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Already published.
No. I.
PHILOSOPHICAL THEORIES AND PHI-
LOSOPHICAL EXPERIENCE.
No. II.
ON THE CONNEXION BETWEEN PHYSIO-
LOGY AND INTELLECTUAL
SCIENCE.
No. III.
ON MAN’S POWER OVER HIMSELF TO
PREVENT OR CONTROL
INSANITY.
No. IV.
AN INTRODUCTION TO PRACTICAL
ORGANIC CHEMISTRY.
No. VI.
A BRIEF VIEW OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY
FROM SOCRATES TO THE COMING
OF CHRIST
will be published in August.
i
o
:
i
.
i
&#&#&#&#&#
Sºmali lá00ág on Öreat ºut.jøttg,
EDITED BY A FEW WBLIL WISHERS
TO KNOWLEDGE.
§
No. V.
&#&#&#&#&#&#
O vitæ philosophia dux ! O virtutis indagatrix, expul-
trixque vitiorum! quid non modo nos, sed omnino vita
hominum sine te esse potuisset? Tu urbes peperisti; tu
dissipatos homines in societatem vitæ convocasti: tu eos
inter se primò domiciliis, deinde conjugiis, tum literarum
et vocum communione junxisti: tu inventrix legum, tu
magistra morum et disciplinæ fuisti. Ad te confugimus:
a te opem petimus ; tibi nos, ut antea magna ex parte, sic
nunc penitus totosque tradimus. Est autem unus dies bene
et ex preceptis tuis actus, peccanti immortalitati antepo-
nendus. Cujus igitur potius opibus utamur, quam tuis ?
quæ et vitæ tranquillitatem largita nobis es, et terrorem
morti sustulisti.—Cic. Tusc. Quæst. lib. v. c. 2.
C. vºw-º-º-', Career, ºva-ce.”
A BRIEF
VIEW OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY
U P TO THE A.G.E OF
PERICLES.
L ON DO N :
WILLIA M PICKERING.
1844,


INTRO DU CTION.
- EARLY three years ago a small volume
crept into print entitled “Philosophical
Theories and Philosophical Experience by a
Pariah.” It purported to be, and was, the re-
sult of the deep communings with unseen things
which suffering had produced in one who be-
lieved in a God, and as a consequence of that
faith believed that in whatever he permitted
even, there must be latent good; and, there-
fore, resolved to seek, and hoped to find it.
At that time two only were privy to the publi-
cation ; the Thinker, and the Friend who edited
those thoughts because they were his own also:
and who, possessing the sinews of printing—
determined that they should no longer form the
mere private solace of one or two.
An unexpected success attended the experi-
ment: the philosophy propounded was approved;
its applicability to all the great purposes of life
was acknowledged; and, very shortly after, a
society was formed for the purpose of editing
vi INTRODUCTION.
more works of the same kind; in which sound
views of science, and great philosophical prin-
ciples should be clearly and shortly brought
forward, for the benefit of those who had neither.
time nor inclination to seek them in more volu-
minous works. Since that time three more
tracts have been ushered into the world under
the auspices of this society:—the Theories
have gained publicity in the lecture room of the
Royal Institution, and have found favour in the
sight both of philosophers and divines. Phy-
siologists of no mean fame have listened and
praised; and among those whom our age looks
up to as great in science, many have bestowed
so liberal a share of commendation as to outgo
the most sanguine hopes of the friends who
first associated themselves for a purpose which
they thought a good one, but of whose success
they were uncertain.
This state of things has put an end to the
dual existence of the Pariah, and the Theorist
is now but one among many pledged to con-
tribute to the common stock; and he knows
not how he can do so better than by presenting
as his quota, a short view of a subject which has
hitherto slumbered in ponderous folios and
quartos, or in fearful ranges of octavo volumes
INTRODUCTION. vii
clad in one livery, which put a man’s reading
courage to the test, and justify him in calling
himself bold who takes down the first volume.
Horace's warning of the danger that whilst
avoiding the Scylla, lengthiness, we may fall
into the Charybdis, obscurity, will doubtless
occur to the ungentle reader, for times have
changed since worthy authors addressed their
intended victims as gentle, the Theorist, can
only answer to the thought, that he hopes to
steer his bark safely between the two. If fur-
thermore, any of these ungentle personages
should wonder why so old a subject as Greek
philosophy should be brought forward; he an-
swers, that though we owe the chief of our sci-
entific acquirements to the spirit of inquiry
which the literature of Greece awoke, when
Europe was slumbering in contented darkness;
few are aware of how much that literature has
done for us; and he wishes to lead his country-
men, and countrywomen too, to do it more
justice. The simple monk who complained of
the Greek tongue, and especially of “the book
called the New Testament,” in that language, as
a “pestilent invention;”—and the military despot
who forbad it to be taught in his schools, knew
it better than we do: they feared it; for it is
b
viii INTRODUCTION.
the language of the free man, whose mind
brooks shackles as ill as his body. We who
have drunk at its pure fountain, go on our way
refreshed, but ungratefully forget whence we
obtained the invigorating draught; and too often
imagine that we exalt Christianity by detracting
from the merits of the great men of antiquity,
“who having not the law, were a law unto
themselves;” and who, if the sum of the Gospel
had not yet risen upon the earth, at least pointed
to its dawning. Clement of Alexandria, whom
we must allow to have been a competent judge
of such matters, explicitly says, “Philosophy
was needful to the Greeks before the coming of
the Lord, for the purifying of their lives,” and
even now it is useful to piety; being a kind of
rudimentary teaching for those who upon con-
viction receive the faith.” “For,” he adds a
little farther on, “philosophy to the Greeks,
was what the law was to the Hebrews, a school-
master to bring men to Christ.” +
It is strange that with such testimony before
us, and with many of the works of that age in
" our hands also, we should have been so gene-
* Sug dukatoovym v.
f Clem. Alex. Strom. lib. i. c. 5.
INTRODUCTION. ix
rally led astray by a misunderstood passage or
two in the epistles of St. Paul, where he is re-
ferring to sophists, and not to philosophers :
and no less grievous is it than strange; for
such misunderstandings make the first steps in
ancient lore a dangerous trial. It is a fearful
moment when we discover that any part of what
we have been taught in our childhood by those
we most venerate, is not true :-the very foun-
dation of our best hopes is shaken, and it is
well if in that frightful wrench of our reason
from our affections, we remain calm enough to
examine how much we must forego, how much
retain. Could we know the private history of
most “free-thinkers,” as they termed them-
selves,—“infidels,” as they have been termed
by others, we should most probably find that
the greater number, as we know has been the
case with many, were made what they were
by some such revulsion of feeling as that above
described. It is time then that the possibility
of any such lamentable results should be pre-
vented, by putting into the hands of all, the
means of knowing, and consequently of teaching,"
the unadulterated TRUTH. The child might
thus receive from his mother in his infancy, the
rudiments of the knowledge which his after
X INTRODUCTION.
progress must be grounded upon; and thus the
best years of his life would not be wasted in
wnlearning, when that process is most danger-
ous, and when there is much hazard that, along
with the prejudices of the nursery, the great
truths of religion and morality may also be dis-
carded. Science, divine and human, would then
stand before him in loving companionship: and
what advance would be too great for one whose
nature was indeed become what Plato had
dreamed long ago;-a blessed harmony of the
seen and the unseen, the intellectual and the
corporeal. The age of pious frauds and po-
litical humbug is passing away: men, and women
too, are beginning to be weary of receiving
dogmata upon trust: and if there be, as assuredly
there is in this age, much of crude and wild
theory, and of contempt for what had before
been held in honour, let us at least impute it to
its right cause, and meet the evil with its proper
remedy. The human soul asks for THE TRUTII:
let us give it;-for surely that God who made
man for himself, and who Is TRUTH, has made
"that the road to peace and to happiness.
It may be needful here to premise that in
order to compress matter that usually has filled
large volumes into so small a space, it has been
INTRODUCTION. xi
requisite to omit all the arguments by which
the writer has been influenced to choose one
account rather than another, where there were
conflicting statements. It is the business of an
author who writes a compendium of this kind,
to exert his own best judgment in the choice of
his materials, in order to give the reader a clear
notion of the subject he has undertaken to ex-
plain; not to weary him by contrasting the dis-
crepancies between ancient authors, and by de-
tailing the reasons why one witness is more
credible than another. In many instances the
choice of testimony must be founded on a deep
study of human nature generally; a subject too
large to be here discussed: the writer, there-
fore, can do no more than ask his reader to have
candour enough to believe that he has left no
author unexplored that could throw light upon
the subject. The results of his reading, his ex-
perience in the world, and his contemplations in
solitude, are here given, and he conscientiously
believes in their general truth ; but his judg-
ment, like that of others, is fallible; and those -
who have the time, will always do well to ex-
amine and judge for themselves.


%2%
& &
f{}
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE.
1800 | About this time the Israelitish family settle
in Egypt, and Greece is peopled by a tribe
from Asia, called by the ancient writers,
Pelasgi. Argos and Sicyon were the first
kingdoms, known as such, in the region
thus colonized. The ancient walls and
monuments, called Cyclopean, being found
where the Pelasgi are said to have settled,
were probably their work. Another tribe,
the Hellenes, though the weaker of the
two at first, gradually gain the supremacy.
1550 They first appear in Phocis, and about
Parnassus, under their king Deucalion,
spread into Thessaly, and drive out the
Pelasgi. The Hellenes "consisted of four
tribes, Æolians, Ionians, Dorians, and
Achaians.
The Israelites leave Egypt.
Cecrops leads a colony from Sais in
Egypt, to Attica; and Cadmus from Phoe-
nicia to Boeotia.
1500 Danaus arrives in Argos from Egypt, and
persuades the people to depose their mo-
narch, and receive him in his room.
Rameses the Great, or Sesostris, pur-
sues his conquests.
1400 | Pelops comes from Mysia to Argos.
Minos reigns in Crete, and clears the
Sea of pirates.
1250 | The Argonautic voyage to Colchis. Orpheus
flourished about this time.
1225 | The seven chiefs besiege Thebes; but it is
1215 only taken by their sons in a second attempt,
1194-
I 184
} Trojan war.
*
xiv
CHRONOLOGICAI, TABLE.
1180
1100
1068
The descendants of Hercules endeavour to
recover their father's kingdom, by the aid
of the Dorians and HEtolians: but the first
attempt under Hyllus, the son of Hercules,
fails. The grandsons of Hyllus, Telephus
and Cresphontes, with Eurysthenes and
Procles (the sons of the third brother Aris-
todemus) succeed in their enterprize. Dur-
ing this time the Ætolians plant colonies,
about I [24 B.C. on the coast of Mysia and
Caria, and in the island of Lesbos.
By the successful invasion of the Herac-
lidae, Argos, Sparta, Messenia, and Corinth,
became Doric ; the Achaians being driven
out. Elis fell to the HEtolians, the allies
of the Dorians. The Achaians fell back on
the Ionians, and settled themselves in the
part afterwards called Achaia. The Toni-
ans were received by the Athenians, who
were of the same race.
Sparta, during the time it was peopled
by the Achaians, was first governed by the
princes of the house of Perseus; and then,
in consequence of marriage, by Menelaus,
of the house of Pelops: but under the Do-
rians it fell to the lot of Procles and Eu-
rysthenes, whose descendants continued to
share the sovereign power; a king being
chosen from each family. Agis was the
son and successor of Eurysthenes, and the
two families were hence called Proclidae
and Agidae. The distinction between
Lacedemonians and Spartans took its rise
probably from this conquest: the former
were the Achaian cultivators, the latter the
Dorian victors.
The Israelites ask a king, and Saul is
chosen.
Codrus saves Athens by his voluntary death
CIIRONOLOGICAL TABLE. XV
880
783–
743
754
752
742-
722
689
682
668
679
650
640
622
when the Dorians threatened that state.
The Archons for life who succeed him,
continue from 1068-752.
The Ionians under Neleus, the son of
Codrus, settle in that part of Asia Minor
afterwards called Ionia, and in the islands
of Samos and Chios.
Lycurgus gives laws to Sparta, and intro-
duces Homer's poems to notice.
Spartan wars with Tegea and Argos, and
affairs with Messenia.
Rome founded.
Archons of Athens limited to ten years ma-
gistracy, but still chosen from the family
of Codrus.
First Messenian war, ended by the taking of
Ithome, and the voluntary death of the
Messenian king Aristodemus. The Mes-
senians become tributary to Sparta, giving
half the produce of their land to the victors.
During this war the college of Ephors was
established.
Shalmanesar, king of Assyria, carries
the ten tribes of Israel into captivity.
Gyges, king of Lydia. Flourishing state of
the Ionian cities.
The ten years archonship abolished in Athens
and yearly archons substituted.
Aristomenes begins a struggle with
Sparta for the recovery of Messenian in-
dependence. He is foiled, and Eira is
taken, and the Messenians reduced to the
condition of Helots.
Numa Pompilius, king of Rome.
About this period Ardyes, king of Lydia,
conquers Prieme in Ionia.
Thales born.
Draco, archon of Athens, publishes his code.
Josiah finds the book of the law and
enforces its observance.
XVI
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE.
B.C.
610
598
§6S
56I
556
5.4S
540
538
OLYMP.
XLII. 3
XLV. 3
LIII. 1
LIV. 4
LV. I
— 4
LVI. 1
LVII. 1
LVIII. I.
LX. I
Anaximander born ?
Cylon endeavours to seize on the
sovereign power at Athens.
Jeremiah prophesied about
this time.
The expiation for the murder
of Cylon's adherents made by
Epimenides.
Solon chosen archon with a
charge to revise the laws.
Anaximenes born ?
Tyranny of Peisistratus in Athens.
Cyrus, king of Persia, ascends
the throne of the Medes also.
Peisistratus is driven out.
Sardis taken by Cyrus, Croesus,
the king of Lydia, made prisoner,
and the kingdom of Lydia added
to the Persian dominions.
Peisistratus, having allied himself
by marriage with the family of
Megacles, is elevated a second
time to the tyranny.
He is driven out a second time by
Megacles.
Death of Thales.
Phocaea besieged by the troops of
Cyrus; the inhabitants ask a
truce to deliberate respecting
capitulation, and in the interim
embark on board their fleet, and
abandon the city. They found
Elea or Velia in Magna Graecia,
and Massilia in Gaul, besides
some settlements in Corsica.
Pythagoras establishes his
school of philosophy in Crotona.
Third elevation of Peisistratus to
the tyranny. He reigns till his
death.
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE.
xvii
B.C.
536
528
514
500
496
490
486
480
479
478
477
469
46
8
466
OLYMP.
LXI. 1
LXIII. 1
LXVI. 3
LXX. 1
LXXI. I.
LXXII. 3
ºxxiii. 3
LXXV. 1
LXXV. 2
— 3
4
LXXVII. 4
LXXVIII. 1
Cyrus restores the Jews to their
country.
Death of Peisistratus.
Hipparchus, the son of Peisistratus
slain by Harmodius and Aris-
togeiton; consequent real ty-
ranny of Hippias: return of the
, Alcmaeonidae, and banishment of
Hippias. Cleisthenes, the son
of Megacles, augments the num-
ber of the council from 400 to
500, and divides the tribes anew,
making ten instead of four.
The revolt of the Ionian states.
Anaxagoras born.
Miletus taken by the Persians.
Battle of Marathon.
Aristeides banished from Athens
by ostracism.
Heroic death of Leonidas and his
companions at Thermopylae 6th
July. Battle of Salamis 25th
September. Anaxagoras comes
to Athens this year? aged 20
years.
Battles of Plataea and Mycale 25th
September.
Repeal of the law of Solon, by
which the Thetes were excluded
from the government.
The long walls to Piraeus built.
Socrates born. Themistocles ba-
nished by ostracism this year or
the following.
Cimon’s victories over
sians.
Themistocles condemned—flies to
Persia.
Great earthquake at Sparta, and
the Per-
— 3
— 4
insurrection of the Helots.
xviii
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE,
B.C.
461
456
45}
449
446
444
441
43}
430
429
428
OLYMP.
LXXIX. 4
LXXXI. 1
LXXXII. 4
LXXXIII. 3
LXXXIV. 1
LXXXVII. 2
LXXXVII. 2
3
4
LXXXVIII. I
Cimon banished by ostracism. Par-
menides flourished about this
time, and Zeno Eleates his scho-
lar, who was 25 years his ju-
nior.
Callias archon. Anaxagoras, then
44, comes to Athens a second
time 2
The Decemvirs established at Rome
written laws, drawn up by them
from those of Athens.
Death of Cimon.
Pericles makes a thirty years truce
with the Lacedaemonians, public
accusation of Anaxagoras, As-
pasia and Pheidias. Anaxago-
ras is banished.
Thucydides, the son of Melesias,
Pericles' political rival, banished
by ostracism.
Melissus, the pupil of Parmenides,
defends Samos ineffectually
against the Athenians.
Outbreak of the Peloponnesian
War.
Plato born.
Death of Pericles.
Death of Anaxagoras.
GREECE IN A SEMI-BARBAROUS
STATE.
FROM 1800 B. C. TO 1044 B. C.
BOUT eighteen hundred years before the
Christian aera, a barbarous horde, under
the guidance of a chief named Inachus, migrated
from the coast of Asia Minor to the islands
and coasts opposite; which, previous to that
time, if we may judge from the exploits which
the traditional stories of this people assigned to
their heroes,” had been the haunts of wild
beasts, which found shelter among rocks and
forests as yet untrodden by the foot of man.
We are not told the cause of this migration;
but as we find indubitable monuments of two
* Hercules, Theseus, and others are celebrated most
especially as destroyers of wild beasts. Even Apollo
is chiefly famed as an expert archer, and one of his
main exploits was the destruction of an enormous
serpent.
B
2 GREECE IN A
great empires, even at that early period, the one
in Egypt and the other in India—we may per-
haps add another also, bordering on the Eu-
phrates, it is not unreasonable to conclude, that
what we have seen occurring, even in our own
days in North America, may have happened in this
case also. The increasing force and population
of a civilized people pressed upon the uncivilized
tribes around: and voluntarily, or otherwise,
the latter left the more fertile lands to their
stronger competitors, and retreated to wilder
hunting grounds. It was thus, probably, that
the whole of Europe became peopled : the pres-
sure from behind drove the more barbarous
tribes farther and farther north, till its most
inhospitable regions were at last inhabited; for
among the scanty records of our Teutonic an-
cestors even, we find the tradition of a chief &
with his followers arriving from Asia.
At least a century was spent by the Pelasgif
in a state of the wildest barbarism; ignorant, if
we may credit their own traditions, of the com-
monest arts of life, and wandering over the
* Odin.
# This is the name given by Greek writers to the
first inhabitants or rather colonizers of the country.
SEMI-BARBAROUS STATE. 3
country with no settled habitation; but by de-
grees they associated into states, and Sicyon
and Argos appear to have been under the go-
vernment of their respective chiefs before 1500
B. C. Pressed on again by other tribes, the Pe-
lasgi passed over into Italy, into Crete, and into
the adjoining islands; and the four Hellenic fa-
milies, the Dorians, the Achaians, the AEolians,
and the Ionians, spread over the lands they re-
tired from. Colonies, too, from the more civi-
lized countries, from Egypt, from Phoenicia, and
from Mysia, fixed themselves in different parts;
and, probably, like other colonists settling among
a rude people, carried with them the arts of war
as well as of peace, and either by force or per-
suasion subjugated those whom they found in
possession of the country. Cecrops, an Egyp-
tian from Sais, is said to have founded Athens
about four generations after the migration of
Inachus; and Cadmus, a Phoenician, not far
from that time, founded Thebes in Boeotia.
About 1500 B. c. Danaus, another Egyptian,
arrived in Argos, but here he found a monarchy
established, and a walled town. He was allowed
to bring forward his claims to admission before
an assembly of the people; and they, led by what
they considered an omen sent by the gods,
4 GREECE IN A
were induced to depose the reigning monarch,
and receive Danaus in his room.” We cannot
tell what the arguments were which the Egyp-
tian prince employed in pleading before the
people: we may conjecture that the benefits of
superior science were urged, since we find it re-
corded that Argos having previously been with-
out water, save what fell from the heavens, the
daughters of their new king taught the inhabit-
ants the art of digging wells. Four of these
wells were in after times held sacred, and re-
ceived especial honours. We may guess at
the revolution in manners caused by the admi-
nistration of this monarch, from the circum-
stance that the appellation of the people was
changed from Pelasgi to Damai; a term which
we find very frequently applied by Homer to all
the Greeks assembled before Ilium.
The situation of Greece, with its numerous
islands, soon led the people to undertake mari-
time and piratical expeditions. That of the
Argonauts, from the mythological grandeur
with which it has been so carefully invested,
would appear to have been either the first or the
* Pausan. l. ii. c. 19, and Eurip. Orest.
# Strabo, lib. viii.
SEMI-BARBAROUS STATE. 5
most important. But in those times, the pirate,
like the Sea Kings of the Norwegians, was a
gentleman; and no discredit, as Thucydides in-
forms us,” was attached to this mode of convey-
ing away the property of others. The maraud-
ing expedition of Jason took place, probably,
about 1250 B. c. It was during the times of
the Judges of Israel; a period when the law of
meum and tuum appears to have been very ob-
scure all over the world.
Most chronologers place the Trojan war, ce-
lebrated in the Iliad, about 1200 B. c.t. At that
time the Achaian states, for so Homer terms
them, were rude, but yet raised far beyond ab-
solute barbarism. We find bards celebrating
the exploits of their heroes ; Sidonian work-
manship adorning their vases, and their robes;
and a kind of rough luxury in the courts of
their princes, which reminds us of the state of
Mexico or Peru, when discovered by Cortez and
Pizarro. It matters not whether we consider
the Homeric poems as the work of one man, or
the lays of different bards collected; still they
must be valid evidence of the state of manners
* Thucyd. lib, i.
# From 1194 to 1184 B.C., Heeren.
6 GREECE IN A
about that time, for their geographical correct-
mess shows that they could not have been writ-
ten any long time after the events took place.
In these early ages no maps or books of travels
furnished the romancist with the means of giv-
ing verisimilitude to his tale; therefore geogra-
phical precision could only have been attained
by personal knowledge, or the narration of actors
in the scenes recorded.
About a hundred years after this, an event
occurred which for a time threatened to over-
cloud the dawning civilization of Achaia. This
was the irruption of the Dorians, a mountain
tribe, who preserved in their fastnesses much of
the rudeness of their forefathers. They were
invited to this invasion of the more civilized re-
gions by the descendants of Hercules, who hav-
ing been expelled by Eurystheus from the coun-
tries which they considered theirs by right of
inheritance or conquest, took advantage pro-
bably of the weakness and disunion among the
Achaian states, which followed upon the Trojan
war, to urge their claims anew. A first but
unsuccessful attempt had been made under the
guidance of Hyllus, the son of Hercules, about
l 180 B.C.: his descendants, having leagued
with the AEtolians also, finally triumphed. Ar-
SEMI-BARBARO US STATE, 7
gos, Sparta, Messenia, and Corinth, fell under
the Dorian rule : * the Achaians, driven step
by step from their country, fell back upon the
Ionians, who occupied the coast nearest to Asia;
and they in their turn, driven on before the ad-
vancing tide of invasion, retreated upon Attica,
where they were hospitably received by the
Athenians, who sprang from the same stock.
But the narrow territory of Attica could not
long maintain so large an increase of population,
and in 1044 B. C. Androclus and Neleus, the
* Probably the dissensions between the aristocratic
and popular factions in after times, had the character of
a war of caste. The conquering Dorians had usurped
the property in the soil; the conquered Achaians were
the cultivators, for them, of lands which were once their
own. Thus it was in Lacedaemon where the Spartans,
i.e. the Dorian conquerors, remained a distinct people
from the Lacedaemonian cultivators, who, again, were a
step above their former slaves, the Helots, and those
who were afterwards reduced to a state of slavery.
The contests for political supremacy between the patri-
cians and plebeians of Rome, were probably of the same
kind, for the very names of the plebeian consuls sound
barbarous and strange among those of the patrician fa-
milies, as if they were of a different race. We may see
a modern illustration of this state of things in Ireland,
where the conquered and the conquering people have
failed to amalgamate.
8 GREECE IN A
sons of that Codrus who by his self-devotion
had saved Athens from Dorian conquest, led
an Ionian colony back to the coast of Asia
Minor : cities were founded,” and the province
thus taken possession of, received thenceforth
the name of Ionia. The islands of Samos and
Chios too, the latter said to have been the re-
sidence of Homer, received Ionian colonies.
Thus the civilization which was checked for
a time by the conquests of the Dorian hordes,
was preserved in the cities of Ionia, and sent
back its missionaries, after a time, to achieve a
nobler victory—that of arts and philosophy over
ignorance and barbarism. From this period
the people of Greece may be considered as di-
vided into two great families, the Ionian and
the Dorian, in which the others were in great
measure absorbed. The Athenians may be
looked upon as the representatives of the first ;
the Spartans of the last.
It would be a wearisome and hopeless labour
were I to attempt to trace with any accuracy the
* There were ten Ionian cities, i. e. Phocaea, Erythrae,
Clazomene, Teos, Lebedus, Colophon, Ephesus, Priene,
Myus, and Miletus. The latter was the nurse of that
philosophy which afterwards made Athens famous.
SEMI-BARBAROUS STATE, 9
theology or philosophy of these early periods,
buried as they are under a mass of allegory and
fable, which we have now no means of remov-
ing; yet in the very scanty records of those
times, there are traces of a purer morality,
and a more worthy religious belief than is ex-
hibited in the gross mythology of the Homeric
poems.” The date assigned to the migration
conducted by Inachus from the Asian shore, co-
incides very nearly with that of the removal of
the Israelitish family into Egypt. At that time
the worship prevalent among the Nomade tribes
of Asia, if we may judge from the book of Job,
seems to have been that of One Almighty Cre-
ator, typified by, and already beginning to be
confounded with the light, or sun; the rest of
the heavenly bodies sharing in the reverence
paid to the apparent source of life. Herodotus
states that at Dodona he was told that they had
* Herodotus, lib. ii. c. 53, gives it as his opinion that
Homer and Hesiod were the inventors of the genealogies
and names of the gods; and Diogenes Laertius reports
that Pythagoras was said to have descended into the
infernal regions, and to have there seen Homer and
Hesiod suffering various punishments for what they had
reported about the gods. Diog, Laert. in vità Pythag.
lib, viii. Ş. 21,
10 GREECE IN A
formerly sacrificed and prayed to the Deity
in general, without giving any name or names
to the object of their worship; but that after a
long time, the names of the gods were brought
them from Egypt. Plato mentions a tradition
of one God governing the universe, though ge-
nerally in so strangely disguised a form that we
may fancy that the fate of his master Socrates
inspired him with some fear of speaking too
plainly.” Aristoteles is more explicit, and
avers, that “it was an ancient saying received
by all from their ancestors, that all things exist
by and through the power of God . . . . . who
being One was known by many names accord-
ing to his modes of manifestation.”
The very early division of the more polished
nations of India and Egypt into castes, which
occasioned a separation of the priesthood from
the people, was probably the cause then, as it
always has been, of a grosser worship on the
part of the latter. The learned sacerdotal caste
reserved to itself the more abstruse parts of
theology; partly perhaps from a natural desire
to keep up the superiority which, however ac-
* Plato, Politicus and Timaeus,
# Aristot. de Mundo c. 6, 7.
SEM I-BARBAROUS STATE. 11
quired, is always gratifying; and partly, too,
from an opinion that the doctrine was too sub-
lime for the comprehension of the ignorant mul-
titude. Then came the plan of teaching the
people by symbols which, from their more tan-
gible nature, were likely to impress themselves
on the recollection better than abstract truths.
The key to these mysterious symbols was in the
hands of the priests; and possibly they them-
selves hardly knew how far the people in general
had lost sight of their original meaning. We
may turn to times nearer our own for an almost
parallel instance: for when the irruption of bar-
barians into the Roman empire gave the Chris-
tian ministers the superiority in learning, they
soon were tempted to use it in the same way.
Feigned miracles and a more gross and tangible
worship were made use of to subjugate or to
captivate the minds of the ignorant people about
them; for, finding them too rude to be argued
into a better faith, they thought that by first ob-
taining a superstitious reverence, they might
finally guide them to better things.” They
* When the pagan Anglo-Saxons were first converted
to Christianity, we find Gregory, the Roman bishop,
thus writing to the missionaries he had sent into Bri-
tain—“And because they (the Saxons) have been used.
12 GREECE IN A
forgot that when they had loaded religion with
ceremonial observances, there was danger that
even the priests themselves, at some future time,
might possibly become infected with the general
superstition, and suffer the substance to escape
whilst they were grasping the shadow of truth.
Doubtless the sacerdotal caste of Egypt re-
tained for a considerable time the remembrance
of the occult meaning of the symbols they used;
and supposed they were preserving the know-
ledge of a theology whose vivifying influence
they were daily losing more and more, as it be-
came a source of worldly advantage, till at last
they saw in it only a fable which was useful to
them.* They, too, had to encounter at times
to slaughter many oxen in the sacrifices to devils, some
solemnity must be exchanged for them ... to the end that
whilst some gratifications are outwardly permitted them,
they may the more readily consent to the inward consola-
tion of the grace of God.” Bede's Eccles. Hist. chap. 30.
* The transition from Gregory indulging his heathen
converts with solemnities in honour of “the nativities of
the holy martyrs, to the end that THEY may the more
easily consent to the inward consolations of God”—to
Leo X. exclaiming-" This fable of Jesus Christ has
been very useful to us”—is curious and instructive. The
step had then been made from the apostolically-minded,
though ill-judging prelate, to the selfish maintainer of the
interests of his caste.
SEMII-BARBAROUS STATE. 13
the invasion of barbarians, on whose supersti-
tious fears they might depend for safety: or
they had to resist, as a corporation, the en-
croachment of monarchs upon their privileges,
in which contest, again, the superstition of the
people was an useful ally. Thus the motives
for encouraging a grosser worship were strong:
the danger was remote, and at that time un-
known. Few, even now after the experience of
ages, seem to be aware that there must be a
rational conviction of the truth of our faith ere
it will influence the heart and life: and it has
been the error of all ages to imagine that it is
better to keep the people ignorant, and obedient
to guidance, than to give them the light which
will enable them to guide themselves. The
difficulty of the undertaking has generally been
the first discouragement: indolence and the love
of power have usually done the rest.
ORPHEUs is the person to whom ancient
writers have attributed the introduction of a
multitude of gods. He is said to have been a
Thracian;–to have accompanied Jason and the
other Argonauts on their piratical expedition,-
to have visited Egypt, and to have brought
from thence the doctrines with which he after-
wards corrupted the rude but simple theology
14 GREECE IN A.
of Greece. The poems and hymns attributed to
him are many of them considered to be spurious,
or much interpolated; but as far as ancient
testimony goes, there seems little doubt that the
doctrine he taught was that of ONE SELF-Ex-
ISTENT GOD, the Maker of all things, who is
present to us in all His works; but this great
truth was disguised under a mass of fables.*
We may take as a specimen one of those which
has reached us. “The origin of the earth was .
ocean : when the water subsided, mud remained,
and from both of these sprang a living creature;
—a dragon having the head of a lion growing
from it, and in the midst, the face of God: by
mame Hercules or Chronos.” (time.) By him
an immense egg was produced, which being split
into two parts, one became the heavens, the
other the earth. Heaven and earth mingled,
and produced Titans or Giants. +
Material things having been produced by some
mysterious operation of the Divinity upon Chaos,
all were held to be imbued with a portion of the
Divine Essence: and as, according to the doc-
* See Cudworth, Syst. Int, cap. iv. §. 17, and Brucker,
Hist. Crit. Phil. parsii. lib. i. cap. 1, where the Orphic
doctrines are fully discussed.
f Athenagoras, Leg. pro Christ. p. 17, folio ed.
SEMI-BARBARO US STATE. 15
trine of the sacerdotal caste, the Supreme Deity
was too mighty to be approached by the vulgar,
every object in nature was, as it were, deified,
for the use of the people; and the portion of the
Divinity by which it was supposed to be ani-
mated, had a peculiar name given to it, by which
it might be invoked. The initiated, for the
mysteries are said to owe their commencement
to Orpheus, were taught that the One Supreme
..Deity was the source of all, and that the tutelary
gods of air, fire, earth, &c. were in fact only
emanations of his power, made manifest to men
by tangible and visible objects. But when the
Most High was no longer to be approached by
the vulgar, the especial manifestation was soon
individualized, and a polytheism which probably
the first introducers of this mysterious doctrine
never contemplated, was built upon it.
It is curious that to this day the rude tribes
of Africa and of North America retain some-
thing of this early doctrine: the fetiche of the
Negro, and the “medicine bag” or amulet of the
Red Man, both consist of insignificant objects
supposed to have some mysterious, in-dwelling,
Divine potency linked to, yet quite distinct in
nature from the object visible to the eyes. The
fetiche in Africa even now is not unfrequently a
| 6 GREECE IN A
stone or a tree, or some other inanimate object;
and if we look back into the early times we are
treating of, we shall find the same thing. The
representation of the Cithaeronian Juno, wor-
shipped by the Thespians, was the trunk of a
tree:–another of the Samian Juno, was a branch
or log, afterwards fashioned into something of a
human shape by the order of Procleus the Ar-
chon. Diana and Ceres were represented in
like manner:* and the Dioscuri among the old.
Spartans had no image save two beams or trunks
of trees, united by two transverse pieces.t. The
ancient Romans worshipped the god of war,
under the form of a spear; the Scythians deified
a sabre; the Arabs, down to the time of Ma-
hommed even, had their sacred stone. We
might have been puzzled by these short notices,
had we not an instance of this kind of early
worship recorded more at length. When the
* Clem. Alex. Protrept. c. 4. See also Tertull. adv.
Gentes. Lucan, in his description of the sacred grove
felled by Caesar's orders, describes the representations of
the Deities as rude trunks of trees.
. . . . . . . “Simulacraque moesta deorum
Arte carent, caesisque extant informia truncis.”
Pharsal. lib. iii. 1.411.
f Plutarch, De amor. frat.
SEMI-IBARBAROUS STATE. 17
patriarch Jacob had had a divine vision, he
awoke out of his sleep, and said, “How dread-
ful is this place I this is none other but the house
of God, and this is the gate of Heaven.” And
Jacob arose early in the morning, and took the
stone that he had put for a pillow, and set it up
for a pillar, and poured oil on the top of it, and
vowed, “If God will be with me . . . . so that I
come again to my father's house in peace, then
shall the Lord be my God, and this stone which
I have set up for a pillar, shall be God's house;
and of all that Thou shalt give me, surely I will
give the tenth unto Thee.” This place he called
Bethel:—some centuries later Bethel was an
idolatrous temple. The history of this one was
probably the history of all.
The mysterious doctrine of Orpheus which
gave tangibility and distinctness to the notions
of the Deity, soon struck the imagination of the
poet: Homer and Hesiod took it up, and finished
the individualizing process, by giving names and
forms” to the various sub-deities of the different
powers of nature. Yet these were, for a long
* Athenagoras, after quoting Herodotus for the above
assertion respecting Homer, adds, that until the statua-
ries had given human shape to the gods, they had not
been named even.
C
18 GREECE IN A.
time, only the poetical version of the old belief:
—the One Supreme God still held the reins,
and Destiny was lookèd up to as the ruler of
these sub-gods, no less than of men. AEschylus,
whose tragic genius found fitter matter in the
simple, but sublime traditions of his forefathers,
than in the ridiculous and disgusting tales of the
Homeric mythology, has handed down to our
days this part of the still popular faith, in his
noble drama of Prometheus Chained: where he
represents Jupiter as sending to beg from the
prophet the knowledge of the yet future decrees
of Destiny. Prometheus, who pretends to no
foreknowledge but that of some few of these
decrees which had been communicated to him,
indignantly refuses to gratify the curiosity of his
oppressor; who, in consequence, inflicts further
tortures upon him, but cannot obtain the desired
prediction. The expressions put into the mouth
of Prometheus are remarkable,” and the whole
* IIP. oi răvra raûtm poipa tra re)\eopópog
kpāva Trézrporat . . . . .
téxym 6’avdykmg do 6evegrápa pakpg
XO. Tig oijv dvdykmg £ariv oiakoorpópog;
IIP. Moipat rpiuopºpot, plvåuovéc r"'Epwyvåg
XO. roërov &pa Zság #arty &00svěorspoc;
IIP. Övk oëv čv čkſhöyot ye rºw tretrowgávny.
SEMI-BARBAROUS STATE, 19
drama so wars against our general motions of the
popular belief at that time, that in order to ex-
plain the possibility of such a public recitation
being permitted and approved, we must suppose
an under current of a very different theology
from that of Hesiod. The invectives which the
oppressed Titan utters against the new power
of Jove; the allusions to wars in which he had
himself assisted him, &c. lead us back very ma-
turally to the time of the first colonization of
Greece: and we can hardly avoid the conclusion
that the Nature-worship of Orpheus had been
PROM. Fate, which brings about its own ends,
Has not ordained this to be . . .
Art is much weaker than Destiny.
Cho. But who holds the rudder of Destiny?
PROM. The three formed Fates, the ever remember-
ing Avengers.
CHO. Is Jupiter weaker than these?
PROM. He cannot escape from what is fated.
The masculine adjective attached to the feminine sub-
stantive Motpat, shews sufficiently that this poet, at
least, had not the three old spinning women in his mind
when he wrote the above passage. Aristoteles says in
his treatise trept koopov, c. 7: oipat 68 kai Tijv Avdykmy
oùk &\\ó rv Aéyé00at, Tràºjv routov, ciovel a kivm row oi-
oriav čvra. “I think indeed that Destiny is nothing
else but this, i. e. God—so called from his unchange-
ableness.” This philosopher adds that the three fates
meant the past, present, and future.
:
20 . GREECE IN A.
:
mixed up with Hero-worship also, and that the
Jupiter of the poets was little else than a suc-
cessful Cretan pirate, who, with his companions,
drove out the Asian chief who was beginning to
civilize the people, and banished him to the wild
regions of the Caucasus. If several centuries
had elapsed between Prometheus, supposing
such a person to have existed, and Hesiod, it
was quite long enough, in times when song was
the only record, to have invested conquerors, or
benefactors of the human race, with some super-
natural attributes; a kind of pre-eminence which
every master mind, in times of ignorance, is sure
to attain.
The result, them, of the inquiry thus far, ap-
pears to be, that the first colonizers of Greece
brought with them much of the simple faith
and worship which we find recorded in the early
Hebrew writings: a stone or a trunk of a tree
was set up for a memorial, and the sons of him
who had there experienced some deliverance, or
been alarmed by some dream, worshipped where
their ancestor had done, that Great Being whose
rule they acknowledged, but whose name they
ventured not to pronounce.* Superstitious
* Plutarch makes it a question why the Romans did
SEMI-BARBAROUS STATE, 21
practices doubtless were mingled with this wor-
ship: the vow of Jephthah had more than its
parallel in the sacrifice of Iphigenia and of Po-
lyxena.* It was this ferocious race that Or-
pheus, the polished and learned traveller, endea-
voured to humanize. Perhaps he imagined that
his hidden doctrine would improve those of a
higher rank, who were likely to be initiated;
while the minds of the vulgar would be amused
by his fables, and weaned from more gloomy
superstitions by the worship of Divine Benevo-
lence, as manifested in the different powers of
nature. But however well meant the attempt,
it failed of its object: the grossness of an igno-
rant age converted the different manifestations
into separate Deities; and as, in later times, the
crucifix or the image of the Virgin in some par-
ticular church was held to be more efficacious
than any other, and to have some especial virtue
of its own; so some particular representation or
memorial of the Divine power was deemed more
not permit the god who especially protected Rome to
be named, or made a subject of idle inquiry 3 Another
proof that every nation felt that there was a Most High,
whom they regarded with awe.
* These events must all have occurred within thirty
years.
%
22 GREECE IN A SEMI-BARBAROUS STATE.
wonder working than another, and different
cities came to have their tutelary stone, or log,
or finally,–statue. The temple was built on the
spot which early and pure devotion had hallowed,
as was the case at Bethel : the men of the age
when it was erected saw only the honour done
to the place where their earliest feelings of piety
had been awakened; and it was only in times far
subsequent, that the cause of its first consecra-
tion was forgotten, and the image which reposed
in that gorgeous fame became the object of ig-
morant worship, and the source of profit to a
mercenary priesthood.



GREECE UNDER ITS SAGES.
FROM 1044 B.C. TO 512 B. C.
E have already taken a slight view of the
fortunes of the early colonizers of Hellas
up to the invasion of the Dorian hordes,” whose
conquests drove the more civilized inhabitants
forward towards the coast, and the territory of
Attica, whence they re-colonized Asia Minor,
and founded the cities of Ionia. From that
time during a period of nearly three hundred
years, tradition scarcely furnishes an event save
the extensive colonization of the islands and
coasts adjacent, by Æolians, and Dorians, as
well as Ionians, a silent proof of the increasing
population, and maritime enterprise, of the diffe-
rent statés. The death of Codrus, the Athenian
* This event is sometimes called “The return of the
Heraclidae.”
24 GREECE UNIDER ITS SAGES.
ruler, had left room for a contest as to the suc-
cession to the throne; and during the disputes
of the two competitors, a third party had arisen,
which refused to allow any other king than
Jupiter.* The elder son of Codrus obtained
the sanction of the Delphian oracle, and the de-
mocratic party were conciliated by what was os-
tensibly a compliment to Codrus. No one was
worthy to bear the same title with this heroic
monarch ; his son therefore was only allowed
the title of Archon, accompanied with some
limitation of the regal power. His descendants
continued to enjoy this rank till 752 B.C. when,
without any assigned cause, the archonship was
rendered a magistracy of ten years duration
only, though still confined to the family of
Codrus. History says nothing, but we may
reasonably conclude, from such an event, that
the great families were becoming powerful; that
acts of oppression had been committed by the
hereditary archons, which had alienated the
affections of the commonalty, and that the no-
bility, by their aid, effected a revolution which
put the main power of the state into their own
* Schol. Aristoph. Nub. quoted by Mitford in his
Hist. of Greece.
GREECE UNDER ITS SAGES. 25
hands; for as the selection of the archon was
henceforward vested in them, he became little
better than their puppet. After a lapse of
seventy years, during which, as before, no event
is noted, a farther change was made in the govern-
ment: the Archonship for ten years was abolish-
ed; the office was now to be held for one year
only, and its power was divided among nine per-
sons, who were chosen by lot from among the
nobility. This farther change was followed, as
might be expected, by contests among the prin-
cipal families for the power now within their
reach, and attempts to seize upon the sove-
reignty.
During this time Sparta was engaged in a
twenty years war with Messemia,” and its events
may give some notion of the manners of the
times. It took place about the time when the
ten tribes of Israel were carried into captivity
by Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, and a little
after the foundation of Rome. We find the
king of Messenia encouraging his men to a des-
perate resistance, by depicting the miseries
which would attend a defeat: their wives and
children would be carried into hopeless slavery,
* From 742–722 B. c.
26 GREECE UNIDER ITS SAGES.
their temples would be plundered and burnt,
and their country desolated.* When defeated,
they apply to the oracle at Delphi, and receive
a command to sacrifice a virgin of the blood of
Epytus to the infernal deities; whereupon Aris-
todemus, a nobleman of that family, proffers
his own daughter as a sacrifice, whom he after-
wards slays with his own hands,f and dissects,
in order to shew that she had not been conta-
minated, as had been asserted in order to save
her life.
The war ended by reducing the Messenians
to the condition of farmers of their own lands
for the benefit of Sparta; a state of things not
likely to be long brooked by a high-spirited, and,
till then, independent people: the same year
which was signalized by the change in the
Athenian government to annual Archons, was
marked also by the beginning of a second Mes-
senian war, in which the gallant Aristomenes
strove to free his countrymen from their bond-
age. The Spartans, alarmed by his exploits,
* Pausan. lib. iv. c. 7.
# About fifty years before this, the king of Moab in
like manner, when defeated, offered his own son and
heir for a burnt offering. See 2 Kings iii. 27.
GREECE UNDER ITS SAGES. 27
consulted the Delphian oracle, and received for
answer, that they should seek a counsellor from
Athens; but the Athenians, when called upon
to comply with the commands of the god, un-
willing to aid the growing strength of Sparta,
picked out a person they thought little likely to
be useful; the lame Tyrtaeus, hitherto known
only as a teacher of grammar, which, in those
times, when prose writing was little practised,
included the art of poetry, and probably of
rhetoric. Athens, it seems, had not yet been
taught the power of words over the mind:—the
Messenians learnt it to their cost:—the songs
of Tyrtaeus, worthy of a better cause, inspirited
the defeated Spartans, and the sword of Aristo-
menes proved weak against the might of poesy:
Messemia again lay at the feet of her ruthless
conquerors, and they used their advantage bar-
barously: the Helots of after times, who were
periodically hunted down like wild beasts, were
chiefly Messenians.
The change of government in Athens, had
either been caused by, or was attended with
great popular disorders. Notwithstanding the
severe code of laws promulgated by Draco,
during his archonship, the great families still
engaged in bloody dissensions; and about 598
28 GREECE UNIDER ITS SAGES.
B. C. Cylon, a man of noble, though not regal
descent, seized on the citadel, and endeavoured
to make himself sole ruler: Megacles, then ar-
chon, and of the family of Codrus, opposed him;
after a short struggle he fled, and his adherents
took sanctuary at the most sacred of all the
altars of Athens, that of the Eumenides, or
avengers. They were lured from thence by
treachery, and massacred; a sacrilege which was
for a long time urged as a cause for banishing
all connexioms of the family engaged in it.
Wearied at last by civil broils, and the revolts
of subject states consequent upon them, all eyes
in Athens were turned upon one man, as the
only person capable of reforming the state.
Solon was made archon, with full power to
re-model the constitution. After promulgating
his laws,” he proceeded to travel in other coun-
tries, and in his absence Peisistratus possessed
himself, by a stratagem, of the sovereignty.
Notwithstanding the mode of attaining it, both
he and his sons used their power well: the laws
* 594 B. c. They will be found at length in Mitford's
History of Greece, chap. v. sect. 4, or more briefly in
Heeren’s Handbuch der Geschichte der Staaten des
Alterthums, part iii. § 14, a work of extraordinary
merit. - -
GREECE UN DER ITS SAGES. 29
of Solon were maintained; Athens was beauti-
fied; means were taken for humanizing the
citizens by the introduction of the fine arts;
charitable provision was made for orphans, for
the infirm and aged; and, in the absence of
books, moral sentences were inscribed in con-
spicuous places:* the state was respected abroad,
and enjoyed peace at home. This state of
things was changed by the assassination of Hip-
parchus, the younger of Peisistratus's two sons,
in consequence of a private pique.T Hippias
* “These tyrants,” says Thucydides, dwelling mock-
ingly on the word applied to them by Athenian tradi-
tion, “These tyrants greatly cultivated wisdom and
virtue.” Thucyd. lib. vi. The poor-law above men-
tioned, was extended to all who by mutilation, sickness,
or age, were incapable of maintaining themselves; and
amounted to from one to two oboli per diem, which was
sufficient to purchase the necessaries of life: orphans
were maintained and educated at the expense of the
state, up to the age of eighteen, when they were armed
and placed in the army. See Boeckh's Public CEconomy
of Athens.
f The conspiracy of Harmodius and Aristogeiton,
though hymned by the Athenians of after times as the
struggle of free men against tyranny, is said by the
dispassionate Thucydides to have originated in motives
as impure as the execution of their plan, if it had been
merely for the overthrow of the tyranny, was unsuccess-
30 GREECE UNIDER ITS SAGES.
the elder brother, equally incensed and alarmed,
began to seek foreign alliances for his family,
and to rule with great severity at home, which
soon disgusted the people; the banished family
of Megacles returned, and, with the aid of the
Spartans, and the now discontented Athenians,
expelled him. Cleisthenes, the son of Megacles,
assumed the chief rule, and the first innovation
in the laws of Solon was made by increasing the
number of tribes from four to ten, and that of
the great council from four hundred to five hun-
dred. But though the change probably had in
view the giving a somewhat more popular form
to the government, or at least the curbing the
power of the adherents of the banished family,
no single ruler could be brooked: Cleisthemes
and his Spartan allies were forcibly opposed and
defeated, and the aristo-democratic form of go-
vernment in Athens was confirmed.
The period which has just been slightly
glanced over was fertile in great men. The
ful. But the hated rival was destroyed, which, pro-
bably, was the chief consideration. The attempt was no
less unpopular than unsuccessful, for Aristogeiton, who
escaped the guards, was seized by the people, and most
unmercifully handled.
GREECE UNDER ITS S A GES. 3]
power which mental cultivation affords to its
possessor was for the most part nobly used; and
few purer or more disinterested philanthropists
are to be found than the lawgivers and sages of
this period, whose names have been handed
down to us by the gratitude of their fellow
citizens. The names of Zaleucus, Charondas,
Lycurgus, and Solom, are still famous as having
been able legislators; and if they failed to pro-
duce a perfect code, we may admit for them all,
the excuse which Solom made for himself, when
asked if he had given the Athenians the best
possible laws, according to his own opinion.
The sage replied that he had not ; but that he
had given them the best they were capable of
receiving.” From Moses downwards this has
probably been the case, for the attempt to cut
down prejudices all at once, and to change the
whole customs and manners of a nation, would
but end in the destruction of the imprudent in-
novator, without improving the people; unless,
as in the case of Christianity, the system was
supported by Superhuman means.
The custom of Greece gave the title of Xoſpoc,
* Plutarch in Vitā Solonis.
32 GREECE UNIDER ITS SAGES.
or sage, to those who excelled their fellows in
science, or moral worth. It is fabled, or per-
haps the tale may be a fact, that a golden tripod
having been drawn up in their nets by some
fishermen of Miletus, a quarrel arose as to its
possession. The oracle at Delphi was consulted,
and the dissension was allayed by its award of
the tripod “to the wisest.” The Milesians, by
common consent, then offered it to their coun-
tryman Thales, who, with a laudable modesty,
Sent it on to Bias of Prieme, who transferred it
to Pittacus, and Pittacus to another yet, till it
came seventhly to Solon, who finding no other
mortal worthy of it, dedicated it to Apollo, as
the only wise.*
The names of the seven among whom the
tripod thus passed round, are differently given
by different authors. THALEs is, however, al-
ways placed at the head of them. He was a
native of Miletus, in that Ionia where Grecian
civilization had sought an asylum from Dorian
barbarism; and he is looked up to as the
founder of the Ionic school of philosophy, so
fruitful in great men; and which closed its
bright career by imbuing with its doctrines the
* See Brucker, Hist. Crit. Phil. p. ii. lib. i. c. 2.
GREECE UNIDIER ITS SAGES. 33
son of a stone cutter, who, in spite of humble
birth and poverty, won for himself the most
illustrious name in all antiquity ; and whose
purity of doctrine, and holiness of life, wrung
from Erasmus the acknowledgment, that when
he perused the life of this heathen, he felt
tempted to exclaim, “Sancte Socrates ora pro
nobis l’’
At an earlier period legislation and political
science had alone attracted the notice of the
sage: but attention was now turned to the na-
tural sciences also. “Thales, the Milesian,”
says Cicero, “who was the first who made such
things a subject of inquiry, said that water was
the origin of all things; but God the mind
which formed all things from it.” There is in
this a striking parallelism to the history of cre-
ation given by Moses, scarcely to be accounted
for, unless we suppose his opinions on this head
derived from tradition. Thales had visited
Egypt: he was somewhat junior to the Pro-
phet Isaiah, and such an event as the destruc-
tion of Sennacherib's army could not but have
made a strong impression on surrounding ma-
tions. The sage, travelling for information,
* Cicero de Nat. Deor. l. i. c. 10.
D
34 GREECE UNDER ITS SAGES.
could therefore scarcely avoid the having his
attention drawn to the Hebrew records; which
is made the more probable from an expression
which Plato puts into the mouth of Socrates;
that, for the higher doctrines of theology, his
disciples must go to the barbarians.” The other
opinions of Thales, as far as we have them re-
corded, are these—“God is the eldest of all
things, for he is without beginning. Death
differs not from life, the soul being immortal,”
—as a consequence of which, he believed the
universe to be full of the disembodied souls of
good and bad men, called by the Greeks dae-
mons. When asked “if a bad man could hide
his evil actions from the Divine power P”
“Not even his evil thoughts,” he replied; and
when farther questioned, “how to lead an ho-
nourable and a just life?” he answered, “By
not doing ourselves what we blame in others.”
When asked “what is fairest?” he replied,
“The world, for it is the work of God.”f
Thales is said to have had no teacher but the
priests of Egypt; under their tuition, and by
his own industry, however, he made consider-
* Plato Dial. Phoedon. f dyévvmtov.
f Diog. Laert. lib. i. § 35, 36, 37.
GREECE UNIDER ITS SAGES. 35
able progress in geometry and astronomy. He
is said to have sacrificed an ox in thankfulness
for the discovery that a right angled triangle
could be inscribed in half a circle; and to have
measured the pyramids, by comparing the length
of the shadow with his own. In astronomy his
opinions probably were clearer than his reporters
make them. His first assertion, that night pre-
ceded the day, is again in conformity with the
Hebrèw account; he is farther said to have con-
sidered the stars and the moon to be of terrestrial
substance, the former ignited, the latter giving
light by reflection from the sun. His disciples
are said to have taught that the earth was in
the centre of the system;% but as that doctrine
is elsewhere stated to have been first broached
by Parmenides, f it is probable that Thales
himself did not teach this. He is recorded to
have predicted a total eclipse of the sun, which
occurred in his time; the first calculated eclipse
on record.j. He considered that all bodies,
though almost infinitely divisible, were com-
posed of atoms, i. e. particles incapable of far-
ther division; and in this he was followed by
* Plutarch. de Placitis Phil. l. iii. c. 2.
f Diog. Laert. in vit. Parmen.
f Cic. de Divin. l. i. c. 49.
36 GREECE UNDER ITS SAGES.
Pythagoras:# and he was no stranger to the
magnetic and electric properties of the load-
stone, and of amber. He is said to have .com-
sidered these substances as endowed with souls;t
yet considering the decline of Grecian literature
at the time the accounts which have reached us
were written, considering too that the use of
the mariner's compass was known, and had been
known from time immemorial sin some of the
countries visited by Vasco de Gama;i we may
give Thales credit for more knowledge on these
subjects than either Plutarch or Diogenes La-
ertius were able to explain ; probably as much
as we ourselves possessed up to the middle of
the last century. Such were the extraordinary
strides in knowledge made by one man almost
unassisted; we cannot wonder that his country-
men voted him the tripod. He lived to the age
of ninety, and died full of years and honour, at
the representation of the Olympic games, 540
* Plut. de Placitis Phil. 1. i. c. 16,
t Aristoteles notices this opinion with regard to the
loadstone in his treatise de anima, arguing from it that
Thales must have considered the soul a force capable of
causing movement, since he attributed a soul to the
loadstone. De Anim. lib. i. c. 2.
# See Bailly, Hist. de l’Astronomie.
GREECE UNDER ITS SAGES. 37
B. C. Paganism had not then become bigoted to
falsehood, as was the case in after times, when
the idolatry of the people became a part of the
polity of states; and Thales could profess with-
out reproach, what afterwards sent Anaxagoras
into banishment, and cost Socrates his life.
EPIMENIDEs of Crete has by some been
placed among the seven sages of Greece: at
any rate he was in habits of intimacy with
them. He is, however, more noted as a man
of piety and holy life, than as deeply versed in
science. He was sent for to Athens after the
massacre of Cylon's adherents, to purify the city
from the guilt which was supposed to have in-
curred the wrath of the gods, and occasioned a
pestilence. Various lustrations were used by
him ; among other ceremonies, he ordered a
certain number of white and black sheep to be
let loose on Mars' hill,” and wherever they lay
down, he directed that an altar should be built
to the god to whom that spot belonged: but to
this god no name was allowed to be given. The
order was scrupulously obeyed: seven centuries
later, Paul, the apostle, stood upon this spot,
pointed to the altar of the unknown God, and
*"Apelotráyog. The court of Areopagus was held here.
38 GREECE UNDER ITS SAGES.
spoke the doctrine boldly, which Epimenides
had been too timid to give utterance to, or
which perhaps he had but dimly discerned. A
painter could not ask a finer subject than the
intrepid apostle, laying his hand on that altar,
which neither the arms of Xerxes, nor the yet
more destructive force of time had injured, rais-
ing the other to heaven, and exclaiming to the
astonished Athenians, “Him whom ye igno-
rantly worship, him declare I unto you—THE
GoD THAT MADE HEAven AND EARTH !”
Many fabulous stories are told of Epimenides,
and it is said that after his death divine honours
were awarded him by his admiring countrymen;
what is more certain, is, that he declined all the
riches offered him by the Athenians, and asked
only a free passage home, and their friendship
for the Gnossians his townsmem.*
SoLON, by general consent has been placed
among the wise seven. Younger than Thales
and Epimenides, he was nevertheless intimate
with both, and, like the former, appears to have
made considerable proficiency in the natural
sciences; for it is said that he corrected the
reckoning of the lunar month made by Thales.
* Diog. Laert. lib. i., § 111.
GREECE UNIDER ITS SAGES. 39
His fame, however, rests mainly upon his laws,
which, according to the state of society they
were intended for, were probably wise ones, and
as good as could have been promulgated without
personal danger. What that state was, we may
gather from what remains to us of his code.
By his laws all freemen were divided into four
ranks, determined by the amount of property.
The first rank consisted of those whose land
produced them yearly five hundred measures *
of corn, wine, oil, or any other commodity of
this kind :—the second rank must possess, in
like manner, a yearly revenue of three hundred
measures. These two were exempt from service
on shipboard, and in the infantry; but they
were bound to keep a horse for the service of
the public; and, within the age of military ser-
vice, to serve personally in the cavalry. Hence
they had the title of Hippeis, Horsemen, or, as
the word is often translated, Knights. The
third rank, called Zeugites, were of persons
whose lands produced two hundred measures,
but less than three hundred. These were bound
to serve in the infantry, among the heavy
armed, and to be provided with complete arms
* Medimni. A medininus was about 12 gallons.
40 GREECE UNDER ITS SAGES.
for the purpose. The rest of the citizens, not
possessed of lands yielding two hundred mea-
sures, were comprehended under the name of
Thetes. These also were bound to military
service; and if provided with sufficient armour,
might increase the force of the heavy armed; if
not, they served among the light armed and on
board the fleet.* The offices of the state could
only be filled by those of the three first classes,
but all the four had a voice in the election of
magistrates, in the decision of criminal cases as
jurors—and in the general assembly of the peo-
ple. The highest court was that of Areopagus:
it consisted of all those who had passed through
the office of archon with credit. Next to that
was the senate, or council, as it is generally
called: chosen by lot from the different wards
or tribes of Attica: at first, when they were
four, an hundred from each ; afterwards, when
Cleisthenes divided the country afresh into ten
wards, fifty were chosen from each, making up
five hundred whose characters were required to
be such as would bear a strict scrutiny, which
was instituted previous to their admission: a
law which tells of a still simple state of man-
* Mitford's Hist. of Greece, Chap. v. Sect. 4. .
GREECE UNIDER ITS SAGES. 41
mers. In this council the business was prepared
for the general assembly of the people, whose
consent was needful to the enactment of any
new law. Besides these there were regular
courts of judicature, and judges likewise made
their circuits through the different districts, to
administer the laws without giving plaintiffs the
trouble of coming to Athens.
Slavery was continued unmodified; and there-
in the code of Solon falls far behind that of
Moses, which, in an earlier age, and among a
less civilized people, had considerably ameli-
orated the condition of the captive. In barba-
rous times, the granting the vanquished his life
was considered as an act of mercy, and the life
thus granted was held thenceforward to belong
to the victor: the necessity of personal service
in war, often caused the cultivation of the land
to be neglected; it seemed natural, therefore,
to employ captives in remedying the evils of the
war, by bringing the neglected soil into fertility;
and the system, once begun, was too convenient
to be abandoned. Thus a state of society sprung
up, which we can scarcely comprehend, and
which put the great mass of the people beyond
the pale of the law. Both in Athens and Sparta,
the slaves greatly outnumbered the freemen.
42 GREECE UNIDER ITS SAGES,
But such a state of things carries in it the seeds
of decay; the free citizens learn to despise
honest industry, and to practise oppression; the
moral feeling becomes depraved, and the bene-
ficial effect of independence on the human cha-
racter is lost amid the license of tyranny.
It has been often and well remarked, that the
degree of civilization among any people may be
judged from the condition of its women. En-
dued with less of physical strength, that sex can
only assume its due place where the powers of
the mind are more honoured than those of the
body; and if we are to assume this as a crite-
rion, we must place Athens low in the scale.
The laws of Solon forbid a man to sell a
daughter or a sister unless she shall have been
guilty of unchastity: thus it is evident that the
whole sex was viewed in the light of domestic
slaves, and their injuries were noticed in the
law, only in the proportion that it affected him
whose property they were considered to be.
Thus an adulterer was punished with death,
while he who committed violence on a free wo-
man, while single, was subjected only to a paltry
fine.* The degraded state in which Solon
* Plutarch in vità Solonis.
GREECE UNIDER ITS SAGES. 43
found and left that sex, led to a depravation of
manners in Athens, and in the states of Greece
generally, which, happily, has no parallel in mo-
dern times. It would be a relief to pass over so
disgusting a subject in total silence, but as, even
in our own days, there are some who shut their
eyes to the evil effect on society resulting from
the degradation of one half of it, there may be
some advantage in bringing forward an extreme
case, to show that the deficiency in principles of
justice which leads to the denial of equal rights
to the one sex, very soon leads also to the op-
pression of the other.
The next in the list of the honoured of
Greece is CHEILON of Lacedaemon, one of the
Ephori of that state. We have nothing left of
his but a few moral sentences, and the testimony
of those who have reported them, that his life
was in full conformity with his precepts. Among
these the injunction, “Not to slander our neigh-
bours—to be more ready to share the misfor-
tunes than the prosperity of our friends—to
keep watch over ourselves—to suffer harm ra-
ther than take a dishonest gain—to be meek
when in power—to bear injuries patiently—to
seek peace—to honour age—to obey the laws,”
are such as an Apostle might give, and an
44 GREECE UNDER ITS SAGES.
Apostle practise. He died as he had lived,
honoured and happy; in the embrace of his
son, who had just been crowned victor in one
of the Olympic games,” exhausted, it is said,
by old age and joy; and has left a fame behind
him which the best might envy, for it is the
fame of quiet, peaceful virtue, unstained by
blood, even in a barbarous age.
PITTACUs of Mitylene, the metropolis of the
island of Lesbos, is also reckoned among the
Sages of Greece; but his name must stand far
behind that of Cheilon. His manhood was sig-
malized by the assassination of the then tyrant,
or ruler of Lesbos. He himself assumed the
government, and conducted it well for ten
years; t during which he enacted salutary laws,
and at the end of that period, being required by
the citizens to descend from his eminence, he
did so with a good grace, and lived ten years
longer, in complete privacy. One or two of his
sayings are remarkable:—“Do not speak evil
of your friend, nor even of your enemy—the
* Diog. Laert. lib. i. § 72.
# Aristoteles quotes the poet Alcaeus to show that
Pittacus exercised his power tyrannically. Polit. lib. iii.
c. 10.
GREECE UNIDER ITS SAGES. 45
gods cannot contend with Destiny—it is diffi-
cult to be worthy.” And then follows what doubt-
less, if he deserved the name his countrymen
gave him, he must have deeply felt—“Victories
should be won without blood,”—and with this
sad acknowledgment on his part, that his great-
ness stood on a false foundation, we will take
our leave of Pittacus—great for his time, but
not beyond his time.
BIAs of Priene also received the tripod. One
of his apothegms is, “Speak of the gods as they
are,” a sentence which implies much ; and he
inculcated humility, by enjoining, “Whatever
thou dost of good, refer it to the gods.” His
death was patriarchal : for having undertaken
the defence of a friend before the tribunal, on
finishing his speech he sate down in apparent
weariness, and rested his head on the bosom of
his daughter's son, who was there. The ad-
versary's advocate replied; judgment was pro-
nounced in favour of the friend of Bias, and the
court being dissolved, the old man, when they
tried to rouse him, was found dead in the lap
of his grandson: so peaceably had his spirit fled
that none had perceived it.*
* Diog. Laert. l. i. § 84.
46 GREECE UNIDER ITS SAGES,
CLEOBULUs, another of the seven, was, ac-
cording to the phrase of the time, tyrant, i. e.
ruler of Lindos, a town of Rhodes, and yielded
in no point to his illustrious friends. He had
visited Egypt in quest of science, and had pro-
fited by his travels; for his government of the
small community he ruled over was just and
wise; and he, and his no less accomplished
daughter, are celebrated for the gentle virtues
they displayed in their elevated rank.” The
writings and learning of this princess are cele-
brated by ancient authors, but none of them
have reached us. The sayings of Cleobulus
accord with his character:-‘‘Do good to your
friends that their friendship may be strength-
ened, to your enemies that they may become
friends:–let your daughters when you give
them in marriage, though girls in age, be wo-
men in understanding,” “by which,” says the
writer of his life with a laughable astonishment,
“he implies that even girls should be in-
structed.” + “Be more eager to hear than to
* Cleobulina was wont to wash the feet of her father's
guests with her own hands. Clem. Alex. Strom. l. iv.
c. 19.
# Diog. Laert. lib. i. § 91.
GREECE UNIDER ITS SAGES. 47
speak :-avoid injustice:—bridle the love of
pleasure:–do violence to no man :—instruct
your children :-keep up no enmities.”
PERIANDER, the son and successor of Cypse-
lus, tyrant of Corinth, has by some been placed
among the wise seven, though his claim is very
questionable, except in so far as he was a patron
of learning. He appears to have been on inti-
mate terms with most of the sages of his times,
and if he was by them complimented with the
tripod, it was probably but a compliment.
PHERECYDES has also been named by some,
as numbered among the seven sages of Greece,
though it is hardly certain that he was of Gre-
cian birth. He is said to have asserted the
immortality of the soul,” and if AElian is to be
credited, was a hardy contemmer of the super-
stitions of his time. His works are lost, and
he is chiefly remembered as the first writer of
prose, and the instructor of a far greater man,
whose commanding mind left its impress for
ages on the countries where he taught. This
man was PYTHAGORAs. .
Those who now visit Calabria would scarcely
suppose, from the present appearance of the
* Cic. Tusc. Quaest. l. i. c. 16.
48 GREECE UNIDER ITS SAGES.
country, that it was once the seat of philosophy,
and of luxury. In fact, Magna Graecia,-for
its numerous greek colonies won it that name
in ancient times, has scarcely any thing left to
attract the traveller; and there is nothing to re-
mind us of its former glories, but here and
there a village whose inhabitants still retain the
language of their forefathers.” But in the days
which I am now describing, the southern extre-
mity, just above Cape Spartivento, was occupied
by the Locrians, whose lawgiver, Zaleucus, is
still celebrated: a little higher, bordering on
the now gulf of Tarento, was situated the city
of Sybaris, so famed for the luxury and effemi-
macy of its inhabitants; and between these two,
not far from the present Capo delle Colonne,
was placed Crotona, where, after travelling over
the larger part of the civilized world, Pytha-
goras established his school of philosophy.
It matters little where a man was born whose
fame identifies him with the progress of the
* Some years back, when travelling in that country,
I was assured that there were still three or four villages
where the ancient Greek was yet spoken by the inha-
bitants. The difficulties of the journey, and the time it
would have taken, prevented me from going thither to
verify this curious fact.
GREECE UNDER ITS S A GES. 49
human mind in general : most, however, agree
that Pythagoras was a Samian, and that his
birth occurred either about 586 or 568 B. C. a.
difference of date quite unimportant to the pre-
sent purpose. His early history is involved in
much obscurity, but it seems allowed on all
hands, that, at some period of his life, he tra-
velled into every country which was likely to
afford him knowledge: indeed, that this was the
chief purpose of his life, may be gathered from
the reply he made when asked what his profes-
sion was. It was at once modest and expres-
sive: “I am a lover of knowledge,” said he ;
and the distinction was afterwards adopted by
all who devoted their time to science.
Having matured his understanding by this
careful cultivation, he began to apply it to the
benefit of his fellow men, and opened a school
of philosophy at Crotona, in Magna Graecia.
Thousands of both sexes, and of all ages,
flocked to hear him, and the reform of manners
consequent upon the moral lessons of the
* pixógogog. The sages of Greece had hitherto
been termed Xopot, wise men; Pythagoras modestly
placed himself below them in terming himself only phi-
losophos, a lover of wisdom.
*
E
50 GREECE UNIDER ITS SAGES,
teacher, was extraordinary.* It must remain a .
matter of deep regret, that the great principles
of his philosophy, which influenced his hearers,
as truth alone can influence, have not come
down to us in his own words; for it is only
from a few scattered notices in later authors,
who scarcely understood his full meaning, that
we can now guess at them even. The com-
mand he acquired over the minds of the Cro-
tonians was used in promoting their political, as
well as moral well being; when, indeed, were
they ever separated? Crotona, under the rule
of a council of three hundred, all imbued with
his principles, quickly rose to greatness; and
during forty years enjoyed unexampled pros-
perity. The new philosophical sect spread
widely in the surrounding countries, and we
soon find Pythagoreans dispersed, not only
over Italy and Sicily, but in the islands and
coasts of Greece: but at Crotona, as elsewhere,
prosperity engendered its evils; the state en-
gaged in a contest with, and conquered Sybaris:
the people clamoured for an equal division of the
conquered lands; the demand was resisted, and
* For a longer account of the life of this great man,
see Gillies's Hist. of Greece, chap. xi.
GREECE UNDER ITS SAGES. 5]
Pythagoras, and his disciples, were banished.
The philosopher died soon after at Metapon-
tuna, another city of Magna Graecia, and Cro-
tona suffered the usual penalty of folly, in the
decay of its greatness.
The discipline of Pythagoras extended itself
not only to the moral conduct, but to the regu-
lation of dress, of meats and drinks; and a re-
semblance to the laws of Moses in one or two
of his injunctions, leads to the conjecture, that
in his various researches he had not neglected
to study this code also, which, from the inter-
course between Egypt and Judea, must have
been well known in the former country. No
animal not fit to be used in sacrifice was to be
eaten by his disciples; and they were com-
manded, when engaged in any religious rite, to
wear clean white garments. Silence, modesty,
temperance, and brotherly love, were enjoined;
and,-among the candidates for initiation into the
deeper mysteries of his doctrine,—a community
of goods; the funds of the whole being adminis-
tered by one of the members:–one of the first
instances on record of a collegiate establish-
ment. A probation of five years was expected
from his pupils, after which they were instructed
in the meaning of the enigmatical sayings, in
52 GREECE UNDER ITS SAGES.
which, like Orpheus, he involved much of his
doctrine. His wife Theano, worthy of such a
husband, not only shared his labours during his
life, but continued the philosophical school after
his death : she is said to have written some
works, now lost. Many extraordinary fables
are related of Pythagoras, which are so incom-
patible with the character of the man, that they
may safely be rejected:—thus, he is said to
have affirmed himself to be the son of Mercury,
who offering him any boon short of immortality,
he asked that of memory, and, accordingly, pro-
fessed to recollect the having passed through
various bodies. On another occasion he is said
to have feigned a descent to the infernal re-
gions.” These tales probably deserve the same
credit as the story of his golden thigh.
Unfortunately, as has been already observed,
we have no writings either of the great teacher
himself, or his no less gifted wife, from which to
gather their doctrines: they are, therefore, to be
collected only from the reports of disciples. In
astronomy, he is thought to have held the same
opinion as was afterwards promulgated by his pu-
pil, Philolaus of Crotona, who taught that a globe
* Diog, Laert, in vità Pythag.
GREECE UNDER ITS SAGES. 53
of fire, the sun, -occupied the centre of the
system, and that round it the other planets re-
volved. That the earth had a movement on its
own axis, and that the revolution made day and
night, and gave an apparent motion to the stars.
That the earth itself was a spheroid, poised in
the air; and that the moon and other planets
were habitable globes like our own. A fanciful
comparison of the seven primary planets to mu-
sical instruments, formed a part of the Pytha-
gorean doctrine ; and hence was said to arise
that music of the spheres which the ancients
were fond of imagining.” Like Thales, he
conceived all matter to consist of certain inde-
finitely small bodies, incapable of further di-
vision, which, from that quality, were called
atoms, i. e. indivisible bodies; and that by a
certain numerical arrangement,t these atoms
formed fire, earth, water, and air; but that by
altering this arrangement, air might become wa-
ter, and water air, &c. That when atoms of fire,
i.e. heat, were introduced into water, it became
fluid from the separation of its particles; but
* See Brucker, Hist. Crit. Phil. pars ii. lib. ii. c. 10.
+ “Pythagorei ex numeris et mathematicorum initiis
profiscisci volunt omnia.” Cic. Acad. l. i. c. 37.
54 GREECE UNIDER ITS SAGES.
that fire being of a lighter nature, had a tendency
to escape into the surrounding air, which thus
either occupying more space, or becoming more
dense, by the introduction of extraneous matter,
exerted a pressure on the water, and squeezed out,
as it were, the remaining particles of fire, until
it became solid.* It would be neither possible
nor profitable in this small treatise to follow out
these speculations, so imperfectly handed down
to us: we may consider them probably, as
among those first glimmerings of truth, which
great minds see in the distance, though they
cannot quite reach them: but whilst raising a
statue to Dalton for his proved theory of definite
proportions, we should not altogether forget
Pythagoras, who twenty-four centuries earlier,
would probably have worked it out, had his age
been less immeasurably behind him.
In theology, his opinions are not less worthy
of remark. “The One Deity is the source of
all things; his form, light; his essence, truth;
* Plato Dial. Timaeus. This is little else than the
doctrine of latent heat. It will probably be found that
both are wrong, and that heat is not a substance; but,
at any rate, modern science has not found it easy to
drive Pythagoras from his position, with regard to its
mode of operation. -
GREECE UNIDER ITS SAGES. 55
he is the giver of good to those who love him,
and, as such, to be worshipped: he is the soul
of all things, pervading and maintaining the
universe.” + “The souls of men exist after the
death of the body: all space is full of them,t
and they are worthy to receive honour and
praise when their course in this life has been
good and virtuous:—the soul strengthens its
holy dispositions by the exercise of devotion —
* It is impossible to read these sublime notions of the
Deity without comparing them with those of the He-
brew prophets: and when we recollect that Pythagoras
was the contemporary of Cyrus; that he visited Egypt
for the express purpose of collecting knowledge, and as
some say, Babylon also, and that the events of the time
must have drawn attention to the Jewish Scriptures, we
may guess with some degree of probability whence they
were drawn.
# According to Jamblicus, he divided unseen intelli-
gences into inferior gods, daemons, i. e. souls of dead
men, and heroes: but Jamblicus did not write till the
fourth century after Christ; and as this doctrine im-
plies a contradiction which Pythagoras would scarcely
have been guilty of, I am inclined to think it has been
misunderstood. In a system where the One Deity is
the soul of all things, pervading and maintaining the
universe, inferior gods would not find place. His doc-
trine was, doubtless, that of Orpheus, and like it, was
misinterpreted in after times. Damons and heroes are
the same thing, i. e. immortalized souls.
56 GREECE UNDER ITS SAGES.
knowledge should be sought as the means of
approaching the nature and felicity of the
Deity.” The lofty spiritualism and pure mo-
rality of this system, long influenced the world;
and though the disciples of Pythagoras, like all
others who oppose the reigning vices of the age,
were persecuted after a time, and driven from
Crotona, this did but spread his philosophy
more widely. Whether the doctrines of this
great man were derived from the countries he
visited, or from the depths of his own mind,
must remain uncertain : he stands there on the
very confines of the darkness of remote ages,
like a bright star, whose splendour in its own
sphere we can only guess at from the light
which it conveys to our far distant orb.

III.
ION I.A.
FROM 700 B. C. TO 428 B. C.
HILST Athens under the laws of Solon,
and the judicious rule of its mild “ty-
rants,”% had been silently, but rapidly advanc-
ing in science and arts, the fortunes of Ionia
had been various. Within three centuries from
their first establishment in this province, the
Grecian colonies had risen to opulence by their
commerce, and skill in the arts. Miletus, Co-
lophon, and Phocaea, especially, shone forth
amid a barbarous age as the seats of luxury and
taste; their commerce with Egypt both enriched
and enlightened them, and probably laid the
foundation of that philosophic school which
still sheds a lingering glory over the ruins of
that once happy land. But in proportion as the
cities of Ionia, and their dependencies, grew in
* Peisistratus and Hipparchus.
58 IONIA.
riches and splendour, they became objects of
notice to the nations around them, and, after
some unsuccessful contests, they appear, for the
most part, to have fallen under the dominion of
the powerful kings of Lydia. When the great
struggle for the empire of Asia began, between
Cyrus and Croesus, the alliance of the Grecian
cities of Ionia was sought by the former; but
at that time they remained faithful to the Ly-
dian monarch. After his defeat, they endea-
voured to make terms with the conqueror, but
it was too late: Miletus only was admitted to
treat; the others, in despair, sought assistance
from Greece, and Sparta was already fitting out
an armament, when the rapid advance of the
Persian generals rendered the succour useless.
Prieme was captured, the inhabitants sold for
slaves, and the surrounding country given up
to the soldiery. Phocaea and Teos, warned by
the fate of Prieme, preferred exile to slavery,
and embarking on board their fleet, with their
families and effects,” left an empty city to the
invaders. The other towns, after an ineffectual
resistance, submitted to the conqueror on his
own terms, and as the greater part of the Per-
—,
* Marseilles was founded by the fugitive Phocaeans.
ION I.A. 59
sian force was then employed elsewhere, these
terms were not severe. Under the dominion of
Persia the Ionian cities again rose to opulence,
and were governed, for the most part, by rulers
of their own, subject only to the supremacy of
“the Great King.” A love of freedom, never-
theless, still lingered among them, which made
them unwilling subjects; and Darius, the suc-
cessor of Cambyses, entertaining some suspicion
of Histiaeus, tyrant of Miletus, sent for him to
Susa under pretence of asking his advice on
points of government, and kept him there in a
sort of honourable confinement.* The wily
Greek saw through the pretext, and, being de-
termined to get free at any hazard, secretly
sent to his nephew, Aristagoras, to urge him to
revolt, hoping that, in this case, he should him-
self be sent to quiet the people. Aristagoras
was already involved in a disagreement with the
Persian authorities when the message arrived;
and, accordingly, reckless of consequences, he
called the people together, made a public re-
nunciation of the sovereignty on the part of
himself and his uncle, and at once raised the
standard of independence. This done, not being
* Herod. l. v. c. 24.
60 IONIA.
mad enough to suppose they could alone resist
the might of Persia, he departed to Greece in
order to obtain succour from the parent states.
Meantime the Athenians had been engaged
in a contest with the Lacedæmonians, in defence
of their liberties, and alarmed at having drawn
upon themselves the resentment of a state which
had taken such fearful vengeance on the Mes-
senians, they sent ambassadors to Artaphernes,
the brother of Darius, at Sardis, to ask the
protection of the Persian monarch. Artapher-
nes having enquired where this hitherto un-
known state was to be found, briefly replied,
that if they brought earth and water, the known
tokens of vassalage, to Darius, they might be
admitted to his protection; if not, they had bet-
ter depart. The ambassadors, impressed only
with the danger from the arms of Sparta, ac-
cepted the humiliating terms. Their conduct
was severely reprobated at their return, but this,
probably, Artaphernes never knew. Shortly
after this, Hippias, the son of Peisistratus, who
had in vain sought assistance among the Gre-
cian states, arrived at the residence of Arta-
phernes. He had allied himself by marriage
with the tyrant of Lampsacus, who had consi-
derable interest at the court of Persia; and he
ION I.A. 6l
thus met with a ready hearing, and the supposed
vassals of the Great King were commanded to
receive back their prince. At the moment
when the indignation excited among the Athe-
mians by this haughty mandate, was at its
height, Aristagoras, who had been unsuccessful
with the Spartans, arrived at Athens. His art-
ful recommendations were well seconded by the
resentment of the people, and an armament in
aid of the Ionians was immediately voted and
equipped. With their aid, Sardis was taken
and burnt, but the force of the confederates
being too small to retain their conquest, it had
no other effect than that of incensing Darius *
to the greatest possible degree, by what ap-
peared to him an act of wanton piracy.
Such was the beginning of that Persian war
whose events have lived in the recollection and
admiration of mankind during nearly twenty-
four centuries, and probably will continue to do
so to the end of time: for as long as the worth
of freedom is known, as long as disinterested-
ness and self-devotion find any sympathy in the
* He commanded an attendant to keep the insult in
his memory, by exclaiming every day to him, as he sate
at dinner, “Remember the Athenians.”
62 IONIA.
human heart, so long must the bay of Salamis,
and the pass of Thermopylae be remembered
and hallowed.
The storm rolled first over Miletus: dissen-
sions among the allies had left it without the
expected succour from other states, and, in the
sixth year of the revolt, this flourishing city was
taken and burnt, its citizens massacred, and its
women and children carried into slavery.* All
the principal cities of Ionia, as well on the main
land as in the islands, with the exception of
Samos, which made a timely submission, shared
the same fate. The next act of the tragedy
was to be laid in Greece itself. After reducing
all the smaller insular states, an army of an
hundred thousand infantry, besides cavalry, was
disembarked, under the guidance of Hippias, on
the Marathonian shore, only thirty miles from
Athens itself; but the age had made its men :
though the force which the Athenians could
bring into the field was far short of the host of
* Herod I. vi. c. 19. The taking of Miletus having
been brought on the stage at Athens, by Phrynichus,
the dramatic poet, the whole audience burst into tears;
and so deeply were they affected, that a decree was
passed, forbidding any future representation of this wo—
ful spectacle, under pain of a heavy fine.
ION I.A. 63
Persia, they had Miltiades; they had Aristides,
great enough to divest himself of command, and
induce the other generals in chief to do the
same, in order that the military skill of his col-
league might meet with no obstacle; and they
had stout hearts and strong arms to strike for
their hearths and homes;–but who is there that
now needs to be told the result of the fight at
Marathon P
The discomfited Persians retreated to their
ships, and this decisive day purchased for the
Athenian's ten years respite from the vengeance
of the offended monarch ; during which time
their fleet was employed in punishing the island
states, which in their opinion had submitted too
readily to the Persians. Miltiades at first had
the command, and being unsuccessful at Naxos,
at his return, wounded and dying, he was im-
peached and condemned to a heavy fine, or, as
some say to death,-an instance of strange in-
gratitude, which unfortunately for the fame of
Athens, was not without its after parallels.
In order to explain much of what follows, it
will be needful to recollect that all through
Greece, as must be the case in every country
where civilization is rapidly advancing, the in-
habitants were divided into two great factions;
64 - IONIA.
the aristocratical, and the democratical, or as
we now, more familiarly term them, the conser-
vative party, and that of the movement. Sparta,
whose institutions admitted of no change, was
at the head of the conservative, or aristocratic
party; Athens, which ever since the death of
Codrus, had been verging more and more to-
wards popular government, was the leader of
the democratical movement. The descendants
of Codrus, still powerful, though deprived of
the sovereignty, had been the indefatigable op-
ponents of Peisistratus, and having Rd them-
selves of his family, would brook no other rival
near the throne. Miltiades had married a
Thracian princess, and was himself the inde-
pendent sovereign of a part of the Thracian
Chersonesus; and their jealousy probably saw
in him another Peisistratus, whom it was need-
ful to crush. Xanthippus, who had married the
niece of Cleisthenes, the lineal descendant of
Alcmaeon, the last archon of the family of Co-
drus, conducted the prosecution of the great
general, whose death from the consequences of
his bodily and mental wounds, delivered the
Alcmaeonidae from a rival they feared, but left
a dark blot on the Athenian name which no
time can efface.
ION I.A., 65
Meantime the gathering storm swept onward
from the east: Xerxes had succeeded to his fa-
ther's hatred of Athens, and at last, after sub-
duing all other opposition, he crossed the Hel-
lespont, and prepared to chastise the presump-
tuous state which had braved his power. But
again the great occasion found men equal to it.
A handful of Spartans, under their heroic king
Leonidas, defended the pass of Thermopylae
against the whole force of Persia for three days,
and when at last, by the treachery of a Greek,
a body of the enemy was conducted over the
mountains, so as to take them in the rear, they
died amid heaps of the best troops of the invading
force, slain by their brave despair. The victory
of Xerxes cost him dear; and though the noble
self-devotion of that gallant band failed to arrest
his progress, it taught his hosts to dread the
obstimate valour of free men, defending all that
was dear to them in life, and paved the way for
the future triumphs of the Grecian arms. The
Athenians, hopeless now of defending their city,
by a no less brave resolve, abandoned their
property and their homes to the fury of their
enemies; and having placed their wives and
children in safety, embarked on board their
fleet, under the command of Themistocles, and
F
66 IONIA.
with the other naval forces of Greece, met the
Persian fleet off Salamis, in a conflict not less
obstimate, but more fortunate, than that of Ther-
mopylae. Xerxes fled discomfited from the scene
of his intended triumph, and in the ensuing sum-
mer, the two great battles of Plataea and My-
cale, fought on the same glorious day, delivered
Greece for ever from the dread of the Persian
armS. -
It is pleasant to look on the bright side of
human nature, and after the brave struggle just
noticed, the mind longs to find Athens and
Sparta, the two eyes of Greece, as they were
appropriately termed, travelling hand in hand
on their glorious career; but this could not be.
Different political institutions held them apart;
the high tone not unjustly assumed by Athens,
as the Saviour of Greece, offended the pride of
other states, and dissensions broke out afresh.
Faction resumed its sway at Athens as soon as
the danger was over, and both Themistocles, and
Cimon, the no less great son of the great Milti-
ades, in turn succumbed to the power of the op-
posite party. That class of the people which by
the laws of Solon had been excluded from offices
of state, after the termination of the Persian in-
vasion, claimed a share in the government which
IONIA. 67
their swords had helped to re-establish: the
claim was a plausible one, and a relaxation of
the law was perhaps called for, under the al-
tered circumstances of the country; but faction
had again divided the greatest men of the re-
public. Themistocles and Aristides took oppo-
site sides, and this latter, glad of an opportunity
to curb the power of his rival by gaining the
popular favour for his own party, in an evil
hour, granted the demand in its fullest extent.
From thenceforward no qualification of property
was required for any office of the state, and it
was too soon found that the hardy, uneducated
demagogue, who could win the favour of the
ignorant multitude, who were unable to decide
on his capacity, might obtain power to ruin his
country. The habits of the Athenian citizen,
nevertheless, were not altered in a day; the
people who had been led by a Themistocles and
a Cimon, could not stoop as yet to the guidance
of a Cleon, and forty glorious years more are
marked as the aera of Pericles, a man not un-
worthy of the great names who had preceded
him. During this time Athens arrived at the
pinnacle of its power: its edifices were rebuilt
in a style which, even in its ruins, still claims
our admiration: its sculpture remains unequalled:
68 IONIA.
in poetry, in rhetoric, in philosophy, it has di-
rected the march of the human intellect through
all succeeding generations. Ages have passed
over, but Athens has had no rival; nor, though
the pismire labours of myriads, perpetuated by
the aid of the printing press, may carry science
forward to greater accuracy of detail, will those
master minds who first held the torch to guide
us on our way, ever cease to excite our admira-
tion.
Such were the events amid which the philo-
sophy of Greece was rudely cradled. Happily
for mankind, it is under this rough nurture that
intellect developes itself the most vigorously;
and never has the world boasted a galaxy of
greater names, than those which threw their
lustre over the period which elapsed from the
stormy rise of the Persian power, to its decline
and final overthrow by the Macedonian arms.
It has already been seen, that the wisdom for
which Greece honoured its sages, was at first
chiefly moral and political; the natural sciences
were only added, as a sort of pastime, to what
they considered the more important parts of a
wise man's study. Of the seven, Thales and
Solon alone gave any attention to natural phi-
IONIA. 69
losophy, and even when their successors saw
the immense field of knowledge spread before
them, and began to cultivate it, they rarely
quite disengaged themselves from politics. Plu-
tarch makes it a reproach to Epicurus, even in
his time, that he alone, of all the Greek philo-
sophers, taught his disciples to stand aloof from
politics, and prefer a quiet obscurity to public
charges and honours.” There will be need to
recur hereafter to this peculiarity in the philo-
sophy of Greece.
While Pythagoras was spreading the light of
science in Magna Graecia, and preaching at the
same time a faith and morality which a Hebrew
prophet would not have disavowed; the school
which Thales had founded at Miletus, was car-
ried on by his friend and pupil ANAXIMANDER,
and after him by ANAXIMENES, a Milesian also,
who appears to have escaped from the desolation
of his native city, and to have returned thither
when the danger was over. Gross errors in
natural science have been imputed to these phi-
losophers, too gross to be believed; for who
can imagine that the friend, or as some say, the
relation of Thales, supposed eclipses to proceed
* Plut. contra Koloten.
70 IONIA.
from the casual shutting of a window in the sun
or moon, through which the light at other times
proceeded : or, that the contemporary of Py-
thagoras, whose disciples were spread over all
Greece and Italy, could believe the earth to be
an extended tabular surface, when the expe-
rience of every mariner of that commercial
country would have told him the contrary.
Probably in the fatal siege and capture of Mi-
letus the greater number of pupils of this school
perished; and those who in after times prose-
cuted Anaxagoras, the pupil of Anaximenes, for
doubting the divine mature of the sum, we may
well suppose paid little attention to the astro-
nomical researches of this school of philosophy.
It has been already seen that Thales held the
opinion, that all matter consists of certain inde-
finitely small particles, and that its first form
was water, out of which the Supreme Deity
formed all things. Anaximander and Anaxi-
menes both differed slightly from their master
as to this first step in creation, Anaximander
asserting that infinity, to & Teipov, was the source
of all material things, from which worlds were
constantly in a course of formation, and into
which they were re-dissolved:* Anaximenes
* See Brucker Hist. Crit. Phil. Pars II. lib. iii. c. 1.
ION I.A., 7 I
affirming this infinity to be the air.” Both
have been accused of atheism by subsequent
writers; but as Thales, the teacher of Amaxi-
mander, and Anaxagoras, the pupil of Anaxi-
memes, both held a supreme Mind to be the
plastic force by whose power the universe co-
heres, so we may justly conclude that their
atheism consisted in the rejection of the popular
superstitions, and that the sole difference be-
tween these masters of the Ionian school con-
sisted in their notions as to the primitive form
of matter; a point of such mere speculation, as
to involve no important consequence: for those
who held the atomic theory of that age, con-
sidered, as we still do, on perhaps more decided
proof, that water and air were but different
modes of combination of the same material par-
ticles. Anaximander is said to have attempted
a map of the world, and to have constructed a
sphere for that purpose. He is likewise said
to have been the first inventor of the gnomon,
and to have constructed one at Lacedaemon. I
He, like the rest of the philosophers of that
* Cic. Lucull. c. 37. See also Aristot. Metaph. I. i.
cº
C. J.
# Diog. Laert. f See Brucker as above.
72 ION I.A.
time, appears to have held the doctrine of Or-
pheus with regard to the omnipresence of the
Deity: thus the heavenly bodies were to be con-
sidered divine, not in regard to their material
atoms, but as being the seat of a part of the
divine power by which they were ruled and
maintained.
XENOPHANES, of Colophon, another city of
Ionia, is distinguished as the founder of a fresh
school of philosophy, differing in some points
from that usually called the Ionic. When the
Phocaeans fled from the arms of Cyrus, a part
of them founded the town of Elea, or Velia, in
Magna Graecia; and as the most distinguished
followers of the above mentioned philosopher
were citizens of this place, the sect was in con-
sequence termed Eleatic. Xenophanes himself,
like others of the Ionians, appears to have fled
from his native country to avoid the slavery
with which they were threatened by the suc-
cesses of Cyrus, and to have lived in great
poverty in Sicily, where he obtained a scanty
subsistence as a bard, singing his own composi-
tions in Zancle and Catana. In these verses,
he is said to have ridiculed the fables of Homer
and Hesiod relative to the gods, and as the
Pythagorean doctrines had spread largely in
IONIA. 73
this region, his satires were likely to have been
heard with approbation.
Xenophanes appears to have possessed a mind
of peculiar acuteness, which led him to feel dis-
satisfied with the loose mode of argument adopted
in the Ionic school: accordingly we find him
grounding his opinions on a very strict course of
reasoning. He assumes in the first place as am
axiom, that something must have existed eter-
nally, because it is an absurdity to suppose that
anything couldever have come into existence, had
there ever been a time when there was nothing.”
Then, whatever is eternal must necessarily be
infinite, as it can have neither beginning nor
end—but what is infinite must be ONE, since if
there were more, one would set a limit to the
other, which is inconsistent with infinity:—and
what is essentially one, can have no difference
of parts; otherwise there might be a discerp-
tion, which would make many things instead of
one. Moreover, what is eternal, infinite, and
without distinction of parts, must be immove-
able and immutable, for there can be no place
* aičvov člvat pnoiv et ri šstv, eitrep pur) #vöéxsrat
wevé00at plmööv čk uměsvög. Aristot. de Xenophani,
which see for the opinions of this philosopher.
74 IONIA,
where it is not, therefore, it does not move; mor
can it be subject to change, for then it would at
Some time be what it was not before, which
would be equivalent to the creation of a new
mature, a thing impossible where there is no
more powerful cause existing. There is there-
fore, ONE ETERNAL, INFINITE, IMMUTABLE
BEING, by whom all things consist, and this
ONE BEING is GoD; incorporeal, omnipresent.*
He has nothing in common with man, either in
form or mode of existence,—he hears all, sees
all, but not by human senses: he is at once mind,
wisdom, eternal existence.f -
The difference between the Ionic and Pytha-
gorean doctrine, and that of Xenophanes, appears
to be this:—that while the former considered
the material atoms of which all things are com-
pounded, and the plastic power which called
them into active existence, as two separate prin-
* See Brucker, Hist. Crit. Phil. Pars. II. lib. ii.
c. 11.
t Diog. Laert. in vit. Xenophanis. This writer adds
also, “that the substance of God is spheroid;” but
Xenophanes was too close a reasoner to advance a con-
tradiction, and Aristoteles does not charge it upon him,
but upon Zeno Eleates: it is, therefore, evident that on
this point the biographer was mistaken.
IONIA. 75
ciples, constituting as it were, the soul and body
of the world; Xenophanes could not in the
strictness of his argument, allow any second
principle, but at once refers all existence to the
operation of that single Power, which alone
exists mecessarily. This controversy has con-
tinued to divide philosophers ever since, and
will probably never be finished as long as the
world lasts; because no advance of science can
ever give us perfect cognizance of the matter in
question. With the perverseness which always
leads men to carry a controverted opinion to its
utmost verge, the one party has denied the ex-
istence of any immaterial principle, the other,
that of any material substance, and both having
a portion of truth mixed with their error, have
found followers. In our own time, Cabamis
and Bishop Berkeley have been the most un-
shrinking representatives of the respective sects
of materialists and idealists, or more properly,
spiritualists. Cabanis refuses to see in man, or
in any material substance, any thing but the
movement of material parts, consequent on the
laws of matter; and asserts that thus certain
functions are executed: but here common sense
steps in, and decides that though he has given
a good exposition of some of the phenomena of
76 IONIA.
nature, he has not explained all; and that,
therefore, something more is wanting to his
theory. Berkeley boldly denies the possibility
of proving any material existence whatever; all
apparently eaternal things are perceived in-
ternally : the universe, therefore, is an idea in
the mind of God, reflected upon the mind of
man as in a mirror, and there is no such thing
as matter at all. Common sense allows his ar-
gument, and laughs at it: and, notwithstanding
all that has been urged on both sides, the bulk
of mankind still persists in believing in immate-
rial as well as material existence.* As far as
pure reasoning goes, the argument of Xeno-
phanes is complete : the physical studies of the
Ionic and Pythagorean schools perhaps enabled
them to add what they might consider an expe-
rimental proof of the etermity of matter; i. e.
that through all its countless changes no atom
is ever lost; but still this is nothing more than
a presumption, and the argument of Xenophanes
cannot be shaken: the manner, therefore, in
which matter has its existence, will most likely
* See, for a fuller examination of the subject, an Essay
by M. Jouffroy, Du Spiritualisme et du Materialisme.
Mélanges Philosophiques, tom. i.
IONIA. 77
remain an unsolved problem as long as we form
part of a material universe.
The opinions of Xenophanes on physics have
been strangely reported; probably by persons
who did not understand them; for some of the
notions imputed to him are too grossly impro-
bable to have found favour with one so well
capable of detecting false reasoning. He is
said, for instance, to have taught that the stars
were nothing but kindled exhalations, which
were quenched when they appeared to set, a
fresh illumination taking place on the following
night. This, at a time when the periodical
rising and setting of certain stars had already
been noticed and recorded, is clearly an impos-
sible degree of ignorance in a man of Xeno-
phanes' rank in science, and must have been
advanced by him solely of those meteors which
are still entitled shooting or falling stars. Thus
he is also said to have taught that there were
many suns, which has been interpreted to mean
that when any accident happened to one, the
earth was presently supplied with another: it is
a more probable conjecture that, as he taught
that there were also an infinite number of worlds,
he, like modern astronomers, considered the
fixed stars to be suns, giving light to their re-
78 ION I.A.
spective systems. These specimens of misre-
presentation may suffice: little is to be gathered
from such reporters. Cicero, more exact in his
information, tells us that Xenophanes believed
the moon to be a habitable globe like our own :"
and he is elsewhere said to have observed the
fossil remains found bedded in rocks, and to
have concluded from thence, that the earth must
at some previous time have undergone notable
revolutions, in which the existing race of beings
had perished.
HERACLEITUs, of Ephesus, though for a
time acknowledged as the founder of a sect of
philosophy, delighted so much in enigmatical
expressions and mysterious concealment, that
even his contemporaries did not always under-
stand him, and his successors still less. The
dogma which is generally held to be especially
his, is that fire is the origin of all things, guided
by fate. According to Aristoteles, he consi-
dered that all mature was in constant movement,
one power alone was permanent, and by it all
was shaped and fashioned:# this power pro-
* Cicero, Lucull. c. 39.
+ y ti čá pávov intropévévy, §§ 3 raúra travra usta-
axmuarićso.6at Tépwksv. Aristot. de Coelo, lib. iii. c. 1.
IONIA. 79
bably was the étuappaevnc, or fate, spoken of by
other writers, who notice the philosophy of He-
racleitus, and by whatever name called, was
none other than the One, Unerring, Supreme
Will, or Deity, which the whole of the Ionian
school acknowledged. It appears, therefore, that
this philosopher only made a slight variation in
the previous Ionic theory, by putting fire in the
room of water or air, as the first form in which
matter existed. It is not impossible that the
Magian doctrines,” which about that time were
gaining a wider spread, might have had a share
in influencing his views. He is said to have
been offered the supreme rule of his native place,
by his fellow citizens, in order to the giving
them a wholesome code of laws; but disgusted
by the profligacy which he saw around him, and
thinking, perhaps, that such a step might give
umbrage to the Persian governor, he refused
the offer. He derided the superstition of his
countrymen without reserve, telling them that
they might as well pray to the stones of their
* The Magians, though called fire worshippers, merely
honoured it as the visible representative of the divine
power.
# Diog. Laert. in vit.
80 IONIA.
houses, as to a stone image.* Some think that
he was banished from Ephesus on this account;
but the revolt of the Ionian cities, about this
time, was a probable reason for his retirement
to the mountains, where he lived as a hermit,
weeping perpetually, it is said, over the miseries
of human existence; which, indeed, were at that
time carried to their height in the deplorable
calamities of the fairest part of Ionia.
The philosophico-theological creed of those
days appears to have been generally that of
Orpheus, i. e. that a pervading intelligence ani-
mated all nature, and that the human soul was
a portion of it: consequently, the blessedness
of this latter consisted in a re-absorption into
its divine original. The saying of Heracleitus,
that “life was the burial of the soul, death, its
deliverance from bondage,”—indicates such to
have been his belief also. His learning was
held in high esteem by his contemporaries, and
his name long kept its place among those of the
most celebrated philosophers, but as he gave
no permanent tincture to the opinions of his
* Clem. Alex. Protrept. c. 4.
f Plutarch ranks him with Parmenides, Socrates, and
Plato as a moral teacher.
ION I.A. 81
age, and as, even then, he had the title of
orkoretvös, i.e. obscure, it is needless to bestow
a longer consideration on his doctrines.
PARMEN IDEs, one of the most famous of the
Eleatic sect, was the contemporary of Hera-
cleitus. Like most of the sages of old, he was
at once philosopher, poet, and legislator, and in
this latter capacity bestowed on his native city
so excellent a code of laws, that Plutarch assures
us it was the practice, even down to his time, to
require the officers of the city to swear when
they entered upon their charge, that they would
observe the laws and ordinances of Parmenides.
In philosophy he appears to have endeavoured
to reconcile the tenets of Pythagoras and the
Ionic school with those of Xenophanes: There
are in nature, he said, two species of things;
the one variable and uncertain, which we view
by our external senses and which is a subject of
opinion only; the other, one and immutable, to
be discovered only by our reason:* a doctrine
in which logical reasoning, common sense, and
observation are blended, as was to be expected
from so eminently practical a man: it must
remain therefore, a matter of deep regret, that
* Plutarch cont. Koloten.
G
82 IONIA,
of all his writings, both on this subject, and
many others which he treated off only a very
few disjointed fragments remain. His scholars,
and Melissus especially, appear to have pushed
his system to the extreme of idealism; asserting
that nothing really was generated or decayed,
but merely appeared to us to be so.i.
One other less desirable celebrity has been
acquired by Parmenides: that of having been
the first to assert that the earth occupies the
centre of the universe; being so equidistant
from all parts, that it remains poised by an
equal attraction on all sides. In one point of
view this record is curious and interesting, as it
shews that the force of gravitation was not un-
known to the philosophers of that day. By
what arguments Parmenides supported his new
opinion we are unable now to tell: for the futile
+ “He discoursed much,” says Plutarch, “respecting
the earth and the heavens, the sun, and the moon, and
the stars, and the creation (yevsouv) of man; and has
left nothing unnoticed, for he was a man versed in phy-
siology from of old, and has written his own observa-
tions, not those of others.” Plut. cont. Kolot.
f #98w Yap Ště yuyveg 6al pagw, §ts p38tpea 6av Tów
6vrov, a NAa povov čokéiv ſpiv. De Coelo, lib. iii.
c. 3. -
IONIA. 83
one afterwards drawn by Pliny the elder, from
the equal length of night and day at the equinox,
seems too slight a foundation for such a man as
Parmenides to ground a system upon. Be that
as it may, the error spread, and soon became
so firmly rooted, that it remained the established
creed in astronomy down to the days of Coper-
micus and Galileo. The only probable cause
that can be assigned for so extraordinary a fact,
is the desolation brought upon the civilized world
by the Babylonian first, and then the Persian
conquests. In the burning of cities and temples
manuscripts perished: in the massacre or en-
slavement of the inhabitants of whole regions,
those who might have handed down the learning
of the preceding age were cut off; and when
Athens arose from her ashes, and the cities of
Ionia were again peopled, and Egypt revived
under the rule of the Ptolemies, the science of
past ages had to be discovered anew. Thanks
to the printing press, the world has no reason
to dread the recurrence of such a calamity.
The Eleatic sect ended with the disciples of
Parmenides, for LEUCIPPUS, though a pupil of
one of them, i.e. of Zeno Eleates, may be con-
sidered as the founder of a new school, rendered
famous by the name of Democritus, and giving
84 IONIA.
rise in part to a yet more famous sect, that of
the Epicureans. We have already seen that
Parmenides' physiological studies gave him a
leaning towards the Pythagorean and Ionian
theory of material atoms; that is, he allowed
that there was in nature, besides the one eternal
existence discovered by reason, something that
our senses took cognizance of, though only as a
matter of opinion. Leucippus, waiving the ar-
gument as to the Being which our reason takes
cognizance of, attached himself to researches
into the nature of what is obvious to our bodily
senses. The universe, according to him, con-
sists of an infinite vacuum, and an infinite mum-
ber of material atoms floating in it, which, by
certain movements, and attraction towards each
other, become conglomerated, and form the dif-
ferent bodies perceivable by our senses, and
which from the same agencies are in a perpetual
state of change. The efficient cause of these
changes was, according to him, a certain neces-
sity, the mature of which he did not explain.”
* Elvaí re.... card ruva &váykmv. Diog. Laert. in
vit. Leucip. It has already been seen that this Neces-
sity, or Fate, was acknowledged among the Greeks as
the Supreme Deity, to whom both gods and men were
subject. See Aristot. de Mundo, c. 7.
IONIA, 85
There will be occasion hereafter to return to
these tenets, when they are more developed by
Democritus and Epicurus : it is time now to
turn to the leader of the opposite school, AN-
AXAGORAs, of Clazomene.
This philosopher, whose name has become
famous as the instructor of Pericles and of So-
crates, was born of noble and wealthy parents,
about the time of the Ionian revolt; and early
became a scholar of Anaximenes, the then head
of the Ionic school. Possibly both might find
themselves in the same place of refuge, and
thus the young Anaxagoras obtained the ad-
vantage of Anaximenes’ tuition sooner than he
would otherwise have done; for, many years
after, when he returned to Clazomene, and saw
his paternal inheritance lying desolate, he is
reported to have said, “But for this destruc-
tion I myself should have been lost.”—Though
he is thought to have filled the chair of Anaxi-
memes for a short period, the greater part of his
life, after he had attained to manhood, was spent
at Athens, which he first visited in his twentieth
year, at the very time when its brave citizens
were betaking themselves to their wooden walls
* Val. Max. lib. viii. c. 7.
86 ION I.A.
to preserve the liberty of Greece; and even
Themistocles is said, during some part of his
brilliant career, to have studied the lore of the
young philosopher. It would seem that, after the
day of Mycale and the subsequent successes of
Cimon had freed Ionia from the dread of the Per-
sian yoke, Anaxagoras returned to his country :
but after no long stay there, came back to Athens,
where he is said to have spent thirty years.
Anaxagoras saw before him the evils re-
sulting from the system of mystery introduced
by Orpheus, which, while it opened its truths
only to the learned, left the vulgar a prey to
the grossest fictions, and plunged them into
both polytheism and idolatry; he probably
saw too the fault of the Ionic doctrine generally,
which so united the Divine Spirit with material
nature, that it amounted almost to a deification
of the latter, and he appears to have resolved
to free his philosophy from both these faults.
He, therefore, boldly faced the superstition of
his time, declaring openly that Phoebus himself,
the great Delphian god, was nothing more than
a ball of glowing metal or rock, which trans-
mitted its warmth to the earth ; and that the
moon, the Diana of Greece, the Isis of Egypt,
was nothing more than another habitable earth,
ION IA , 87
with hills and valleys like our own. He taught
that there was but ONE God, and that was the
intelligent MIND which had given movement
and consequent form to the material atoms of
the universe, and which, though it pervaded and
ordered all mature, was separate, and unmixed
with any material substance.*
Pericles, the great statesman of Athens, who, -
before he became acquainted with Anaxagoras,
had listened to the far more questionable doc-
trines of Zeno Eleates, soon became a convert
to his teaching: the licentiousness and extrava-
gant luxury which the plundered riches of
Persia had cherished and maintained, were
already beginning to threaten the best interests
of the state, and were deeply felt by Pericles
himself, in the unhappy home thus created for
him.4 There was that in the doctrine of Anax-
agoras, which was of power to reform the public
morals, and fix the government on a surer foun-
dation ; and Pericles and his friends, with a
noble enthusiasm, appear to have become the
* Aristot. Metaph. l. i. c. 3.
f The wise economy introduced by him into his house
expenses was bitterly complained of by his first wife, and
his sons by her. See Plutarch's life of this statesman.
88 ION I.A.
apostles of the new philosophy, new at least in
the simple and bold avowal of its principles.
About this time too, Anaxagoras found another
and powerful auxiliary in the person of one of
the most famed and the most maligned of all
the characters of antiquity. ASPASIA, the
daughter of Axiochus, a Milesian, made her
appearance at Athens as a teacher of rhetoric
and politics.” Her glowing eloquence, her ta-
lents, her youth, her extraordinary beauty, won
* Aspasia has been stigmatized as a courtesan, a
charge not very compatible with a life so devoted to
learning as to have made her an able teacher of the
above sciences at a very early age. When we recollect
too, that the severely virtuous Pericles made her his
wife; that their only son, though illegitimate by the laws
of Athens because his mother was a foreigner, must,
from his age, have been born some time after their mar-
riage; and that Socrates, in after times, carried the
wives and daughters of his friends to profit by her con-
versation and instruction; we may well believe that the
reproaches so plentifully cast upon her, were but the
calumnies of a faction, invented for a political purpose.
Those really known to be courtesans, Lais for instance,
or Theodota mentioned by Xenophon, Mem. lib. iii. c.
11, made no pretensions to philosophy : but on the other
hand, those who did study philosophy, and spurned the
silly etiquettes of Grecian society, were thus stigmatized
by the impure and the envious; and later writers have
repeated the charge without examination.
IONIA. 89
upon all hearts; and the Athenians, who till
then had thought a woman capable of nothing
but the superintendence of the loom and the
storehouse; who considered a wife merely as a
household drudge, and could not suppose that
rational intercourse and friendship with a fe-
male was possible; suddenly saw themselves
obliged to bow before female intellect, and
learned the eloquence which was to captivate
the multitude, and the arts by which they were
to wield the power of the state, from female
lips. The most distinguished characters in
Athens attended her lectures; Pericles,” then
in almost the height of his power, and Socrates
just entering upon life, alike sought her instruc-
tion. She herself embraced the opinions of
Anaxagoras, if indeed, she had not already been
trained in his school at Miletus, and appears to
have co-operated with all her power in the pro-
ject of reforming the religious creed, as well as
the manners, of the country. Euripides, the
* Pericles' famous funeral oration for the slain at
Samos, is said to have been composed by Aspasia. See
Plato. Menex. She is said also to have been the adviser
of that expedition; a stroke of policy questioned by
some, but which, by establishing the popular party in
Samos, gained a new ally for Athens.
90 IONIA.
tragic poet, enlisted himself in the same cause,
and the new sect spread so rapidly as to alarm
the opposite party. The conservatives of Athens
dreaded, or affected to dread, the change of
manners likely to be introduced by the new
system;” and a decree was procured, that those
who disputed the existence of the gods, or
broached new opinions respecting celestial ap-
pearances, should be tried before an assembly
of the people. The comic poets, whose gross
ribaldry had always been discouraged by Peri-
cles, were the ready tools in the hands of the
opposite faction ; and after a series of both per-
sonal and political libels, aimed at the great
* At the time when this law was proposed, the reli-
gious festivals, sacrifices, &c. supplied the indigent citi-
zens with a considerable part of their maintenance.
Even the theatrical entertainments, which the Athenians
were so passionately fond of, were exhibited at a reli-
gious festival, i. e. the Dionysia, or feast of Bacchus;
and a gratuity was distributed to the people on that
occasion. It was easy, therefore, to rouse them to main-
tain those rites which furnished them with so large a
part of their subsistence. The expense which this en-
tailed upon the state, became at last so ruinous, that
within fifty years after, we find Demosthenes complaining
that the money which should have maintained their
fleets and troops, was wasted in feasts and plays.
IONIA. 9 |
statesman, the master stroke was attempted, by
attacking his private friends no less than him-
self with a series of prosecutions. Pheidias, the
still unrivalled architect and sculptor, was thrown
into prison on frivolous pretences: Pericles
himself was called on to give an account of his
administration, in terms that implied a reproach,
and Anaxagoras and Aspasia were prosecuted
under the new law, for impiety. A farther ri-
diculous charge was added against Aspasia, as
it had been against Pheidias, of keeping free
women in her house for the private pleasures of
her great pupil: a charge, which the character
given of Pericles by the great contemporary
historian of Greece, sufficiently disproves, even
if the commonest principles of human nature
had not sufficiently convinced us already, that
a woman engaged in such a traffic could never
have been the confidante and guide of the great
and wise minister of Athens. But it is scarcely
indulging a conjecture to suppose that the scheme
for the reform of religion and manners, em-
braced that of restoring women to such a posi-
tion in society, as should curb the fearful de-
pravation which so unblushingly prevailed: and
the young women of free or noble birth whom
Aspasia entertained in her house, were no
92 IONIA.
doubt her pupils; but in a nobler science than
the gross minds of her accusers could under-
stand. The stepping beyond the walls of the
Gynaeceum and mixing in general society, were
things as much proscribed by the customs of
ancient Greece as of modern Turkey, and those
who disdained these restraints were instantly
supposed to have broken through all others.”
Pericles found it beyond his power to save
both the accused, though he personally under-
took their defence. For Anaxagoras he pleaded
the blameless life they had all witnessed, and
with difficulty obtained the commutation of the
sentence of death into banishment; which he
lightened as far as possible, by carrying his
honoured instructor a part of the way towards
Lampsacus, his future abode, in his own chariot.
In Aspasia he felt a yet dearer interest, and in
her cause all the powers of the rhetoric he had
learned in her school were exerted: but nature
* Some amusing instances have occurred in modern
Turkey of the impression made on the minds of pashas
and other dignitaries, by the unveiled and unrestrained
women of Europe: courtesy alone preventing them
from characterizing such females in the same terms that
the ancients used in speaking of the female philosophers
of their time.
Ionia. 93
taught a better rhetoric still: the danger of one
he loved so well overcame the proud reserve of
the statesman and the general; he burst into
tears; and to those unwonted tears the sensitive
Athenians granted what their fanaticism or
their party spirit would perhaps have denied
to arguments; Aspasia was acquitted “much
against the tenor of the law,” observes the bio-
grapher, and Pericles, as she had been so nearly
sacrificed on his account, resolved to shelter her
in future, and made her his wife.
Anaxagoras is said to have fallen into so
much poverty at Lampsacus, that he had covered
his head to die; but Pericles hearing of his
state, hastened to him, and by timely succour,
and friendly assiduity, lengthened the life of his
friend and instructor, whose decease did not
occur until the year after that of his noble
pupil. The opinions of this philosopher on phy-
sics, have, as usual been very imperfectly re-
ported: he appears to have differed slightly
from Thales in regard to the elemental form of
matter, which he considered as consisting of
various kinds of perfectly similar particles* each
* apxdc Óe rāg potopspstag. Diog. Laert. in vit.
Anaxag. Cic. Lucull. c. 37.
94 IONIA,
species of which, by natural attraction joined
into one substance:—thus, that the matter of
bone would be formed of one kind of particles,
—flesh of another, and so on. Such at least is
the representation given of his opinion on this
head, by Aristoteles and Lucretius, who combat
it with more violence than justice perhaps, for
the ancients were by no means precise in the
use of the word souxeva, elements, and it is
most probable that Anaxagoras did not under-
stand it in the same sense as his opponents,
and that his Guotoutpetal were merely what we
should now call compound atoms, not elemental
ones, which latter, among the more ancient na-
tural philosophers, would have been termed
principles. The notion that bodies consist of
similarly formed particles, was perhaps adopted
from observing the constitution of minerals of
easy fracture, which constantly split into similar
forms; reasoning from analogy, he might con-
clude that such would be the case with all sub-
stances, if they could be split in like manner.
He is said to have considered earthquakes as
the effect of air within the earth ;-wind as the
effect of the rarefaction of the air by the sun;
lightning as the effect of friction of the clouds
ION I.A. 95
on each other: modern philosophy has not
much to change in this.
In treating of the opinions of the ancient
philosophers we must always recollect that the
fragments of them which remain to us, are, for
the most part, handed down to us by persons
who evidently were ignorant, in many cases, of
the very first principles of the philosophy they
report; so that all the observations, arguments,
and experimental proofs, by which the studiers
of nature in ancient times supported their
views, have been wholly lost. Aristoteles, the
only person capable of doing justice to his pre-
decessors, was not born till nearly fifty years
after the death of Anaxagoras; and between the
banishment of this latter, and the establishment
of the former as a teacher, nearly a century
elapsed; so that he, clear and logical as he was
in all his reasonings, wanted the proper data on
which to ground them, whilst criticising the
supposed tenets of those who preceded him;
and in no instance is this more apparent than
in his mention of the philosophical views of
Anaxagoras. Yet we have in his writings va-
luable remnants of them, which give rise to a
suspicion that they were more profound than
96 IONIA.
his own. On the subject of the soul, he ac-
knowledges that Anaxagoras, while asserting
that one Supreme Mind put dead matter into
motion to form the universe, asserted equally
that the moving power in man, and the soul,
were two distinct things; and that this latter
was of a nature unlike any material thing, and
separate from the bodily perturbation of the
passions: in which opinion he stood alone,”
says the Stagirite; a point, however, which ad-
mits of considerable doubt.
The natural philosophers of the earlier ages
have probably been too lightly esteemed of late:
they have been held wild theorists who hit
right sometimes by chance; but it has not been
sufficiently considered that while theroad to truth
is but one, the ways of error are innumerable;
and that, therefore, the hitting right by chance
is not a thing of such common occurrence as to
justify us in assuming such to have been always
the case. Numa is said to have fetched light-
ning from the skies at pleasure, by a process
which was attempted by his successor, Tullus
Hostilius; who, failing, killed himself and burnt
his palace. The art was said to have been
* Aristot. de Anim. lib. i. c. 2.
f Plin. Hist. Nat. lib. ii. c. 52.
IONIA. 97
well known to the old Etrurians; some ac-
quaintance with the laws of electricity, there-
fore, must have been possessed by these per-
sons. Pythagoras, who visited Italy shortly
after Numa's death, might well become ac-
quainted with the science of Etruria, from
whence he probably gained that true notion of
the Solar system which Numa also appears to
have possessed :* but of the philosophy of Py-
thagoras, or the science of Etruria, alas! what
now remains to us?—Yet even in these short
and scattered notices, misunderstood as they
were by those who handed them down to us,
there is enough to give the modern philosopher
room for thought, and perhaps to raise a suspi-
eion in his mind that he is but re-discovering
what former observers had known, if not so
accurately, at least with some degree of cer-
tainty.
The decree procured by Diopithes, by
which all question of existing opinions on theo-
logy or astronomy was made an indictable of.
fence in the Athenian state, closes the first
epoch in the history of Greek philosophy. The
philosopher had hitherto been the guide and
* See Plut. vit. Num.
H
98 IONIA.
the lawgiver; and had been looked up to by all
classes as one who deserved the highest honours.
A mistaken notion, originally adopted in Egypt
as it would seem, that the lower people were
unfit for the knowledge of the highest truths,
and that these were to be reserved for the in-
itiated alone, was first brought into Greece by
Orpheus; and his successors too readily adopted
it. The vulgar were left at the mercy of the
superstition, which so readily springs up in un-
taught minds, and the philosophic lawgiver, in-
stead of seeking to enlighten them, received the
popular faith as the foundation for his code,
and placed the fetiche of the people among the
things acknowledged and honoured by the laws.
Not that it is possible to root up by force a
cherished popular superstition; that would be
an insane attempt: but the ignorance which
cherished it ought to have been combated, and,
except by the so called tyrant Hipparchus, it
was not. This bad seed bore bitter fruit: the
simple religion of the heart, which was of force
to influence the life when duly appealed to, gra-
dually, gave place to a mass of fable which the
very canaille laughed at whilst they upheld;—
witness the favoured comedies of Aristophanes;
—and to a set of obscene ceremonies which
IONIA. 99
sapped the very foundations of public morals;
till at last this ugly offspring of the Orphic
secret doctrine grew to power enough to be a
fit ally for a political faction. Henceforward
we shall no longer see the philosopher as an
honoured lawgiver; his next appearance will be
as a fearless martyr to the truth; avowing his
opinion and dying for it.
THE END.
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