The Historians' History of the World 03

Hippias having been presented to the assembled allies, the Spartans expressed their sorrow for having dethroned him, their resentment and alarm at the new born insolence of Athens, already tasted by her immediate neighbours, and menacing to every state represented in the convocation, and their anxiety to restore Hippias, not less as a reparation for past wrong, than as a means, through his rule, of keeping Athens low and dependent. But the proposition, though emanating from Sparta, was listened to by the allies with one common sentiment of repugnance. They had no sympathy for Hippias, no dislike, still less any fear, of Athens, and a profound detestation of the character of a despot. The spirit which had animated the armed contingents at Eleusis now reappeared among the deputies at Sparta, and the Corinthians again took the initiative. Their deputy Sosicles protested against the project in the fiercest and most indignant strain: no language can be stronger than that of the long harangue which Herodotus puts into his mouth, wherein the bitter recollections prevalent at Corinth respecting Cypselus and Periander are poured forth. “Surely, heaven and earth are about to change places,—the fish are coming to dwell on dry land, and mankind going to inhabit the sea,—when you, Spartans, propose to subvert the popular governments, and to set up in the cities that wicked and bloody thing called a Despot. First try what it is, for yourselves at Sparta, and then force it upon others if you can: you have not tasted its calamities as we have, and you take very good care to keep it away from yourselves. We adjure you, by the common gods of Hellas,—plant not despots in her cities: if you persist in a scheme so wicked, know that the Corinthians will not second you.”

This animated appeal was received with a shout of approbation and sympathy on the part of the allies. All with one accord united with Sosicles in adjuring the Lacedæmonians “not to revolutionise any Hellenic city.” No one listened to Hippias when he replied, warning the Corinthians that the time would come, when they, more than any one else, would dread and abhor the Athenian democracy, and wish the Pisistratidæ back again. He knew well, says Herodotus, that this would be, for he was better acquainted with the prophecies than any man. But no one then believed him, and he was forced to take his departure back to Sigeum: the Spartans not venturing to espouse his cause against the determined sentiment of the allies.

That determined sentiment deserves notice, because it marks the present period of the Hellenic mind; fifty years later it will be found materially altered. Aversion to single-headed rule, and bitter recollection of men like Cypselus and Periander are now the chords which thrill in an assembly of Grecian deputies: the idea of a revolution, implying thereby a great and comprehensive change, of which the party using the word disapproves, consists in substituting a permanent One in place of those periodical magistrates and assemblies which were the common attribute of oligarchy and democracy: the antithesis between these last two is as yet in the background, nor does there prevail either fear of Athens or hatred of the Athenian democracy. But when we turn to the period immediately before the Peloponnesian War, we find the order of precedence between these two sentiments reversed. The anti-monarchical feeling has not perished, but has been overlaid by other and more recent political antipathies,—the antithesis between democracy and oligarchy having become, not indeed the only sentiment, but the uppermost sentiment, in the minds of Grecian politicians generally, and the soul of active party movement. Moreover, a hatred of the most deadly character has grown up against Athens and her democracy, especially in the grandsons of those very Corinthians who now stand forward as her sympathising friends. The remarkable change of feeling here mentioned is nowhere so strikingly exhibited as when we contrast the address of the Corinthian Sosicles, just narrated, with the speech of the Corinthian envoys at Sparta, immediately antecedent to the Peloponnesian War, as given to us in Thucydides. It will hereafter be fully explained by the intermediate events, by the growth of Athenian power, and by the still more miraculous development of Athenian energy.

[494-490 B.C.]