whole of the citizens, young and old, made their principal repast at the Sisitia or public table. The meals were coarse and parsimonious; the conversation was fitted to inprove the youth in virtue, and cultivate the patriotic spirit. Pithy sentences were most encouraged, and to this day preserve the term laconic. Spartan education nourished all the severer virtuesrespect for parents, reverence for old age, inflexible honor, undaunted courage, contempt of danger and death:-above all, the love of glory and country.

Solon attained the dignity of Archon, B.C. 594, and was intrusted with the framing of a new system of government and of laws. The people claimed the sovereign power, and they received it; the rich demanded offices and dignities, the system of Solon accommodated them to the utmost of their wishes. He divided the citizens in four classes, according to the measure of their wealth. To the first three, the richer citizens, belonged all the offices of the Commonwealth. The fourth, the poorer class, more numerous than all the other three, had a deliberative voice and an equal right of suffrage with them in the public assembly, where all laws were passed, and measures of state decreed. Consequently the weight of the latter decided every question.

To regulate in some degree the proceedings of these assemblies, and balance the weight of popular interest, Solon instituted a senate of four hundred members, afterwards enlarged to six hundred, with whom it was necessary that every measure should originate, before it became the subject of discussion in the assembly of the people.

In cases of public commotion, every person was bound to take a part, with a view that all who were wise might be brought forward to stem the torrent of popular distraction, and that no secret influencethe most dangerous weapon in all conspiraciesmight screen from public notice the prime movers in such disturbances. One of the most iniquitous and absurd perculiarities of the Athenian and some other governments of Greece, was the practice of

Ostracism, a ballot of all the citizens, in which each wrote down upon a shell-whence the term Ostracism-the name of the person in his opinion most obnoxious to censure. Six thousand votes were required against a person to determine his condemnation. The Athenians readily embraced Solon's system, for the laws of Draco, B.C. 624, were so terribly severe, that they were said to have been written in blood.

The manners of the Athenians formed the most striking contrast to those of the Lacedæmonians. Luxury was the character of the Athenians, as frugality the Spartans. The arts were, at Athens, in the highest esteem; the Lacedæmonians despised the arts, and all who cultivated them. At Athens Nature was outraged by the too free indulgence of every licentious propensity; the Lacedæmonians. thwarted Nature by checking and obstructing the force and influence of every tender feeling.

It

The legislation of Solon laid the foundation of Athenian greatness, and remained in force for more than four centuries. In B.C. 560 the government was seized by Pisistratus and subsequently held by his two sons, Hippias and Hipparchus. is Pisistratus who collected the poems of Homer. Hippias, having been dethroned for cruelty, solicited foreign aid to replace him in the sovereignty. Darius, the son of Hystaspes, meditated at this time the conquest of Greece. Hippias took advantage of the views of an enemy against his native country, and Greece was now involved in a war with Persia.

THE WAR BETWEEN GREECE AND PERSIA.

The Athenians, offended by the countenance given by the Persians and Spartans to Hippias, had aided the people of Ionia in an attempt to throw off the yoke of Persia, and burnt and ravaged Sardis, the capital of Lydia. Darius speedily reduced the Ionians to submission, and then turned his arms against the Greeks, their allies; the exile Hippias eagerly prompting the expedition.

After an insolent demand of submission, which the Greeks scornfully refused, Darius began a hostile attack both by sea and land. The first Persian fleet was wrecked in doubling the promontory of Athos; a second, of six hundred sail, ravaged the

Grecian islands, while an immense army, landing in Euboea, poured with impetuosity on Attica. The Athenians met them on the plain of Marathon.

The Battle of Marathon.

Two thousand three hundred and fifty years ago, a council of Athenian officers was summoned on the slope of one of the mountains that look over the plain of Marathon, on the eastern coast of Attica. The immediate subject of their meeting was to consider whether they should give battle to an enemy that lay encamped on the shore beneath them; but on the result of their deliberations depended, not merely the fate of two armies, but the whole future progress of human civilization.

There were eleven members of that council of war. Ten were generals, who were then annually elected at Athens, one for each of the local tribes into which the Athenians were divided. Each general led the men of his own tribe, and each was invested with equal military authority.

They had, indeed, deep matter for anxiety, though little aware how momentous to mankind were the votes they were about to give, or how the generations to come would read with interest the record of their debate. They saw before them the invading forces of a mighty empire, which had in the last fifty years shattered and enslaved nearly all the kingdoms and principalities of the then known world. They knew that all the resources of their own country were comprised in the little army entrusted to their guidance. They saw before them a chosen host of the Great King, sent to wreak his special wrath on that country, and on the other insolent little Greek community, which had dared to aid his rebels and burn the capital of one of his provinces. That victorious host had already fulfilled half its mission of vengeance. Eretria, the confederate of Athens in the bold march against Sardis nine years before, had fallen in the last few days; and the Athenian generals could disern from the heights the island of Egilia, in which the Persians had deposited their Eretrian prisoners, whom they had reserved to be led away captives into Upper Asia, there to hear their doom from the lips of King Darius himself. The numerical disparity between the force which the Athenian commanders had under them, and that which they were called on to encounter, was fearfully apparent to some of the council. The historians who wrote nearest to the time of the battle do not pretend to give any detailed statements of the numbers, engaged, but there are sufficient data for our making a general estimate. Every free Greek was trained to military duty: and, from the incessant border wars between the different states, few Greeks reached the age of manhood without having seen some service. But the muster-roll of free Athenian citizens of an age fit for military duty never exceeded thirty thousand, and at this epoch probably did not amount to two-thirds of that number.

It is impossible to reckon the fully equipped force that marched from Athens to Marathon, when the news of the Persian landing arrived, at higher than ten thousand men.

With one exception, the other Greeks held back from aiding them. Sparta had promised assistance; but the Persians had landed on the sixth day of the moon, and a religious scruple delayed the march of Spartan troops till the moon should have reached its full. From one quarter only, and that a most un

expected one, did Athens receive aid at the moment of her great peril.

For some years before this time, the little state of Platea in Boeotia, being hard pressed by her powerful neighbor, Thebes, had asked the protection of Athens, and had owed to an Athenian army the rescue of her independence. Now when it was noised over Greece that the Mede had come from the uttermost parts of the earth to destroy Athens, the brave Platæans, unsolicited, marched with their whole force to assist in the defence, and to share the fortunes of their benefactors. The general levy of the Platæans only amounted to a thousand men: and this little column, marching from their city along the southern ridge of Mount Citharon, and thence across the Attic territory, joined the Athenian forces above Marathon almost immediately before the battle.

This generous daring of their weak but true-hearted ally was never forgotten at Athens. The Platæans were made the fellow-countrymen of the Athenians, except the right of exercising certain political functions; and from that time forth in the solemn sacrifices at Athens, the public prayers were offered up for a joint blessing from Heaven upon the Athenians, and the Platæans also.

After the junction of the column from Platæa, the Athenian commanders must have had under them about eleven thousand fully-armed and disciplined infantry, and probably a larger number of irregular light-armed troops.

Contrasted with their own scanty forces, the Greek commanders saw stretched before them, along the shores of the winding bay, the tents and shipping of the varied nations that marched to do the bidding of the King of the Eastern world. The difficulty of finding transports and of securing provisions would form the only limit to the numbers of a Persian army. Nor is there any reason to suppose the estimate of Justin exaggerated, who rates at a hundred thousand the force which on this occasion had sailed, under the satraps Datis and Artaphernes, from the Cilician shores, against the devoted coasts of Euboea and Attica. Up to the day of Marathon the Medes and Persians were reputed invincible. They had more than once met Greek troops in Asia Minor, in Cyprus, in Egypt, and had invariably beaten them. Nothing can be stronger than the expressions used by the early Greek writers respecting the terror which the name of the Medes inspired, and the prostration of men's spirits before the apparently resistless career of the Persian arms. It is, therefore, little to be wondered at, that five of the ten Athenian generals shrank from the prospect of fighting a pitched battle against an enemy so superior in numbers, and so formidable in military renown. The other five generals were for speedy and bold operations. And, fortunately for Athens and for the world, one of them was a man, not only of the highest military genius, but also of that energetic character which impresses its own type and ideas upon spirits feebler in conception.

Miltiades was the head of one of the noblest houses at Athens: he ranked the acidæ among his ancestry, and the blood of Achilles flowed in the veins of the hero of Marathon. Two other men of signal eminence in history, though their renown was achieved at a later period than that of Miltiades, were also among the ten Athenian generals at Marathon. One was Themistocles, the future founder of the Athenian navy and the destined victor of Salamis: the other was Aristides, who afterwards led the Athenian troops at Platæa, and whose integrity and just popularity acquired for his country, when the Persians

had finally been repulsed, the advantageous pre-eminence of being acknowledged by half of the Greeks as their impartial leader and protector.

One officer in the council of war had not yet voted. This was Callimachus, the War-Ruler. The votes of the generals were five and five, so that the voice of Callimachus would be decisive. On that vote, in all human probability, the destiny of all the nations of the world depended. The vote of the brave War-Ruler was gained; the council determined to give battle; and such was the ascendency and military eminence of Miltiades, that his brother-generals, one and all, gave up their days of command to him, and cheerfully acted under his orders.

The plain of Marathon, which is about twenty-two miles distant from Athens, lies along the bay of the same name on the north-eastern coast of Attica. The plain is nearly in the form of a crescent, and about six miles in length. It is about two miles broad in the centre, where the space between the mountains and the sea is greatest, but it narrows towards either extremity, the mountains coming close down to the water at the horns of the bay. There is a valley trending inwards from the middle of the plain, and a ravine comes down to it to the southward. Elsewhere it is closely girt round on the land side by rugged limestone mountains, which are thickly studded with pines, olive-trees, and cedars, and overgrown with the myrtle, arbutus, and the other low odoriferous shrubs that everywhere perfume the Attic air. The level of the ground is now varied by the mound raised over those who fell in the battle, but it was an unbroken plain when the Persians encamped on it. There are marshes at each end, which are dry in spring and summer, and then offer no obstruction to the horseman, but are commonly flooded with rain, and so rendered impracticable for cavalry, in the autumn, the time of year at which the action took place.

The Greeks, lying encamped on the mountains, could watch every movement of the Persians on the plain below, while they were enabled completely to mask their own. Miltiades also had, from his position, the power of giving battle whenever he pleased, or of delaying it at his discretion, unless Datis were to attempt the perilous operation of storming the heights.

Miltiades, on the afternoon of a September day, 490 B.C., gave the word for the Athenian army to prepare for battle. According to old national custom, the warriors of each tribe were arrayed together; neighbor thus fighting by the side of neighbor, friend by friend, and the spirit of emulation and the consciousness of responsibility excited to the very utmost. The War-Ruler, Callimachus, had the leading of the right wing; the Platæans formed the extreme left; and Themistocles and Aristides commanded the centre. The line consisted of the heavy-armed spearmen only. For the Greeks (until the time of Iphicrates) took little or no account of light-armed soldiers in a pitched battle, using them only in skirmishes or for the pursuit of a defeated enemy. The panoply of the regular infantry consisted of a long spear, of a shield, helmet, breast-plate, greaves, and short sword. Thus equipped, they usually advanced slowly and steadily into action in an uniform phalanx of about eight spears deep. But the military genius of Miltiades led him to deviate on this occasion from the commonplace tactics of his countrymen. It was essential for him to extend his line so as to cover all the practicable ground, and to secure himself from being outflanked and charged in the rear by the Persian horse. This exten