South of Argos, and away from the sea, rise the peaks of the Parnon range. They are beautiful, but still more pleasing to the eye is the Eurotas River that runs between them and the taller, darker, snow-tipped range
Qf Taygetus on the west. In that seismic valley lay Homer's "hollow
CHAP.IV)	SPARTA	73
Lacedaemon," a plain so guarded by mountains that Sparta, its capital, needed no walls. At its zenith Sparta ("The Scattered") was a union of five villages, totaling some seventy thousand population. Today it is a hamlet of four thousand souls; and hardly anything remains, even in the modest museum, of the city that once ruled and ruined Greece.
The Expansion of Sparta
From that natural citadel the Dorians dominated and enslaved the south ern Peloponnesus. To these long-haired northerners, hardened by moun tains and habituated to war, there seemed no alternative in life but con quest or slavery; war was their business, by which they made what seemed to them an honest living; the non-Dorian natives, weakened by agriculture and peace, were in obvious need of masters. So the kings of Sparta, who claimed a continuous lineage from the Heracleidae of 1104, first subjected the indigenous population of Laconia, and then attacked Messenia. That land, in the southwestern comer of the Peloponnesus, was relatively level and fertile, and was tilled by pacific tribes. We may read in Pausanias how the Messenian king, Aristodemus, consulted the oracle at Delphi for ways to defeat the Spartans; how Apollo bade him offer in sacrifiee to the gods a virgin of his own royal race; how he put to death his own daughter, and lost the war.19 (Perhaps he had been mistaken about his daughter.) Twa generations later the brave Aristomenes led the Messenians in heroic revolt For nine years their cities bore up under attack and siege; but in the end the Spartans had their way. The Messenians were subjected to an annual tax of half their crops, and thousands of them were led away to join the Helot serfs.
The picture that we are to form of Laconian society before Lycurgus has, like some ancient paintings, three levels. Above is a master class of Dorians, living for the most part in Sparta on the produce of fields owned by them in the country and tilled for them by Helots. Socially between, geographically surrounding, the masters and the Helots were the Perioeci ("Dwellers Around"): freemen living in a hundred villages in the moun tains or on the outskirts of Laconia, or engaged in trade or industry in the towns; subject to taxation and military service, but having no share in the government, and no right of intermarriage with the ruling class. Low est and most numerous of all were the Helots, so named, according to Strabo, from the town of Helus, whose people had been among the fust to be enslaved by the Spartans.., By simple conquest of the non-Dorian population or by importing prisoners of war, Sparta had made Laconia a
74	THE	LIFE  OF  GREECE	(CHAP.IV
land of some 224,000 Helots, 120,000 Perioeci, and 32,000 men, women, and children of the citizen class....
The Helot had all the liberties of a medieval serf. He could marry as he pleased, breed without forethought, work the land in his own way, and live in a village with his neighbors, undisturbed by the absentee owner of his lot, so long as he remitted regularly to this owner the rental fixed by the government. He was bound to the soil, but neither he nor the land could be sold. In some cases he was a domestic servant in the town. He was expected to attend his master in war, and, when called upon, to fight for the state; if he fought well he might receive his freedom. His economic condition was not normally worse than that of the village peasantry in the rest of Greece outside of Attica, or the unskilled laborer in a modem city. He had the consolations of his own dwelling, varied work, and the quiet friendliness of trees and fields. But he was continually subject to martial law, and to secret supervision by a secret police, by whom he might at any moment be killed without cause or trial.11
In Laconia, as elsewhere, the simple paid tribute to the clever; this is a custom with a venerable past and a promising future. In most civilizations this distribution of the goods of life is brought about by the normally peaceful operation of the price system: the clever persuade us to pay more for the less readily duplicable luxuries and services that they offer us than the simple can manage to secure for the more easily replaceable necessaries that they produce. But in Laconia the concentration of wealth was effected by irritatingly visible means, and left among the Helots a volcanic dis content that in almost every year of Spartan history threatened to upset the state with revolution.
Sparta's Golden Age
In that dim past before Lycurgus came, Sparta was a Greek city like the rest, and blossomed out in song and art as it would never do after him. Music above all was popular there, and rivaled man's antiquity; for as far back as we can delve we find the Greeks singing. In Sparta, so frequently at war, music took a martial turn-the strong and simple "Doric mode"; and not only were other styles discouraged, but any deviation from this Doric style was punishable by law. Even Terpander, though he had quelled a sedition by his songs, was fineg by the ephors, and his lyre nailed mute to the wall, because to suit his·voice, he had dared to add another string
These figures, of course, are conjectural, being based upon a few hints and many assump
tions.
CHAP.IV)	SPARTA	15
to the instrument; and in a later generation Timotheus, who had expanded Terpander's seven strings to eleven, was not allowed to compete at Sparta until the ephors had removed from his lyre the scandalously extra strings.•
Sparta, like England, had great composers when she imported them. Towards 670, supposedly at the behest of the Delphic oracle, Terpander was brought in from Lesbos to prepare a contest in choral singing at the festival of the Carneia. Likewise Thaletas was summoned from Crete about 620; and soon after came Tyrtaeus, Aleman, and Polymnestus. Their labors went mostly to composing patriotic music and training choruses to sing it. Music was seldom taught to individual Spartans;"' as in revolution ary Russia, the communal spirit was so strong that music took a corporate form, and group competed with group in magnificent festivals of song and dance. Such choral singing gave the Spartans another opportunity for dis cipline and mass formations, for every voice was subject to the leader. At the feast of the Hyacinthia King Agesilaus sang obediently in the place and time assigned to him by the choral master; and at the festival of the Gymnopedia the whole body of Spartans, of every age and sex, joined in massive exercises of harmonious dance and antistrophal song. Such occa-. sions must have provided a powerful stimulus and outlet to the patriotic sentiment.
Terpander (i.e., "Delighter of Men") was one of those brilliant poet
musicians w• .o maugurated the great age of Lesbos in the generation before Sappho. Tradition ascribed to him the invention of scolia or drinking songs, and the expansion of the lyre from four to seven strings; but the heptachord, as we have seen, was as old as Minos, and presumably men had sung the glories of wine in the forgotten adolescence of the world. Certainly he made a name for himself at Lesbos as a kitharoedos-i.e., a com poser and singer of musical lyrics. Having killed a man in a brawl, he was exiled, and found it convenient to accept an invitation from Sparta. There, it seems, he lived the remainder of his days, teaching music and training choruses. We are told that he ended his life at a drinking party: while he was singing-perhaps that extra note which he had added at the top of the scale-one of his auditors threw a fig at him; which, entering his mouth and his windpipe, choked him to death in the very ecstasy of song.•
Tyrtaeus continued Terpander's work at Sparta during the Second Mes senian War. He came from Aphidna-possibly in Lacedaemon, probably in Attica; certainly the Athenians had an old joke about the Spartans, that when the latter were losing the Second War they were saved by a lame Attic schoolmaster, whose songs of battle woke up the dull Spartans, and stirred them to victory.• Apparently he sang his own songs to the Bute
THE	LIFE  OF GREECE	(CHAP. IV
in public assembly, seeking to transform martial death into enviable glory. "It is a fine thing," says one of his surviving fragments, "for a brave man to die in the front rank of those who fight for their country    Let each
one, standing squarely on his feet, rooted to the ground and biting his lips, keep firm.... Foot to foot, shield to shield, waving plumes mingling and helmets clashing, let the warriors press breast to breast, each sword and spear-point meeting in the shock of battle."" Tyrtaeus, said the Spartan King Leonidas, "was an adept in tickling the souls of youth."'8
Aleman sang in the same generation, as friend and rival of Tyrtaeus, but in a more varied and earthly strain. He came from far-off Lydia, and some said that he was a slave; nevertheless the Lacedaemonians welcomed him, not having yet learned the xenelasia, or hatred of foreigners, which was to become part of the Lycurgea-n code. The later Spartans would have been scandalized at his eulogies of love and food, and his roster of Laconia's noble wines. Tradition ranked him as the grossest eater of antiquity, and as an insatiable pursuer of women. One of his songs told how fortunate he was that he had not remained in Sardis, where he might have become an emas culate priest of Cybele, but had come to Sparta, where he could love in freedom his golden-haired mistress Megalostrata."" He begins for us that dynasty of amorous poets which culminates in Anacreon, and he heads the list of the "Nine Lyric Poets" chosen by Alexandrian critics as the best of ancient Greece.• He could write hymns and paeans as well as songs of wine and love, and the Spartans liked especially the parthenia, or maiden songs, which he composed for choruses of girls. A fragment now and then reveals that power of imaginative feeling which is the heart of poetry:


Dr. Carl Blegen, field director of the University of Cincinnati excavations at Troy (1931f), believes that these have shown that Troy VI was destroyed about 1300, erobably by earthquake, and that upon its ruins rose the Seventh City, which he calls Pnam's Troy. Dorpfeld prefers to call this Troy VIb. Cf. Journal of Hellenic Studies, LVI, 156.
t (7) Troy VII was a small unfortified settlement, which occupied the site till (8) Alex
ander the Great, in 334, built upon it Troy VIII in homage to Homer. (9) About the begin ning of the Christian era the Romans built Novum Ilium, or New Troy, which survived till the fifth century A.D.
:j: The name Troy was traced ·by Greek tradition to the eponymous hero Tros, father of Ilus, father of Laomedon, father of Priam.88 Hence the variant names of the city-Troas, llios, Ilion, Ilium. An eponymous hero, or eponym, is a probably legendary person to whom a social or political group attributes its origin and name. The Dardani, for example, believed or pretended that they were descended from Dardanus, son of Zeus; so the Dorians traced tnemselves to Dorus, the lonians to Ion, etc.
THE	LIFE  OF GREECE	(CHAP.ll
position of Troy near the entrance to the Hellespont and the rich lands about the Black Sea. Throughout history that narrow passage has been the battleground of empires; the siege of Troy was the Gallipoli adventure of 1194 B.c. The plain was moderately fertile, and precious metals lay in the soil to the east; but this alone would hardly account for the wealth of Troy, and the tenacious attack of the Greeks. The city was admirably placed to levy tolls upon vessels wishing to pass through the Hellespont, while it was too far inland to be conveniently assailed from the sea:""perhaps it was this, and not Helen's face, that launched a thousand ships upon Ilium. On a like lier theory the southward current and winds in the strait persuaded mer chants to unload their cargoes at Troy and ship them overland into the interior; from the charges exacted for this service Troy may have derived its wealth and power... In any case the city's trade grew rapidly, as may be judged from the varied provenance of its remains. From the lower Aegean came copper, olive oil, wine, and pottery; from the Danube and Thrace came pottery, amber, horses, and swords; from distant China came so great a rarity as jade." In return Troy brought from the interior, and exported, timber, silver, gold, and wild asses. Seated proudly behind their walls, the "horse-taming Trojans" dominated the Troad,·and taxed its trade on land and sea.
The picture that we derive from the Iliad of Priam and his household is one of BiJ>lical grandeur and patriarchal benevolence. The King is polyg amous, not as a diversion but as a royal responsibility to continue his high breed abundantly; his sons are monogamous, and as well behaved as the fictitious Victorians-excepting, of course, the gay Paris, who is as innocent of morals as Alcibiades. Hector, Helenus, and Troilus are more likable than the vacillating Agamemnon, the treacherous Odysseus, and the petulant Achilles; Andromache and Polyxena are as charming as Helen and Iphi genia; and Hecuba is a shade better than Clytaemnestra. All in all, the Trojans, as pictured by their enemies, seem to us less deceitful, more de voted, better gentlemen, than the Greeks who conquered them. The con querors themselves felt this in later days; Homer had many a kind word to say for the Trojans, and Sappho and Euripides left no doubt as to where their sympathies and admiration lay. It was a pity that these noble Dardans stood in the way of an expanding Greece which, despite its multitude of faults, would in the end bring to this and every otl1er region of the Mediter ranean a higher civilization than they had ever known.
CHAPTER III
The Heroic Age
THE ACHAEANS
ODEST Hittite tablets from Boghaz Keui, of approximately 1325 B.c., speak of the "Ahhijava" as a peop}e equal in pow r to the Hittites themselves. An Egyptian record towards 122 1 B.c. mentions the "Akaiwasha" as joining other "Peoples of the Sea" in a Libyan invasion of Egypt, and describes them as a roving band "fighting to fill their bellies.m In Homer the Achaeans are, specifically, a Greek-speaking people of south ern Thessaly;" often, however, because they had become the most powerful of the Greek tribes, Homer uses their name for all the Greeks at Troy. Greek historians and poets of the classic age called the Achaeans, like the Pelasgians, autochthonous-native to Greece as far back as memory could recall; and they assumed without hesitation that the Achaean culture de scribed in Homer was one with that which has here been termed Myce naean. Schliemann accepted this identification, and for a brief while the
world of scholarship agreed with him.
In 1901 an unusually iconoclastic Englishman, Sir William Ridgeway,' upset this happy confidence by pointing out that though Achaean civiliza tion agreed with the Mycenaean in many ways, it differed in vital particu lars. (1) Iron is practically unknown to the Mycenaeans; the Achaeans are familiar with it. ( 2) The dead in Homer are cremated; in Tiryns and Mycenae they are buried, implying a different conception of the afterlife.
(3) The Achaean gods are the Olympians, of whom no trace has been found in the culture of Mycenae. (4) The Achaeans use long swords, round shields, and safety-pin brooches; no objects of such form appear in the varied Mycenaean remains. (5) There are considerable dissimilarities in coiffure and dress. Ridgeway concluded that the Mycenaeans were Pelas gians, and spoke Greek; that the Achaeans were blond "Celts," or Central Europeans, who came down through Epirus and Thessaly from 2000 on ward, brought with them the worship of Zeus, invaded the Peloponnesus about 1400, adopted Greek speech and many Greek ways, and established
37
THE	LIFE  OF GREECE	(cHAP.m
themselves as feudal chieftains ruling from their fortress-palaces a sub jugated Pelasgian population.
The theory is illuminating, even if it must be substantially modified. Greek literature says nothing of an Achaean invasion; and it would not be wise to hang a rejection of so unanimous a tradition upon a gradual in crease in the use of iron, a change in modes of burial or coiffure, a lengthen ing of swords or rounding of shields, or even a safety pin. It is more likely that the Achaeans, as all classic writers supposed, were a Greek tribe that, in its natural multiplication, expanded from Thessaly into the Peloponnesus during the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries, mingled their blood with the Pelasgo-Mycenaeans there, and, towards 1250 B.c., became the ruling class.6 Probably it was they who gave Greek to the Pelasgians, instead of receiving it from them. In such place names as Corinth and Tiryns, Parnas sus and Olympia,• we may have echoes of a Creto-Pelasgo-Mycenaean tongue.• In the same manner, presumably, the Achaeans superimposed their mountain and sky gods upon the "chthonic" or subterranean deities of the earlier population. For the rest there is no sharp line of separation between the Mycenaean culture and that later phase of it, the Achaean, which we find in Homer; the two ways of life seem to have Iningled and melted into one. Slowly, as the amalgamation proceeded, Aegean civilization passed away, dying in the defeat of Troy, and Greek civilization began.
THE HEROIC LEGENDS
The legends of the Heroic Age suggest both the origins and the destinies of the Achaeans. We must not ignore these stories; for though a sanguinary fancy enlivens them, they may contain more history than we suppose; and
they are so bound up with Greek poetry, drama, and art that we should be at a loss to understand these without them.t
And in such Greek words as sestrmon (sesame), kyparissos (cypress), hyssopos (hyssop), omos (wine), S(l1ldalon (sandal), chalkos (copper), thalassa (sea), molybdos (lead), zephyros (zephyr), kybernao (steer), sphongos (sponge), laos (people), labyrinthis, dithyrtrmbos, ldtharis (zither), s:yrim: (flute), and paian (paean).
t ''Perseus ... Heracles ... Minos, Theseus, Jason ... it has been common in modem times
to regard these and the other heroes of this age ... as purely mythical creations. The later Greeks, in criticizing the records of their past, had no doubt that they were historical per sons who actually ruled in Argos and other kingdoms; and after a period of extreme skepti cism many modem critics have begun to revert to the Greek view as that which explains the evidence mmt satisfactorily  The heroes of the tales, like the geographical scenes in which
they moved, are real."-Ctrmbridge Ancient History, II, 478. We shall assume that the major legends are true in essence, imaginative in detail.


beautiful painting, or at least a handsome fee. They turned to common life with a Dutch zest, and delighted in picturing barbers, cobblers, prosti tutes, seamstresses, donkeys, deformed men, or peculiar animals. To these genre pictures they added representations of still life-cakes and eggs, fruit and vegetables, fish and game, wine and all the paraphernalia of its ancient ritual. Sosus of Pergamum amused his contemporaries by imitating, in a deceptively realistic floor mosaic, an unswept floor still littered with the leavings of a feast.1" The sedate were scandalized, and denounced these glorifiers of common things as pornographoi and rhyparographoi-por trayers of obscenity and filth. In Thebes the representation of ugly objects was forbidden by law.u
Certain larger masterpieces of the age were rescued not from anonymity but from oblivion by the lava of Vesuvius. A fresco found at Ostia is apparently a weak copy of a Hellenistic original; we know it as The Aldobrandini Wedding from the Italian family to which it belonged before it found a place in the Vatican. Aphrodite, Rubensianly robust, warms up the courage of the timid bride while the bridegroom, needing no prodding, waits impatiently beside the couch; finer than these central personages is a graceful woman playing some hymeneal strain on a faded lute. A Pompeian mural, traced uncertainly to a third-century Greek original, shows Achilles, with Patroclus beside him, angrily surrendering Briseis to Agamemnon's lust. The figures in these paintings seem to our wont and taste more ample than beautiful; we are accustomed to less body and longer legs; but it must be conceded that ancient artists knew Greek men and women better than we shall ever know them. Time has taken the bloom from these works; only an act of historical imagination can restore the brilliance and freshness that doubtless were once the admiration of multitudes and kings.
More impressive are certain Roman mosaics that have apparently been de rived from Hellenistic paintings. Mosaic was an old art in Egypt and Mesopo tamia; the Greeks took it over, and lifted it to the peak of its history. A paint ing was divided by lines into little squares, and tiny cubes of marble were so colored that when put together they reproduced the picture in a form surpris ingly durable; several mosaics, though trodden by innumerable feet through many centuries, still retain their color and tell their ancient tale. The Battle of lssus, found in the House of the Faun at Pompeii, and dubiously connected with a fourth-century Greek painting by Philoxenus,• is composed of approximately 1,500,000 stones, each some two or three millimeters square, the whole mosaic measuring eight by sixteen feet. It was badly injured by the earthquake and eruption that overwhelmed Pompeii in A.D. 79, but enough remains to attest the skill and vigor of the work. Alexander, black and disheveled with the heat and
This mosaic, and the Achilles and Briseis, are in the Naples Museum.
CHAP.XXVII)	THE  ART  OF  THE  DISPERSION	621
filth of war, is leading the attack, and has ridden his Bucephalus to within a few feet of the chariot that carries Darius. A Persian grandee has flung himself be tween the kings, and has received Alexander's lance in his body. Darius, ignor ing his own danger-for the conqueror's next lance is aimed at him-leans from his chariot towards his fallen friend, his face full of anxiety and grief. Persian cavalrymen rush up to rescue their ruler, and Alexander's weapon stays poised in the air. The representation of complex emotions in Darius' face is the out standing accomplishment of the work; but the most attractive head in the com position is that of Alexander's horse. There is no greater mosaic than this.
m. SCULPTURE
Never has statuary been more abundant than in the Hellenistic age. Temples and palaces, homes and streets, gardens and parks were crowded with it; every phase of human life, and many aspects of the plant and animal world, were represented in it; portrait busts immortalized for a moment dead heroes and living celebrities; at last even abstractions like Fortune, Peace, Calumny, or the Nick of Time, became concrete in stone. Euty chides of Sicyon, a pupil of Lysippus, molded for Antioch a famous Tyche, or Fortwze, to serve as the incarnation of the city's soul and hope. The sons of Praxiteles-Timachus and Cephisodotus-carried on the refined tradition of Athenian sculpture; and in the Peloponnesus Damophon of Messene scaled the heights of fame with a colossal group of Demeter, Persephone, and Artemis. But most of the new sculptors followed the line of least starva tion to the palaces and courts of Greco-Oriental magnates and kings.
Rhodes, in the third century, developed a school of sculpture character istically its own. There were a hundred colossal statues in the island, any one of which, says Pliny,"' would have made a city famous. The greatest of them was the bronze colossus of the sun-god Helios, set up in successive blocks by Chares of Lindus about 280. Chares, says a naive tradition, com mitted suicide when the cost seriously exceeded his estimate; and Laches, also of Lindus, completed the work. It did not bestride the harbor, but rose near it to a height of one hundred and five feet. Its dimensions might sug gest that Rhodian taste ran to display and size; but perhaps the Rhodians proposed to use it as a lighthouse and a symbol. If we may believe a poem in The Greek Anthology,"' the statue held a light aloft, and symbolized the freedom that Rhodes enjoyed-a curious a11ticipation of a famous statue in a modern port.• It was, of course, included among the Seven Wanders of the World. "This statue," Pliny reports,
The Statue of Liberty is one hundred and fifty-one feet high from base to torch.
622	THE   LIFE  OF GREECE	(CHAP.XXVII
was thrown down by an earthquake fifty-six years after it was erected. Few men can clasp the thumb in their arms, and its fingers are larger than most statues. When the limbs are broken asunder vast caverns are seen yawning in the interior. Within it, too, are to be seen large masses of rock by whose weight the artist steadied it while in process of erection. It is said that it was twelve years in the mak ing, and that three hundred talents were spent upon it-a sum raised from the - ngines of war abandoned by Demetrius after his futile siege.•10
Almost as famous in history was another product of the Rhodian school, the Laocoon. Pliny saw it in the palace of the Emperor Titus; it was found in the ruins of the Baths of Titus in A.D. 1506, and is almost certainly the original work of Agesander, Polydorus, and Athenodorus, who carved it out of two blocks of marble in the second or first century B.C.18 Its discovery stirred Renaissance Italy and profoundly impressed Michelangelo, who
tried, without success, to restore the lost right arm of the central figure.t
Laocoon was a Trojan priest who, when the Greeks sent the wooden horse to Troy, advised against receiving it, saying (says Virgil), Timeo Dtmaos et dona ferentes-"l fear the Greeks even when they bring gifts."10 To punish his wisdom Athena, who favored the Greeks, commissioned two serpents to kill him. They seized first upon his two sons, seeing which Laocoon rushed to their aid, only to be caught in the coils; in the end all three were crushed, and died from the venom of the fangs. The sculptors took the liberty assumed by Virgil (and, in the Philoctetes, by Sophocles) to describe pain vigorously, but the result does not accord with the natural repose of stone. In literature, and usually in life, pain passes; in the Laocoon the cry of agony has been given an unnatural permanence, and the specta tor is not so moved as by Demeter's silent grief.+ What nevertheless evokes our admiration is the mastery of design and technique; the musculature is exaggerated, but the old priest's limbs, and the bodies of his sons, are molded with dignity and restraint. Perhaps if we had known the story before seeing the group we should have been as impressed as Pliny, who thought this the greatest achievement of ancient plastic art.ao
It remained where it fell till A.D. 653, when the Saracens sold the materials. Nine hundred camels were required to remove them.''
t The restored arm in the Vatican is the work of Bernini, well done in detail, but ruinous
to the centripetal unity of the composition. Winckelmann nevertheless liked the group so well that Lessing was aroused, by reading him, to write a book of esthetic criticism around it, and occasionally about it.
:I:In the Demeter of the British Museum.
--··
CHAP.XXVII)	THE	ART	OF  THE	DISPERSION
Many other Greek centers had flourishing schools of sculpture in this under estimated age. Alexandria turned over its soil and its buildings too often in the long course of its history to preserve the works that Greek artists made for the Ptolemies. The sole important survivor is the serene Nile of the Vatican, humor ously supported by sixteen water babies symbolizing the sixteen cubits of the river's annual rise. At Sidon Greek sculpture cut for unknown dignitaries a series of sarcophagi of which the best, misnamed the Sarcophagus of Alexander, is the pride of the Constantinople Museum. Its carving is equal, on a smaller scale, to that of the Parthenon frieze; the figures are handsome and well propor tioned; the action is vigorous but clear, and the soft tints that still cling to the stone exemplify the aid that Greek painting gave to Greek sculpture. At Tralles, in Caria, about 150 B.c., Apollonius and Tauriscus cast for Rhodes a colossal bronze group now known as the Farnese Bull: two handsome youths are lashing the lovely Dirce to the horns of a wild bull, because she has ill-treated their mother Antiope-who looks on in repulsively calm satisfaction.• At Pergamum Greek sculptors cast in bronze several battle groups, which Attalus first dedi cated in his capital to celebrate his repulse of the Gauls. To express the debt which all Greek culture felt to Athens, and perhaps to spread his fame, Attalus presented marble replicas of these figures to be set up on the Athenian Acropolis. Fragmentary marble copies have survived in The Dying Gaul of the Capitoline Museum, in the miscalled Paetus and Arriat-a Gaul who, preferring death to capture, kills first his wife and then himself-and in several smaller pieces now scattered through Egypt and Europe. Perhaps to the same group belongs a Dead Amazon,! impeccably molded in every detail except the incredibly per fect breasts. These figures show a classic restraint in the expression of emotion: the conquered men suffer the extremes of pain and grief, but die without opera; and the conquerors have allowed the artists to portray the virtues, as well as the defeat, of their enemies. There is no sign here of any falling off in power of conception, accuracy of anatomical observation, or skill ·and patience of tech nique. Almost as perfect is the great relief that ran along the base of the Altar of Zeus on the Acropolis of Pergamum, and told again the story of the war be tween the gods and the giants-presumably a modest allegory for Pergamenes and Gauls. The work is overcrowded, and sometimes theatrically violent; but some figures stand out as in the best tradition of Greek art. The headless Zeus is carved with the strength of Scopas, and the goddess Hecate is a lyric of grace and beauty amid the terror and carnage of war.
The original is lost. A Roman marble copy of the third century A.D. was found in the sixteenth century in the Baths of Caracalla, was repaired by Michelangelo, was housed for a time in the Palazzo Farnese, and is now in the Naples Museum.
t In the Museo delle Terme at Rome.
:1:ln the Naples Museum.


CHAP.IV)	SPARTA	79
The Lacedaemonian Constitution
When we attempt to specify the reforms of Lycurgus the tradition be comes contradictory and confused. It is difficult to say which elements of the Spartan code preceded Lycurgus, which were created by him or his generation, and which were added after him. Plutarch and Polybius• assure us that Lycurgus redistributed the land of Laconia into thirty thou sand equal shares among the citizens; Thucydides.. implies that there was no such distribution. Perhaps old properties were left untouched, while the newly conquered land was equally divided. Like Cleisthenes of Sicyon and Cleisthenes of Athens, Lycurgus (viz., the authors of the Lycurgean constitution) abolished the kinship organization of Laconian society, and replaced it with geographical divisions; in this way the power of the old families was broken, and a wider aristocracy was formed. To prevent the displacement of this landowning oligarchy by such mercantile classes as were gaining leadership in Argos, Sicyon, Corinth, Megara, and Athens, Lycurgus forbade the citizens to engage in industry or trade, prohibited the use or importation of silver or gold, and decreed that only iron should be used as currency. He was resolved that the Spartans (i.e., the landown ing citizens) should be left free for government and war.
It was a boast of ancient conservatives40 that the Lycurgean constitution endured so long because the three forms of government-monarchy, aris tocracy, and democracy-were united in it, and in such proportions that each element neutralized the others against excess. Sparta's monarchy was really a duarchy, since it had concurrently two kings, descending from the invading Heraclids. Possibly this strange institution was a compromise between two related and therefore rival houses, or a device to secure without absolutism the psychological uses of royalty in maintaining social order and national prestige. Their powers were limited: they performed the sacri£ces of the state religion, headed the judiciary, and commanded the army in war. In all matters they were subordinate to the Senate; and after Plataea they lost more and more of their authority to the ephors.
The aristocratic and predominant clement of the constitution resided in the Senate, or gerousia, literally and actually a group of old men; normally citizens under sixty were considered too immature for its deliberations. Plutarch gives their number as twenty-eight, and tells an incredible story of their election. When a vacancy occurred candidates were required to pass silently and in tum before the Assembly; and he who was greeted with the loudest and longest shouts was pronounced elected." Perhaps this
So	THE   LIFE  OF GREECE	(CHAP.IV
was thought to be a realistic and economical abbreviation of the fuller democratic process. We do not know which of the citizens were eligible to such election; presumably they were the homoioi, or equals, who owned the soil of Laconia, had served in the army, and brought their quota of food to the public mess.'" The Senate originated legislation, acted as a supreme court in capital crimes, and formulated public policy.
The Assembly, or apella, was Sparta's concession to democracy. Appar ently all male citizens were admitted to it upon reaching the age of thirty; some eight thousand males were eligible in a population of 376,000. It met on each day of the full moon. All matters of great public moment were submitted to it, nor could any law be passed wjthout its consent. Few laws, however, were ever added to the Lycurgean constitution; and these the Assembly might accept or reject, but not discuss or amend. It was essentially the old Homeric public meeting, listening in awe to the council of chiefs and elders, or to the army-commanding kings. Theoretically sov ereignty resided in the apella; but an amendment made to the constitution after Lycurgus empowered the Senate, if it judged that the Assembly had decided "crookedly," to reverse the decision.'" When an advanced thinker asked Lycurgus to establish a democracy Lycurgus replied, "Begin, my friend, by setting it up in your own family.'"'
Cicero compared the five ephors (i.e., overseers) to the Roman tribunes, since they were chosen annually by the Assembly; but they corresponded more to the Roman consuls, as wielding an administrative power checked only by the protests of the Senate. The ephorate existed before Lycurgus, and yet is not mentioned in such reports of his legislation as have reached us. By the middle of the sixth century the ephors had become equal in authority to the kings; after the Persian War they were practically supreme. They received embassies, decided disputes at law, commanded the armies, and directed, absolved, or punished the kings.
The enforcement of the government's decrees was entrusted to the army and the police. It was the custom of the ephors to arm certain of the younger Spartans as a special and secret police (the kry,pteia), with the right to spy upon the people, and, in the case of Helots, to kill at their discretion." This institution was used at unexpected times, even to do away with Helots who, though they had served the state bravely in war, were feared by the masters as able and therefore dangerous men. After eight years of the Peloponnesian War, says the impartial Thucydides,
the Helots were invited by a proclamation to pick out those of their number who claimed to have most distinguished themselves against
CHAP. IV)	SPARTA
the enemy, in order that they might receive their freedom; the object being to test them, as it was thought that the first to claim their free dom would be the most high-spirited and the most apt to rebel. As many as two thousand were selected accordingly, who crowned themselves and went round the temples, rejoicing in their new free dom. The Spartans, however, soon afterwards did away with them, and no one ever knew how each of them perished.•
The power and pride of Sparta was above all in its army, for in the courage, discipline, and skill of these troops it found its security and its ideal. Every citizen was trained for war, and was liable to military service from his twentieth to his sixtieth year. Out of this severe training came the hoplites of Sparta-those close-set companies of heavy-armed, spear hurling citizen infantry that were the terror even of the Athenians, and remained practically undefeated until Epaminondas overcame them at Leuctra. Around this army Sparta formed its moral code: to be good was to be strong and brave; to die in battle was the highest honor and happi ness; to survive defeat was a disgrace that even the soldier's mother could hardly forgive. "Return with your shield or on it," was the Spartan mother's farewell to her soldier son. Flight with the heavy shield was impossible.
The Spartan Code
To train men to an ideal so unwelcome to the flesh it was necessary to take them at birth and form them by the most rigorous discipline. The
.first step was a ruthless eugenics: not only must every child face the father's right to infanticide, but it must also be brought before a state council of inspectors; and any child that appeared defective was thrown from a cliff of Mt. Taygetus, to die on the jagged rocks below." A further elimination probably resulted from the Spartan habit of inuring their infants to discomfort and exposure.'" Men and women were warned to consider the health and character of those whom they thought of marry ing; even a king, Archidamus, was fined for marrying a diminutive wife.• Husbands were encouraged to lend their wives to exceptional men, so that fine children might be multiplied; husbands disabled by age or illness were expected to invite young men to help them breed a vigorous family. Lycurgus, says Plutarch, ridiculed jealousy and sexual monopoly, and called it "absurd that people should be so solicitous for their dogs and horses as to exert interest and pay money to procure fine breeding, and yet keep
THE	LIFE  OF GREECE	(CHAP. IV
their wives shut up, to be made mothers only by themselves, who might be foolish, infirm, or diseased." In the general opinion of antiquity the Spanan males were stronger and handsomer, their women healthier and lovelier, than the other Greeks.'°
Probably more of this result was due to training than to eugenic birth. Thucydides makes King Archidamus say: "There is little difference" (at binh, presumably) "between man and man, but the superiority lies with him who is reared in the severest school."a At the age of seven the Spanan boy was taken from his family and brought up by the state; he was en rolled in what was at once a military regiment and a scholastic class, under a paidonomos, or manager of boys. In each class the ablest and bravest boy was made captain; the rest were instructed to obey him, to submit to the punishments he might impose upon them, and to striv'e to match or better him in achievement and discipline. The aim was not, as at Athens, athletic form and skill, but manial courage and worth. Games were played in the nude, under the eyes of elders and lovers of either sex. The older men made it their concern to provoke quarrels among the boys, individu ally and in groups, so that vigor and fonitude might be tested and trained; and any moment of cowardice brought many days of disgrace. To bear pain, hardship, and misfortune silently was required of all. Every year, at the altar of Anemis Onhia, some chosen youths were scourged till their blood stained the stones.111 At twelve the boy was deprived of undercloth ing, and was allowed but one garment throughout the year. He did not bathe frequently, like the lads of Athens, for water and unguents made the body soft, while cold air and clean soil made it hard and resistant. Winter and summer he slept in the open, on a bed of rushes broken from the Eurotas' banks. Until he was thirty he lived with his company in bar racks, and knew none of the comforts of home.
He was taught reading and writing, but barely enough to make him literate; books found few buyers in Spana,.. and it was easy to keep up with the publishers. Lycurgus, said Plutarch, wished children to learn his laws not by writing but by oral transmission and youthful practice under care ful guidance and example; it was safer, he thought, to make men good by unconscious habituation than to rely upon theoretical persuasion; a proper education would be the best government. But such education would have to be moral rather than mental; character was more important than intel lect. The young Spanan was trained to sobriety, and some Helots were compelled to drink to excess in order that the youth might see how foolish drunkenness can be... He was taught, in preparation for war, to forage
	 SPARTA
in the fields and find his own food, or starve; to steal in such cases was per missible, but to be detected was a crime punishable by flogging.• H he behaved well he was allowed to attend the public mess of the citizens, and was expected to listen carefully there so that he might become acquainted with the problems of the state, and learn the an of genial conversation. At the age of thiny, if he had survived with honor the hardships of youth, he was admitted to the full rights and responsibilities of a citizen, and sat down to dine with his elders.
The girl, though left to be brought up at home, was also subject to regu lation by the state. She was to engage in vigorous games-running, wres tling, throwing the quoit, casting the dart-in order that she might become strong and healthy for easy and perfect motherhood. She should go naked in public dances and processions, even in the presence of young men, so that she might be stimulated to proper care of her body, and her defects might be discovered and removed. "Nor was there anything shameful in the nakedness of the young women," says the highly moral Plutarch; "mod esty attended them, and all wantonness was excluded." While they danced they sang songs of praise for those that had been brave in war, and heaped contumely upon those that had given way. Mental education was not wasted upon the Spanan girl.
As to love, the young man was permitted to indulge in it without preju dice of gender. Nearly every lad had a lover among the older men; from this lover he expected further education, and in return he offered affection and obedience. Often this exchange grew into a passionate friendship that stimulated both youth and man to bravery in war."" Young men were allowed considerable freedom before marriage, so that prostitution was rare, and hetairai here found no encouragement."' In all of Lacedaemon we hear of only one temple to Aphrodite, and there the goddess was repre sented as veiled, armed with a sword, and bearing fetters on her feet, as if to symbolize the foolishness of marrying for love, the subordination of love to war, and the strict control of marriage by the state.


A Greek talent weighed fifty-eight pounds avoirdupois.
CHAPTER  XXIV
Hellenism and the Orient
THE SELEUCID EMPIRE
J\ S we move from the mainland through the Aegean into the Greek set
.fl. tlements in Asia and Egypt we are surprised to find a fresh and flour ishing life, and we perceive that the Hellenistic age saw not so much the decay as the dissemination of Greek civilization. From the end of the Peloponnesian War a stream of Greek soldiers and immigrants had entered Asia. Alexander's conquests widened this stream by offering new oppor tunities and avenues to Hellenic enterprise.
Seleucus, called "Nicator" (Victor), was distinguished among Alexander's generals as a man of courage, imagination, and unscrupulous generosity. It was characteristic of him that he gave his second wife, the beautiful Stratonice, to his son Demetrius when he learned that the boy was pining away for love of her. Antigonus I, challenging the allotment of Babylonia to Seleucus, set out to con quer for himself all the Near East; Seleucus and Ptolemy I defeated him at Gaza in 312.  From that moment the house of Seleucus dated the Seleucid Empire, and a new era...:.a mode of reckoning that survived in western Asia till Mohammed. Seleucus united under his scepter the old kingdoms and cultures of Elam, Sumeria, Persia, Babylonia, Assyria, Syria, Phoenicia, and, at times, Asia Minor and Palestine. At Seleucia and Antioch he built capitals richer and more popu lous than any ever known in mainland Greece. For Seleucia he chose a site near the aged Babylon and the future Baghdad, almost at the junction of the Eu phrates and the Tigris; it was conveniently located to attract commerce between Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf and beyond; within half a century it had a population of 600,000 souls-a motley mass of Asiatics dominated by a minority of Greeks.• Antioch was similarly situated on the Orontes, not too far from its mouth to be reached by ocean shipping, yet sufficiently inland to be safe from naval attack, to tap the fertile fields of the river valley; and to draw the Mediter ranean trade of northern Mesopotamia and Syria. Here the later Seleucid em perors established their residence, until under Antiochus IV it became the wealthiest city of Seleucid Asia, adorned with temples, porticoes, theaters, gym-
On this site Professor Leroy Waterman "in 1931 exhwned tablets indicating that one of the richest citizens of Seleucia had avoided the payment of taxes for twenty-five years.•
572
CHAP. XXIV)	HELLENISM  AND THE  ORIENT	573
nasiums, palaestras, flower gardens, landscaped boulevards, and parks so beauti ful that the Garden of Daphne was known throughout Greece for its laurels and cypresses, its fountains and streams.
Seleucus I was assassinated in 281, after thirty-five years of beneficent and popular rule. From his death his empire began to disintegrate, torn with geo graphical and racial divisions, violent struggles for the throne, and barbarian invasions on every side. Antiochus I Soter (Savior) fought gallantly against the Gauls. Antiochus II Theos (the God) lived in a perpetual intoxication, as if again to illustrate the gamble of hereditary monarchy; his wife Laodice began that chain of intrigue which disrupted and finally ruined the royal house. Antiochus III the Great was a man of capacity and culture; his bust in the Louvre shows a Greco-Macedonian with the courage of Macedon and the intelligence of Greece. He recaptured by untiring war most of the territory which the empire had lost since Seleucus I. He established a library at Antioch, and promoted the literary movement that culminated in Meleager of Gaza at the close of the second century. He preserved the Greek custom of municipal autonomy, writ ing to the cities that "if he should order anything contrary to the laws they should pay no attention, but assume that he had acted in ignorance."" He was ruined by ambition, imagination, and a flair for love. In 2 I 7 he was defeated by Ptolemy IV at Raphia, and lost Phoenicia, Syria, and Palestine; he consoled him self by a victorious expedition into Bactria and India (208), duplicating the ex ploits of Alexander. Lured by Hannibal into helping him against Rome, he landed an army in Euboea, fell in love at fifty with a pretty maid of Chalcis, courted her honorably, married her elaborately, forgot the war, and spent the winter enjoying his happiness.• The Romans defeated him at Thermopylae, drove him into Asia Minor, and overwhelmed him at Magnesia. Restless, he plunged into another eastern campaign, and died in its course ( I 87), after a reign of thirty-six years.
His son Seleucus IV loved peace, administered the empire with economy and wisdom, and was assassinated in 175. At that time his younger brother was serv ing as archon at Athens, where he had gone to study philosophy. Hearing of Seleucus' death, he organized an army, marched to Antioch, deposed the assassin, and took the throne ( I 75). Antiochus IV was both the most interesting and the most erratic of his line, a rare mixture of intellect, insanity, and charm. He governed his kingdom ably despite a thousand injustices and absurdities. He allowed his delegates to abuse their power, and gave his mistress authority over three cities. He was generous and cruel without judgment, often forgiving or condemning by whim, surprising simple folk with costly gifts, and tossing money with a child's ecstasy among the crowds in the street. He loved wine, women, and art; he drank to excess, and left his royal seat, at banquets, to dance naked with the entertainers, or to carouse with wastrels;' he was a Bohemian
574	THE	LIFE  OF GREECE	(CHAP. XXIV
whose dream of power had come true. He despised the solemnity and trappings of the court, played practical jokes upon his dignitaries, and disguised himself to know the luxury of anonymity; it delighted him to mingle with the people and overhear their comments on the King. He liked to wander among the shops of the artisans, watching and studying the work of engravers and jewelers, and dis cussing with them the technical details of their craft. He felt a sincere enthusi asm for Greek art, literature, and thought. He made Antioch for a century the art center of the Greek world; he paid artists handsomely to set up statuary and temples in other cities of Hellas; he redecorated the shrine of Apollo at Delos, built a theater for Tegea, and financed the completion of the Olympieum at Athens. Having lived fourteen impressionable years in Rome, he had imbibed a
taste for republican institutions; and as if to foreshadow Augustus, it pleased
:us humor and policy to clothe his monarchical power in the forms of republican
freedom. The chief effect of his passion for things Roman was the introduction of gladiatorial games in Antioch, his capital. The people resented the brutal sport, but Antiochus won them over by lavish and spectacular displays; when they became accustomed to the butchery he considered their degeneration a personal victory. It was characteristic of him that he began as an ardent follower of the Stoics, and ended as an easy convert to the Epicureans. He enjoyed his own qualities so keenly that he labeled his coins Antiochus Theos Epiphanes the God Made Manifest. Overreaching himself in the manner of his imagina tive kind, he attempted in 169 to conquer Egypt. He was succeeding when Rome, herself a candidate for the Egyptian plum, ordered him to retire from African soil. Antiochus asked time to consider; but the Roman envoy, Popilius, drew a circle in the sand around Antiochus, and bade him decide before stepping over its line. Antiochus yielded in fury, plundered the Temple at Jerusalem to restore his treasury, sought glory like his father in a campaign against the eastern tribes, and died in Persia on the way, of epilepsy, madness, or disease.•
SELEUCID CMLIZATION
The function of the Seleucid Empire in history was to give to the Near East that economic protection and order which Persia had provided before Alex ander, and which Rome would restore after Caesar. Despite the wars, revolu tions, spoliations, and corruption normal to human affairs, that function was performed. The Macedonian conquest broke down a thousand barriers of gov ernment and speech, and invited the East and the West to fuller economic exchange. The result was a brilliant resurrection of Greek Asia. While division and strife, the poverty of the soil, and the migrations of trade routes ruined the mainland, the comparative unity and peace preserved by the Seleucids encour aged agriculture, commerce, and industry. The Greek cities of Asia were no
CHAP.XXIV)	HELLENISM  AND THE  ORIENT	575
longer free to make revolutions or experiments; homonoia, Harmony, was en forced by the kings, and was literally worshiped by the people as a god." Old cities like Miletus, Ephesus, and Smyrna had a second blooming.
The valleys of the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Jordan, the Orontes, the Maean der, the Halys, and the Oxus were fertile then beyond the conception of present imagination, obsessed with the vision of the deserts and rocky wastes that cover so much of the Near East after two thousand years of erosion, deforestation, and neglectful tenant tillage: The soil was irrigated by a system of canals main tained under the supervision of the state. The land was owned by the king, or his nobles, or the cities, or the temples, or private individuals; in all cases the labor was performed by serfs transmitted with the soil in bequest or sale. The govern ment considered as national property all the riches contained in the earth," but did little to exploit them. Trades, and even cities, were now highly specialized. Miletus was a busy textile center; Antioch imported raw materials and turned them into finished goods. Some large factories, manned with slaves, achieved a modest degree of mass production for the general market.• But domestic con sumption lagged behind production; the people were so poor that no adequate home market encouraged large-scale industry.
Commerce was the life of Hellenistic economy. It made the great fortunes, built the great cities, and employed a growing proportion of the expanding population. Money transactions now almost completely replaced the barter that had survived for four centuries the coinage of Croesus. Egypt, Rhodes, Seleucia, Pergamum, and other governments issued currencies sufficiently stable and similar to facilitate international trade. Bankers provided public and private credit. Ships were larger, made four to six knots per hour, and shortened voyages by crossing the open sea. On land the Seleucids developed and extended the great highways left as part of Persia's legacy to the East. Caravan routes con verged from inner Asia upon Seleucia, and opened out thence to Damascus, Berytus (Beirut), and Antioch. Enriched by trade, and enriching it in tum, populous centers rose there and at Babylon, Tyre, Tarsus, Xanthus, Rhodes, Halicamassus, Miletus, Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Byzantium, Cyzicus, Apamea, Heracleia, Amisus, Sinope, Panticapaeum, Olbia, Lysimacheia, Abydos, Thessalonica (Salonika), Chalcis, Delos, Corinth, Ambracia, Epidamnus (Duraz zo), Taras, Neapolis (Naples), Rome, Massalia, Emporium, Panormus (Paler mo), Syracuse, Utica, Carthage, Cyrene, and Alexandria. One busy web of trade bound together Spain under Carthage and Rome, Carthage under Hamil car, Syracuse under Hieron II, Rome under the Scipios, Macedonia under the Antigonids, Greece under the Leagues, Egypt under the Ptolemies, the Near East under the Seleucids, India under the Mauryas, and China under the Hans. The routes from China passed through Turkestan, Bactria, and Persia, or over the Aral, Caspian, and Black Seas. The routes from India passed through Af-
THE	LIFE  OF GREECE	(CHAP. XXIV


E.g., in the Reproduction of Animals (iv. 6.1) he refers to the regrowth of the eyes when experimentally cut out in young birds; and he rejects the theory that the right testicle pro duces male, and the left testicle female, offspring, by showing that a man whose right testicle bad been removed had continued to have children of either sex.
528	THE	LIFE  OF GREECE	(CHAP.XX!
eclipsed by the intervention of the earth between it and the sun.""" He has an admirable sense of geological time; periodically but imperceptibly, he tells us, the sea is replaced by land and land by the sea;1158 countless nations and civilizations have appeared and disappeared, whether through swift catastrophe or slow time: "Probably every art and philosophy has been repeatedly developed to the utmost and has perished again."wr Heat is the chief agent of geological and meteorological changes. He hazards explana tions of clouds, fog, dew, frost, rain, snow, hail, wind., thunder, lightning, the rainbow, and meteors. His theories are often bizarre; but the epochal importance of the little treatise on meteorology is that it invokes no super natural agencies, but seeks to account for the apparent whims of the weather through natural causes operating in certain sequences and regu larities. Natural science could go no further until invention gave it instru ments of greater scope and precision in observation and measurement.
It is in biology that Aristotle is most at home, observes most widely and abundantly, and makes the most mistakes. The consolidation of previous discoveries in the final establishment of this vital science is his supreme achievement. With the help of his pupils, he gathered data on the fauna and flora of the Aegean countries, and brought together the first scientific collections of animals and plants. If we may follow Pliny,:tJ58 Alexander gave orders to his hunters, gamekeepers, fishermen, and others to supply Aristotle with whatever species and information he might request. The philosopher apologizes for his interest in lowly things: "In all natural objects there lies some marvel, and if any one despises the contemplation of the lower ani mals, he must despise himself."'""
He classifies the animal kingdom into enaima and anaima-blooded and
bloodless-approximately corresponding to our "vertebrates" and "inverte brates." He subdivides the bloodless animals into testaceans, crustaceans, mollusks, and insects; the sanguineous into fishes, amphibians, birds, and mammals. He covers an impressively vast and varied field: organs of diges tion, excretion, sensation, locomotion, reproduction, and defense; the types and ways of fishes, birds, reptiles, apes, and hundreds of other groups; their pairing seasons and their methods of bearing and rearing their young; the phenomena of puberty, menstruation, conception, pregnancy, abortion, heredity, twins; the habitats and migrations of animals, their parasites and diseases, their modes of sleep and hibernation.... Hgeives an excellent account of the life of.the bee.180 He is full of queer incidental observations: that the blood of oxen coagulates more rapidly than that of most other ani-
CHAP,XXI)	THE  ZENITH  OF  PHILOSOPHY
mals; that some male animals, especially the goat, have been known to give milk; that "in both sexes the horse is the most salacious of animals after man."*m
He is particularly interested in the reproductive structures and habits of animals, and marvels at the multiplicity of ways in which nature achieves the continuance of species, "preserving the type when she is unable to pre serve the individual";'.. in this field his work remained unequaled until the last century. The life of animals moves about two foci-eating and pro creation.'.. "The female has an organ which must be regarded as an ovary, for it contains that which at first is undifferentiated egg, and which be comes by differentiation many eggs."t'"' The female element contributes to the embryo material and food, the male element contributes energy and movement; the female is the passive element, the male is the activating agent.106 Aristotle rejects the opinions of Empedocles and Democritus, that the sex of the embryo is determined by the temperature of the womb, or by the preponderance of one reproductive element over the other, and then reformulates the theories as his own: "Whenever the formative (male) principle fails to gain the upper hand, and from deficient warmth fails prop erly to cook the material and so fashion it into its own shape, then will this material pass over into ... the female.""" "Sometimes," he adds, "women bring forth three or even four children, especially in certain parts of the world. The largest number ever brought forth is five, and such an occur rence has been witnessed on several occasions. There was once upon a time a woman who had twenty children at four births; and most of them grewup."m
He anticipates many theories of nineteenth-century biology. He be lieves that the organs and characteristics of the embryo are formed by tiny particles (the "gemmules" of Darwin's "pangenesis") that pass from every part of the adult into the reproductive elements.lSS Like Von Baer he teaches that in the embryo the characters belonging to the genus appear first, those belonging to the species second, those belonging to the indi vidual third.'"" He states a principle on which Herbert Spencer prided him self, that the fertility of organisms, by and large, varies inversely as the complexity of their development.''IO His description of the chick embryo shows him at his best:
References in the History of Animals indicate that Aristotle prepared a volume of ana tomical sketches, and that some of them were reproduced on the walls of the Lyceum; his text us s letters in mode n. styl , to refer to vari?us organs or points i? the drawings.
t Anstotle failed to d1stmgmsh between ovaries and uterus; but his descripoon was not
materially bettered before the work of Stensen in 1669.
THE	LIFE  OF GREECE	(CHAP.BI
If you wish, try this experiment. Take twenty or more eggs and let them be incubated by two or more hens. Then each day, from the second to that of hatching, remove an egg, break it, and examine it.   With the common hen the embryo becomes first visible after
three days   The heart appears like a speck of blood, beating and
moving as though endowed with life; and from it two veins with blood in them pass in a convoluted course, and a membrane carry ing bloody fibers from the vein-ducts now envelops the yolk. . .. When the egg is ten days old, the chick and all its parts are distinctly visible.1n
The human embryo, Aristotle believes, develops like the chick: "In the same way the infant lies within its mother's womb ... for the nature of the bird can be likened to that of man."'.,. His theory of analogous organs en ables him to see the animal world as one: "A nail is the analogue of a claw, a hand of a crab's nipper, a feather of a fish's scale."'" At times he comes close to a doctrine of evolution:
Nature proceeds little by little from things lifeless to animal life in such a way that it is impossible to determine the exact line of de marcation.... Thus, next after lifeless things in the upward scale comes the genus of plants, relatively lifeless as compared with ani mals, but alive as compared with corporeal objects. There is in plants a continuous scale of ascent towards the animal. There are certain objects in the sea concerning which one would be at a loss to determine whether they be animal or vegetable   The sponge
is in every respect like a vegetable. . .. Some animals are rooted, and perish if detached   In regard to sensibility, some animals give
no sign of it, others indicate it obscurely.... And so throughout the animal scale there is a graduated differentiation."'
He considers the ape an intermediate form between man and other vivip arous animals.1'111 He rejects Empedocles' notion of the natural selection of accidental mutations; there is no fortuity in evolution; the lines of devel opment are determined by the inherent urge of each form, species, and genus to develop itself to the fullest realization of its nature. There is design, but it is less a guidance from without than an inner drive or "entelechy"• by which each thing is drawn to its natural fulfillment.
Intermingled with these brilliant suggestions there are (as might be ex pected from the hindsight of twenty-three centuries) errors so numerous, and some so gross, that we are warranted in suspecting that the zoological works of Aristotle have suffered some admixture of his own notes with
•From echo, I have-telos, my goal or purpose-en, within.
    THE  ZENITH OF PHILOSOPHY


great baths. Stone was employed for most temples and the more pretentious homes. One variety from Cappadocia was so translucent that a temple built with it was adequately lighted with all its openings c!osed.32 The conquest of Greece brought a taste for marble, which was satisfied first by importing columns, then marble, and finally by working the Carrara quarries near Luna. Before Augustus marble was largely confined to columns and slabs; in his time it was used as a facing for brick and concrete; only in this super ficial sense did he leave Rome, here and there, a city of marble; walls of solid marble were rare. The Romans liked to mingle in the same building the red and gray granite of Egypt, the green cipollino of Euboea, the black and yellow marbles of Numidia, with their own white Carrara, and with basalt, alabaster, and porphyry. Never had architectural material been so complex or so colorful.
To the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders Rome added the Tuscan a-nd Composite styles, and certain modifications. Columns were often monoliths instead of superimposed drums. The Doric column received an Ionic base and took on a new, unfluted slenderness; the Ionic capital was sometimes given four volutes to offer the same appearanceJrom every side; the Corin thian column and capital were developed to a delicate be1uty beyond any Greek example, but in later decades this style was spoiled by undue elabora tions. A like excess poured flowers over the Ionic volutes to make the Composite capital, as in the Arch of Titus; sometimes the volutes ended in animal or human forms suggestive of gargoyles and presaging medieval forms. The lavish Romans often mixed several orders in the same building, as in the theater of Marcellus; and then again, with perverse economy, they left the side columns attached to the cella, as in the Maison Carree at N1mes. Even when the development of the arch had taken from columns their old supporting role the Romans added them as functionless ornaments-a custom that has survived into our own uncertain age.
The Temples of Rome
For nearly all her temples Rome kept the Greek trabeate principle architraves (i.e., master beams) upheld by columns and carrying the roof. Augustus was conservative in art as in everything else, and most of the shrines built by his order clung to the orthodox tradition. From his time on ward the emperors multiplied homes for their Olympic rivals and clothed their lechery with an architectural piety that crowded the hills and blocked the streets with tiled and gilded fanes. Jupiter, of course, ,vas their favorite recipient. Among many he had one as Jupiter Tonans, the Thunderer; an-
CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. XVI
other as Jupiter Stator, who had stayed the flight of the Romans in battle; and he shared with Juno and Minerva the holiest of Rome's sanctuaries, atop the Capitoline hill. There in the central cell, flanked by a three-storied Corinthian colonnade, was the gold-and-ivory colossus of Jupiter Optimus Maximus-Jove the Best and Greatest. Tradition ascribed the first form of this supreme house of Roman worship to T arquinius Priscus; it was several times burned down and rebuilt; Stilicho (A.D. 404) stole its gold-plated bronze doors to pay his soldiers, and the Vandals carried off the gold
plated tiles of the roof. Some fragments of the pavement remain.
On the northern summit of the same hill rose the Temple of Juno Moneta, Juno the Monitor or Guardian; here was the Roman mint, and from its name, of course, comes our word for the root of much ambition. On the south side of the hill was the shrine of Saturn, the oldest god of the Capitol; the Romans dated its first dedication at 497 B.c.; eight Ionic columns and an architrave sur vive. In the Forum, at the foot of the hill, was the little Temple of Janus, god of all beginnings; its doors were opened only in time of war, and were closed but three times in Rome's ancient history. At the southeast comer of the Forum stood the Temple of Castor and Pollux, erected in 495 B.c.; three slender Corin thian columns have come down to us from the reconstruction by Tiberius; they are by common consent the finest columns in Rome.
In his o,vn forum Augustus added a Temple of Mars Ultor-the Avenger vowed before Philippi; three of its majestic columns stand. One end of its cella was a semicircular apse, an architectural form destined to become the chancel of early Christian churches. On the Palatine Augustus built entirely of marble a sumptuous temple to Apollo for the god's help at Actium; he adorned it with sculptures by Myron and Scopas, added a splendid library and an art gallery to its enclosure, and did all he could to make men feel that the god had left Greece for Rome and had brought with him the spiritual and cultural leadership of the world. It was even whispered by Augustus' friends, now that his mother was safely dead, that Apollo, disguised as an agile snake, had begotten the subtle prince.
In the northwest part of the city was a great shrine to Isis, and on the Palatine
a spacious sanctuary for Cybele. Handsome shelters were provided for personi fied abstractions-Health, Ho or, Virtu , Concord, Faith, Fortune, and many more. Nearly all of these contamed gallenes of statuary and painting. In his great Temple of Peace Vespasian gathered for the general eye many of the art treasures of Nero's Golden House, and some of the relics of Jerusalem. The Temple of
Fortuna Virilis, in the Forum Boarium, has the distinction of beinoa the most com- pletely preserved of the pre-Augustan buildings in Rome. The ladies of the
capital frequently worshipped there, for the goddess, they believed, would teach them how to conceal their defects from men.
To these and a hundred other temples in the classic rectangular style the archi-
CHAP.XVI)	ROME  AND ITS  ART	359
tects of Rome added several circular temples, which revealed a new mastery of the problems presented by a dome. Tradition derived this type from the round hut of Romulus, religiously preserved on the Palatine for many centuries. Almost as old was the pretty Aedes Vestae, or House of Vesta, near the Temple of Castor and Pollux; its circular cella, faced with white marble, was enclosed by handsome Corinthian columns, and its roof was a dome of gilded brass. Adjoin ing it was the Palace of the Vestals-eighty-four rooms built cloisterwise around a peristyled court, the Atrium Vestae. The Pantheon was not yet a circular temple; as built by Agrippa it was rectangular, but had a circular plaza before it; Hadrian's architects raised over this space the round temple and mighty dome which are still among the bravest works of man.
The Arcuate Revolution
Rome was greater in her secular than in her sacred architecture. For here she could escape the bondage of tradition and unite engineering with art-utility and power with beauty and form-in a manner all her own. The principle of Greek architecture had been the straight line (however deli cately modulated as in the Parthenon): the vertical column, the horizontal architrave, the triangular pediment. The principle of specifically Roman architecture was to be the curve. The Romans wanted grandeur, audacity, size; but they could not roof their vast bpildings on rectilinear and trabeate principles except by a maze of impeding columns. They solved the problem with the arch, usu:::.lly in its rounded form; with the vault, which is a pro longed arch; and with the dome, which is a rotated arch. Perhaps Roman generals and their aides had brought from Egypt and Asia a growing famili arity with arcuate shapes, and had reawakened early Roman and Etruscan traditions long overwhelmed by orthodox Greek styles. Now Rome em ployed the arch on so great a scale that the whole art of building took from this form a new and lasting name. By laying a web of brick ribs along the lines of strain before pouring concrete into the wooden frame of the roof, the Romans developed the articulated vault; by crossing two cylindrical or barrel vaults at right angles they produced a network of ribs and groins that could sustain a heavier superstructure and bear more lateral thrust. These were the principles of Rome's arcuate revolution.
It was in the great baths and amphitheaters that the new style reached
its completion. The baths of Agrippa, Nero, and Titus were the first of a long series that culminated in the Baths of Diocletian. They were monu mental buildings of concrete faced with stucco or brick, and rising to majestic heights. The interiors were richly decorated with marble and mosaic pavements, varicolored columns, coffered ceilings, paintings, and
360	CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. XVI
statuary. They were equipped with dressing rooms, hot and cold baths, an intermediate room of warm air, swimming pools, palaesrras, libraries, read ing rooms, research rooms, lounges, and probably art galleries. Most of the chambers were centrally heated by large clay pipes running under floors and within the walls. These tber111ae were the most spacious and sumptuous public buildings ever erected, and they have never been equaled in their class. They were part of that socialism of recreation with which the princi pate excused its growing monarchy.*
This same paternalism built the greatest the:1ters in history. Those of Rome were much fewer but larger than those of modern capitals. The smallest was that which Cornelius Balbus built in the Field of Mars ( 13 B.c.), searing 7700; Augustus rebuilt Pompey's theater, seating 17,500; he com pleted another, named for Marcellus, searing 20,500. Unlike Greek theaters, these were walled, and the stands were supported by arched and vaulted masonry instead of resting on the slope of a hill. Only the stage was roofed; but often the audience was sheltered from the sun by a linen awning (velcrriu111), which in Pompey's theater covered a space 5 50 feet wide. Over the entrances were boxes for dignitaries and magnates. Some stages had curtains which, when the play began, were not raised aloft, but lowered into a groove. The sr:1ge was elevated some five feet. Its background usually took the form of an elaborate building which, extending from wing to wing, helped the actors to throw their voices out over the immense audi ences. Seneca speaks of "stage mechanics who invent scaffolding that goes aloft of its own accord, or floors that rise silently into the air." 32a A change of scene was effected by revolving prisms, or by moving a set into the wings or into the loft, thereby exposing the next. Acoustics were aided by sinking hollow jars into the floor and walls of the stage.32b The auditorium was cooled by rivulets of water running along the passages; sometimes a mixture of water, wine, and crocus juice w2s conducted by pipes to the highest tiers and thence scattered over the audience as a perfumed spray.32c Statues adorned the interior, and lar_ge pictures were painted as scenery. Probably no theater or opera house m the world today could equal the size and splendor of Pompey's.
More popular still were the circus, the stadium, and the amphitheater. Rome had several stadiums, used chiefly for athletic contests. Horse or chariot races, and some spectacles, were presented at the Circus Flaminius
in the Field of 1\fars, or, _more usually, at the Circus Iaximus as rebuilt by  ,. .._


Caesar became leaders of the poor. He took his revenge upon life for having made him at once patrician and penniless; when he conquered money he made it serve his appetites without qualm or restraint. He was unprepos sessing-glaring blue eyes in a "\vhite face mixed with rough blotches of fiery red, "like a mulberry sprinkled over with flour." 17 His education belied his looks. He was well versed in Greek as well as Roman literature, was a dis criminate collector of art (usually by military means), had the works of Aristotle brought from Athens to Rome as p:1rt of his richest spoils, and found time, between war and revolution, to write his Memoirs for the mis guidance of posterity. He was a jolly companion and a generous friend, devoted to wine, women, battle, and song. "He lived extravagantly," says Sallust, "yet pleasure never interfered with his duties, except that his conduct as a husband might have been more honorable." 18 He made his way rapidly, above all in the army, his happiest medium; he treated his soldiers as com rades, shared their work, their marches, and their dangers; "his only effort was not to allow anyone to surpass him in wisdom or bravery." 19 He believed in no gods, but many superstitions. Otherwise he was the most realistic as well as the most ruthless of the Romans; his imagination and his feelings were always under the control of his intellect. It was said of him that he was half lion and half fox, and that the fox in him was more dan gerous than the lion.20 Livi g half the time on battlefields, spending the last decade of his life in civil war, he nevertheless preserved his good humor to the end, graced his brutalities with epigrams, filled Rome with his laughter, made a hundred thousand enemies, achieved all his purposes, and died in bed. Such a man seemed chemically compounded of the virtues and vices needed to subdue revolution at home and Mithridates abroad. His 35,000 trained men easily overcame the haphazard cohorts that .Marius had impro vised in Rome. Seeing his situation helpless, Marius escaped to Africa. Sulpicius was killed, betrayed by his servant; Sulla had the head of the tribune affixed to the rostrum that had lately rung with its eloquence; he rewarded the slave with freedom for his services, and death for his treachery. While his soldiers dominated the Forum he decreed that henceforth no measure should be offered to the Assembly except by permission of the Senate, and that the order of voting should be as in the "Servian constitu tion," which gave priority and advantage to the upper cbsses. He had himself chosen proconsul, allowed Cnaeus Octavius and Cornelius Cinna to be elected consuls (87), and then marched off to encounter l\1ithridates the
Great.
He had hardly left Italy when the struggle of the plebeian po-pulares and the patrician and equestrian opti111ates was resumed. The conservative sup porters of Octavius fought in the Forum with the radical followers of Cinna,
CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. VI
and in one day ro,ooo men were killed. Octavius won, and Cinna fled to organize revoit in the neighboring towns. Marius, after a winter in hiding, sailed back to Italy, proclaimed freedom to slaves, and led a force of 6000 men against Octavius in Rome. The rebels won, slaughtered thousands, adorned the rostra with the heads of slain senators, and paraded the streets with noble heads on their pikes as a model for later revolutions. Octavius accepted death calmly as he sat in his robes of office on his tribune's chair. The carnage continued for five days and nights, the rebel terror for a year. A revolutionary tribunal subpoenaed patricians, condemned them if they had opposed Marius, and seized their property. A nod from Marius sufficed tosend any man to death, usually by execution there and then. All of Sulla's friends were slain; his property was confiscated; he was deposed from his command and was declared a public enemy. The dead were refused burial and were left in the streets to be devoured by birds and dogs. The freed slaves plundered, raped, and killed indiscriminately, until Cinna gathered 4000 of them together, surrounded them with Gallic soldiery, and had.them butchered to death.21
Cinna was now (86) chosen consul.for the second time, Marius for the sixth. In the first month of his new term .l\farius died, aged seventy-one, worn out with hardships and violence. Valerius Flaccus, elected in his stead, passed a bill canceling seventy-five per cent of all debts, and then left for the East with an army of r 2,000 men to depose Sulla from command. Enjoy ing undivided power at Rome, Cinna changed the Republic into a dictator ship, nominated all successful candidates for major offices, and had himself elected consul for four successive years.
When Flaccus left Italy, Sulla was besieging Athens, which had joined Mithridates in revolt. Receiving nothing from the Senate for the pay of his troops, he had financed his campaign by pillaging the temples and treasuries of Olympia, Epidaurus, and Delphi. In March, 86, his soldiers broke through a gate in Athens' walls, poured in, and revenged themselves for the city's long-delayed welcome by a riot of slaughter and robbery. Plutarch tells us that "there was no numbering the slain; . . . blood flowed through the streets and far out into the suburbs." 22 At last Sulla called a halt to the m:issacre, remarking generously that he would "forgive the living for the dead." He led his refreshed troops northward, defeated a great force at Chaeronea and Orchomenus, pursued its remnants across the Hellespont into Asia, and prepared to meet the main army of the Pontic king. But meanwhile Flaccus and his legions had also reached Asia, and Sulla was again informed that he must give up his command. He persuaded Flaccus to let him complete the campaign; thereupon Flaccus was killed by his lieutenant, Fimbria, who now declared himself commander of all Roman
CHAP. VI)	THE  AGRARIAN  REVOLT	125
armies and advanced north against Sulla. Faced with this folly, Srulla made a peace with Mithridates (85), bywhich the King was to restore all the conquests that he had made in the war, surrender eighty galleys to Rome, and pay an indemnity of 2000 talents. Then Sulla turned south and met Fimbria in Lydia. Fimbria's soldiers went over to Sulla, and Fimbria com mitted suicide. Master now of the Greek East, Sulla exacted 20,000 talents as indemnities and accrued taxes from the revolted cities of Ionia. He sailed with his army to Greece, marched to Patrae, and arrived at Brundisium in
83. Cinna tri d to stop him but was killed by his troops.
Sulla was bringing to the Treasury 15,000 pounds of gold :md r 15,000 pounds of silver, in addition to money and works of art which he credited to his personal account. But the democratic leaders, still in power in Rome, continued to brand him as a public enemy, and denounced his treaty with
.Mithridates as a national humiliation. Reluctantly Sulla led his 40,000 troops to the gates of Rome. Many of the aristocracy went out to join him; one of them, Cnaeus Pompey, brought a legion recruited entirely from his father's clients and friends. The son of .Marius led an army out t.9 encounter Sulla, was defeated, and fled to Praeneste, after sending instructions to the populares praetor to put to death all leading patricians still left in the capital. The praetor convoked the Senate, and the marked men were killed in their seats or their flight. The democratic forces then evacuated Rome, and Sulla entered it unhindered; but meanwhile a Samnite army of 100,000 men intent on avenging the Social \Var, marched up from the south and joined the democratic remnants. Sulla went out to meet them, and at the Colline Gate his 50,000 men won one of the bloodiest victories of ancient times. Sulla ordered 8000 prisoners shot down with arrows, on the ground that they could make more trouble alive than dead. The severed heads of the captured generals were displayed on pikes before the walls of Praeneste, ,\,.here the last democratic army was standing siege. Praeneste fell, the young Marius killed himself, and his head was nailed up in the Forum-a procedure which fre quent precedents had now made constitutional.
Sulla had no trouble in persuading the Senate to make him dictator. At once he issued a proscription list condemning to death forty senators and 2600 businessmen; these last had supported Marius against him, and had bought in at bargains the property of senators slain during the radical regime. He offered rewards to informers, and prizes up to 12,000 denarii ($7200) to those who should bring him the proscribed men, alive or dead. The Forum was adorned festively with the heads of the slain a_nd with periodi cally renewed proscription lists which the citizens had to read at frequent intervals to know if they might still live. Massacre, banishment, and con fiscation spread their horrors from Rome to the provinces and fell upon
126	CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. VI
Italian rebels and the followers of Marius everywhere. Some 4700 persons died in this aristocratic terror. "Men were butchered in the embraces of their wives," says Plutarch, "sons in the arms of their mothers." Many persons who had been neutral, or even conservative, were proscribed, exiled, or slain; Sulla, it was said, needed their money for his troops, his pleasures, or his friends. Confiscated property was sold to the highest bidder or to Sulla's favorites, and became the foundation of many fortunes, like those of Crassus and Catiline.
Using his powers as dictator, Sulla issued a series of edicts-known from his clan name as the Carnelian Laws-by which he hoped to establish a permanently aristocratic constitution. To replace 'dead citizens he enfran chised many Spaniards and Celts and some former slaves. He weakened the assemblies by adding these new members indebted to him and by again ruling that no measure should be put before the Assembly except by consent of the Senate. To stop the flocking of poor Italians to Rome he suspended the state distribution of com; at the same time he eased the pressure of population n the city by distributing land to 120,000 veterans. To prevent the use of successive consulships as in effect a dictatorship, he re-emphasized the old requirement of a ten-year interval before the same office could be held a second time by the same man. He lowered the prestige of the tribunate by limiting its right of veto and making ex-tribunes ineligible for any higher office. He took from the business class, and restored to the Senate, the exclusive right to serve as jurors in the higher courts; and he replaced the farming of taxes to publicans with direct payments from the provinces to the Treasury. He reorganized the courts, increased their number for quicker trials, and carefully specified their functions and fields. All the legislative, judicial, executive, social, and sartorial privileges enjoyed by the Senate before the Gracchan revolt were returned to it, for Sulla was certain that only a monarchy or an aristocracy could wisely administer an empire. To renew the full membership of the Senate he allowed the Tribal Assembly to promote to it 300 members of the "equestrian" class. To show his confidence in this thoroughgoing restoration, he disbanded his legions and decreed that no army should be permitted in Italy. After two years of dictatorship, he resigned all his powers, re-established consular government, and retired to private life (80).
He was safe, for he had killed nearly all who could plan his assassination. He dismissed his lictors and guards, walked unharmed in the Forum, and offered to give an account of his official actions to any citizen who should ask for it. Then he went to spend his last years in his villa at Cum::ie. Tired of war, of power and glory, perhaps of men, he surrounded himself with singers, dancers, actors, and actresses; wrote his Conmzentarii, hunted and
CHAP. VI)	THE   AGRARIAN  REVOLT	127
fished, ate and drank. Men had long since called him Sulla Felix, Sulla the Happy, because he had won every battle, known every pleasure, reached every power, and lived without fear or regret. He married five wives, di vorced four, and eked out their inadequacy with mistresses. At 58 he devel oped an ulcer of the colon so severe that "the corrupted flesh," says Plutarch, "broke out into lice. Many men were employed day and night in destroying them, but they so multiplied that not only his clothes, baths, and basins, but his very food was polluted with them." 23 He died of intestinal hemorrhage, after hardly a year of retirement (78). He had not neglected to dictate his epitaph: "No friend ever served me, and no enemy ever wronged me, whom I have not repaid in full." 24
CHAPTER  VII
TheOligarchic  Reaction
77-60 B.C.
THE  GOVERNMENT
EVERTHELESS, Sulla had erred twice on the side of generosity. He had spared the son and nephew of his enemies, the gay and brilliant Caius Julius Caesar, who was entering his twenties in the proscription years; Sulla had nominated him for death, but let him go on the importuning of their common friends; his judgment, however, was not mistaken when he remarked, "In that young man go many Mariuses." 1 And perhaps he erred in resigning too soon and enjoying himself to an early end. Had his patience and insight equaled his ruthlessness and courage, he might have saved Rome a half century of chaos and given her in So n.c. the peace and security, order and prosperity, that Augustus would bring back from Actium. He restored
the old when he should have created the new.