"There shall stand up yet,"--after Cyrus, under whom all this still is,--"three kings in Persia,"--Cambyses, Smyrdis, Darius;--"and the fourth,"--Xerxes, who shall then come,--"shall be far richer than they all, and far stronger, and shall stir up all his people against the Greeks, and a mighty king shall stand up,"--Alexander,--"that shall rule with great dominion, and do according to his will. And when he shall stand up, his kingdom shall be broken, and shall be divided in four parts toward the four winds of heaven,"--see also vii. 6 vii. 8--"but not to his posterity, and his successors shall not equal his power, for his kingdom shall be plucked up, even for others beside these,"--his four principal successors.
In that sloping afternoon sunlight, the shadows that the three boats sent down beneath the surface, must have been long enough and broad enough to shade half Xerxes' army. Who can tell how appalling to the wounded whale must have been such huge phantoms flitting over his head!
Most famous in our Western annals and Indian traditions is that of the White Steed of the Prairies; a magnificent milk-white charger, large-eyed, small-headed, bluff-chested, and with the dignity of a thousand monarchs in his lofty, overscorning carriage. He was the elected Xerxes of vast herds of wild horses, whose pastures in those days were only fenced by the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghanies. At their flaming head he westward trooped it like that chosen star which every evening leads on the hosts of light. The flashing cascade of his mane, the curving comet of his tail, invested him with housings more resplendent than gold and silver-beaters could have furnished him. A most imperial and archangelical apparition of that unfallen, western world, which to the eyes of the old trappers and hunters revived the glories of those primeval times when Adam walked majestic as a god, bluff-browed and fearless as this mighty steed. Whether marching amid his aides and marshals in the van of countless cohorts that endlessly streamed it over the plains, like an Ohio; or whether with his circumambient subjects browsing all around at the horizon, the White Steed gallopingly reviewed them with warm nostrils reddening through his cool milkiness; in whatever aspect he presented himself, always to the bravest Indians he was the object of trembling reverence and awe. Nor can it be questioned from what stands on legendary record of this noble horse, that it was his spiritual whiteness chiefly, which so clothed him with divineness; and that this divineness had that in it which, though commanding worship, at the same time enforced a certain nameless terror.
The annexation of Egypt by Cambyses of Persia in 525 B.C. was preceded by the voluntary surrender of Cyprus, which formed part of Darius's "fifth satrapy."[17] The Greek cities, faring ill under Persia, and organized by Onesilaus of Salamis, joined the Ionic revolt in 500 B.C.;[18] but the Phoenician states, Citium and Amathus, remained loyal to Persia; the rising was soon put down; in 480 Cyprus furnished no less than 150 ships to the fleet of Xerxes;[19] and in spite of the repeated attempts of the Delian League to "liberate" the island, it remained subject to Persia during the 5th century.[20] The occasion of the siege of Idalium by Persians (which is commemorated in an important Cypriote inscription) is unknown.[21] Throughout this period, however, Athens and other Greek states maintained a brisk trade in copper, sending vases and other manufactures in return, and bringing Cyprus at last into full contact with Hellenism. But the Greek cities retained monarchical government throughout, and both the domestic art and the principal religious cults remained almost unaltered. The coins of the Greek dynasts and autonomous towns are struck on a variable standard with a stater of 170 to 180 grs.[22] The principal Greek cities were now Salamis, Curium, Paphos, Marion, Soli, Kyrenia and Khytri. Phoenicians held Citium and Amathus on the south coast between Salamis and Curium, also Tamassus and Idalium in the interior; but the last named was little more than a sanctuary town, like Paphos. At the end of the 5th century a fresh Salaminian League was formed by Evagoras (q.v.), who became king in 410, aided the Athenian Conon after the fall of Athens in 404, and revolted openly from Persia in 386, after the peace of Antalcidas.[23] Athens again sent help, but as before the Phoenician states supported Persia; the Greeks were divided by feuds, and in 380 the attempt failed; Evagoras was assassinated in 374, and his son Nicocles died soon after. After the victory of Alexander the Great at Issus in 333 B.C. all the states of Cyprus welcomed him, and sent timber and ships for his siege of Tyre in 332. Entry: HISTORY
In estimating the authority of Herodotus (q.v.) we must be careful to distinguish between the invasion of Xerxes and all that is earlier. Herodotus's work was published soon after 430 B.C., i.e. about half a century after the invasion. Much of his information was gathered in the course of the preceding twenty years. Although his evidence is not that of an eye-witness, he had had opportunities of meeting those who had themselves played a part in the war, on one side or the other (e.g. Thersander of Orchomenos, ix. 16). In any case, we are dealing with a tradition which is little more than a generation old, and the events to which the tradition relates, the incidents of the struggle against Xerxes, were of a nature to impress themselves indelibly upon the minds of contemporaries. Where, on the other hand, he is treating of the period anterior to the invasion of Xerxes, he is dependent upon a tradition which is never less than two generations old, and is sometimes centuries old. His informants were, at best, the sons or grandsons of the actors in the wars (e.g. Archias the Spartan, iii. 55). Moreover, the invasion of Xerxes, entailing, as it did, the destruction of cities and sanctuaries, especially of Athens and its temples, marks a dividing line in Greek history. It was not merely that evidence perished and records were destroyed. What in reference to tradition is even more important, a new consciousness of power was awakened, new interests were aroused, and new questions and problems came to the front. The former things had passed away; all things were become new. A generation that is occupied with making history on a great scale is not likely to busy itself with the history of the past. Consequently, the earlier traditions became faint and obscured, and the history difficult to reconstruct. As we trace back the conflict between Greece and Persia to its beginnings and antecedents, we are conscious that the tradition becomes less trustworthy as we pass back from one stage to another. The tradition of the expedition of Datis and Artaphernes is less credible in its details than that of the expedition of Xerxes, but it is at once fuller and more credible than the tradition of the Ionian revolt. When we get back to the Scythian expedition, we can discover but few grains of historical truth. Entry: II
ARTEMISIA, daughter of Lygdamis, was queen of Halicarnassus and Cos about 480 B.C. Being a dependent of Persia, she took part in person in the expedition of Xerxes against the Greeks, and fitted out five ships, with which she distinguished herself in the sea-fight near Salamis (480). When closely pursued by the Athenians she escaped by the stratagem of attacking one of the Persian vessels, whereupon the Athenians concluded that she was an ally, and gave up the pursuit (Herod. vii. 99, viii. 68). After the battle Xerxes declared that the men had fought like women, and the women like men. By her advice he did not risk another battle, but at once retired from Greece. She is said to have loved a young man named Dardanus, of Abydos, and, enraged at his neglect of her, to have put out his eyes while he was asleep. The gods, as a punishment for this, ordered her, by an oracle, to take the famous but rather mythical _lover's leap_ from the Leucadian promontory (Photius, _Cod. 153a_). Entry: ARTEMISIA
_History._--Several causes contributed to the formation of the first Confederacy of Delos. During the 6th century B.C. Sparta had come to be regarded as the chief power, not only in the Peloponnese, but also in Greece as a whole, including the islands of the Aegean. The Persian invasions of Darius and Xerxes, with the consequent importance of maritime strength and the capacity for distant enterprise, as compared with that of purely military superiority in the Greek peninsula, caused a considerable loss of prestige which Sparta was unwilling to recognize. Moreover, it chanced that at the time the Spartan leaders were not men of strong character or general ability. Pausanias, the victor of Plataea, soon showed himself destitute of the high qualities which the situation demanded. Personal cupidity, discourtesy to the allies, and a tendency to adopt the style and manners of oriental princes, combined to alienate from him the sympathies of the Ionian allies, who realized that, had it not been for the Athenians, the battle of Salamis would never have been even fought, and Greece would probably have become a Persian satrapy. The Athenian contingent which was sent to aid Pausanias in the task of driving the Persians finally out of the Thraceward towns was under the command of the Athenians, Aristides and Cimon, men of tact and probity. It is not, therefore, surprising that when Pausanias was recalled to Sparta on the charge of treasonable overtures to the Persians, the Ionian allies appealed to the Athenians on the grounds of kinship and urgent necessity, and that when Sparta sent out Dorcis to supersede Pausanias he found Aristides in unquestioned command of the allied fleet. To some extent the Spartans were undoubtedly relieved, in that it no longer fell to them to organize distant expeditions to Asia Minor, and this feeling was strengthened about the same time by the treacherous conduct of their king Leotychides (q.v.) in Thessaly. In any case the inelastic quality of the Spartan system was unable to adapt itself to the spirit of the new age. To Aristides was mainly due the organization of the new league and the adjustment of the contributions of the various allies in ships or in money. His assessment, of the details of which we know nothing, was so fair that it remained popular long after the league of autonomous allies had become an Athenian empire. The general affairs of the league were managed by a synod which met periodically in the temple of Apollo and Artemis at Delos, the ancient centre sanctified by the common worship of the Ionians. In this synod the allies met on an equality under the presidency of Athens. Among its first subjects of deliberation must have been the ratification of Aristides' assessment. Thucydides lays emphasis on the fact that in these meetings Athens as head of the league had no more than presidential authority, and the other members were called [Greek: summachoi] (allies), a word, however, of ambiguous meaning and capable of including both free and subject allies. The only other fact preserved by Thucydides is that Athens appointed a board called the Hellenotamiae ([Greek: tamias], steward) to watch over and administer the treasury of the league, which for some twenty years was kept at Delos, and to receive the contributions ([Greek: phoros]) of the allies who paid in money. Entry: DELIAN
GELO, son of Deinomenes, tyrant of Gela and Syracuse. On the death of Hippocrates, tyrant of Gela (491 B.C.), Gelo, who had been his commander of cavalry, succeeded him; and in 485, his aid having been invoked by the Gamori (the oligarchical landed proprietors) of Syracuse who had been driven out by the populace, he seized the opportunity of making himself despot. From this time Gelo paid little attention to Gela, and devoted himself to the aggrandizement of Syracuse, which attained extraordinary wealth and influence. When the Greeks solicited his aid against Xerxes, he refused it, since they would not give him command of the allied forces (Herodotus vii. 171). In the same year the Carthaginians invaded Sicily, but were totally defeated at Himera, the result of the victory being that Gelo became lord of all Sicily. After he had thus established his power, he made a show of resigning it; but his proposal was rejected by the multitude, and he reigned without opposition till his death (478). He was honoured as a hero, and his memory was held in such respect that when all the brazen statues of tyrants were condemned to be sold in the time of Timoleon (150 years later) an exemption was made in favour of the statue of Gelo. Entry: GELO
The centre of commercial and civic life of the older group of communities, as of the greater city of the classical age, was the Agora or market. Here were the various public buildings, which, when the power of the princes on the citadel was transferred to the archons, formed the offices of the administrative magistracy. The site of the primitive Agora ([Greek: archaia agora]) was probably in the hollow between the Acropolis and the Pnyx, which formed a convenient meeting-place for the dwellers on the north and south sides of the fortress as well as for its inhabitants. In the time of the Peisistratids the Agora was enlarged so as to extend over the Inner Ceramicus on the north-west, apparently reaching the northern declivities of the Areopagus and the Acropolis on the south. After the Persian Wars the northern portion was used for commercial, the southern for political and ceremonial purposes. In the southern were the Orchestra, where the Dionysiac dances took place, and the famous statues of Harmodius and Aristogeiton by Antenor which were carried away by Xerxes; also the Metroum, or temple of the Mother of the Gods, the Bouleuterium, or council-chamber of the Five Hundred, the Prytaneum, the hearth of the combined communities, where the guests of the state dined, the temple of the Dioscuri, and the Tholus, or Skias, a circular stone-domed building in which the Prytaneis were maintained at the public expense; in the northern were the Leocorium, where Hipparchus was slain, the [Greek: stoa basilikae], the famous [Greek: stoa poikilae], where Zeno taught, and other structures. The Agora was commonly described as the "Ceramicus," and Pausanias gives it this name; of the numerous buildings which he saw here scarcely a trace remains; their position, for the most part, is largely conjectural, and the exact boundaries of the Agora itself are uncertain. What are perhaps the remains of the [Greek: stoa basilikae], in which the Archon Basileus held his court and the Areopagus Council sat in later times, were brought to light in the winter of 1897-1898, when excavations were carried out on the eastern slope of the "Theseum" hill. Here was found a rectangular structure resembling a temple, but with a side door to the north; it possessed a portico of six columns. The north slope of the Areopagus, where a number of early tombs were found, was also explored, and the limits of the Agora on the south and north-west were approximately ascertained. A portion of the main road leading from the Dipylon to the Agora was discovered. Entry: I
GUARDS, AND HOUSEHOLD TROOPS. The word _guard_ is an adaptation of the Fr. _guarde_, mod. _garde_, O. Ger. _ward_; see GUARDIAN. The practice of maintaining bodyguards is of great antiquity, and may indeed be considered the beginning of organized armies. Thus there is often no clear distinction between the inner ring of personal defenders and the select corps of trained combatants who are at the chief's entire disposal. Famous examples of corps that fell under one or both these headings are the "Immortals" of Xerxes, the Mamelukes, Janissaries, the _Huscarles_ of the Anglo-Saxon kings, and the Russian Strelitz (_Stryeltsi_). In modern times the distinction of function is better marked, and the fighting men who are more intimately connected with the sovereign than the bulk of the army can be classified as to duties into "Household Troops," who are in a sense personal retainers, and "Guards," who are a _corps d'élite_ of combatants. But the dividing line is not so clear as to any given body of troops. Thus the British Household Cavalry is part of the combatant army as well as the sovereign's escort. Entry: GUARDS
The _Gutu_ or Kurdu were reduced to subjection by Cyrus before he descended upon Babylon, and furnished a contingent of fighting men to his successors, being thus mentioned under the names of Saspirians and Alarodians in the muster roll of the army of Xerxes which was preserved by Herodotus. Entry: KURDISTAN
In 1802 Georg Friedrich Grotefend (q.v.) was persuaded by the librarian of Göttingen University to essay the task. He began with the assumption that there were three languages, and that of these the first was ancient Persian, the language of the Achaemenians, who had erected these palaces and caused these inscriptions to be written. For his first attempts at decipherment he chose two of these old Persian inscriptions and laid them side by side. They were of moderate length, and the frequent recurrence of the same signs in them seemed to indicate that their contents were similar. The method which he now pursued was so simple, yet so sure, as he advanced step by step, that there seemed scarcely a chance of error. Münter had observed in all the Persian texts a word which occurred in two forms, a short and a longer form. This word appeared in Grotefend's two texts in both long and short forms. Münter had suggested that it meant "king" in the short form and "kings" in the longer, and that when the two words occurred together the expression meant "king of kings." But further, this word occurred in both inscriptions in the first line, and in both cases was followed by the same word. This second word Grotefend supposed to mean "_great_," the combined expression being "king great," that is, "great king." All this found support in the phraseology of the lately deciphered Sassanian inscriptions, and it was plausible in itself. It must, however, be supported by definite facts, and furthermore each word must be separated into its alphabetic parts, every one of them identified, and the words themselves be shown to be philologically possible by the production of similar words in related languages. In other words, the archaeological method must find support in a philological method. To this Grotefend now devoted himself with equal energy. His method was as simple as before. He had made out to his own satisfaction the titles "great king, king of kings." Now, in the Sassanian inscriptions, the first word was always the king's name, followed immediately by "great king, king of kings," and Grotefend reasoned that this was probably true in his texts. But if true, then these two texts were set up by two different kings, for the names were not the same at the beginning. Furthermore the name with which his text No. I. began appears in the third line of text No. II., but in a somewhat longer form, which Grotefend thought was a genitive and meant "of N." It followed the word previously supposed to be "king" and another which might mean son (N king son), so that the whole expression would be "son of N king." From these facts Grotefend surmised that in these two inscriptions he had the names of three rulers, grandfather, father and son. It was now easy to search the list of the Achaemenian dynasty and to find three names which would suit the conditions, and the three which he ventured to select were Hystaspes, Darius, Xerxes. According to his hypothesis the name at the beginning of inscription I. was Darius, and he was ready to translate his texts in part as follows:-- Entry: CUNEIFORM
5. _The Great Age (480-338 B.C.)._--The effects of the repulse of Persia were momentous in their influence upon Greece. The effects upon Elizabethan England of the defeat of the Spanish armada would afford quite an inadequate parallel. It gave the Greeks a heightened sense, both of their own national unity and of their superiority to the barbarian, while at the same time it helped to create the material conditions requisite alike for the artistic and political development of the 5th century. Other cities besides Athens were adorned with the proceeds of the spoils won from Persia, and Greek trade benefited both from the reunion of Ionia with Greece, and from the suppression of piracy in the Aegean and the Hellespont. Do these developments justify us in giving to the period, which begins with the repulse of Xerxes, and ends with the victory of Philip, the title of "the Great Age"? If the title is justified in the case of the 5th century, should the 4th century be excluded from the period? At first sight, the difference between the 4th century and the 5th may seem greater than that which exists between the 5th and the 6th. On the political side, the 5th century is an age of growth, the 4th an age of decay; on the literary side, the former is an age of poetry, the latter an age of prose. In spite of these contrasts, there is a real unity in the period which begins with the repulse of Xerxes and ends with the death of Alexander, as compared with any preceding one. It is an age of maturity in politics, in literature, and in art; and this is true of no earlier age. Nor can we say that the 5th century is, in all these aspects of Greek life, immature as compared with the 4th, or, on the other hand, that the 4th is decadent as compared with the 5th. On the political side, maturity is, in one sense, reached in the earlier century. There is nothing in the later century so great as the Athenian empire. In another sense, maturity is not reached till the 4th century. It is only in the later century that the tendency of the Greek constitutions to conform to a common type, democracy, is (at least approximately) realized, and it is only in this century that the principles upon which democracy is based are carried to their logical conclusion. In literature, if we confine our attention to poetry, we must pronounce the 5th century the age of completed development; but in prose the case is different. The style even of Thucydides is immature, as compared with that of Isocrates and Plato. In philosophy, however high may be the estimate that is formed of the genius of the earlier thinkers, it cannot be disputed that in Plato and Aristotle we find a more mature stage of thought. In art, architecture may perhaps be said to reach its zenith in the 5th, sculpture in the 4th century. In its political aspect, the history of the Great Age resolves itself into the history of two movements, the imperial and the democratic. Hitherto Greece had meant, politically, an aggregate of independent states, very numerous, and, as a rule, very small. The principle of autonomy was to the Greek the most sacred of all political principles; the passion for autonomy the most potent of political factors. In the latter half of the 6th century Sparta had succeeded in combining the majority of the Peloponnesian states into a loose federal union; so loose, however, that it appears to have been dormant in the intervals of peace. In the crisis of the Persian invasion the Peloponnesian League was extended so as to include all the states which had espoused the national cause. It looked on the morrow of Plataea and Mycale (the two victories, won simultaneously, in 479 B.C., by Spartan commanders, by which the danger from Persia was finally averted) as if a permanent basis for union might be found in the hegemony of Sparta. The sense of a common peril and a common triumph brought with it the need of a common union; it was Athens, however, instead of Sparta, by whom the first conscious effort was made to transcend the isolation of the Greek political system and to bring the units into combination. The league thus founded (the Delian League, established in 477 B.C.) was under the presidency of Athens, but it included hardly any other state besides those that had conducted the defence of Greece. It was formed, almost entirely, of the states which had been liberated from Persian rule by the great victories of the war. The Delian League, even in the form in which it was first established, as a confederation of autonomous allies, marks an advance in political conceptions upon the Peloponnesian League. Provision is made for an annual revenue, for periodical meetings of the council, and for a permanent executive. It is a real federation, though an imperfect one. There were defects in its constitution which rendered it inevitable that it should be transformed into an empire. Athens was from the first "the predominant partner." The fleet was mainly Athenian, the commanders entirely so; the assessment of the tribute was in Athenian hands; there was no federal court appointed to determine questions at issue between Athens and the other members; and, worst omission of all, the right of secession was left undecided. By the middle of the century the Delian League has become the Athenian empire. Henceforward the imperial idea, in one form or another, dominates Greek politics. Athens failed to extend her authority over the whole of Greece. Her empire was overthrown; but the triumph of autonomy proved the triumph of imperialism. The Spartan empire succeeds to the Athenian, and, when it is finally shattered at Leuctra (371 B.C.), the hegemony of Thebes, which is established on its ruins, is an empire in all but name. The decay of Theban power paves the way for the rise of Macedon. Entry: 5