The Historians' History of the World 03

It is not certain whether this struggle had begun, or was only impending, at the time of the embassy which came from Sparta to request the aid of the Athenians against Ithome. But the two parties were no less at variance on this subject than on the other. The aristocratical party considered Sparta as its natural ally, and did not wish to see Athens without a rival in Greece. Cimon was personally attached to Sparta, possessed the confidence of the Spartans, and took every opportunity of expressing the warmest admiration for their character and institutions; and, to mark his respect for them, gave one of his sons the name of Lacedæmonius. He himself was in some degree indebted to their patronage for his political elevation, and had requited their favour by joining with them in the persecution of Themistocles. When therefore Ephialtes dissuaded the people from granting the request of the Spartans, and exclaimed against the folly of raising a fallen antagonist, Cimon urged them “not to permit Greece to be lamed, and Athens to lose her yoke-fellow.” This advice prevailed, and Cimon was sent with a large force to assist the Spartans at the siege of Ithome.

The first effect produced by the affront Sparta later gave to Athens, was, as we have seen, a resolution to break off all connection with Sparta, and, to make the rupture more glaring, they had entered into an alliance with Sparta’s old rival, Argos.

This turn of events was extremely agreeable to the democratical party at Athens, not only in itself, on account of the assistance which they might hope to receive from Argos, but because it immediately afforded them a great advantage in their conflict with their domestic adversaries, and in particular furnished them with new arms against Cimon. He instantly became obnoxious, both as the avowed friend of Sparta, and as the author and leader of the expedition which had drawn so rude an insult on his countrymen. The attack on the authority of the Areopagus was now prosecuted with greater vigour, and Cimon had little influence left to exert in its behalf. Yet his party seems not by any means to have remained passive, but to have put forth all its strength in a last effort to save its citadel: and it was supported by an auxiliary which had in its possession some very powerful engines to wield in its defence.

[525-456 B.C.]

This was the poet Æschylus, who was attached to it by his character and his early associations. Himself a Eupatrid, perhaps connected with the priestly families of Eleusis, his deme, if not his birth-place, he gloried in the laurels which he had won at Marathon, above all the honours earned by his sword and by his pen, though he had also fought at Salamis, and had founded a new era of dramatic poetry. He was an admirer of Aristides, whose character he had painted in one of his tragedies, under the name of an ancient hero, with a truth which was immediately recognised by the audience.

Æschylus

The contest with Persia, which was the subject of one of his great works, probably appeared to him the legitimate object for the energies of Greece. Beside this general disposition to side with Cimon’s party, against Pericles, the whole train of his poetical and religious feelings was nourished by a study of the mythical and religious traditions of Greek antiquity. In his tragedy, entitled the Eumenides, he exhibits the mythical origin of the court and council of Areopagus, in the form which best suited his purpose, tracing it to the cause first pleaded there between the Argive matricide Orestes, who pledges his country to eternal alliance with Athens, and the “dread goddesses,” who sought vengeance for the blood which he had shed. The poet brings these terrible beings on the stage, as well as the tutelary goddess of the city, who herself institutes the tribunal, “to last throughout all ages,” and exhorts her people to preserve it as the glory and safeguard of the city; and the spectators are led to consider the continuance of the blessings which the pacified avengers promise to the land, as depending on the permanence of the institution which had succeeded to their function.b

Owing to a misunderstanding as to the date of this tragedy, it was long believed that Æschylus wrote it in reproof of Pericles for diminishing the power of the Areopagus. When it became certain that the play was not produced till 458, a new light was thrown on the affair, showing Æschylus as a defender of the merely judicial function of the Areopagus, for Pericles and Ephialtes left the Areopagus its judicial dignity and merely removed its political weight, as will be more fully shown in a later chapter. Æschylus therefore appears as one in no sense protesting, but rather as showing the true origin and strictly judicial function of the Areopagus, and approving Ephialtes who carried the day and reduced its pretensions.a

CIMON EXILED

[461-460 B.C.]