PREFACE.

n this little book the attempt has been to trace Greek History so as to be intelligible to young children.  In fact, it will generally be found that classical history is remembered at an earlier age than modern history, probably because the events are simple, and there was something childlike in the nature of all the ancient Greeks.  I would begin a child’s reading with the History of England, as that which requires to be known best; but from this I should think it better to pass to the History of Greece, and that of Rome (which is in course of preparation), both because of their giving some idea of the course of time, and bringing p. 4Scripture history into connection with that of the world, and because little boys ought not to begin their classical studies without some idea of their bearing.  I have begun with a few of the Greek myths, which are absolutely necessary to the understanding of both the history and of art.  As to the names, the ordinary reading of them has been most frequently adopted, and the common Latin titles of the gods and goddesses have been used, because these, by long use, have really come to be their English names, and English literature at least will be better understood by calling the king of Olympus Jupiter, than by becoming familiar with him first as Zeus.      CHARLOTTE M. YONGE

CHAP. I.—OLYMPUS.

am going to tell you the history of the most wonderful people who ever lived.  But I have to begin with a good deal that is not true; for the people who descended from Japhet’s son Javan, and lived in the beautiful islands and peninsulas called Greece, were not trained in the knowledge of God p. 12like the Israelites, but had to guess for themselves.  They made strange stories, partly from the old beliefs they brought from the east, partly from their ways of speaking of the powers of nature—sky, sun, moon, stars, and clouds—as if they were real beings, and so again of good or bad qualities as beings also, and partly from old stories about their forefathers.  These stories got mixed up with their belief, and came to be part of their religion and history; and they wrote beautiful poems about them, and made such lovely statues in their honour, that nobody can understand anything about art or learning who has not learnt these stories.  I must begin with trying to tell you a few of them.

In the first place, the Greeks thought there were twelve greater gods and goddesses who lived in Olympus.  There is really a mountain called Olympus, and those who lived far from it thought it went up into the sky, and that the gods really dwelt on the top of it.  Those who lived near, and knew they did not, thought they lived in the sky.  But the chief of all, the father of gods and men, was the sky-god—Zeus, as the Greeks called him, or Jupiter, as he was called in Latin.  However, as all things are born of Time, so the sky or Jupiter was said to have a father, Time, whose Greek name was Kronos.  His other name was Saturn; and as Time devours his offspring, so Saturn was said to have had the bad habit of eating up his children as fast as they were born, till at last his wife Rhea contrived to give him a stone in swaddling clothes, and while he was p. 13biting this hard morsel, Jupiter was saved from him, and afterwards two other sons, Neptune (Poseidon) and Pluto (Hades), who became lords of the ocean and of the world of the spirits of the dead; for on the sea and on death Time’s tooth has no power.  However, Saturn’s reign was thought to have been a very peaceful and happy one.  For as people always think of the days of Paradise, and believe that the days of old were better than their own times, so the Greeks thought there had been four ages—the Golden age, the Silver age, the Brazen age, and the Iron age—and that people had been getting worse in each of them.  Poor old Saturn, after the Silver age, had had to go into retirement, with only his own star, the planet Saturn, left to him; and Jupiter was reigning now, on his throne on Olympus, at the head of the twelve greater gods and goddesses, and it was the Iron age down below.  His star, the planet we still call by his name, was much larger and brighter than Saturn.  Jupiter was always thought of by the Greeks as a majestic-looking man in his full strength, with thick hair and beard, and with lightnings in his hand and an eagle by his side.  These lightnings or thunderbolts were forged by his crooked son Vulcan (Hephæstion), the god of fire, the smith and armourer of Olympus, whose smithies were in the volcanoes (so called from his name), and whose workmen were the Cyclops or Round Eyes—giants, each with one eye in the middle of his forehead.  Once, indeed, Jupiter had needed his bolts, for the Titans, a horrible race of p. 14monstrous giants, of whom the worst was Briareus, who had a hundred hands, had tried, by piling up mountains one upon the other, to scale heaven and throw him down; but when Jupiter was hardest pressed, a dreadful pain in his head caused him to bid Vulcan to strike it with his hammer.  Then out darted Heavenly Wisdom, his beautiful daughter Pallas Athene or Minerva, fully armed, with piercing, shining eyes, and by her counsels he cast down the Titans, and heaped their own mountains, Etna and Ossa and Pelion, on them to keep them down; and whenever there was an earthquake, it was thought to be caused by one of these giants struggling to get free, though perhaps there was some remembrance of the tower of Babel in the story.  Pallas, this glorious daughter of Jupiter, was wise, brave, and strong, and she was also the goddess of women’s works—of all spinning, weaving, and sewing.

p. 15Jupiter’s wife, the queen of heaven or the air, was Juno—in Greek, Hera—the white-armed, ox-eyed, stately lady, whose bird was the peacock.  Do you know how the peacock got the eyes in his tail?  They once belonged to Argus, a shepherd with a hundred eyes, whom Juno had set to watch a cow named Io, who was really a lady, much hated by her.  Argus watched till Mercury (Hermes) came and lulled him to sleep with soft music, and then drove Io away.  Juno was so angry, that she caused all the eyes to be taken from Argus and put into her peacock’s tail.

Mercury has a planet called after him too, a very small one, so close to the sun that we only see it just after sunset or before sunrise.  I believe Mercury or Hermes really meant the morning breeze.  The story went that he was born early in the morning in a cave, and after he had slept a little while in his cradle, he came forth, and, finding the shell of a tortoise with some strings of the inwards stretched across it, he at once began to play on it, and thus formed the first lyre.  He was so swift that he was the messenger of Jupiter, and he is always represented with wings on his cap and sandals; but as the wind not only makes music, but blows things away unawares, so Mercury came to be viewed not only as the god of fair speech, but as a terrible thief, and the god of thieves.  You see, as long as these Greek stories are parables, they are grand and beautiful; but when the beings are looked on as like men, they are absurd and often horrid.  The gods had p. 16another messenger, Iris, the rainbow, who always carried messages of mercy, a recollection of the bow in the clouds; but she chiefly belonged to Juno.

All the twelve greater gods had palaces on Olympus, and met every day in Jupiter’s hall to feast on ambrosia, a sort of food of life which made them immortal.  Their drink was nectar, which was poured into their golden cups at first by Vulcan, but he stumbled and hobbled so with his lame leg that they chose instead the fresh and graceful Hebe, the goddess of youth, till she was careless, and one day fell down, cup and nectar and all.  The gods thought they must find another cupbearer, and, looking down, they saw a beautiful youth named Ganymede watching his flocks upon Mount Ida.  So they sent Jupiter’s eagle down to fly away with him and bring him up to Olympus.  They gave him some ambrosia to make him immortal, and established him as their cupbearer.  Besides this, the gods were thought to feed on the smoke and smell of the sacrifices people offered up to them on earth, and always to help those who offered them most sacrifices of animals and incense.

The usual names of these twelve were—Jupiter, Neptune, Juno, Latona, Apollo, Diana, Pallas, Venus, Vulcan, Mercury, Vesta, and Ceres; but there were multitudes besides—“gods many and lords many” of all sorts of different dignities.  Every river had its god, every mountain and wood was full of nymphs, and there was a great god of all nature called Pan, which in Greek p. 17means All.  Neptune was only a visitor in Olympus, though he had a right there.  His kingdom was the sea, which he ruled with his trident, and where he had a whole world of lesser gods and nymphs, tritons and sea horses, to attend upon his chariot.

And the quietest and best of all the goddesses was Vesta, the goddess of the household hearth—of home, that is to say.  There are no stories to be told about her, but a fire was always kept burning in her honour in each city, and no one might tend it who was not good and pure.

p. 18CHAP. II.—LIGHT AND DARK.

he god and goddess of light were the glorious twin brother and sister, Phœbus Apollo and Diana or Artemis.  They were born in the isle of Delos, which was caused to rise out of the sea to save their mother, Latona, from the horrid serpent, Python, who wanted to devour her.  Gods were born strong and mighty; and the first thing Apollo did was to slay the serpent at Delphi with his arrows.  Here was a dim remembrance of the promise that the Seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’s head, and also a thought of the way Light slays the dragon of darkness with his beams.  Apollo was lord of the day, and Diana queen of the night.  They were as bright and pure as the thought of man could make them, and always young.  The beams or rays were their arrows, and so Diana was a huntress, always in the woods with her nymphs; and she was so modest, that once, when an unfortunate wanderer, named Actæon, came on her with her nymphs by chance when they were bathing in a stream, she splashed some water in his face and turned him into a p. 19stag, so that his own dogs gave chase to him and killed him.  I am afraid Apollo and Diana were rather cruel; but the darting rays of the sun and moon kill sometimes as well as bless; and so they were the senders of all sharp, sudden strokes.  There was a queen called Niobe, who had six sons and daughters so bright and fair that she boasted that they were equal to Apollo and Diana, which made Latona so angry, that she sent her son and daughter to slay them all with their darts.  The unhappy Niobe, thus punished for her impiety, wept a river of tears till she was turned into stone.

p. 20The moon belonged to Diana, and was her car; the sun, in like manner, to Apollo, though he did not drive the car himself, but Helios, the sun-god, did.  The world was thought to be a flat plate, with Delphi in the middle, and the ocean all round.  In the far east the lady dawn, Aurora, or Eôs, opened the gates with her rosy fingers, and out came the golden car of the sun, with glorious white horses driven by Helios, attended by the Hours strewing dew and flowers.  It passed over the arch of the heavens to the ocean again on the west, and there Aurora met it again in fair colours, took out the horses, and let them feed.  Aurora had married a man named Tithonus.  She gave him ambrosia, which made him immortal, but she could not keep him from growing old, so he became smaller and smaller, till he dwindled into a grasshopper, and at last only his voice was to be heard chirping at sunrise and sunset.

Helios had an earthly wife too, and a son named Phaëton, who once begged to be allowed to drive the chariot of the sun for just one day.  Helios yielded; but poor Phaëton had no strength nor skill to guide the horses in the right curve.  At one moment they rushed to the earth and scorched the trees, at another they flew up to heaven and would have burnt Olympus, if Jupiter had not cast his thunderbolts at the rash driver and hurled him down into a river, where he was drowned.  His sisters wept till they were changed into poplar trees, and their tears hardened into amber drops.

p. 21Mercury gave his lyre to Apollo, who was the true god of music and poetry, and under him were nine nymphs—the Muses, daughters of memory—who dwelt on Mount Parnassus, and were thought to inspire all noble and heroic song, all poems in praise to or of the gods or of brave men, and the graceful music and dancing at their feasts, also the knowledge of the stars of earth and heaven.

These three—Apollo, Diana, and Pallas—were the gods of all that was nobly, purely, and wisely lovely; but the Greeks also believed in powers of ill, and there was a goddess of beauty, called Venus (Aphrodite).  Such beauty was hers as is the mere prettiness and charm of pleasure—nothing high or fine.  She was said to have risen out of the sea, as the sunshine touched the waves, with her golden hair dripping with the spray; and her favourite home was in myrtle groves, where she drove her car, drawn by doves, attended by the three Graces, and by multitudes of little winged children, called Loves; but there was generally said to be one special p. 22son of hers, called Love—Cupid in Latin, Eros in Greek—whose arrows, when tipped with gold, made people fall in love, and when tipped with lead, made them hate one another.  Her husband was the ugly, crooked smith, Vulcan—perhaps because pretty ornaments come of the hard work of the smith; but she never behaved well to him, and only coaxed him when she wanted something that his clever hands could make.

She was much more fond of amusing herself with Mars (Ares), the god of war, another of the evil gods, for he was fierce, cruel, and violent, and where he went slaughter and blood were sure to follow him and his horrid daughter Bellona.  His star was “the red planet Mars;” but Venus had the beautiful clear one, which, according as it is seen either at sunrise or sunset, is called the morning or evening star.  Venus also loved a beautiful young earthly youth, called Adonis, who died of a thrust from a wild boar’s tusk, while his blood stained crimson the pretty flower, pheasant’s eye, which is still called Adonis.  Venus was so wretched that she persuaded Jupiter to decree that Adonis should come back and live for one-half of the year, but he was to go down to Pluto’s underground kingdom the other half.  This is because plants and flowers are beautiful for one year, die down, and rise again.

But there is a much prettier story, with something of the same meaning, about Ceres (Demeter), the grave, motherly goddess of corn and all the fruits of the earth.  p. 23She had one fair daughter, named Proserpine (Persephone), who was playing with her companions near Mount Etna, gathering flowers in the meadows, when grim old Pluto pounced upon her and carried her off into his underground world to be his bride.  Poor Ceres did not know what had become of her darling, and wandered up and down the world seeking for her, tasting no food or drink, till at last, quite spent, she was taken in as a poor woman by Celeus, king of Eleusis, and became nurse to his infant child Triptolemus.  All Eleusis was made rich with corn, while no rain fell and no crops grew on the rest of the earth; and though first Iris and then all the gods came to beg Ceres to relent, she would grant nothing unless she had her daughter back.  So Jupiter sent Mercury to bring Proserpine home; but she was only to be allowed to stay on earth on condition that she had eaten nothing while in the under world.  Pluto, knowing this, had made her eat half a pomegranate, and so she could not stay with her mother; but Ceres’s tears prevailed so far that she was to spend the summer above ground and the winter below.  For she really was the flowers and fruit.  Ceres had grown so fond of little Triptolemus that she wanted to make him immortal; but, as she had no ambrosia, this could only be done byp. 24putting him on the fire night after night to burn away his mortal part.  His mother looked in one night during the operation, and shrieked so that she prevented it; so all Ceres could do for him was to give him grains of wheat and a dragon car, with which he travelled all about the world, teaching men to sow corn and reap harvests.

Proserpine seems to have been contented in her underground kingdom, where she ruled with Pluto.  It was supposed to be below the volcanic grounds in southern Italy, near Lake Avernus.  The entrance to it was guarded by a three-headed dog, named Cerberus, and the way to it was barred by the River Styx.  Every evening Mercury brought all the spirits of the people who had died during the day to the shore of the Styx, and if their funeral rites had been properly performed, and they had a little coin on the tongue to pay the fare, Charon, the ferryman, took them across; but if their corpses were in the sea, or on battle-fields, unburied, the poor shades had to flit about vainly begging to be ferried over.  After they had crossed, they were judged by three judges, and if they had been wicked, were sent over the river of fire to be tormented by the three Furies, Alecto, Megara, and Tisiphone, who had snakes as scourges and in their hair.  If they had been brave and virtuous, they were allowed to live among beautiful trees and flowers in the Elysian fields, where Pluto reigned; but they seem always to have longed after the life they had lost; and these Greek p. 25notions of bliss seem sad besides what we know to be the truth.  Here, too, lived the three Fates, always spinning the threads of men’s lives; Clotho held the distaff, Lachesis drew out the thread, and Atropos with her shears cut it off when the man was to die.  And, though Jupiter was mighty, nothing could happen but by Fate, which was stronger than he.

p. 26CHAP. III.—THE PEOPLING OF GREECE.

ou remember the Titans who rebelled against Jupiter.  There was one who was noble, and wise, and kind, who did not rebel, and kept his brother from doing so.  His name was Prometheus, which means Forethought; his brother’s was Epimetheus, or Afterthought; their father was Iapetus.  When all the other Titans had been buried under the rocks, Jupiter bade Prometheus mould men out of the mud, and call on the winds of heaven to breathe life into them.  Then Prometheus loved the beings he had made, and taught them to build houses, and tame the animals, and row and sail on the sea, and study the stars.  But Zeus was afraid they would be too mighty, and would not give them fire.  Then Prometheus climbed the skies, and brought fire down for them in a hollow reed.

The gods were jealous, and thought it time to stop this.  So Jupiter bade Vulcan mould a woman out of clay, and Pallas to adorn her with all charms and gifts, so that she was called Pandora, or All Gifts; and they gave her a casket, into which they had put all pains, and p. 27griefs, and woes, and ills, and nothing good in it but hope; and they sent her down to visit the two Titan brothers.  Prometheus knew that Jupiter hated them, and he had warned Epimetheus not to take any gift that came from Olympus; but he was gone from home when Pandora came; and when Epimetheus saw how lovely she was, and heard her sweet voice, he was won over to trust her, and to open the box.  Then out flew all the evils and miseries that were stored in it, and began to torment poor mankind with war, and p. 28sickness, and thirst, and hunger, and nothing good was left but hope at the bottom of the box.  And by-and-by there came spirits, called Prayers, but they were lame, coming after evil, because people are so apt not to begin to pray till harm has befallen them.

The gods undertook also to accept sacrifices, claiming a share in whatever animal man slew.  Prometheus guarded his people here by putting the flesh of a bullock on one side, and the bones and inward parts covered with the fat on the other, and bidding Jupiter choose which should be his.  The fat looked as if the heap it covered were the best, and Jupiter chose that, and was forced to abide by his choice; so that, whenever a beast was killed for food, the bones and fat were burnt on the altar, and man had the flesh.  All this made Jupiter so angry, that, as Prometheus was immortal and could not be killed, he chained the great, good Titan to a rock on Mount Caucasus, and sent an eagle continually to rend his side and tear out his liver as fast as it grew again; but Prometheus, in all his agony, kept hope, for he knew that deliverance would come to him; and, in the meantime, he was still the comforter and counsellor of all who found their way to him.

Men grew very wicked, owing to the evils in p. 29Pandora’s box, and Jupiter resolved to drown them all with a flood; but Prometheus, knowing it beforehand, told his mortal son Deucalion to build a ship and store it with all sorts of food.  In it Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha floated about for nine days till all men had been drowned, and as the waters went down the ship rested on Mount Parnassus, and Deucalion and Pyrrha came out and offered sacrifices to Jupiter.  He was appeased, and sent Mercury down to ask what he should grant them.  Their prayer was that the earth might be filled again with people, upon which the god bade them walk up the hill and throw behind them the bones of their grandmother.  Now Earth was said to be the mother of the Titans, so the bones of their grandmother were the rocks, so as they went they picked up stones and threw them over their shoulders.  All those that Deucalion threw rose up as men, and all those that Pyrrha threw became women, and thus the earth was alive again with human beings.  No one can fail to see what far older histories must have been brought in the minds of the Greeks, and have been altered into these tales, which have much beauty in themselves.  The story of the flood seems to have been mixed up with some small later inundation which only affected Greece.

The proper old name of Greece was Hellas, and the people whom we call Greeks called themselves Hellênes. [29]  Learned men know that they, like all the people of Europe, and also the Persians and Hindoos, sprang p. 30from one great family of the sons of Japhet, called Arians.  A tribe called Pelasgi came first, and lived in Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy; and after them came the Hellênes, who were much quicker and cleverer than p. 31the Pelasgi, and became their masters in most of Greece.  So that the people we call Greeks were a mixture of the two, and they were divided into three lesser tribes—the Æolians, Dorians, and Ionians.

Now, having told you that bit of truth, I will go back to what the Greeks thought.  They said that Deucalion had a son whose name was Hellên, and that he again had three sons, called Æolus, Dorus, and Xuthus.  Æolus was the father of the Æolian Greeks, and some in after times thought that he was the same with the god called Æolus, who was thought to live in the Lipari Islands; and these keep guard over the spirits of the winds—Boreas, the rough, lively north wind; Auster, the rainy south wind; Eurus, the bitter east; and Zephyr, the gentle west.  He kept them in a cave, and let one out according to the way the wind was wanted to blow, or if there was to be a storm he sent out two at once to struggle, and fight, and roar together, and lash up Neptune’s world, the sea.  The Æolians did chiefly live in the islands and at Corinth.  One of the sons of Æolus turned out very badly, and cheated Jupiter.  His name was Sisyphus, and he was punished in Tartarus—Pluto’s world below—by having always to roll a stone up a mountain so steep that it was sure to come down upon him again.

Dorus was, of course, the father of the Dorians; and Xuthus had a son, called Iôn, who was the father of the Ionians.  But, besides all these, there was a story of two brothers, named Ægyptus and Danaus, one of p. 32whom settled in Egypt, and the other in Argos.  One had fifty sons and the other fifty daughters, and Ægyptus decreed that they should all marry; but Danaus and his daughters hated their cousins, and the father gave each bride a dagger, with which she stabbed her bridegroom.  Only one had pity, and though the other forty-nine were not punished here, yet, when they died and went to Tartarus, they did not escape, but were obliged to be for ever trying to carry water in bottomless vessels.  The people of Argos called themselves Danai, and no doubt some of them came from Egypt.

One more story, and a very strange one, tells of the peopling of Greece.  A fair lady, named Europa, was playing in the meadows on the Phœnician coast, when a great white bull came to her, let his horns be wreathed with flowers, lay down, and invited her to mount his back; but no sooner had she done so, than he rose and trotted down with her to the sea, and swam with her out of sight.  He took her, in fact, to the island of Crete, where her son Minos was so good and just a king, that, when he died, Pluto appointed him and two others to be judges of the spirits of the dead.  Europe was called after Europa, as the loss of her led settlers there from Asia.  Europa’s family grieved for her, and her father, mother, and brother went everywhere in search of her.  Cadmus was the name of her brother, and he and his mother went far and wide, till the mother died, and Cadmus went to Delphi—the p. 33place thought to be the centre of the earth—where Apollo had slain the serpent Python, and where he had a temple and cavern in which every question could be answered.  Such places of divination were called oracles, and Cadmus was here told to cease from seeking his sister, and to follow a cow till she fell down with fatigue, and to build a city on that spot.  The poor cow went till she came into Bœotia, and there fell.  Cadmus meant to offer her up, and went to fetch water from a fountain near, but as he stooped a fierce dragon rushed on him.  He had a hard fight to kill it, but Pallas shone out in her beauty on him, and bade him sow its teeth in the ground.  He did so, and they sprung up as warriors, who at once began to fight, and killed one another, all but five, who made friends, and helped Cadmus to build the famous city called Thebes.  It is strange, after so wild a story as this, to be told that Cadmus first taught writing in Greece, and brought the alphabet of sixteen letters.  The Greek alphabet was really learnt from the Phœnicians, and most likely the whole is a curious story of some settlement of that eastern people in Greece.  Most likely they brought in the worship of the wine-god, Bacchus (Dionysos), for he was called Cadmus’s grandson.  An orphan at first, he was brought up by the nymphs and Mercury, and then became a great conqueror, going to India, and Egypt, and everywhere, carrying the vine and teaching the use of wine.  He was attended by an old fat man, named Silenus, and by creatures, called Fauns and Satyrs, p. 34like men with goats’ ears and legs; his crown was of ivy, and his chariot was drawn by leopards, and he was at last raised to Olympus.  His feasts were called orgies; he-goats were sacrificed at them, and songs were sung, after which there was much drinking, and people danced holding sticks wreathed with vine and ivy leaves.  The women who danced were called Bacchanals.  The better sort of Greeks at first would not adopt these shameful rites.  There were horrid stories of women who refused them going mad and leaping into the sea, and the Bacchanals used to fall upon and destroy all who resisted them.

p. 35CHAP. IV.—THE HERO PERSEUS.

hero means a great and glorious man, and the Greeks thought they had many such among their forefathers—nay, that they were sons of gods, and themselves, after many trials and troubles, became gods, since these Greeks of old felt that “we are also His offspring.”

Here is a story of one of these heroes.  His mother was the daughter of an Argive king, and was named Danaë.  He was named Perseus, and had bright eyes and golden hair like the morning.  When he was a little babe, he and his mother were out at sea, and were cast on the isle of Seriphos, where a fisherman named Dictys took care of them.  A cruel tyrant named Polydectes wanted Danaë to be his wife, and, as she would not consent, he shut her up in prison, saying that she should never come out till her son Perseus had brought him the head of the Gorgon Medusa, thinking he must be lost by the way.  For the Gorgons were three terrible sisters, who lived in the far west beyond the setting sun.  Two of them were immortal, and had dragon’s wings and brazen claws and serpent hair, but their sister Medusa was mortal, and sop. 36beautiful in the face that she had boasted of being fairer than Pallas.  To punish her presumption, her hair was turned to serpents, and whosoever looked on her face, sad and lovely as it was, would instantly be turned into stone.

But, for his mother’s sake, young Perseus was resolved to dare this terrible adventure, and his bravery brought help from the gods.  The last night before he was to set out Pallas came and showed him the images of the three Gorgons, and bade him not concern himself about the two he could not kill; but she gave him a mirror of polished brass, and told him only to look at Medusa’s reflection on it, for he would become a stone if he beheld her real self.  Then Mercury came and gave Perseus a sword of light that would cleave all on whom it might fall, lent him his own winged sandals, and told him to go first to the nymphs of the Graiæ, the Gorgons’ sisters, and make them tell him the way.

So the young hero went by land and sea, still westwards, to the very borders of the world, where stands the giant of the west, Atlas, holding up the great vault of the skies on his broad shoulders.  Beyond lay the dreary land of twilight, on the shores of the great ocean that goes round the world, and on the rocks on the shores sat the three old, old nymphs, the Graiæ, who had been born with grey hair, and had but one eye and one tooth among them, which they passed to one another in turn.  When the first had seen the noble-looking youth speeding to them, she handed her eye on, that the next sister might look at him; but Perseus was p. 37too quick—he caught the one eye out of her hand, and then told the three poor old nymphs that he did not want to hurt them, but that he must keep their eye till they had told him the way to Medusa the Gorgon.

They told him the way, and, moreover, they gave him a mist-cap helmet from Tartarus, which would make him invisible whenever he put it on, and also a bag, which he slung on his back; and, thus armed, he went further to the very bounds of the world, and he took his mirror in his hand, and looked into it.  There he saw the three Gorgon sisters, their necks covered with scales like those of snakes (at least those of two), their teeth like boar’s tusks, their hands like brass, and their wings of gold; but they were all fast asleep, and Perseus, still looking into his mirror, cleft Medusa’s neck with his all-cutting sword, and put her head into the bag on his back without ever seeing her face.  Her sisters awoke and darted after him; but he put on his helmet of mist, and they lost him, while he fled away on Mercury’s swift-winged sandals.  As he sped eastward, he heard a voice asking whether he had really killed the Gorgon.  It was Atlas, the old heaven-supporting giant; and when Perseus answered that he had, Atlas declared that he must see the head to convince him.  So Perseus put a hand over his shoulder, and drew it up by its snaky hair; but no sooner had Atlas cast his eyes on it than he turned into a mountain, his white beard and hair becoming the snowy peak, and his garments the woods and forests.  And there he still p. 38stands on the west coast of Africa, and all our modern map-books are named after him.

But Perseus’ adventures were not over.  As he flew on by the Lybian coast he heard a sound of wailing, and beheld a beautiful maiden chained by her hands and feet to a rock.  He asked what had led her to this sad plight, and she answered that she was Andromeda, the daughter of Cepheus and Cassiopeia, king and p. 39queen of Ethiopia, and that her mother had foolishly boasted that she was fairer than the Nereids, the fifty nymphs who are the spirits of the waves.  Neptune was so much displeased that he sent a flood to overflow the land, and a sea-monster to devour the people and cattle.  In an oasis or isle of fertility in the middle of the Lybian desert was a temple of Jupiter, there called Ammon, and the Ethiopians had sent there to ask what to do.  The oracle replied that the evil should cease if Andromeda were given up to the monster.  Cepheus had been obliged to yield her up because of the outcries of the people, and here she was waiting to be devoured.  Perseus, of course, was ready.  He heard the monster coming, bade Andromeda close her eyes, and then held up the Gorgon’s head.  In an instant her foe had become a rock, and he cleft the maiden’s chains, brought her back to her father and mother, who gave her to him in marriage, and made a great feast; but here a former lover of hers insulted them both so much, that Perseus was forced to show him the Gorgon’s face, and turn him into stone.

Then Perseus, with Andromeda, took his way to Seriphos.  Indeed it was high time that he should come back, for Polydectes, thinking that he must long ago have been turned into a rock at the sight of Medusa, had tried to take Danaë by force to be his wife, and she had fled into a temple, where no one dared to touch her, since it was always believed that the gods punished such as dragged suppliants away p. 40from their temples.  So Perseus went to Polydectes, who was in the midst of a feast, and, telling him that his bidding was done, held up the head of Medusa, and of course the king and his whole court turned at once into stone.  Now that the work of the Gorgon’s head was done, Perseus offered it to Pallas, who placed it upon her shield, or, as it is always called, her ægis; and he gave back the sword of light, cap of mist, and winged sandals to Mercury.

After this he returned to Argos, and there, at a game of quoits, he had the misfortune to throw the quoit the wrong way, and hit his grandfather, the king, so as to kill him.  Perseus reigned afterwards, and, like all the nobler Greek heroes, kept out the worship of Bacchus and its foul orgies from his dominions; but he afterwards exchanged kingdoms with another king, and built the city of Tiryas.  He lived happily with Andromeda, and had a great many children, whose descendants viewed him as a demi-god, and had shrines to him, where they offered incense and sacrifice; for they thought that he and all the family were commemorated in the stars, and named the groups after them.  You may find them all in the North.  Andromeda is a great square, as if large stars marked the rivets of her chains on the rock; Perseus, a long curved cluster of bright stars, as if climbing up to deliver her; her mother Cassiopeia like a bright W, in which the Greeks traced a chair, where she sat with her back to the rest to punish her for her boast.  Cepheus is there too, but he p. 41is smaller, and less easy to find.  They are all in the North, round the Great Bear, who was said by the Greeks to be a poor lady whom Juno had turned into a bear, and who was almost killed unknowingly by her own son when out hunting.  He is the Little Bear, with the pole star in his tail, and she is the Great Bear, always circling round him, and, as the Greeks used to say, never dipping her muzzle into the ocean, because she is so far north that she never sets.

This story of Perseus is a very old one, which all nations have loved to tell, though with different names.  You will be amused to think that the old Cornish way of telling it is found in “Jack the Giant-Killer,” who had seven-leagued boots and a cap of mist, and delivered fair ladies from their cruel foes.

p. 42CHAP. V.—THE LABOURS OF HERCULES.

ne morning Jupiter boasted among the gods in Olympus that a son would that day be born in the line of Perseus, who would rule over all the Argives.  Juno was angry and jealous at this, and, as she was the goddess who presided over the births of children, she contrived to hinder the birth of the child he intended till that day was over, and to hasten that of another grandson of the great Perseus.  This child was named Eurystheus, and, as he had been born on the right day, Jupiter was forced to let him be king of Argos, Sparta, and Mycenæ, and all the Dorian race; while the boy whom he had meant to be the chief was kept in subjection, in spite of having wonderful gifts of courage and strength, and a kind, generous nature, that always was ready to help the weak and sorrowful.

His name was Alcides, or Hercules, and he was so strong at ten months old, that, with his own hands, he strangled two serpents whom Juno sent to devour him in his cradle.  He was bred up by Chiron, the chief of the Centaurs, a wondrous race of beings, who had horses’ p. 43bodies as far as the forelegs, but where the neck of the horse would begin had human breasts and shoulders, with arms and heads.  Most of them were fierce and savage; but Chiron was very wise and good, and, as Jupiter made him immortal, he was the teacher of many of the great Greek heroes.  When Hercules was about eighteen, two maidens appeared to him—one in a simple white dress, grave, modest and seemly; the other scarcely clothed, but tricked out in ornaments, with a flushed face, and bold, roving eyes.  The first told him that she p. 44was Virtue, and that, if he would follow her, she would lead him through many hard trials, but that he would be glorious at last, and be blest among the gods.  The other was Vice, and she tried to wile him by a smooth life among wine-cups and dances and flowers and sports, all to be enjoyed at once.  But the choice of Hercules was Virtue, and it was well for him, for Jupiter, to make up for Juno’s cheat, had sworn that, if he fulfilled twelve tasks which Eurystheus should put upon him, he should be declared worthy of being raised to the gods at his death.

p. 45Eurystheus did not know that in giving these tasks he was making his cousin fulfil his course; but he was afraid of such a mighty man, and hoped that one of these would be the means of getting rid of him.  So when he saw Hercules at Argos, with a club made of a forest tree in his hand, and clad in the skin of a lion which he had slain, Eurystheus bade him go and kill a far more terrible lion, of giant brood, and with a skin that could not be pierced, which dwelt in the valley of Nemea.  The fight was a terrible one; the lion could not be wounded, and Hercules was forced to grapple with it, and strangle it in his arms.  He lost a finger in the struggle, but at last the beast died in his grasp, and he carried it on his back to Argos, where Eurystheus was so much frightened at the grim sight that he fled away to hide himself, and commanded Hercules not to bring his monsters within the gates of the city.

There was a second labour ready for Hercules—namely, the destroying a serpent with nine heads, called Hydra, whose lair was the marsh of Lerna.  Hercules went to the battle, and managed to crush one head with his club, but that moment two sprang up in its place; moreover, a huge crab came out of the swamp, and began to pinch his heels.  Still he did not lose heart, but, calling his friend Iolaus, he bade him take a p. 46fire-brand and burn the necks as fast as he cut off the heads; and thus at last they killed the creature, and Hercules dipped his arrows in its poisonous blood, so that their least wound became fatal.  Eurystheus said that it had not been a fair victory, since Hercules had been helped, and Juno put the crab into the skies as the constellation Cancer; while a labour to patience was next devised for Hercules—namely, the chasing of the Arcadian stag, which was sacred to Diana, and had golden horns and brazen hoofs.  Hercules hunted it up hill and down dale for a whole year, and when at last he caught it, he got into trouble with Apollo and Diana about it, and had hard work to appease them; but he did so at last; and for his fourth labour was sent to catch alive a horrid wild boar on Mount Erymanthus.  He followed the beast through a deep swamp, caught it in a net, and brought it to Mycenæ.

The fifth task was a curious one.  Augeas, king of Elis, had immense herds, and kept his stables and cow-houses in a frightful state of filth, and Eurystheus, hoping either to disgust Hercules or kill him by the unwholesomeness of the work, sent him to clean them.  Hercules, without telling Augeas it was his appointed p. 47task, offered to do it if he were repaid the tenth of the herds, and received the promise on oath.  Then he dug a canal, and turned the water of two rivers into the stables, so as effectually to cleanse them; but when Augeas heard it was his task, he tried to cheat him of the payment, and on the other hand Eurystheus said, as he had been rewarded, it could not count as one of his labours, and ordered him off to clear the woods near Lake Stymphalis of some horrible birds, with brazen beaks and claws, and ready-made arrows for feathers, which ate human flesh.  To get them to rise out of the forest was his first difficulty, but Pallas lent him a brazen clapper, which made them take to their wings; then he shot them with his poisoned arrows, killed many, and drove the rest away.

King Minos of Crete had once vowed to sacrifice to the gods whatever should appear from the sea.  A beautiful white bull came, so fine that it tempted him not to keep his word, and he was punished by the bull going mad, and doing all sorts of damage in Crete; so that Eurystheus thought it would serve as a labour for Hercules to bring the animal to Mycenæ.  In due time back came the hero, with the bull, quite subdued, upon his shoulders; and, having shown it, he let it loose again to run about Greece.

He had a harder task in getting the mares of the Thracian king, Diomêdes, which were fed on man’s flesh.  He overcame their grooms, and drove the beasts away; but he was overtaken by Diomêdes, and, while fighting with him and his people, put the mares under p. 48the charge of a friend; but when the battle was over, and Diomêdes killed, he found that they had eaten up their keeper.  However, when he had fed them on the dead body of their late master, they grew mild and manageable, and he brought them home.

The next expedition was against the Amazons, a nation of women warriors, who lived somewhere on the banks of the Euxine or Black Sea, kept their husbands in subjection, and seldom brought up a son.  The bravest of all the Amazons was the queen, Hippolyta, to whom Mars had given a belt as a reward for her valour.  Eurystheus’ daughter wanted this belt, and Hercules was sent to fetch it.  He was so hearty, honest, and good-natured, that he talked over Hippolyta, and she promised him her girdle; but Juno, to make mischief, took the form of an Amazon, and persuaded the ladies that their queen was being deluded and stolen away by a strange man, so they mounted their horses and came down to rescue her.  He thought she had been treacherous, and there was a great fight, in which he killed her, and carried off her girdle.

Far out in the west, near the ocean flowing round the world, were herds of purple oxen, guarded by a two-headed dog, and belonging to a giant with three bodies called Geryon, who lived in the isle of Erythria, in the outmost ocean.  Passing Lybia, Hercules came to the end of the Mediterranean Sea, Neptune’s domain, and there set up two pillars—namely, Mounts Calpe and Abyla—on each side a the Straits of Gibraltar.  p. 49The rays of the sun scorched him, and in wrath he shot at it with his arrows, when Helios, instead of being angry, admired his boldness, and gave him his golden cup, wherewith to cross the outer ocean, which he did safely, although old Oceanus, who was king there, put up his hoary head, and tried to frighten him by shaking the bowl.  It was large enough to hold all the herd of oxen, when Hercules had killed dog, herdsman, and giant, and he returned it safely to Helios when he had crossed the ocean.  The oxen were sacrificed to Juno, Eurystheus’ friend.

Again Eurystheus sent Hercules to the utmost parts of the earth.  This time it was to bring home the golden apples which grew in the gardens of the Hesperides, the daughters of old Atlas, who dwelt in the land of Hesperus the Evening Star, and, together with a dragon, guarded the golden tree in a beautiful garden.  Hercules made a long journey, apparently round by the North, and on his way had to wrestle with a dreadful giant named Antæus.  Though thrown down over and over again, Antæus rose up twice as strong every time, till Hercules found out that he grew in force whenever he touched his mother earth, and therefore, lifting him up in those mightiest of arms, the hero squeezed the breath out of him.  By-and-by he came to Mount Caucasus, where he found the chained Prometheus, and, aiming an arrow at the eagle, killed the tormentor, and set the Titan free.  In return, Prometheus gave him much good counsel, and indeed seems to have gone p. 50with him to Atlas, who, according to this story, was still able to move, in spite of the petrifaction by Hercules’ grandfather.  Atlas undertook to go to his daughters, and get the apples, if Hercules would hold up the skies for him in the meantime.  Hercules agreed, and Atlas shifted the heavens to his shoulders, went, and presently returned with three apples of gold, but said he would take them to Eurystheus, and Hercules must continue to bear the load of the skies.  Prometheus bade Hercules say he could not hold them without a pad for them to rest on his head.  Atlas took them again to hold while the pad was put on; and thereupon Hercules picked up the apples, and left the old giant to his load.

One more labour remained—namely, to bring up the three-headed watch-dog, Cerberus, from the doors of Tartarus.  Mercury and Pallas both came to attend him, and led him alive among the shades, who all fled from him, except Medusa and one brave youth.  He gave them the blood of an ox to drink, and made his way to Pluto’s throne, where he asked leave to take Cerberus to the upper world with him.  Pluto said he might, if he could overcome Cerberus without weapons; and this he did, struggling with the dog, with no protection but the lion’s skin, and dragging him up to the light, where the foam that fell from the jaws of one of the three mouths produced the plant called aconite, or hellebore, which is dark and poisonous.  After showing the beast to Eurystheus, Hercules safely returned him to the underworld, and thus completed his twelve great labours.

p. 51

CHAP. VI.—THE ARGONAUTS.

ou remember that Cadmus founded Thebes.  One of his daughters was named Ino.  She married a son of King Æolus, who had been married before, and had two children, Phryxus and Helle.  Ino was a cruel stepmother, and deceived her husband into thinking that the oracle at Delphi required him to sacrifice his son to Jupiter; but as the poor boy stood before the altar, down from the skies came a ram with a golden fleece, which took both the children on his back, and flew away with them over land and sea; but poor Helle let go in passing the narrow strait between Asia and Europe, fell into the sea, and was drowned.  The strait was called after her, the Hellespont, or Helle’s Sea.  Phryxus came safely to Colchis, on the Black Sea, and was kindly received by Æetes, the king of the country.  They sacrificed the golden-woolled ram to Jupiter, and nailed up its fleece to a tree in the grove of Mars.

Some time after, Pelias, the usurping king of Iolcus, was driving a mule-car through the market-place, when he saw a fine young man, with hair flowing p. 52on his shoulders, two spears in his hand, and only one sandal.  He was very much afraid, for it had been foretold to him by an oracle that he would be slain by the man with one foot bare.  And this youth was really Jason, the son of his brother Æson, from whom he had taken the kingdom.  Fearing that he would kill the child, Æson had sent it away to the cave of the Centaur Chiron, by whom Jason had been bred up, and had now come to seek his fortune.  He had lost his shoe in the mud, while kindly carrying an old woman across a river, little knowing that she was really the goddess Juno, who had come down in that form to make trial of the kindness of men, and who was thus made his friend for ever.  Pelias sent for the young stranger the next day, and asked him what he would do if he knew who was the man fated to kill him.  “I should send him to fetch the Golden Fleece,” said Jason.

“Then go and fetch it,” said Pelias.

Jason thereupon began building a ship, which he called Argo, and proclaimed the intended expedition throughout Greece, thus gathering together all the most famous heroes then living, most of whom had, like him, been brought up by the great Centaur Chiron.  Hercules was one of them, and another was Theseus, the great hero of the Ionian city of Athens, whose prowess was almost equal to that of Hercules.  He had caught and killed the great white bull which Hercules had brought from Crete and let loose, and he had also destroyed the p. 53horrid robber Procrustes (the Stretcher), who had kept two iron bedsteads, one long and one short.  He put tall men into the short bed, and cut them down to fit it, and short men into the long bed, pulling them out till they died, until Theseus finished his life on one of his own beds.

Another deed of Theseus was in Crete.  The great white bull which Minos ought to have sacrificed had left a horrible offspring, a monster called the Minotaur, half man and half bull, which ate human flesh, and did horrible harm, till a clever artificer named Dædalus made a dwelling for it called the Labyrinth, approached by so many cross paths, winding in and out in a maze, p. 54that everyone who entered it was sure to lose himself; and the Minotaur could never get out, but still they fed him there; and as Athens was subject to Crete, the people were required to send every year a tribute of seven youths and seven maidens for the Minotaur to devour.  Theseus offered himself to be one of these, telling his father that whereas a black sail was always carried by the ship that bore these victims to their death, he would, if he succeeded in killing the Minotaur, as he hoped to do, hoist a white one when coming home.  When he reached Crete, he won the heart of Minos’ daughter Ariadne, who gave him a skein of thread: by unwinding this as he went he would leave a clue behind him, by which he could find his way out of the labyrinth, after killing the monster.  When this was done, by his great skill and strength, he took ship again, and Ariadne came with him; but he grew tired of her, and left her behind in the isle of Naxos, where Bacchus found her weeping, consoled her, and gave her a starry crown, which may be seen in the sky on a summer night.  Theseus, meantime, went back to Athens, but he had forgotten his promise about the white sail, and his poor old father, seeing the black one, as he sat watching on the rocks, thought that ill news was coming, fell down, and was drowned, just as Theseus sailed safely into port.  Theseus was a friend of Hercules, had been with him on his journey to the land of the Amazons, and had married one of them named Antiope.

Two more of the Argonauts were Castor and Pollux, p. 55the twin sons of Leda, queen of Sparta.  She had also two daughters, named Helen and Clytemnestra, and Helen was growing into the most beautiful woman in the world.  These children, in the fable, had been hatched from two huge swans’ eggs; Castor and Clytemnestra were in one egg, and Pollux and Helen in the other.  Castor and Pollux were the most loving of brothers, and while Castor was famous for horsemanship, Pollux was the best of boxers.  They, too, had p. 56been pupils of Chiron; so was Peleus of Ægina, who had wooed Thetis, one of the fifty Nereids, or sea-nymphs, though she changed herself into all sorts of forms when he caught her first—fire, water, a serpent, and a lioness; but he held her fast through all, and at last she listened to him, and all the gods and goddesses had come to the wedding feast.  They had one son, named Achilles, whom Thetis had tried to make immortal after Ceres’ fashion, by putting him on the fire at night; but, like Triptolemus’ mother, Peleus had cried out and spoilt the spell.  Then she took the boy to the river Styx, and bathed him there, so that he became invulnerable all over, except in the heel by which she held him.  The child was now in Chiron’s cave, being fed with the marrow of lions and bears, to make him strong and brave.

One more Argonaut must be mentioned, namely, the minstrel Orpheus.  He was the son of the muse Calliope, and was looked on as the first of the many glorious singers of Greece, who taught the noblest and best lessons.  His music, when he played on the lyre, was so sweet, that all the animals, both fierce and gentle, came round to hear it; and not only these, but even the trees and rocks gathered round, entranced by the sweetness.

All these and more, to the number of fifty, joined Jason in his enterprise.  The Argo, the ship which bore them, had fifty oars, and in the keel was a piece of wood from the great oak of Dodona, which could p. 57speak for the oracles.  When all was ready, Jason stood on the poop, and poured forth a libation from a golden cup, praying aloud to Jupiter, to the Winds, the Days, the Nights, and to Fate to grant them a favourable voyage.  Old Chiron came down from his hills to cheer them, and pray for their return; and as the oars kept measured time, Orpheus struck his lyre in tune with their splash in the blue waters.

They had many adventures.  After passing the Hellespont, they found in the Propontis, which we call the Sea of Marmora, an islet called the Bears’ Hill, inhabited by giants with six arms, whom they slew.

In Mysia a youth named Hylas went ashore to fetch water, but was caught by the nymphs of the stream and taken captive.  Hercules, hearing his cry, went in search of him, and, as neither returned, the Argo sailed without them.  No more was heard of Hylas, but Hercules went back to Argos.

They next visited Phineus, a wise old blind king, who was tormented by horrid birds called Harpies, with women’s faces.  These monsters always came down when he was going to eat, devoured the food, and spoilt what they did not eat.  The Argonauts having among them two winged sons of Boreas (the north wind), hunted these horrible creatures far out into the Mediterranean.  Phineus then told them that they would have to pass between some floating rocks called the Symplegades, which were always enveloped in mist, were often driven together by the wind, and crushed p. 58whatever was between.  He told them to let fly a dove, and if it went through safely they might follow.  They did so, and the dove came out at the other side, but with her tail clipped off as the rocks met.  However, on went the Argo, each hero rowing for his life, and Juno and Pallas helping them; and, after all, they were but just in time, and lost the ornaments at their stern!  Fate had decreed that, when once a ship passed through these rocks unhurt, they should become fixed, and thus they were no longer dangerous.  It does not seem unlikely that this story might have come from some report of the dangers of icebergs.  Of course there are none in the Black Sea, but the Greeks, who knew little beyond their own shores, seem to have fancied that this was open to the north into the great surrounding ocean, and the Phœnicians, who were much more adventurous sailors than they, may have brought home histories of the perils they met in the Atlantic Ocean.

The Argonauts had one more encounter with Hercules’ old foes, the birds of Stymphalis, and after this safely arrived at Colchis, and sailed into the mouth of the river Phasis, from which it is said the pheasant takes its name.

p. 59CHAP. VII.—THE SUCCESS OF THE ARGONAUTS.

hen Jason arrived at Colchis, he sent to King Æetes, and asked of him the Golden Fleece.  To this Æetes replied that he might have it, provided he could yoke the two brazen-footed bulls with flaming breath, which had been a present from Vulcan, and with them plough a piece of land, and sow it with the dragon’s teeth.  Pallas had given Æetes half the teeth of the dragon of Thebes, which had been slain by Cadmus.

The task seemed beyond his reach, till Medea, the wicked witch, daughter of Æetes, promised to help him, on condition that he would marry her, and take her to Greece.  When Jason had sworn to do so, Medea gave him an ointment with which to rub himself, also his shield and spear.  For a whole day afterwards neither sword nor fire should hurt him, and he would thus be able to master the bulls.  So he found it; he made them draw the plough, and then he sowed the teeth, which came up, like those sown by Cadmus, as armed men, who began to attack him; but, as Medea had bidden him, he threw a stone among them, and they began to fight p. 60with one another, so that he could easily kill the few who spared each other.

Still Æetes refused to give him the fleece, and was about to set fire to the Argo, and kill the crew; but Medea warned Jason in time, and led him to the spot where it was nailed against a tree.  Orpheus lulled the guardian dragon to sleep with his lyre, while Jason took down the fleece; and Medea joined them, carrying in her arms her little brother, whom she had snatched from his bed with a cruel purpose, for when her father took alarm and gave chase, she cut the poor child to pieces, and strewed his limbs on the stream of the Phasis, so that, while her father waited to collect them, the Argo had time to sail away.

It did not return by the same route, but went to the north, and came to the isle of the goddess Circe, who purified Jason and Medea from the blood of the poor boy.  Then they came to the isle of the Sirens, creatures like fair maidens, who stood on the shore singing so sweetly that no sailor could resist the charm; but the moment any man reached the shore, they strangled him and sucked his blood.  Warned by Medea, Orpheus played and sang so grandly as to drown their fatal song, and the Argo came out into the p. 61Mediterranean somewhere near Trinacria, the three-cornered island now called Sicily, where they had to pass between two lofty cliffs.  In a cave under one of these lived a monster called Scylla, with twelve limbs and six long necks, with a dog’s head to each, ready each to seize a man out of every ship that passed; but it was safer to keep on her side than to go to the other cliff, for there a water-witch named Charybdis lived in a whirlpool, and was sure to suck the whole ship in, and swallow it up.  However, for her husband Peleus’ sake, Thetis and her sister Nereids came and guided the Argo safely through.

When the crew returned to Iolcus, they had only been absent four months; and Jason gave the fleece to his uncle Pelias, and dedicated the Argo to Neptune.  He found his father Æson grown very old, but Medea undertook to restore him to youth.  She went forth by moonlight, gathered a number of herbs, and then, putting them in a caldron, she cut old Æson into pieces, threw them in, and boiled them all night.  In the morning Æson appeared as a lively black-haired young man, no older than his son.  Pelias’ daughters came and begged her to teach them the same spell.  She feigned to do so, but she did not tell them the true herbs, and thus the poor maidens only slew their father, and did not bring him to life again.  The son of Pelias drove the treacherous Medea and her husband from Iolcus, and they went to Corinth, where they lived ten years, until Jason grew weary of Medea, and put her away, in order to marry Creusa, the king’s daughter.  In her p. 62rage, Medea sent the bride the fatal gift of a poisoned robe, then she killed her own children, and flew away, in a chariot drawn by winged serpents, to the east, where she became the mother of a son named Medus, from whom the nation of Medes was descended.  As to Jason, he had fallen asleep at noon one hot day under the shade of the Argo, where it was drawn up on the sand by Neptune’s temple, when a bit of wood broke off from the prow, fell on his head, and killed him.

Of the other Argonauts, Orpheus went to Thessaly, and there taught and softened the people much by his p. 63music.  He married a fair maiden named Eurydice, with whom he lived happily and peacefully, till she was bitten by a venomous serpent and died.  Orpheus was so wretched that he set forth to try to bring her back from Tartarus.  He went with nothing but his lyre, and his music was so sweet that Cerberus stood listening, and let him pass, and all the torments of the Danaids, Sisyphus and all the rest, ceased while he was playing.  His song even brought tears into Pluto’s eyes, and Proserpine, who guarded the female dead, gave him leave to take back Eurydice to the light of day, provided he did not once look back as he led her out of Tartarus.

Orpheus had to walk first, and, as he went up the long, dark cavern, with Eurydice behind him, he carefully obeyed, till, just as he was reaching the upper air, he unhappily forgot, and turned his head to see whether she were following.  He just saw her stretch out her hands to him, and then she was drawn back, and vanished from his sight.  The gates were closed, and he had lost her again.  After this he wandered sadly about, all his songs turned to woe, until at last the Bacchanal women, in fury at his despising the foul rites of their god, tore him limb from limb.  The Muses collected his remains, and gave them funeral rites, and Jupiter placed his lyre in the skies, where you may know it by one of the brightest of all our stars.

Hercules also made another visit to the realms below.  Admetus, one of the Æolian kings, had obtained from Apollo that, when the time came for him to die, his lifep. 64should be prolonged if anyone would submit to death in his turn.  The call came while Admetus was still young, and he besought his old father, and then his mother, to die in his stead; but they would not, and it was his fair young wife Alcestis who gave her life for his.  Just as she was laid in the tomb, Hercules came to visit Admetus, and, on hearing what had happened, he went down to the kingdom of Pluto and brought her back.  Or some say he sat by her tomb, and wrestled with Death when he came to seize her.

But, strong as he was, Hercules had in time to meet death himself.  He had married a nymph named Deianira, and was taking her home, when he came to a river where a Centaur named Nessus lived, and gained his bread by carrying travellers over on his back.  Hercules paid him the price for carrying Deianira over, while he himself crossed on foot; but as soon as the river was between them, the faithless Centaur began to gallop away with the lady.  Hercules sent an arrow after him, which brought him to the ground, and as he was dying he prepared his revenge, by telling Deianira that his blood was enchanted with love for her, and that if ever she found her husband’s affection failing her, she had only to make him put on a garment anointed with it, and his heart would return to her: he knew full well that his blood was full of the poison of the Hydra, but poor Deianira believed him, and had saved some of the blood before Hercules came up.

Several years after, Hercules made prisoner a maiden p. 65named Iole, in Lydia, after gaining a great victory.  Landing in the island of Eubœa, he was going to make a great sacrifice to Jupiter, and sent home to Deianira for a festal garment to wear at it.  She was afraid he was falling in love with Iole, and steeped the garment in the preparation she had made from Nessus’ blood.  No sooner did Hercules put it on, than his veins were filled with agony, which nothing could assuage.  He tried to tear off the robe, but the skin and flesh came with it, and his blood was poisoned beyond relief.  He sailed home, and when Deianira saw the state he was in she hung herself for grief, while he charged Hylas, his eldest son, to take care of Iole, and marry her as soon as he grew up.  Then, unable to bear the pain any longer, and knowing that by his twelve tasks he had earned the prize of endless life, he went to Mount Œta, crying aloud with the pain, so that the rocks rang again with the sound.  He gave his quiver of arrows to his friend Philoctetes, charging him to collect his ashes and bury them, but never to make known the spot; and then he tore up, with his mighty strength, trees by the roots enough to form a funeral pile, lay down on it, and called on his friend to set fire to it; but no one could bear to do so, till a shepherd consented to thrust in a torch.  Then thunder was heard, a cloud came down, and he was borne away to Olympus, while Philoctetes collected and buried the ashes.

His young sons were banished by Eurystheus, and were taken by his old friend Iolaus to seek shelter in various p. 66cities, but only the Athenians were brave enough to let them remain.  Theseus had been driven away and banished from Athens; but the citizens sheltered the sons of the hero, and, when Eurystheus pursued them, a battle was fought on the isthmus of Corinth, in which the old enemy of Hercules was killed by Iolaus, with all his sons.  Then the Heraclieds (sons of Hercules) were going to fight their way back to Argos, but an army met them at the isthmus, and was going to give them battle, when Hylas proposed that he should fight with a single champion chosen on the other side.  If he gained, he was to be restored to the kingdom of Perseus; if not, there was to be a truce for a hundred years.  Hylas had not the strength of his father; he was slain, and his brothers had to retreat and bide their time.

Argos came into the power of Agamemnon, who had married Clytemnestra, the sister of Castor and Pollux, while his brother Menelaus married the beautiful Helen.  All the Greek heroes had been suitors for Helen, the fairest woman living, and they all swore to one another that, choose she whom she might, they would all stand by him, and punish anyone who might try to steal her from him.  Her choice fell on Menelaus, and soon after her wedding her brother Castor was slain, and though Pollux was immortal, he could not bear to live without his brother, and prayed to share his death; upon which Jupiter made them both stars, the bright ones called Gemini, or the Twins, and Menelaus reigned with Helen at Sparta, as Agamemnon did at Mycenæ.

p. 67These two were sons of Atreus, and were descended from Tantalus, once a favourite of the gods, who used to come down and feast with him, until once he took his son Pelops and dressed him for their meal.  Jupiter found it out, collected the limbs, and restored the boy to life; but Ceres had been so distracted with grief about her daughter, that she had eaten one shoulder, and Jupiter gave him an ivory one instead.  Tantalus was sent to Tartarus, where his punishment was to pine with hunger and thirst, with a feast before him, where he neither could touch the food nor the drink, because there was a rock hung over his head threatening to crush him.  Pelops was a wonderful charioteer, and won his bride in the chariot race, having bribed the charioteer of his rival to leave out the linchpins of his wheels.  Afterwards, when the charioteer asked a reward, Pelops threw him into the sea; and this was the second crime that brought a doom on the race.  Pelops gave his name to the whole peninsula now called the Morea, or mulberry-leaf, but which was all through ancient times known as the Peloponnesus, or Isle of Pelops.  He reigned at Elis, and after his death his sons Atreus and Thyestes struggled for the rule, but both were horribly wicked men, and Atreus was said to have killed two sons of Thyestes, and served them up to him at a feast.  There was, therefore, a heavy curse on the whole family, both on Ægisthus, son of Thyestes, and on his cousins Agamemnon and Menelaus, the Atridæ, or sons of Atreus.

p. 68

CHAP. VIII.—THE CHOICE OF PARIS.

he gods and goddesses were merrily feasting when Ate, the goddess of strife, desirous of making mischief, threw down among them a golden apple, engraven with the words, “This apple to the Fair.”  The three goddesses, Juno, Pallas, and Venus, each thought it meant for her—one having the beauty of dignity, the other the beauty of wisdom, and the third the beauty of grace and fairness.  They would not accept the award of any of the gods, lest they should not be impartial; but they declared that no one should decide between them but Paris, a shepherd, though a king’s son, who was keeping his flocks on Mount Ida.

Each goddess tried to allure him to choose her by promises.  Juno offered him a mighty throne; Pallas promised to make him the wisest of men; Venus declared that she would give him the fairest woman on earth for his wife for ten years—she could assure him of no more.  And it was Venus to whom Paris assigned the golden apple of discord, thus bitterly offending Juno and Pallas, who became the enemies of his nation.

p. 69His nation was the Trojan, who dwelt on the east coast of the Ægean Sea, and were of the Pelasgic race.  Their chief city was Troy, with the citadel Ilium, lying near the banks of the rivers Simois and Scamander, between the sea shore and the wooded mount of Ida, in the north-east of the peninsula we call Asia Minor.  The story went that the walls had been built by Neptune and Apollo, the last of whom had brought the stones to their place by the music of his lyre; but the king who p. 70was then reigning had refused to pay them, and had thus made them also his foes.  But within the citadel was an image of Pallas, three ells long, with a spear in one hand and a distaff in the other, which was called the Palladium.  It was said to have been given by Jupiter to Ilus, the first founder of the city; and as long as it was within the walls, the place could never be taken.

The present king was Priam, and his wife was Hecuba.  They had nineteen children, and lived in a palace built round a court, with an altar in the middle, their sons having houses likewise opening into the court.  Paris, who was worthless and pleasure-loving, was the eldest son; Hector, a very noble person, was the second.  After Paris had given judgment in her favour, Venus directed him to build a ship, and go to visit the Greek kings.  He was kindly entertained everywhere, and especially at Sparta; and here it was that Venus fulfilled her promise, by helping him to steal away Helen, the fairest of women, while her husband Menelaus was gone to Crete.

As soon as Menelaus found out how his hospitality had been misused, he called upon all the Greek heroes to remember their oath, and help him to recover his wife, and take vengeance on Paris.  Everyone replied to the call; but the wise Ulysses, grandson of Sisyphus, and king of the little isle of Ithaca, could not bear to leave his home, or his fair young wife Penelope, for a war which he knew would be long and terrible, so he feigned to be mad, and began furiously ploughing the p. 71sea shore with a yoke of oxen.  However, the next cleverest hero, Palamedes, to prove him, placed his infant son Telemachus full in the way of the plough, and when Ulysses turned it aside from the child, they declared that his madness was only pretended, and he was forced to go with them.

The Nereid Thetis knew that if her brave and beautiful son Achilles went to Troy, he would die there; so she dressed him as a maiden, and placed him at the court of the king of Scyros, where he stayed for love of one of the king’s daughters.  But the Greeks had a man named Calchas, who was an augur—that is, he could tell what was going to happen by the flight of birds, by the clouds, and by the inwards of sacrificed animals.  Calchas told the Greeks that Troy would never be taken unless Achilles went with them.  So Ulysses, guessing where the youth was, disguised himself as a merchant, and went with his wares to the palace of Scyros.  All the maidens came forth to look at them, and while most were busy with the jewels and robes, one, tall and golden-haired, seemed to care for nothing but a bright sword, holding it with a strong, firm hand.  Then Ulysses knew he had found Achilles, and told him of the famous war that was beginning, and the youth threw off his maiden’s garb, put on his armour, and went eagerly with them; but before he went he married the fair Deidamia, and left her to wait for him at Scyros, where she had a son named Pyrrhus.

Indeed the Greeks were whole years gathering their p. 72forces, and when they did all meet at last, with their ships and men, Agamemnon, king of Mycenæ, Menelaus’ brother, took the lead of them all.  As they were sacrificing to Jupiter, a snake glided up a tree, where there was a sparrow’s nest, and ate up all the eight young ones, and then the mother bird.  On seeing this, Calchas foretold that the war would last nine years, and after the ninth Troy would be taken.

However, they sailed on, till at Aulis they were stopped by foul winds for many days, and Calchas told them it was because of Agamemnon’s broken vow.  He had sworn, one year, to sacrifice to Diana the fairest thing that was born in his house or lands.  The fairest thing that was born was his little daughter Iphigenia; but he could not bear to sacrifice her, and so had tried offering his choicest kid.  Now Diana sent these winds to punish him, and the other kings required him to give up his child.  So a message was sent to her mother, Clytemnestra, to send her, on pretence that she was to be married to Achilles, and when she came to Aulis she found that it was only to be offered up.  However, she resigned herself bravely, and was ready to die for her father and the cause; but just as Agamemnon had his sword ready, and had covered her face that he might not see her pleading eyes as he was slaying her, Diana took pity, darted down in a cloud, and in the place of the maiden a white hind lay on the altar to be offered.  Iphigenia was really carried off to serve as priestess at Diana’s temple at Tauris, but it was long before it was p. 73known what had become of her, and Clytemnestra never forgave Agamemnon for what he had intended to do.

At the isle of Tenedos the Greeks had to leave behind Philoctetes, the friend of Hercules, who had his quiver of poisoned arrows, because the poor man had a wound in his heel, which was in such a dreadful state that no one could bear to come near him.  One story was that he was bitten by a water-snake, another that when he was just setting off he had been over-persuaded to show where he had buried the ashes of Hercules.  He did not say one word, but stamped with his foot on the place, and an arrow fell out at the moment and pierced his heel.  At any rate, he and the arrows were left behind, while the Greeks reached the coast of Troy.

The augurs had declared that the first man who touched the shore would be the first to be killed.  Achilles threw his shield before him, and leaped out of the ship upon that; but Protesilaus leaped without so p. 74doing, and was slain almost instantly by the Trojans.  When his wife Laodamia heard of his death, she grieved and pined so piteously that his spirit could not rest, and Mercury gave him leave to come back and spend three hours with her on earth.  He came, but when she tried to embrace him she found that he was only thin air, which could not be grasped, and when the time was over he vanished from her sight.  Then Laodamia made an image of him, and treated it as a god; and when her father forbade her to do this, she leaped into the fire, and thus perished.

The chief of the Greeks were Agamemnon, king of Mycenæ, his brother Menelaus of Sparta, and Achilles of Ægina, whose men were called Myrmidons, and said to be descended from ants.  His friend, to whom he was devoted, was called Patroclus.  He was the most perfect warrior in the army, but Diomed the Ætolian came near him in daring, and Ajax of Salamis, son of Telamon, was the biggest and strongest man.  His brother Teucer used to stand behind his shield and aim arrows at the Trojans.  There was another Ajax, from Locria, called after his father Oileus.  The oldest man in the camp was Nestor, king of Pylos, who had been among the Argonauts, and had been a friend of Hercules, and was much looked up to.  The wisest men were Ulysses of Ithaca, and Palamedes, who is said to have invented the game of chess to amuse the warriors in the camp; but Ulysses never forgave Palamedes for his trick on the shore at Ithaca, and managed p. 75to make him be suspected of secret dealings with the Trojans, and put to death.  Each of these brought a band of fighting men, and they had their ships, which were not much more than large boats, drawn up high and dry on the shore behind the camp.  They fought with swords and spears, which latter were thrown with the hand.  Some had bows and arrows, and the chiefs generally went to battle in a chariot, an open car drawn by two horses, and driven by some trusty friend, who held the horses while the chief stood up and launched spear after spear among the enemy.  There was no notion of mercy to the fallen; prisoners were seldom made, and if a man was once down, unless his friends could save him, he was sure to be killed.

During the first eight years of the war we do not hear much of the Greeks.  They seem to have been taking and wasting the cities belonging to the Trojans all round the country.  The home of Andromache, Hector’s good and loving wife, was destroyed, and her parents and brothers killed; and Priam’s cousin Æneas was also driven in from Mount Ida, with his old father Anchises, and wife and little son.  In the ninth year of the war the Greeks drew up their forces round the walls of Troy itself, their last exploit having been the taking of the city of Chrysæ, where they had gained a great deal of plunder.  All captives were then made slaves, and in the division of the spoil a maiden named Briseis was given to Achilles, while Agamemnon took one called Chryseis, the daughter of Chryses, priest of Apollo.

p. 76

CHAP. IX.—THE SIEGE OF TROY.

e have come to the part of this siege which is told us in the Iliad, the oldest poem we know, except the Psalms, and one of the very finest.  It begins by telling how Chryses prayed to Apollo to help him to get back his daughter, and Apollo sent a plague upon the Greeks in their camp.  Calchas told them it was because of Chryseis, and they forced Agamemnon to give her safely back to her father.  His pride, however, was hurt, and he said he must have Briseis in her stead, and sent and took her from Achilles.  In his wrath Achilles declared he would not fight any more for the Greeks, and his mother Thetis begged Jupiter to withdraw his aid from them likewise, that they might feel the difference.

The Trojans went out to attack them, and when they were drawn up in battle array, old Priam made Helen come and sit by him on the battlements over the gateway, to tell him who all the chiefs were.  It was proposed that, instead of causing the death of numbers who had nothing to do with the quarrel, Menelaus and p. 77Paris should fight hand-to-hand for Helen; and they began; but as soon as Venus saw that her favourite Paris was in danger, she came in a cloud, snatched him away, and set him down in Helen’s chamber, where his brother Hector found him reclining at his ease, on coming to upbraid him for keeping out of the battle, where so many better men than he were dying for his crime.  Very different were Hector’s ways.  He parted most tenderly with his wife Andromache, and his little son Astyanax, who was so young that he clung crying to his nurse, afraid of his father’s tall helmet and horsehair crest.  Hector took the helmet off before he lifted the little one in his arms and prayed to the gods for him.

Each day the Trojans gained, though one day Jupiter forbade any of the gods or goddesses to interfere, and on another he let them all go down and fight for their own parties.  He was himself impartial; but one day Juno managed to borrow Venus’ girdle, which made her so charming that nothing could resist her, and she lulled him to sleep.  During that time the Greeks prevailed again, but this only lasted till Jupiter awoke, and then the Trojans gained great success.  All the Greek heroes were disabled one after another, and Hector and his men broke through the rampart they had made round their camp, and were about to burn the ships, when Patroclus, grieved at finding all his friends wounded, came to Achilles with an entreaty that he might be allowed to send out the Myrmidons, and try to save the ships.  Achilles consented, and dressed p. 78Patroclus in his own armour.  Then all gave way before the fresh Myrmidons led by Patroclus, and the Trojans were chased back to their walls; but as Hector made a last stand before the gates, Apollo, who loved Troy because he had built the walls, caused a sunbeam to strike on Patroclus and make him faint, so that Hector easily struck him down and killed him.  Then there was a desperate fight over his body.  The Trojans did get the armour off it, but the Greeks saved the corpse, and had almost reached the rampart, when the Trojans came thicker and more furiously on them, and were almost bursting in, when Achilles, hearing the noise, came out, and, standing on the rampart just as he was, all unarmed, gave a terrible thundering shout, at which the Trojans were filled with dismay, and fled back in confusion, while the corpse of Patroclus was borne into the tent, where Achilles mourned over it, with many tears and vows of vengeance against Hector.

His mother Thetis came from the sea and wept with him, and thence she went to Vulcan, from whom she obtained another beautiful suit of armour, with a wondrous shield, representing Greek life in every phase of war or peace; and in this Achilles went forth again to p. 79the battle.  He drove the Trojans before his irresistible might, came up with Hector, chased him round and round the walls of Troy, and at length came up with him and slew him.  Then, when Patroclus had been laid on a costly funeral pile, Achilles dragged Hector’s body at the back of his chariot three times round it.  Further, in honour of his friend, he had games of racing in chariots and on foot, wrestling, boxing, throwing heavy stones, and splendidly rewarded those who excelled with metal tripods, weapons, and robes.

But when poor old Priam, grieving that his son’s corpse should lie unburied, thus hindering his shade from being at rest, came forth at night, in disguise, to beg it from Achilles, the hero received the old man most kindly, wept at the thought of his own old father Peleus, fed and warmed him, and sent home the body of Hector most honourably.

Here ends the Iliad.  It is from other poems that the rest of the history is taken, and we know that Achilles performed many more great exploits, until Paris was aided by Apollo to shoot an arrow into the heel which alone could be wounded, and thus the hero died.  There was another great fight over his body, but Ajax and Ulysses rescued it at last; Ajax bore it to the ships, and Ulysses kept back the Trojans.  Thetis and all the Nereids and all the Muses came to mourn over him; and when he was burnt in the funeral pile she bore away his spirit to the white island, while the Greeks raised a huge mound in his honour.  She p. 80promised his armour to the Greek who had done most to rescue his corpse.  The question lay between Ajax and Ulysses, and Trojan captives being appointed as judges, gave sentence in favour of Ulysses.  Ajax was so grieved that he had a fit of frenzy, fancied the cattle were the Greeks who slighted him, killed whole flocks in his rage, and, when he saw what he had done, fell on his own sword and died.

Having lost these great champions, the Greeks resolved to fetch Achilles’ young son Pyrrhus to the camp, and also to get again those arrows of Hercules which Philoctetes had with him.  Ulysses and Pyrrhus were accordingly sent to fetch him from his lonely island.  They found him howling with pain, but he would not hear of coming away with them.  So Ulysses stole his quiver while he was asleep, but when he awoke and missed it his lamentations so moved young Pyrrhus that he gave them back; and this so touched the heart of Philoctetes that he consented to return to the camp.  p. 81There Machaon, the physician of the Greeks, healed his foot, and he soon after shot Paris with one of the arrows.

Instead of now giving up Helen, Deiphobus and Helenus, the two next brothers, quarrelled as to which should marry her, and when she was given to Deiphobus, Helenus was so angry that he went out and wandered in the forests of Mount Ida, where he was made prisoner by Ulysses, who contrived to find out from him that Troy could never be taken while it had the Palladium within it.  Accordingly, Ulysses and Diomed set out, and, climbing over the wall by night, stole the wondrous image.  While the Trojans were dismayed at the loss, the Greeks seemed to have changed their minds.  They took ship and went away, and all the surviving Trojans, relieved from their siege, rushed down to the shore, where all they found was a monstrous wooden horse.  While they were looking at it in wonder, a Greek came out of the rocks, and told them that his name was Sinon, and that he had been cruelly left behind by the Greeks, who had grown weary of the siege and gone home, but that if the wonderful horse were once taken into Troy it would serve as another Palladium.  The priest of Neptune, Laocöon, did not believe the story, and declared that Sinon was a spy; but he was cut short in his remonstrance by two huge serpents, which glided out of the sea and devoured him and his two sons.  Cassandra, too, a daughter of Priam, who had the gift of prophecy, but was fated never to be believed, shrieked with p. 82despair when she saw the Trojans harnessing themselves to the horse to drag it into Troy, but nobody heeded her, and there was a great feast to dedicate it to Pallas.  Helen perhaps guessed or knew what it meant, for at dark she walked round it, and called the names of Ulysses, and many other Greeks, in the voices of Penelope and the other wives at home.

For indeed the horse was full of Greeks; and at dark Sinon lighted a beacon as a signal to the rest, who were only waiting behind the little isle of Tenedos.  Then he let the others out of the horse, and slaughter and fire reigned throughout Troy.  Menelaus slew Deiphobus as he tried to rise from bed, and carried Helen down to his ship.  Poor old Priam tried to put on his armour and defend Hecuba and his daughters, but Pyrrhus killed him at the altar in his palace-court; and Æneas, after p. 83seeing this, and that all was lost, hurried back to his own house, took his father Anchises on his back, and his little son Iulus in one hand, his household gods in the other, and, with his wife Creusa following, tried to escape from the burning city with his own troop of warriors.  All succeeded except poor Creusa, who was lost in the throng of terrified fugitives, and was never found again; but Æneas found ships on the coast, and sailed safely away to Italy.

All the rest of the Trojans were killed or made slaves.  Ulysses killed Hector’s poor little son, and Andromache became slave to young Pyrrhus.  Cassandra clung to Pallas’ statue, and Ajax Oileus, trying to drag her away, moved the statue itself—such an act of sacrilege that the Greeks had nearly stoned him on the spot—and Cassandra was given to Agamemnon.  Polyxena, the youngest sister, was sacrificed on the tomb of Achilles, and poor old Hecuba went mad with grief.

p. 84CHAP. X.—THE WANDERINGS OF ULYSSES.

he overthrow of the temples at Troy was heavily visited on the Greeks by the gods, and the disasters that befel Ulysses are the subject of another grand Greek poem called the Odyssey, from his right Greek name Odysseus.  He was the special favourite of Pallas Athene, but she could not save him from many dangers.  He had twelve ships, with which he set out to return to Ithaca; but as he was doubling Cape Malea, one of the rugged points of the Peloponnesus, a great storm caught him, and drove him nine days westward, till he came to an island, where he sent three men to explore, but they did not return, and he found that this was the land of the lotus-eaters, a people who always lie about in a dreamy state of repose, and that to taste the food drives away all remembrance of home and friends.  He was obliged to drag his men away by force, and bind them to the benches.  The lotus bean, or jujube, is really eaten in Africa, but not with these effects.

Next they came to another island, where there was a bay with rocks around, with goats leaping on them.  p. 85Here Ulysses left eleven ships, and sailed with one to explore the little islet opposite.  Landing with his men, he entered an enormous cavern, well stored with bowls of milk and cream, and with rows of cheeses standing on the ledges of rock.  While the Greeks were regaling themselves, a noise was heard, and great flocks of sheep and goats came bleating in.  Behind them came a giant, with a fir tree for a staff, and only one eye in the middle of his forehead.  He was Polyphemus, one of the Cyclops, sons of Neptune, and workmen of Vulcan.  He asked fiercely who the strangers were, and Ulysses told him that they were shipwrecked sailors, imploring him for hospitality in the name of the gods.  Polyphemus laughed at this, saying he was stronger than the gods, and did not care for them; and, dashing two unhappy Greeks on the floor, he ate them up at once; after which he closed up the front of the cave with a monstrous rock, penned up the kids and lambs, and began to milk his goats, drank up a great quantity of milk, and fell asleep on the ground.  Ulysses thought of killing him at once, but recollected that the stone at the mouth of the cave would keep him captive if the giant’s strength did not move it, and abstained.  In the morning the Cyclops let out his flocks, and then shut the Greeks in with the stone; but he left his staff behind, and Ulysses hardened the top of this in the fire.  A skin of wine had been brought from the ships, and when Polyphemus came home in the evening, and had devoured two more Greeks, Ulysses offered it to him.  p. 86It was the first wine he had tasted, and he was in raptures with it, asking his guest’s name as he pledged him.  “No-man,” replied Ulysses, begging again for mercy.  “This will I grant,” said the Cyclops, “in return for thy gift.  No-man shall be the last whom I devour.”  He drank up the whole skin of wine, and went to sleep.  Then Ulysses and four of his companions seized the staff, and forced its sharpened top into the Cyclops’ single eye, so that he awoke blind, and roaring with pain so loud that all the other Cyclops awoke, and came calling to know who had hurt him.  “No-man,” shouted back Polyphemus; and they, thinking it was only some sudden illness, went back to their caves.  Meanwhile, Ulysses was fastening the remaining Greeks under the bellies of the sheep and goats, the wool and hair hanging over them.  He himself clung on under the largest goat, the master of the herd.  When morning came, bleatings of the herds caused the blind giant to rouse himself to roll back the stone from the entrance.  He laid his hand on each beast’s back, that his guests might not ride out on them, but he did not feel beneath, though he kept back Ulysses’ goat for a moment caressing it, and saying, “My pretty goat, thou seest me, but I cannot see thee.”

As soon as Ulysses was safe on board ship, and had thrust out from land, he called back his real name to the giant, whom he saw sitting on the stone outside his cave.  Polyphemus and the other Cyclops returned by hurling rocks at the ship, but none touched it, and p. 87Ulysses reached his fleet safely.  This adventure, however, had made Neptune his bitter foe, and how could he sail on Neptune’s realm?

However, he next came to the Isle of the Winds, which floated about in the ocean, and was surrounded by a brazen wall.  Here dwelt Æolus, with his wife and sons and daughters, and Ulysses stayed with him a whole month.  At the end of it, Æolus gave Ulysses enough of each wind, tied up in separate bags, to take him safely home; but his crew fancied there was treasure in them, and while he was asleep opened all the bags at once, and the winds bursting out tossed all the ships, and then carried them back to the island, where Æolus declared that Ulysses must be a wretch forsaken of the gods, and would give him no more.

Six days later the fleet came to another cannibal island, that of the Læstrygonians, where the crews of all the ships, except that of the king himself, were caught and eaten up, and he alone escaped, and, still proceeding westward, came to another isle, belonging to Circe, the witch goddess, daughter to Helios.  The comrades of Ulysses, whom he had sent to explore, did not return, and he was himself landing in search of them, when Mercury appeared to him, and warned him that, if he tasted of the bowl she would offer him, he would, like his friends, be changed by her into a hog, unless he fortified himself with the plant named moly—a white-flowered, starry sort of garlic, which Mercury gave him.  Ulysses then made his way through a wood p. 88to the hall where Circe sat, waited on by four nymphs.  She received him courteously, offered him her cup, and so soon as he had drunk of it she struck him with her wand, and bade him go grunt with his fellows; but as, thanks to the moly, he stood unchanged before her, he drew his sword and made her swear to do him no hurt, and to restore his companions to their proper form.  They then made friends, and he stayed with her a whole year.  She told him that he was fated not to return home till he had first visited the borders of the world of Pluto, and consulted Tiresias, the blind prophet.  She told him what to do, and he went on beyond the Mediterranean into the outer ocean, to the land of gloom, where Helios, the sun, does not shine.  Here Ulysses dug a pit, into which he poured water, wine, and the blood of a great black ram, and there flocked up to him crowds of shades, eager to drink of it, and to converse with him.  All his own friends were there—Achilles, Ajax, and, to his surprise, Agamemnon—all very melancholy, and mourning for the realms of day.  His mother, who had died of grief for his absence, came and blessed him; and Tiresias warned him of Neptune’s anger, and of his other dangers, ere he should return to Ithaca.  Terror at the ghastly troop overcame him at last, and he fled and embarked again, saw Circe once more, and found himself in the sea by which the Argo had returned.  The Sirens’ Isle was near, and, to prevent the perils of their song, Ulysses stopped the ears of all his crew with wax, and though he left his p. 89own open, bade them lash him to the mast, and not heed all his cries and struggles to be loosed.  Thus he was the only person who ever heard the Sirens’ song and lived.  Scylla and Charybdis came next, and, being warned by Pallas, he thought it better to lose six than all, and so went nearest to the monster, whose six mouths at once fell on six of the crew, and tore them away.

The isle of Trinacria was pasture for the 360 cattle of Helios, and both Tiresias and Circe had warned Ulysses that they must not be touched.  He would fain have passed it by, but his crew insisted on landing for the night, making oath not to touch the herds.  At dawn such a wind arose that they could not put to p. 90sea for a month, and after eating up the stores, and living on birds and fish, they took some of the oxen when Ulysses was asleep, vowing to build a temple to Helios in recompense.  They were dismayed at seeing the hides of the slain beasts creep on the ground, and at hearing their flesh low as it boiled in the cauldron.  Indeed, Helios had gone to Jupiter, and threatened to stop his chariot unless he had his revenge; so as soon as the wretched crew embarked again a storm arose, the ship was struck by lightning, and Ulysses alone was saved from the wreck, floating on the mast.  He came back past Scylla and Charybdis, and, clinging to the fig tree which hung over the latter, avoided being sucked into the whirlpool, and by-and-by came to land in the island of the nymph Calypso, who kept him eight years, but he pined for home all the time, and at last built a raft on which to return.  Neptune was not weary of persecuting him, and raised another storm, which shattered the raft, and threw Ulysses on the island of Scheria.  Here the king’s fair daughter Nausicaa, going down to the stream with her maidens to wash their robes, met the shipwrecked stranger, and took him home.  Her father feasted him hospitably, and sent him home in a ship, which landed him on the coast of Ithaca fast asleep, and left him there.  He had been absent twenty years; and Pallas further disguised his aspect, so that he looked like a beggar, when, in order to see how matters stood, he made his way first to the hut of his trusty old swineherd Eumæus.

p. 91Nothing could be worse than things were.  More than a hundred powerful young chiefs of the Ionian isles had taken possession of his palace, and were daily revelling there, thrusting his son Telemachus aside, and insisting that Penelope should choose one of them as her husband.  She could only put them off by declaring she could wed no one till she had finished the winding-sheet she was making for old Laertes, her father-in-law; while to prevent its coming to an end she undid by night whatever she wove by day.  Telemachus had gone to seek his father, but came home baffled to Eumæus’ p. 92hut, and there was allowed to recognise Ulysses.  But it was as a beggar, broken-down and foot-sore, that Ulysses sought his palace, and none knew him there but his poor old dog Argus, who licked his feet, and died for joy.  The suitors, in their pride, made game of the poor stranger, but Penelope sent for him, in case he brought news of her husband.  Even to her he told a feigned story, but she bade the old nurse Euryclea take care of him, and wash his feet.  While doing so, the old woman knew him by a scar left by the tusk of a wild boar long ago, and Ulysses could hardly stifle her cry of joy; but she told him all, and who could be trusted among the slaves.  The plans were fixed.  Telemachus, with much difficulty, persuaded his mother to try to get rid of the suitors by promising to wed him only who could bend Ulysses’ bow.  One after another tried in vain, and then, amid their sneers, the beggar took it up, and bent it easily, hit the mark, and then aimed it against them!  They were all at the banquet-table in the hall.  Eumæus and the other faithful servants had closed all the doors, and removed all the arms, and there was a terrible slaughter both of these oppressors and the servants who had joined with them against their queen and her son.

After this, Ulysses made himself known to his wife, and visited his father, who had long retired to his beautiful garden.  The kindred of the suitors would have made war on him, but Pallas pacified them, and the Odyssey leaves him to spend his old age in Ithaca, and p. 93die a peaceful death.  He was just what the Greeks thought a thoroughly brave and wise man; for they had no notion that there was any sin in falsehood and double-dealing.

p. 94CHAP. XI.—THE DOOM OF THE ATRIDES.

ou remember that Ulysses met Agamemnon among the other ghosts.  The King of Men, as the Iliad calls him, had vast beacons lighted from isle to isle, and from cape to cape, to announce that Troy was won, and that he was on his way home, little knowing what a welcome was in store for him.

His wife Clytemnestra had never forgiven him for the loss of Iphigenia, and had listened to his cousin Ægisthus, who wanted to marry her.  She came forth and received Agamemnon with apparent joy, but his poor captive Cassandra wailed aloud, and would not cross the threshold, saying it streamed with blood, and that this was a house of slaughter.  No one listened to her, and Agamemnon was led to the bath to refresh himself after his journey.  A new embroidered robe lay ready for him, but the sleeves were sewn up at the wrists, and while he could not get his hands free, Ægisthus fell on him and slew him, and poor Cassandra likewise.

His daughter Electra, fearing that her young brother p. 95Orestes would not be safe since he was the right heir of the kingdom, sent him secretly away to Phocis, where the king bred him up with his own son Pylades, and the two youths loved each other as much as Achilles and Patroclus had done.  It was the bounden duty of a son to be the avenger of his father’s blood, and after eight years, as soon as Orestes was a grown warrior, he went with his friend in secret to Mycenæ, and offered a lock of his hair on his father’s tomb.  Electra, coming out with her offerings, found these tokens, and knew that he was near.  He made himself known, and she admitted him into the house, where he fulfilled his stern charge, and killed both Clytemnestra and Ægisthus, then celebrated their funeral rites with all due solemnity.

This was on the very day that Menelaus and Helen returned home.  They had been shipwrecked first in Egypt, where they spent eight years, and then were held by contrary winds on a little isle on the coast of Egypt, where they would have been starved if Menelaus had not managed to capture the old sea-god Proteus, when he came up to pasture his flock of seals on the beach, and, holding him tight, while he changed into every kind of queer shape, forced him at last to speak.  By Proteus’ advice, Menelaus returned to Egypt, and made the sacrifices to the gods he had forgotten before, after which he safely reached Sparta, on the day of Clytemnestra’s obsequies.  Just as they were ended, the Furies, the avengers of crime, fell upon Orestes for having slain his mother.  He fled in misery from p. 96Mycenæ, which Menelaus took into his own hands, while the wretched Orestes went from place to place, still attended and comforted by faithful Pylades, but he never tried to rest without being again beset by the Furies.  At last Apollo, at the oracle at Delphi, sent him to take his trial at the court of justice at Athens, called Areopagus, Ares’ (or Mars’) Hill, after which the oracle bade him fetch the image of Diana from Tauris, marry his cousin Hermione, the daughter of Menelaus and Helen, and recover his father’s kingdom.

Pallas Athene came down to preside at Areopagus, and directed the judges to pronounce that, though the slaying of a mother was a fearful crime, yet it was Orestes’ duty to avenge his father’s death.  He was therefore acquitted, and purified by sacrifice, and was no more haunted by the Furies, while with Pylades he sailed for Tauris.  In that inhospitable place it was the custom to sacrifice all strangers to Diana, and, as soon as they had landed, Orestes and Pylades were seized, and taken to the priestess at the temple, that their hair might be cut and their brows wreathed for the sacrifice.  The priestess was no other than Iphigenia, who had been snatched away from Aulis, and, when she and the brother, whom she had left an infant, found each other out, she contrived to leave the temple by night, carrying the image of Diana with her.  They went to Delphi together, and there Iphigenia met Electra, who had heard a false report that her beloved Orestes had been sacrificed by the priestess of Tauris, and was just going p. 97to tear out her eyes, when Orestes appeared, and the sisters were made known to each other.  A temple was built for the image near Marathon, in Attica, and Iphigenia spent the rest of her life as priestess there.  Orestes, in the meantime, married Hermione—after, as some say, killing Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles, to whom she was either promised or married—and reigned over both Mycenæ and Sparta until the hundred years’ truce with the Heracleids, or grandsons of Hercules, had come to an end, and they returned with a party of Dorians and conquered Sparta, eighty years after the Trojan war.

p. 98This is the last of the events of the age of heroes, when so much must be fable, though there may be a germ of historical truth which no one can make out among the old tales that had come from the East, and the like of which may be found among the folk-lore of all nations.  These are the most famous of the stories, because they joined all Greeks together, and were believed in by all Greeks alike in their main circumstances; but every state had its own story, and one or two may be told before we end this chapter of myths, because they are often heard of, and poetry has been written about some of them.

At Thebes, in Bœotia, the king, Laius, was told that his first child would be his death.  So as soon as it was born he had its ancles pierced, and put it out in a wood to die; but it was found by a shepherd, and brought to Corinth, where the queen named it Œdipus, or Swollen Feet, and bred it up as her own child.  Many years later Œdipus set out for the Delphic oracle, to ask who he was; but all the answer he received was that he must shun his native land, for he would be the slayer of his own father.  He therefore resolved not to return to Corinth, but on his journey he met in a narrow pass with a chariot going to Delphi.  A quarrel arose, and in the fight that followed he slew the man to whom the chariot belonged, little knowing that it was Laius, his own father.

He then went on through Bœotia.  On the top of a hill near Thebes sat a monster called the Sphinx, with p. 99a women’s head, a lion’s body, and an eagle’s wings.  She had been taught riddles by the Muses, and whoever failed to answer them she devoured upon the spot.  Whoever could answer her was to marry the king’s sister, and share the kingdom.  Œdipus went bravely up to her, and heard her question, “What is the animal that is at first four-legged, then two-legged, then three-legged?”  “Man,” cried Œdipus.  “He creeps as a babe on all-fours, walks upright in his prime, and uses a staff in his old age.”  Thereupon the Sphinx turned to stone, and Œdipus married the princess, and reigned many years, till there was a famine and pestilence, and the oracle was asked the cause.  It answered that the land must be purified from the blood of Laius.  Only then did Œdipus find out that it was Laius whom he had slain; and then, by the marks on his ancles, it was proved that he was the babe who had been exposed, so that he had fulfilled his fate, and killed his own father.  To save Thebes, he left the country, with his eyes put out by way of expiation, and wandered about, only attended by his faithful daughter Antigone, till he came to Athens, where, like Orestes, he was sheltered, and allowed to expiate his crime.  After his death, Antigone came back to Thebes, where her two brothers Eteocles and Polynices had agreed to reign each a year by turns; but when Eteocles’ year was over he would not give up to his brother, and Polynices, in a rage, collected friends, among whom were six great chiefs, and attacked Thebes.  In the battle called “The p. 100Seven Chiefs against Thebes,” all were slain, and Eteocles and Polynices fell by each other’s hands.  Their uncle Creon forbade that the bodies of men who had so ruined their country should receive funeral honours from anyone on pain of death, thus condemning their shades to the dreary flitting about on the banks of the Styx, so much dreaded.  But their sister Antigone, the noblest woman of Greek imagination, dared the peril, stole forth at night, and gave burial alone to her two brothers.  She was found out, and put to death for her sisterly devotion, though Creon’s own son killed himself for grief and love of her.  This happened in the generation before the Trojan war, for Tydeus, the father of Diomed, was one of the seven chiefs.

Macedon, the country northward of Greece, had one very droll legend.  Midas, king of the Bryges, at the foot of Mount Bermion, had a most beautiful garden, full of all kinds of fruit.  This was often stolen, until he watched, and found the thief was old Silenus, the tutor of Bacchus.  Thereupon he filled with wine the fount where Silenus was used to drink after his feast, and thus, instead of going away, the old god fell asleep, and Midas caught him, and made him answer all his questions.  One was, “What is best for man?” and the answer was very sad, “What is best for man is never to have been born.  The second best is to die as soon as may be.”  At last Silenus was released, on condition that he would grant one wish, and this was that all that Midas touched should turn to gold; and p. 101so it did, clothes, food, and everything the king took hold of became solid gold, so that he found himself starving, and entreated that the gift might be taken away.  So he was told to bathe in the river Pactolus, in Lydia, and the sands became full of gold dust; but, in remembrance of his folly, his ears grew long like those of a donkey.  He hid them by wearing a tall Phrygian cap, and no one knew of them but his barber, who was told he should be put to death if ever he mentioned these ears.  The barber was so haunted by the secret, that at last he could not help relieving himself, by going to a clump of reeds and whispering into them, “King Midas has the ears of an ass;” and whenever the wind rustled in the reeds, those who went by might always hear them in turn whisper to one another, “King Midas has the ears of an ass.”  Some accounts say that it was for saying that Pan was a better musician than Apollo that Midas had his ass’s ears, and that it was Lydia of which he was king; and this seems most likely, for almost as many Greeks lived in the borders of Asia Minor as lived in Greece itself, and there were many stories of the hills, cities, and rivers there, but I have only told you what is most needful to be known—not, of course, to be believed, but to be known.

p. 102

CHAP. XII.—AFTER THE HEROIC AGE.

ll these heroes of whom we have been telling lived, if they lived at all, about the time of the Judges of Israel.  Troy is thought to have been taken at the time that Saul was reigning in Israel, and there is no doubt that there once was a city between Mount Ida and the Ægean Sea, for quantities of remains have been dug up, and among them many rude earthenware images of an owl, the emblem of Pallas Athene, likenesses perhaps of the Palladium.  Hardly anything is told either false or true of Greece for three hundred years after this time, and when something more like history begins we find that all Greece, small as it is, was divided into very small states, each of which had a chief city and a government of its own, and was generally shut in from its neighbours by mountains or by sea.  There were the three tribes, Ionian, Dorian, and Æolian, dwelling in these little states, and, though they often quarrelled among themselves, all thinking themselves one nation, together with their kindred in the islands of the Ægean, on the coasts of Asia, and also in Sicily and Southern Italy, which was sometimes called Greater Greece.

p. 103Some time between the heroic age and the historical time, there had been a great number of songs and verses composed telling of the gods and heroes.  Singers and poets used to be entertained by the kings, and sometimes to wander from one place to another, welcomed by all, as they chanted to the harp or the lyre the story of the great forefathers of their hosts, especially when they had all joined together, as in the hunt of the great boar of Calydon, in the voyage for the Golden Fleece, and, above all, in the siege of Troy.  The greatest of all these singers was the blind poet Homer, whose songs of the wrath of Achilles and the wanderings of Ulysses were loved and learnt by everyone.  Seven different cities claimed to be his birth-place, but no one knows more about him than that he was blind—not even exactly when he lived—but his poems did much to make the Greeks hold together.

And so did their religion.  Everybody sent to ask questions of the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, and there really were answers to them, though no one can tell by what power.  And at certain times there were great festivals at certain shrines.  One was at Olympia, in Elis, where there was a great festival every five years.  It was said that Hercules, when a little boy, had here won a foot-race with his brothers, and when the Heracleids returned to Sparta they founded a feast, with games for all the Greeks to contend in.  There were chariot races, horse races, foot races, boxing and wrestling matches, throwing weights, playing with p. 104quoits, singing and reciting of poems.  The winner was rewarded with a wreath of bay, of pine, of parsley, or the like, and he wore such an one as his badge of honour for the rest of his life.  Nothing was thought more of than being first in the Olympic games, and the Greeks even came to make them their measure of time, saying that any event happened in such and such a year of such an Olympiad.  The first Olympiad they counted from was the year 776 b.c., that is, before the coming of our blessed Lord.  There were other games every three years, which Theseus was said to have instituted, on the isthmus of Corinth, called the Isthmean Games, and others in two different places, and no honour was more highly esteemed than success in these.

There were also councils held of persons chosen from each tribe, called Amphictyons, for arranging their affairs, both religious and worldly, and one great Amphictyonic council, which met near Delphi, to discuss the affairs of all Greece.  In truth, all the great nations who long ago parted in Asia have had somewhat the same arrangement.  A family grew first into a clan, then into a tribe, then into a nation, and the nation that settled in one country formed fresh family divisions of clans, tribes, and families.  At first the father of a family would take council with the sons, the head of a clan with the fathers of families, the chief of a tribe with the heads of clans, and as these heads of clans grew into little kings, the ablest of them would lead the nation in time of war, as Agamemnon did the chiefs p. 105against Troy.  However, the Greeks seem for the most part, between the heroic and historical ages, to have dropped the king or chief of each state, and only to have managed them by various councils of the chief heads of families, who were called aristoi, the best, while those who were not usually called into council, though they too were free, and could choose their governors, and vote in great matters, were termed demos, the people.  This is why we hear of aristocracy and democracy.  Under these freemen were the people of the country they had conquered, or any slaves they had bought or taken captive, or strangers who had come to live in the place, and these had no rights at all.

Greek cities were generally beautiful places, in valleys between the hills and the sea.  They were sure to have several temples to the gods of the place.  These were colonnades of stone-pillars, upon steps, open all round, but with a small dark cell in the middle, which was the shrine of the god, whose statue, and carvings of whose adventures, adorned the outside.  There was an altar in the open-air for sacrifices, the flesh of which was afterwards eaten.  In the middle of a town was always a market-place, which served as the assembling-place of the people, and it had a building attached to it where the fire of Vesta was never allowed to go out.  The charge of it was given to the best men who could be found; and when a set of citizens went forth to make a new home or colony in Asia, Sicily, or Italy, they always took brands from this fire, guarded them p. 106carefully in a censer, and lighted their altar-fires therefrom when they settled down.

These cities were of houses built round paved courts.  The courts had generally a fountain in the middle, and an altar to the hero forefather of the master, where, before each meal, offerings were made and wine poured out.  The rooms were very small, and used for little but sleeping; and the men lived chiefly in the cloister or pillared walks round the court.  There was a kind of back-court for the women of the family, who did not often appear in the front one, though they were not shut up like Eastern women.  Most Greeks had farms, which they worked by the help of their slaves, and whence came the meat, corn, wine, and milk that p. 107maintained the family.  The women spun the wool of the sheep, wove and embroidered it, making for the men short tunics reaching to the knee, with a longer mantle for dignity or for need; and for themselves long robes  reaching to the feet—a modest and graceful covering—but leaving the arms bare.  Men cut their hair close; women folded their tresses round their heads in the simplest and most becoming manner that has yet been invented.  The feet were bare, but sandalled, and the sandals fastened with ornamented thongs.  Against the sun sometimes a sort of hat was worn, or the mantle was put over the head, and women had thick veils wrapping them.

In time of war the armour was a helmet with a horse-hair crest, a breast-plate on a leathern cuirass, which had strips of leather hanging from the lower edge as far down as the knee; sometimes greaves to guard the leathern buskin; a round shield of leather, faced with metal, and often beautifully ornamented; and also spears, swords, daggers, and sometimes bows and arrows.  Chariots for war had been left off since the heroic times; indeed Greece was so hilly that horses were not very much used in battle, though riding was part of the training of a Greek, and the Thessalian p. 108horses were much valued.  Every state that had a seaboard had its fleet of galleys, with benches of oars; but the Greek sailors seldom ventured out of sight of land, and all that Greece or Asia Minor did not produce was brought by the Phœnicians, the great sailors, merchants, and slave-dealers of the Old World.  They brought Tyrian purple, gold of Ophir, silver of Spain, tin of Gaul and Britain, ivory from India, and other such luxuries; and they also bought captives in war, or kidnapped children on the coast, and sold them as slaves.  Ulysses’ faithful swineherd was such a slave, and of royal birth; and such was the lot of many an Israelite child, for whom its parents’ “eyes failed with looking and longing.”

The Greeks had more power of thought and sense of grace than any other people have ever had.  They always had among them men seeking for truth and beauty.  The truth-seekers were called philosophers, or lovers of wisdom.  They were always trying to understand about God and man, and this world, and guessing at something great, far beyond the stories of Jupiter; and they used to gather young men round them under the pillared porches and talk over these thoughts, or write them in beautiful words.  Almost all the p. 109sciences began with the Greeks; their poems and their histories are wonderfully written; and they had such great men among them that, though most of their little states were smaller than an ordinary English county, and the whole of them together do not make a country as large as Ireland, their history is the most remarkable in the world, except that of the Jews.  The history of the Jews shows what God does for men; the history of Greece shows what man does left to himself.

Greece was not so small as what is called Greece now in our modern maps.  It reached northwards as far as the Volutza and Khimera mountains, beyond which lay Macedon, where the people called themselves Greeks, but were not quite accepted as such.  In this peninsula, together with the Peloponnesus and the isles, there were twenty little states, making up Hellas, or Greece. [109]

p. 110CHAP. XIII.—LYCURGUS AND THE LAWS OF SPARTA.  b.c. 884–668.

ou remember that after a hundred years the grandsons of Hercules returned, bringing with them their followers of Dorian birth, and conquered Laconia.  These Dorians called themselves Spartans, and were the rulers of the land, though the Greeks, who were there before them, were also freemen, all but those of one city, called Helos, which revolted, and was therefore broken up, and the people were called Helots, and became slaves to the Spartans.  One of the Spartan kings, sons of Hercules, had twin sons, and these two reigned together with equal rights, and so did their sons after them, so that there were always two kings at Sparta.  One line was called the Agids, from Agis, its second king; the other Eurypontids, from Eurypon, its third king, instead of from the two original twins.

The affairs of Sparta had fallen into a corrupt state by the third generation after Eurypon.  The king of his line was killed in a quarrel, and his widow, a wicked p. 111woman, offered his brother Lycurgus to kill her little new-born babe, if he would marry her, that she might continue to be queen.  Lycurgus did not show his horror, but advised her to send the child alive to him, that he might dispose of it.  So far from killing it was he, that he carried it at once to the council, placed it on the throne, and proclaimed it as Charilaus, king of Sparta.

There were still murmurs from those who did not know that Lycurgus had saved the little boy’s life.  As he was next heir to the throne, it was thought that he must want to put Charilaus out of the way, so as to reign himself; so, having seen the boy in safe keeping, Lyccurgus went on his travels to study the laws and ways of other countries.  He visited Crete, and learnt the laws of Minos; and, somewhere among the Greek settlements in Asia, he is said to have seen and talked to Homer, and heard his songs.  He also went to Egypt, and after that to India, where he may have learnt much from the old Brahmin philosophy; and then, having made his plan, he repaired to Delphi, and prayed until he received answer from Apollo that his laws should be the best, and the state that obeyed them the most famous in Greece.  He then went home, where he had been much missed, for his young nephew Charilaus, though grown to man’s estate, was too weak and good-natured to be much obeyed, and there was a great deal of idleness, and gluttony, and evil of all sorts prevailing.

Thirty Spartans bound themselves to help Lycurgus in his reform, and Charilaus, fancying it a league against p. 112himself, fled into the temple of Pallas, but his uncle fetched him out, and told him that he only wanted to make laws for making the Spartans great and noble.  The rule was only for the real Dorian Spartans, the masters of the country, and was to make them perfect warriors.  First, then, he caused all the landmarks to be taken up, and the lands thrown into one, which he divided again into lots, each of which was large enough to yield 82 bushels of corn in a year, with wine and oil in proportion.  Then, to hinder hoarding, he allowed no money to be used in the country but great iron weights, so that a small sum took up a great deal of room, and could hardly be carried about, and thus there was no purchasing Phœnician luxuries; nor was anyone to use gold or ivory, soft cushions, carpets, or the like, as being unworthy of the race of Hercules.  The whole Spartan nation became, in fact, a regiment of highly-disciplined warriors.  They were to live together in public barracks, only now and then visiting their homes, and even when they slept there, being forbidden to touch food till they came to the general meal, which was provided for by contributions of meal, cheese, figs, and wine from each man’s farm, and a little money to buy fish and meat; also a sort of soup called black broth, which was so unsavoury that nobody but a Spartan could eat it, because it was said they brought the best sauce, namely, hunger.  A boy was admitted as soon as he was old enough, and was warned against repeating the talk of his elders, by being told on his first entrance, by the eldest man in the p. 113company, “Look you, sir; nothing said here goes out there.”  Indeed no one used more words than needful, so that short, pithy sayings came to be called Laconic.  To be a perfect soldier was the great point, so boys were taught that no merit was greater than bearing pain without complaint; and they carried this so far, that a boy who had brought a young wolf into the hall, hidden under his tunic, let it bite him even to death without a groan or cry.  It is said that they were trained to theft, and were punished, not for the stealing, but the being found out.  And, above all, no Spartan was ever to turn his back in battle.  The mothers gave the sons a shield, with the words, “With it, or on it.”  The Spartan shields were long, so that a dead warrior would be borne home on his shield; but a man would not dare show his face again if he had thrown it away in flight.  The women were trained to running, leaping, and throwing the bar, like the men, and were taught stern hardihood, so that, when their boys were offered to the cruel Diana, they saw them flogged to death at her altar without a tear.  All the lives of the Spartans were spent in exercising for war, and the affairs of the state were managed not so much by the kings, but by five judges called Ephors, who were chosen every year, while the kings had very little power.  They had to undergo the same discipline as the rest—dressed, ate, and lived like them; but they were the high priests and chief captains, and made peace or war.

At first Lycurgus’ laws displeased some of the p. 114citizens much, and, when he was proposing them, a young man named Alcander struck him on the face with his staff, and put out his eye.  The others were shocked, and put Alcander into Lycurgus’ hands, to be punished as he thought fit.  All Lycurgus did was to make him wait upon him at meals, and Alcander was so touched and won over that he became one of his best supporters.  After having fully taught Sparta to observe his rule, Lycurgus declared that he had another journey to take, and made the people swear to observe his laws till he came back again.  He never did come back, and they held themselves bound by them for ever.

This story of Lycurgus has been doubted, but whether there were such a man or not, it is quite certain that these were the laws of Sparta in her most famous days, and that they did their work of making brave and hardy soldiers.  The rule was much less strict in the camp than the city, and the news of a war was delightful to the Spartans as a holiday-time.  All the hard work of their farms was done for them by the Helots, who were such a strong race that it was not easy to keep them down, although their masters were very cruel to them, often killing large numbers of them if they seemed to be growing dangerous, always ill-treating them, and, it is said, sometimes making them drunk, that the sight of their intoxication might disgust the young Spartans.  In truth, the whole Spartan system was hard and unfeeling, and much fitter to make fighting machines than men.

p. 115The first great Spartan war that we know of was with their neighbours of Messenia, who stood out bravely, but were beaten, and brought down to the state of Helots in the year 723 b.c., all but a small band, who fled into other states.  Among them was born a brave youth named Aristomenes, who collected all the boldest of his fellow-Messenians to try to save their country, and Argos, Arcadia, and Elis joined with them.  Several battles were fought.  One, which was called the battle of the Boar’s Pillar, was long sung about.  An augur had told Aristomenes that under a tree sat the Spartan brothers Castor and Pollux, to protect their countrymen, and that he might not pass it; but in the pursuit he rushed by it, and at that moment the shield was rent from him by an unseen hand.  While he was searching for it, the Spartans (who do seem this time to have fled) escaped; but Messene was free, and he was crowned with flowers by the rejoicing women.  A command from Apollo made him descend into a cave, where he found his shield, adorned with the figure of an eagle, and, much encouraged, he won another battle, and would have entered Sparta itself, had not Helen and her twin brothers appeared to warn him back.  At last, however, the war turned against him, and in a battle on Laconian ground he was stunned by a stone, and taken prisoner, with 50 more.  They were all condemned to be thrown down a high rock into a deep pit.  Everyone else was killed by the fall, but Aristomenes found himself unhurt, with sky above, high p. 116precipices on all sides, and his dead comrades under him.  He wrapped himself in his cloak to wait for death, but on the third day he heard something moving, uncovered his face, and saw that a fox had crept in from a cavern at the side of the pit.  He took hold of the fox’s tail, crawled after it, and at last saw the light of day.  He scraped the earth till the way was large enough for him to pass, escaped, and gathered his friends, to the amazement of the Spartans.  Again he gained the victory, and a truce was made, but he was treacherously seized, and thrown into prison.  However, this time he was set free by a maiden, whom he gave in marriage to his son.  At last Eira, the chief city of Messenia, was betrayed by a foolish woman, while Aristomenes was laid aside by a wound.  In spite of this, however, he fought for three days and nights against the Spartans, and at last drew up all the survivors—women as well as men—in a hollow square, with the children in the middle, and demanded a free passage.  The Spartans allowed these brave Messenians to pass untouched, and they reached Arcadia.  There the dauntless Aristomenes arranged another scheme for seizing Sparta itself, but it was betrayed, and failed.  The Arcadians stoned the traitor, while the gentle Aristomenes wept for him.  The remaining Messenians begged him to lead them to a new country, but he would not leave Greece as long as he could strike a blow against Sparta.  However, he sent his two sons, and they founded in Sicily a new Messene, which we still call Messina.  p. 117Aristomenes waited in vain in Arcadia, till Damagetus, king of Rhodes, who had been bidden by an oracle to marry the daughter of the best of Greeks, asked for the daughter of Aristomenes, and persuaded him to finish his life in peace and honour in Rhodes.

p. 118CHAP. XIV.—SOLON AND THE LAWS OF ATHENS.  b.c. 594–546.

orth of the Peloponnesus, jutting out into the Ægean Sea, lay the rocky little Ionian state of Attica, with its lovely city, Athens.  There was a story that Neptune and Pallas Athene had had a strife as to which should be the patron of the city, and that it was to be given to whichever should produce the most precious gift for it.  Neptune struck the earth with his trident, and there appeared a war-horse; but Pallas’ touch brought forth an olive-tree, and this was judged the most useful gift.  The city bore her name; the tiny Athenian owl was her badge; the very olive-tree she had bestowed was said to be that which grew in the court of the Acropolis, a sacred citadel on a rock above the city; and near at hand was her temple, called the Parthenon, or Virgin’s Shrine.  Not far off was the Areopagus, a Hill of Ares, or Mars, the great place for hearing causes and doing justice; and below these there grew up a city filled with men as brave as the Spartans, p. 119and far more thoughtful and wise, besides having a most perfect taste and sense of beauty.

The Athenians claimed Theseus as their greatest king and first lawgiver.  It was said that, when the Dorians were conquering the Peloponnesus, they came north and attacked Attica, but were told by an oracle that they never would succeed if they slew the king of Athens.  Codrus, who was then king of Athens, heard of this oracle, and devoted himself for his country.  He found that in battle the Dorians always forbore to strike p. 120him, and he therefore disguised himself, went into the enemy’s camp, quarrelled with a soldier there, and thus caused himself to be killed, so as to save his country.  He was the last king.  The Athenians would not have anyone less noble to sit in his seat, and appointed magistrates called Archons in the stead of kings.

Soon they fell into a state of misrule and disorder, and they called on a philosopher named Draco to draw up laws for them.  Draco’s laws were good, but very strict, and for the least crime the punishment was death.  Nobody could keep them, so they were set aside and forgotten, and confusion grew worse, till another wise lawgiver named Solon undertook to draw up a fresh code of laws for them.

Solon was one of the seven wise men of Greece, who all lived at the same time.  The other six were Thales, Bion, Pittacus, Cleobulus, Chilo, and Periander.  This last was called Tyrant of Corinth.  When the ancient Greeks spoke of a tyrant, they did not mean a cruel king so much as a king who had not been heir to the crown, but had taken to himself the rule over a free people.  A very curious story belongs to Periander, for we have not quite parted with the land of fable.  It is about the poet Arion, who lived chiefly with him at Corinth, but made one voyage to Sicily.  As he was coming back, the sailors plotted to throw him overboard, and divide the gifts he was bringing with him.  When he found they were resolved, he only begged to play once more on his lyre; then, standing on the prow, p. 121he played and sung a hymn calling the gods to his aid.  So sweet were the sounds that shoals of dolphins came round the ship, and Arion, leaping from the prow, placed himself on the back of one, which bore him safely to land.  Periander severely punished the treacherous sailors.  Some think that this story was a Greek alteration of the history of Jonah, which might have been brought by the Phœnician sailors.

Solon was Athenian by birth, and of the old royal line.  He had served his country in war, and had travelled to study the habits of other lands, when the Athenians, wearied with the oppressions of the rich and great, and finding that no one attended to the laws of Draco, left it to him to form a new constitution.  It would be of no use to try to explain it all.  The chief thing to be remembered about it is, that at the head of the government were nine chief magistrates, who were called Archons, and who were changed every three years.  To work with them, there was a council of four hundred aristoi, or nobles; but when war or peace was decided, the whole demos, or people, had to vote, according to their tribes; and if a man was thought to be dangerous to the state, the demos might sentence him to be banished.  His name was written on an oyster shell, or on a tile, by those who wished him to be driven away, and these were thrown into one great vessel.  If they amounted to a certain number, the man was said to be “ostracised,” and forced to leave the city.  This was sometimes done very unjustly, but it answered the p. 122purpose of sending away rich men who became overbearing, and kept tyrants from rising up.  There were no unnatural laws as there were at Sparta; people might live at home as they pleased; but there were schools, and all the youths were to be taught there, both learning and training in all exercises.  And whether it was from Solon’s laws or their own character, there certainly did arise in Athens some of the greatest and noblest men of all times.

After having set things in order, Solon is said to have been so annoyed by foolish questions on his schemes, that he went again on his travels.  First he visited his friend Thales, at Miletus, in Asia Minor; and, finding him rich and comfortable, he asked why he had never married.  Thales made no answer then, but a few days later he brought in a stranger, who, he said, was just from Athens.  Solon asked what was the news.  “A great funeral was going on, and much lamentation,” said the man.  “Whose was it?”  He did not learn the name, but it was a young man of great promise, whose father was abroad upon his travels.  “The father was much famed for his wisdom and justice.”  “Was it Solon?” cried the listener.  “It was.”  Solon burst into tears, tore his hair, and beat his breast; but Thales took his hand, saying, “Now you see, O Solon, why I have never married, lest I should expose myself to griefs such as these;” and then told him it was all a trick.  Solon could not much have approved such a trick, for when Thespis, a great actor of plays, came to p. 123Athens, Solon asked him if he were not ashamed to speak so many falsehoods.  Thespis answered that it was all in sport.  “Ay,” said Solon, striking his staff on the ground; “but he that tells lies in sport will soon tell them in earnest.”

After this, Solon went on to Lydia.  This was a kingdom of Greek settlers in Asia Minor, where flowed that river Pactolus, whose sands contained gold-dust, from King Midas’ washing, as the story went.  The king was Crœsus, who was exceedingly rich and splendid.  He welcomed Solon, and, after showing him all his glory, asked whom the philosopher thought the happiest of men.  “An honest man named Tellus,” said Solon, “who lived uprightly, was neither rich nor poor, had good children, and died bravely for his country.”  Crœsus was vexed, but asked who was next happiest.  “Two brothers named Cleobis and Bito,” said Solon, “who were so loving and dutiful to their mother, that, when she wanted to go to the temple of Juno, they yoked themselves to her car, and drew her thither; then, having given this proof of their love, they lay down to sleep, and so died without pain or grief.”  “And what do you think of me?” said Crœsus.  “Ah!” said Solon, “call no man happy till he is dead.”

Crœsus was mortified at such a rebuff to his pride, and neglected Solon.  There was a clever crooked Egyptian slave at Crœsus’ court, called Æsop, who gave his advice in the form of the fables we know so well, such as the wolf and the lamb, the fox and the grapes, etc.; p. 124though, as the Hindoos and Persians have from old times told the same stories, it would seem as if Æsop only repeated them, but did not invent them.  When Æsop saw Solon in the background, he said, “Solon, visits to kings should be seldom, or else pleasant.”  “No,” said Solon; “visits to kings should be seldom, or else profitable,” as the courtly slave found them.  Æsop came to a sad end.  Crœsus sent him to Delphi to distribute a sum of money among the poor, but they quarrelled so about it that Æsop said he should take it back to the king, and give none at all; whereupon the Delphians, in a rage, threw him off a precipice, and killed him.

Crœsus was just thinking of going to war with the great Cyrus, king of the Medes and Persians, the same who overcame Assyria, took Babylon, and restored Jerusalem, and who was now subduing Asia Minor.  Crœsus asked council of all the oracles, but first he tried their truth.  He bade his messenger ask the oracle at Delphi what he was doing while they were inquiring.  The answer was—

“Lo, on my sense striketh the smell of a shell-covered tortoise
Boiling on the fire, with the flesh of a lamb, in a cauldron;
Brass is the vessel below, brass the cover above it.”

Crœsus was really, as the most unlikely thing to be guessed, boiling a tortoise and a lamb together in a brazen vessel.  Sure now of the truth of the oracle, he sent splendid gifts, and asked whether he should go to war with Cyrus.  The answer was that, if he did, a mighty kingdom would be overthrown.

p. 125He thought it meant the Persian, but it was his own.  Lydia was overcome, Sardis, his capital, was burnt, and he was about to be slain, when, remembering the warning, “Call no man happy till his death,” he cried out, “O Solon, Solon, Solon!”

Cyrus heard him, and bade that he should be asked what it meant.  The story so struck the great king, that he spared Crœsus, and kept him as his adviser for the rest of his life.

p. 126CHAP. XV.—PISISTRATUS AND HIS SONS.  b.c. 558–499.

fter all the pains that Solon had taken to guard the freedom of the Athenians, his system had hardly begun to work before his kinsman Pisistratus, who was also of the line of Codrus, overthrew it.  First this man pretended to have been nearly murdered, and obtained leave to have a guard of fifty men, armed with clubs; and with these he made everyone afraid of him, so that he had all the power, and became tyrant of Athens.  He was once driven out, but he found a fine, tall, handsome woman, a flower-girl, in one of the villages of Attica, dressed her in helmet and cuirass, like the goddess Pallas, and came into Athens in a chariot with her, when she presented him to the people as their ruler.  The common people thought she was their goddess, and Pisistratus had friends among the rich, so he recovered his power, and he did not, on the whole, use it badly.  He made a kind law, decreeing that a citizen who had been maimed in battle should be provided for by the State, and he was the first Greek to found a p. 127library, and collect books—namely, manuscripts upon the sheets of the rind of the Egyptian paper-rush, or else upon skins.  He was also the first person to collect and arrange the poems of Homer.  Everybody seems to have known some part by heart, but they were in separate songs, and Pisistratus first had them written down and put in order, after which no Greek was thought an educated man unless he thoroughly knew the Iliad and Odyssey.

Pisistratus ruled for thirty-three years, and made the Athenians content, and when he died his sons Hippias and Hipparchus ruled much as he had done, and gave no cause for complaint.  One thing they did was to set up mile-stones all over the roads of Attica, each with a bust of Mercury on the top, and a wise proverb carved below the number of the miles.  But they grew proud and insolent, and one day a damsel of high family was rudely sent away from a solemn religious procession, because Hipparchus had a quarrel with her brother Harmodius.  This only made Harmodius vow vengeance, and, together with his friend Aristogeiton, he made a plot with other youths for surrounding the two brothers at a great festival, when everyone carried myrtle-boughs, as well as their swords and shields.  The conspirators had daggers hidden in the myrtle, and succeeded in killing Hipparchus, but Harmodius was killed on the spot, and Aristogeiton was taken and tortured to make him reveal his other accomplices, and so was a girl named Leœna, who was known to have p. 128been in their secrets; but she bore all the pain without a word, and when it was over she was found to have bitten off her tongue, that she might not betray her friends.  Hippias kept up his rule for a few years longer, but he found all going against him, and that the people were bent on having Solon’s system back; so, fearing for his life, he sent away his wife and children, and soon followed them to Asia, b.c. 510.  This—which is called the Expulsion of the Pisistratids—was viewed by the Athenians as the beginning of their freedom.  They paid yearly honours to the memory of the murderers Harmodius and Aristogeiton; and as Leœna means a lioness, they honoured that brave woman’s constancy with the statue of a lioness without a tongue.

Hippias wandered about for some time, and ended by going to the court of the king of Persia.  Cyrus was now dead, after having established a great empire, which spread from the Persian Gulf to the shore of the Mediterranean, and had Babylon for one of its capitals.  When Crœsus was conquered, almost all the Greek colonies along the coast of Asia Minor likewise fell to the “Great King,” as his subjects called him.  The Persians adored the sun and fire as emblems of the great God, and thought the king himself had something of divinity in his person, and therefore, like most Eastern kings, he had entire power over his people for life or death; they were all his slaves, and the only thing he could not do was to change his own decrees.

After the Asian coast, the isles of the Ægean stood p. 129next in the way of the Persian.  In the little isle of Samos lived a king called Polycrates, who had always been wealthy and prosperous.  His friend Amasis, king of Egypt, told him that the gods were always jealous of the fortunate, and that, if he wished to avert some terrible disaster, he had better give up something very precious.  Upon this Polycrates took off his beautiful signet ring and threw it into the sea; but a few days later a large fish was brought as a present to the king, and when it was cut up the ring was found in its stomach, and restored to Polycrates.  Upon this Amasis p. 130renounced his friendship, declaring that, as the gods threw back his offering, something dreadful was before him.  The foreboding came sadly true, for the Persian satrap, or governor, of Sardis, being envious of Polycrates, declared that the Ionian was under the Great King’s displeasure, and invited him to Sardis to clear himself.  Polycrates set off, but was seized as soon as he landed in Asia, and hung upon a cross.

Amasis himself died just as the Persians were coming to attack Egypt, which Cyrus’ son Cambyses entirely conquered, and added to the Persian empire; but Cambyses shortly after lost his senses and died, and there was an unsettled time before a very able and spirited king named Darius obtained the crown, and married Cyrus’ daughter Atossa.  Among the prisoners made at Samos there was a physician named Democedes, who was taken to Susa, Darius’ capital.  He longed to get home, and tried not to show how good a doctor he was; but the king one day hurt his foot, and, when all the Persian doctors failed to cure him, he sent for Democedes, who still pretended to be no wiser, until torture was threatened, and he was forced to try his skill.  Darius recovered, made him great gifts, and sent him to attend his wives; but Democedes still pined for home, and managed to persuade Atossa to beg the king to give her Spartan and Athenian slaves, and to tell him some great undertaking was expected from him.  The doctor’s hope in this was that he should be sent as a spy to Greece, before the war, and should make his escape; p. 131but it was a bad way of showing love to his country.  Hippias was at Susa too, trying to stir up Darius to attack Athens, and restore him as a tributary king; and there was also Histiæus, a Greek, who had been tyrant of Miletus, and who longed to get home.  All the Ionian Greeks on the coast of Asia Minor hated the Persian rule, and Histiæus hoped that if they revolted he should be wanted there, so he sent a letter to his friend Aristagoras, at Miletus, in a most curious way.  He had the head of a trusty slave shaved, then, with a red-hot pin, wrote his advice to rise against the Persians, and, when the hair was grown again, sent the man as a present to Aristagoras, with orders to tell him to shave his head.

Aristagoras read the letter, and went to Sparta to try to get the help of the kings in attacking Persia.  He took with him a brass plate, engraven with a map of the world, according to the notions of the time, where it looked quite easy to march to Susa, and win the great Eastern empire.  At first Cleomenes, the most spirited of the kings, was inclined to listen, but when he found that this easy march would take three months he changed his mind, and thought it beyond Spartan powers.  Aristagoras went secretly to his house, and tried to bribe him, at least, to help the Ionians in their rising; but while higher and higher offers were being made, Gorgo, the little daughter of Cleomenes, only eight years old, saw by their looks that something was wrong, and cried out, “Go away, father; this stranger p. 132will do you harm.”  Cleomenes took it as the voice of an oracle, and left the stranger to himself.

He then went to Athens, and the Athenians, being Ionians themselves, listened more willingly, and promised to aid their brethren in freeing themselves.  Together, the Athenians and a large body of Ephesians, Milesians, and other Ionians, attacked Sardis.  The Persian satrap Artaphernes threw himself into the citadel; but the town, which was built chiefly of wicker-work, that the houses might not be easily thrown down by earthquakes, caught fire, and was totally burnt.  The Athenians could not stay in the flaming streets, and had to give back, and the whole Persian force of the province came up and drove them out.  Darius was furious when he heard of the burning of Sardis, and, for fear he should forget his revenge, ordered that a slave should mention the name of Athens every day to him as he sat down to dinner.  Histiæus, however, succeeded in his plan, for Darius believed him when he said the uproar could only have broken out in his absence, and let him go home to try to put it down.

He was not very well received by Artaphernes, who was sure he was at the bottom of the revolt.  “Aristagoras put on the shoe,” he said, “but it was of your stitching.”

Aristagoras had been killed, and Histiæus, fleeing to the Ionians, remained with them till they were entirely beaten, and he surrendered to the Persians, by whom p. 133he was crucified, while the Ionians were entirely crushed, and saw their fairest children carried off to be slaves in the palace at Susa.  Darius had longed after Greek slaves ever since he had seen a fine handsome girl walking along, upright, with a pitcher of water on her head, the bridle of a horse she was leading over her arm, and her hands busy with a distaff.  He did not know that such grand people are never found in enslaved, oppressed countries, like his own, and he wanted to have them all under his power, so he began to raise his forces from all parts of his empire, for the conquest of what seemed to him the insolent little cities of Greece, and Hippias, now an old man, undertook to show him the way to Athens, and to betray his country.  The battle was between the East and West—between a despot ruling mere slaves, and free, thoughtful cities, full of evil indeed, and making many mistakes, but brave and resolute, and really feeling for their hearths and homes.

p. 134CHAP. XVI.—THE BATTLE OF MARATHON.  b.c. 490.

he whole Persian fleet, manned by Phœnician sailors, and a huge army, under the two satraps Datis and Artaphernes, were on the opposite side of the Ægean Sea, ready to overwhelm little Attica first, and then all Greece.  Nobody had yet stood firm against those all-conquering Persians, and as they came from island to island the inhabitants fled or submitted.  Attica was so small as to have only 9000 fighting men to meet this host.  They sent to ask the aid of the Spartans, but though these would have fought bravely, an old rule forbade them to march during the week before the full moon, and in this week Athens might be utterly ruined.  Nobody did come to their help but 600 men from the very small state of Platæa, and this little army, not numbering 10,000, were encamped around the temple of Hercules, looking down upon the bay of Marathon, where lay the ships which had just landed at least 200,000 men of all the Eastern nations, and among them many of the Greeks of Asia p. 135Minor.  The hills slant back so as to make a sort of horse-shoe round the bay, with about five miles of clear flat ground between them and the sea, and on this open space lay the Persians.

It was the rule among the Athenians that the heads of their ten tribes should command by turns each for a day, but Aristides, the best and most high-minded of all of them, persuaded the rest to give up their turns to Miltiades, who was known to be the most skilful captain.  He drew up his men in a line as broad as the whole front of the Persian army, though far less deep, and made them all come rushing down at them with even step, but at a run, shouting the war-cry, “Io pæan!  Io pæan!”  In the middle, where the best men of the Persians were, they stood too firm to be thus broken, but at the sides they gave way, and ran back towards the sea, or over the hills, and then Miltiades gave a signal to the two side divisions—wings, as they were called—to close up together, and crush the Persian centre.  The enemy now thought of nothing but reaching their ships and putting out to sea, while the Athenians tried to seize their ships; Cynegyrus, one brave Greek, caught hold of the prow of one ship, and when the crew cut off his hand with an axe, he still clung with the other, till that too was cut off, and he sank and was drowned.  The fleet still held many men, and the Athenians saw that, instead of crossing back to Asia Minor, it was sailing round the promontory of Sunium, as if to attack Athens.  It was even said that p. 136a friend of Hippias had raised a shield, glittering in the sun, as a signal that all the men were away.  However, Miltiades left Aristides, with his tribe of 1000 men, to guard the plain and bury the dead, and marched back over the hills with the rest to guard their homes, that same night; but the Persians must have been warned, or have changed their mind, for they sailed away for Asia; and Hippias, who seems to have been wounded in the battle, died at Lemnos.  The Spartans came up just as all was over, and greatly praised the Athenians, for indeed it was the first time Greeks had beaten Persians, and it was the battle above all others that saved Europe from falling under the slavery of the East.  The fleet was caught by a storm as it crossed the Ægean Sea again.

All the Athenians who had been slain were buried under one great mound, adorned with ten pillars bearing their names; the Platæans had another honourable mound, and the Persians a third.  All the treasure that was taken in the camp and ships was honourably brought to the city and divided.  There was only one exception, namely, one Kallias, who wore long hair bound with a fillet, and was taken for a king by a poor Persian, who fell on his knees before him, and showed him a well where was a great deal of gold hidden.  Kallias not only took the gold, but killed the poor stranger, and his family were ever after held as disgraced, and called by a nickname meaning, “Enriched by the Well.”

The Platæans were rewarded by being made freemen p. 137of Athens, as well as of their own city; and Miltiades, while all his countrymen were full of joy and exultation, asked of them a fleet of seventy ships, promising to bring them fame and riches.  With it he sailed for the island of Faros, that which was specially famed for its white marble.  He said he meant to punish the Parians for having joined the Persians, but it really was because of a quarrel of his own.  He landed, and required the Parians to pay him a hundred talents, and when they refused he besieged the city, until a woman named Timo, who was priestess at a temple of Ceres near the gates, promised to tell him a way of taking the city if he would meet her at night in the temple, where no man was allowed to enter.  He came, and leaped over the outer fence of the temple, but, brave as he was in battle, terror at treading on forbidden and sacred ground overpowered him, and, without seeing the priestess, he leaped back again, fell on the other side, and severely injured his thigh.  The siege was given up, and he was carried back helpless to Athens, where there was no mercy to failures, and he was arraigned before the Areopagus assembly, by a man named Xanthippus, for having wasted the money of the State and deceived the people, and therefore being guilty of death.

It must have been a sad thing to see the great captain, who had saved his country in that great battle only a year or two before, lying on his couch, too ill to defend himself, while his brother spoke for him, and p. 138appealed to his former services.  In consideration of these it was decided not to condemn him to die, but he was, instead, to pay fifty talents of silver, and before the sum could be raised, he died of his hurts.  It was said that his son Kimôn put himself into prison till the fine could be raised, so as to release his father’s corpse, which was buried with all honour on the plain of Marathon, with a tomb recording his glory, and not his fall.

The two chief citizens who were left were Aristides and Themistocles, both very able men; but Aristides was perfectly high-minded, unselfish, and upright, while Themistocles cared for his own greatness more than anything else.  Themistocles was so clever that his tutor had said to him when he was a child, “Boy, thou wilt never be an ordinary person; thou wilt either be a mighty blessing or a mighty curse to thy country.”  When he grew up he used his powers of leading the multitude for his own advantage, and that of his party.  “The gods forbid,” he said, “that I should sit on any tribunal where my friends should not have more advantage than strangers.”  While, on the other hand, Aristides was so impartial and single-hearted that he got the name of Aristides the Just.  He cared most for the higher class, the aristoi, and thought they could govern best, while Themistocles sought after the favour of the people; and they both led the minds of the Athenians so completely while they were speaking, that, after a meeting where they had both made a speech, Aristides said, “Athens will never be safe till p. 139Themistocles and I are both in prison,” meaning that either of them could easily make himself tyrant.

However, Aristides, though of high family, was very poor, and men said it was by the fault of his cousin Kallias, the “Enriched by the Well;” and Themistocles contrived to turn people’s minds against him, so as to have him ostracised.  One day he met a man in the street, with a shell in his hand, who asked him to write the name of Aristides on it, as he could not write himself.  “Pray,” said Aristides, “what harm has this person done you, that you wish to banish him?”

“No harm at all,” said the man; “only I am sick of always hearing him called the Just.”

Aristides had no more to say, but wrote his own name; and six thousand shells having been counted up against him, he was obliged to go into exile for ten years.

Cynegyrus, the man whose hands had been cut off in the bay of Marathon, had a very famous brother named Æschylus—quite as brave a soldier, and a poet besides.  The Athenians had come to worshipping Bacchus, but not in the horrid, mad, drunken manner of the first orgies.  They had songs and dances by persons with their heads wreathed in vine and ivy leaves, and a goat was sacrificed in the midst.  The Greek word for a goat is tragos, and the dances came to be called tragedies.  Then came in the custom of having poetical speeches in the midst of the dances, made in the person of some old hero or god, and these p. 140always took place in a curve in the side of a hill, so worked out by art that the rock was cut into galleries, for half-circles of spectators to sit one above the other, while the dancers and speakers were on the flat space at the bottom.  Thespis, whom Solon reproved for falsehoods, was the first person who made the dancers and singers, who were called the chorus, so answer one another and the speakers that the tragedy became a play, representing some great action of old.  The actors had to wear brazen masks and tall buskins, or no one could have well seen or heard them.  Æschylus, when a little boy, was set to watch the grapes in his father’s vineyard.  He fell asleep, and dreamt that Bacchus appeared to him, and bade him make his festivals noble with tragedies; and this he certainly did, for the poetry he wrote for them is some of the grandest that man ever sung, and shows us how these great Greeks were longing and feeling after the truth, like blind men groping in the dark.  The custom was to have three grave plays or tragedies on the same subject on three successive days, and then to finish with a droll one, or comedy, as it was called, in honour of the god Comus.  There is one trilogy of Æschylus still preserved to us, where we have the death of Agamemnon, the vengeance of Orestes, and his expiation when pursued by the Furies, but the comedy belonging to them is lost.

Almost all the greatest and best Greeks of this time believed in part in the philosophy of Pythagoras, who had lived in the former century, and taught that the p. 141whole universe was one great divine musical instrument, as it were, in which stars, sun, winds, and earth did their part, and that man ought to join himself into the same sweet harmony.  He thought that if a man did ill his spirit went into some animal, and had a fresh trial to purify it, but it does not seem as if many others believed this notion.

p. 142CHAP. XVII.—THE EXPEDITION OF XERXES.  b.c. 480.

he Athenians had not a long breathing-time.  Darius, indeed, died five years after the battle of Marathon; but his son Xerxes was far more fiery and ambitious, and was no sooner on the throne than he began to call together all the vast powers of the East, not to crush Athens alone, but all the Greeks.  He was five years gathering them together, but in the spring of 480 he set out from Sardis to march to the Hellespont, where he had a bridge of ships chained together, made to enable his army to cross the strait on foot.  Xerxes was a hot-tempered man, not used to resistance, and it was said that when a storm broke part of his bridge he caused the waves to be scourged and fetters to be thrown in, to show that he was going to bind it to his will.  He sat on a throne to watch his armies pass by.  It is said that there were two million six hundred thousand men, of every speech and dress in Asia and Egypt, with all sorts of weapons; and as the “Great King” watched the endless number pass by, he burst p. 143into tears to think how soon all this mighty host would be dead men!

Xerxes had a huge fleet besides, manned by Phœnicians and Greeks of Asia Minor, and this did not venture straight across the Ægean, because of his father’s disaster, but went creeping round the northern coast.  Mount Athos, standing out far and steep into the sea, stood in the way, and it was dangerous to go round it; so Xerxes thought it would be an undertaking worthy of him to have a canal dug across the neck that joins the mountain to the land, and the Greeks declared that he wrote a letter to the mountain god, bidding him not to put rocks in the way of the workmen of the “Great King.”  Traces of this canal can still be found in the ravine behind Mount Athos.

All the Greeks knew their danger now, and a council from every city met at the Isthmus of Corinth to consider what was to be done.  All their ships, 271 in number, were gathered in a bay on the north of the great island of Eubœa.  There the Spartan captain of the whole watched and waited, till beacons from height to height announced that the Persians were coming, and then he thought it safer to retreat within the Euripus, the channel between the island and the mainland, which is so narrow that a very few ships could stop the way of a whole fleet.  However, just as they were within shelter, a terrible storm arose, which broke up and wrecked a great number of Persian ships, though the number that were left still was far beyond that of the p. 144Greeks.  On two days the Greeks ventured out, and always gained the victory over such ships as they encountered, but were so much damaged themselves, without destroying anything like the whole fleet, that such fighting was hopeless work.

In the meantime Xerxes, with his monstrous land army, was marching on, and the only place where it seemed to the council at the Isthmus that he could be met and stopped was at a place in Thessaly, where the mountains of Œta rose up like a steep wall, leaving no opening but towards the sea, where a narrow road wound round the foot of the cliff, and between it and the sea was a marsh that men and horses could never cross.  The springs that made this bog were hot, so that it was called Thermopylæ, or the Hot Gates.

The council at the Isthmus determined to send an army to stop the enemy there, if possible.  There were 300 Spartans, and various troops from other cities, all under the command of one of the Spartan kings, Leonidas, who had married Gorgo, the girl whose word had kept her father faithful.  They built up a stone wall in front of them, and waited for the enemy, and by-and-by the Persians came, spreading over an immense space in the rear, but in this narrow road only a few could fight at once, so that numbers were of little use.  Xerxes sent to desire the Spartans to give up their arms.  Leonidas only answered, “Come and take them.”  The Persian messenger reported that the Greeks were sitting on the wall combing their hair, while others were playing p. 145at warlike games.  Xerxes thought they were mad, but a traitor Spartan whom he had in his camp said it was always the fashion of his countrymen before any very perilous battle.  Xerxes made so sure of victory over such a handful of men, that he bade his captains bring them all alive to him; but day after day his best troops fell beaten back from the wall, and hardly a Greek was slain.

But, alas! there was a mountain path through the chestnut woods above.  Leonidas had put a guard of p. 146Phocian soldiers to watch it, and the Persians did not know of it till a wretch, for the sake of reward, came and offered to show them the way, so that they might fall on the defenders of the pass from behind.  In the stillness of the early dawn, the Phocians heard the trampling of a multitude on the dry chestnut leaves.  They stood to arms, but as soon as the Persians shot their arrows at them they fled away and left the path open.  Soon it was known in the camp that the foe were on the hills above.  There was still time to retreat, and Leonidas sent off all the allies to save their lives; but he himself and his 300 Spartans, with 700 Thespians, would not leave their post, meaning to sell their lives as dearly as possible.  The Delphic oracle had said that either Sparta or a king of Sparta must perish, and he was ready to give himself for his country.  Two young cousins of the line of Hercules he tried to save, by telling them to bear his messages home; but one answered that he had come to fight, not carry letters, and the other that they would fight first, and then take home the news.  Two more Spartans, whose eyes were diseased, were at the hot baths near.  One went back with the allies, the other caused his Helot to lead him to the camp, where, in the evening, all made ready to die, and Leonidas sat down to his last meal, telling his friends that on the morrow they should sup with Pluto.  One of these Thespians had answered, when he was told that the Persian arrows came so thickly as to hide the sky, “So much the better; we shall fight in the shade.”

p. 147The Persians were by this time so much afraid of these brave men that they could only be driven against them by whips.  Leonidas and his thousand burst out on them beyond the wall, and there fought the whole day, till everyone of them was slain, but with heaps upon heaps of dead Persians round them, so that, when Xerxes looked at the spot, he asked in horror whether all the Greeks were like these, and how many more Spartans there were.  Like a barbarian, he had Leonidas’ body hung on a cross; but in after times the brave king’s bones were buried on the spot, and a mound raised over the other warriors, with the words engraven—

“Go, passer-by, at Sparta tell,
Obedient to her law, we fell.”

There was nothing now between the Persians and the temple at Delphi.  The priests asked the oracle if they should bury the treasures.  “No,” the answer was; “the god will protect his own.”  And just as a party of Persians were climbing up the heights to the magnificent temple there was a tremendous storm; rocks, struck by lightning, rolled down, and the Persians fled in dismay; but it is said Xerxes sent one man to insult the heathen god, and that he was a Jew, and therefore had no fears, and came back safe.

Now that Thermopylæ was lost, there was no place fit to guard short of the Isthmus of Corinth, and the council decided to build a wall across that, and defend it, so as to save the Peloponnesus.  This left Attica outside, and the Athenians held anxious council what p. 148was to become of them.  Before the way to Delphi was stopped, they had asked the oracle what they were to do, and the answer had been, “Pallas had prayed for her city, but it was doomed; yet a wooden wall should save her people, and at Salamis should women be made childless, at seed-time or harvest.”

Themistocles said the wooden walls meant the ships, and that the Athenians were all to sail away and leave the city.  Others would have it that the wooden walls were the old thorn fence of the Acropolis, and these, p. 149being mostly old people, chose to stay, while all the rest went away; and while the wives and children were kindly sheltered by their friends in the Peloponnesus, the men all joined the fleet, which lay off Salamis, and was now 366 in number.  The Persians overran the whole country, overcame the few who held out the Acropolis, and set Athens on fire.  All the hope of Greece was now in the fleet, which lay in the strait between Attica and the isle of Salamis.  Eurybiades, the Spartan commander, still wanted not to fight, but Themistocles was resolved on the battle.  Eurybiades did all he could to silence him.  “Those who begin a race before the signal are scourged,” said the Spartan.  “True,” said Themistocles; “but the laggards never win a crown.”  Eurybiades raised his leading staff as if to give him a blow.  “Strike, but hear me,” said Themistocles; and then he showed such good reason for there meeting the battle that Eurybiades gave way.  Six days later the Persian fleet, in all its grandeur, came up, and Xerxes caused his throne to be set on Mount Ægaleos, above the strait, that he might see the battle.  The doubts of the Peloponnesians revived.  They wanted to sail away and guard their own shores, but Themistocles was so resolved that they should fight that he sent a slave with a message to Xerxes, pretending to be a traitor, and advising him to send ships to stop up the other end of the strait, to cut off their retreat.  This was done, to the horror of honest Aristides, who, still exiled, was in Ægina, watching what to p. 150do for his countrymen.  In a little boat he made his way at night to the ship where council was being held, and begged that Themistocles might be called out.  “Let us be rivals still,” he said; “but let our strife be which can serve our country best.  I come to say that your retreat is cut off.  We are surrounded, and must fight.”  Themistocles said it was the best thing that could happen, and led him into the council with his tidings.

They did fight.  Ship was dashed against ship as fast as oars could bring them, their pointed beaks bearing one another down.  The women who were made childless were Persian women.  Two hundred Persian ships were sunk, and only forty Greek ones; an immense number were taken; and Xerxes, from his throne, saw such utter ruin of all his hopes and plans, that he gave up all thought of anything but getting his land army back to the Hellespont as fast as possible, for his fleet was gone!

p. 151CHAP. XVIII.—THE BATTLE OF PLATÆA.  b.c. 479–460.

fter being thus beaten by sea, and having learnt what Greeks were by land, Xerxes himself, with a broken, sick, and distressed army, went back to Sardis; but he left a satrap named Mardonius behind him, with his best troops, in Thessaly, to see whether anything could still be done for his cause.  He did try whether the Athenians could be persuaded to desert the other Greeks, and become allies of Persia, but they made a noble answer—“So long as the sun held his course, the Athenians would never be friends to Xerxes.  Great as might be his power, Athens trusted to the aid of the gods and heroes, whose temple he had burnt.”

After this answer, Mardonius marched again into Attica, and took possession of it; but as the Athenians were now all safe in Salamis, or among their friends, he could not do them much harm; and while he was finishing the ruin he had begun ten months before, the Spartans had raised their army, under the command of p. 152their king, Pausanias, nephew to Leonidas, and all the best soldiers from the other Greek cities.  They came up with the Persians near the city of Platæa.  Though a Spartan, Pausanias had rather not have fought; but when at last the battle began, it was a grand victory, and was gained in a wonderfully short time.  The Spartans killed Mardonius, and put the best Persian troops, called the Immortals, to flight; and the Athenians, under Aristides, fought with the Thebans, who had joined the Persian army.  The whole Persian camp was sacked.  The Helots were sent to collect the spoil, and put it all together.  They stole a good deal of the gold, which they took for brass, and sold it as such.  Waggon-loads of silver and gold vessels were to be seen; collars, bracelets, and rich armour; and the manger of Xerxes’ horses, which he had left behind, and which was of finely-worked brass.  Pausanias bade the slaves of Mardonius to prepare such a feast as their master was used to, and then called his friends to see how useless were all the carpets, cushions, curtains, gold and silver, and the dainties upon them, and how absurd it was to set out on a conquering expedition thus encumbered.

A tenth part of the spoil was set apart for Apollo, and formed into a golden tripod, supported by a brazen p. 153serpent with three heads.  A great statue of Jupiter was sent to Olympia, the pedestal adorned with the names of all the cities which had sent men to the battle, and such another of Neptune was set up on the Isthmus; while a temple to Athene, adorned with pictures of the battle, was built on the spot near Platæa.  Pausanias received a sample of all that was best of the spoil.  Among the dead was found that one Spartan who had missed Thermopylæ.  He had been miserable ever since, and only longed to die in battle, as now he had done.  The Platæans were to be respected by all the other states of Greece, so long as they yearly performed p. 154funeral rites in honour of the brave men whose tombs were left in their charge.

On the same day as the battle of Platæa was fought, another great battle was fought at Mykale, near Miletus, by the Ionian Greeks of Asia, assisted by Athenians and Spartans.  It set Miletus free from the Persians, and was the first step backwards of their great power.  The Athenian fleet also gained back the Chersonesus, and brought home the chains that had fastened together the bridge of boats, to be dedicated in the temples of their own gods.

The Athenians were all coming home rejoicing.  Even the very week after Xerxes had burnt the Acropolis, the sacred olive which Pallas Athene was said to have given them had shot out a long branch from the stump, and now it was growing well, to their great joy and encouragement.  Everyone began building up his own house; and Themistocles, Aristides, and the other statesmen prepared to build strong walls round the city, though the Spartans sent messengers to persuade them that it was of no use to have any fortified cities outside the Peloponnesus; but they knew this was only because the Spartans wanted to be masters of Greece, and would not attend to them.  Athens stood about three miles from the coast, and in the port there had hitherto been a village called Piræus, and Themistocles persuaded the citizens to make this as strong as possible, with a wall of solid stone round it.  These were grand days at Athens.  They had noble architects and p. 155sculptors; and Æschylus was writing the grandest of his tragedies—especially one about the despair of the Persian women—but only fragments of most of them have come down to our time.

In 375 Aristides died, greatly honoured, though he was so poor that he did not leave enough to pay his funeral expenses; but a monument was raised to him by the State, and there is only one Athenian name as pure and noble as his.

The two other men who shared with him the honours of the defeat of the Persians met with very different fates, and by their own fault.  When Pausanias went back to Sparta, he found his life there too stern and full of restraint, after what he had been used to in his campaign.  He tried to break down the power of the Ephors, and obtain something more like royalty for the kings, and this he hoped to do by the help of Persia.  He used to meet the messenger of this traitorous correspondence in the temple of Neptune, in the promontory of Tænarus.  Some of the Ephors were warned, hid themselves there, and heard his treason from his own lips.  They sent to arrest him as soon as he came back to Sparta; but he took refuge in the temple of Pallas, whence he could not be dragged.  However, the Spartans were determined to have justice on him.  They walled up the temple, so that he could neither escape nor have food brought to him; indeed it is said that, in horror at his treason, his mother brought the first stone.  When he was at the point of p. 156death he was taken out, that the sanctuary might not be polluted, and he died just as he was carried out.  The Spartans buried him close to the temple, and gave Pallas two statues of him, to make up for the suppliant she had lost, but they were always reproached for the sacrilege.

Themistocles was a friend of Pausanias, and was suspected of being mixed up in his plots.  He was obliged to flee the country, and went to Epirus, where he came to the house of King Admetus, where the queen, Phthia, received him, and told him how to win her husband’s protection, namely, by sitting down on the hearth by the altar to the household gods, and holding her little son in his arms.

When Admetus came in, Themistocles entreated him to have pity on his defenceless state.  The king raised him up and promised his protection, and kept his word.  Themistocles was taken by two guides safely across the mountains to Pydna, where he found a merchant ship about to sail for Asia.  A storm drove it to the island of Naxos, which was besieged by an Athenian fleet; and Themistocles must have fallen into the hands of his fellow-citizens if he had landed, but he told the master of the ship that it would be the ruin of all alike if he were found in the vessel, and promised a large reward if he escaped.  So the crew consented to beat about a whole day and night, and in the morning landed safely near Ephesus.  He kept his word to the captain; for indeed he was very rich, having taken bribes, while p. 157Aristides remained in honourable poverty.  He went to Susa, where Xerxes was dead; but the Persians had fancied his message before the battle of Salamis was really meant to serve them, and that he was suffering for his attachment to them, so the new king, Artaxerxes, the “Long-armed,” who had a great esteem for his cleverness, was greatly delighted, offered up a sacrifice in his joy, and three times cried out in his sleep, “I have got Themistocles the Athenian.”

Themistocles had asked to wait a year before seeing the king, that he might have time to learn the language.  When he came, he put forward such schemes for conquering Greece that Artaxerxes was delighted, and gave him a Persian wife, and large estates on the banks of the Mæander, where he spent the rest of his life, very rich, but despised by all honest Greeks.

All the history of the war with Xerxes was written by Herodotus, a Greek of Caria, who travelled about to study the manners, customs, and histories of different nations, and recorded them in the most lively and spirited manner, so that he is often called the father of history.

Æschylus went on gaining prizes for his tragedies, till 468, when, after being thirteen times first, he was excelled by another Athenian named Sophocles, and was so much vexed that he withdrew to the Greek colonies in Sicily.  It is not clear whether he ever came back to Athens for a time, but he certainly died in p. 158Sicily, and in an extraordinary way.  He was asleep on the sea-shore, when an eagle flew above him with a tortoise in its claws.  It is the custom of eagles to break the shells of these creatures by letting them fall on rocks from a great height.  The bird took Æschylus’ bald head for a stone, threw down the tortoise, broke his skull, and killed him!

Sophocles did not write such grand lines, yearning for the truth, as Æschylus, but his plays, of Ajax’ madness, and especially of Antigone’s self-devotion, were more touching, and full of human feeling; and Euripides, who was a little younger, wrote plays more like those of later times, with more of story in them, and more characters, especially of women.  He even wrote one in which he represented Helen as never having been unfaithful at all; Venus only made up a cloud-image to be run away with by Paris, and Helen was carried away and hidden in Egypt, where Menelaus found her, and took her home.  The works of these three great men have always been models.  The Greeks knew their plays by heart almost as perfectly as the Iliad and Odyssey, and used to quote lines wherever they applied.

p. 159

CHAP. XIX.—THE AGE OF PERICLES.  b.c. 464–429.

thens and Sparta were now quite the greatest powers in Greece.  No other state had dared to make head against the Persians, and all the lesser cities, and the isles and colonies, were anxious to obtain the help and friendship of one or other as their allies.  The two states were always rivals, and never made common cause, except when the Persian enemy was before them.  In the year 464 there was a terrible earthquake in Laconia, which left only five houses standing in Sparta, and buried great numbers in the ruins.  The youths, who were all together in one building exercising themselves, were almost all killed by its fall; and the disaster would have been worse if the king, Archidamas, had not caused the trumpet to be blown, as if to call the people to arms, just outside the city.  This brought all the men in order together just in time, for the Helots were rising against them, and, if they had found them groping each in the ruins of his house, might have killed them one by one; whereas, finding them up and armed, the slaves saw it was in vain, and dispersed.

p. 160The Messenians, who had never forgotten Aristodemus, hoped to free themselves again.  A great many of the Helots joined them, and they made their fortified hill of Ithome very strong.  The Spartans called on the Athenians to help them to put down the insurrection.  The three greatest men in Athens were Pericles, the son of that Xanthippus who had impeached Miltiades; Kimôn, the son of Miltiades himself; and Ephialtes, a great orator, who was thought to be as upright as Aristides the Just.  When the request from Sparta came, Ephialtes was against helping the rival of Athens; but Kimôn, who had friends in Laconia, declared that it would be unbecoming in Athens to let Greece be crippled in one of her two legs, or to lose her own yoke-fellow.  He prevailed, and was sent with an army to help in the siege of Ithome; but it was such a tardy siege that the Spartans fancied that the Athenians had an understanding with the Messenians, and desired them to go home again, thus, of course, affronting them exceedingly.

Two years after, Kimôn was ostracised; but soon after the Spartans affronted the Athenians, by placing a troop of men at Tanagra, on the borders of Attica.  The Athenians went out to attack them, and Kimôn sent to entreat permission to fight among his tribe, but he was not trusted, and was forbidden.  He sent his armour to his friends—a hundred in number—and bade them maintain his honour.  They were all killed, fighting bravely, and the victory was with the Spartans.  Soon p. 161after, the virtuous Ephialtes was stabbed by some unknown person, and Pericles, feeling that good men could not be spared, moved that Kimôn should be called home again.  Kimôn was much loved; he was tall and handsome, with curly hair and beard; and he was open-handed, leaving his orchards and gardens free to all, and keeping a table for every chance guest.  Yet he much admired the Spartans and their discipline, and he contrived to bring about a five-years’ truce between the two great powers.  The greatest benefit he gave his people was the building of the Long Walls, which joined Athens and the Piræus together, so that the city could never be cut off from the harbour.  Kimôn began them at his own expense, and Pericles persuaded the Athenians to go on with them, when their founder had been sent on an expedition to the isle of Cyprus, which was rising against the Persians.  There Kimôn fell sick and died, but his fleet, immediately after, won a grand victory over the Phœnician and Cilician fleets, in the Persian service.

However, some hot-headed young Athenians were beaten at Coronea by the Bœotians, who were Spartan allies, and a good many small losses befel them by land, till they made another peace for thirty years in 445.  There was nobody then in Athens, or Greece either, equal to Pericles, who was managing all affairs in his own city with great wisdom, and making it most beautiful with public buildings.  On the rock of the Acropolis stood the Parthenon, the temple of the virgin p. 162goddess Pallas Athene, which was adorned with a portico, the remains of which still stand up gloriously against the blue Grecian sky.  The bas-relief carvings on the pediments, representing the fight between the Centaurs and Lapithæ, are now in the British Museum; and though the statue itself is gone, still seals and gems remain, made to imitate it, and showing the perfect beauty of the ivory and gold statue of Athene herself, which was carved by the great sculptor Phidias, and placed within the temple.  When there was a question whether this figure should be made of marble or of ivory, and Phidias recommended marble as the p. 163cheapest, the whole assembly of Athenians voted for ivory.

A beautiful fortification called the Propylæa guarded the west side of the Acropolis, where only there was no precipice; and there were other splendid buildings—a new open theatre, for the acting of those unrivalled tragedies of the three Athenian poets, and of others which have been lost; a Museum, which did not then mean a collection of curiosities, but a place where the youth might study all the arts sacred to the Muses; a Lyceum for their exercises, and schools for the p. 164philosophers.  These schools were generally colonnades of pillars supporting roofs to give shelter from the sun, and under one of these taught the greatest, wisest, and best of all truth-seekers, namely, Socrates.

Though the houses at Athens stood irregularly on their steep hill, there was no place in the world equal to it for beauty in its buildings, its sculptures, and its carvings, and, it is also said, in its paintings; but none of these have come down to our times.  Everything belonging to the Athenians was at this time full of simple, manly grace and beauty, and in both body and mind they were trying to work up to the greatest perfection they could devise, without any aid outside themselves to help them.

But they had come to the very crown of their glory.  When a war arose between the Corinthians and the Corcyrans, who inhabited the isle now called Corfu, the Corcyrans asked to be made allies of Athens, and a fleet was sent to help them; and as the Corinthians held with Sparta, this brought on a great war between Athens and Sparta, which was called the Peloponnesian war, and lasted thirty years.  It was really to decide which of the two great cities should be chief, and bot