How Athens Rose From Its Ashes

The torch of Xerxes and Mardonius left Athens a heap of ashes. But, like

the new birth of the fabled phoenix, there rose out of these ashes a

city that became the wonder of the world, and whose time-worn ruins are

still worshipped by the pilgrims of art. We cannot proceed with our work

without pausing awhile to contemplate this remarkable spectacle.



The old Athens bore to the new much the same relation that the chrysa is

bears to the butterfly. It was little more than an ordinary country

town, the capital of a district comparable in size to a modern county.

Pisistratus and his sons had built some temples, and had completed a

part of the Dionysiac theatre, but the city itself was simply a cluster

of villages surrounded by a wall; while the citadel had for defence

nothing stronger than a wooden rampart. The giving of this city to the

torch was no serious loss; in reality it was a gain, since it cleared

the ground for the far nobler city of later days.



It is not often that a whole nation removes from its home, and its

possessions are completely swept away. But such had been the case with

the Attic state. For a time all Attica was afloat, the people of city

and country alike taking to their ships; while a locust flight of

Persians passed over their lands, ravaging and destroying all before

them, and leaving nothing but the bare soil. Such was what remained to

the people of Attica on their return from Salamis and the adjacent

isles.



Athens lay before them a heap of ashes and ruin, its walls flung down,

its dwellings vanished, its gardens destroyed, its temples burned. The

city itself, and the citadel and sacred structures of its Acropolis,

were swept away, and the business of life on that ravaged soil had to be

begun afresh.



Yet Attica as a state was greater than ever before. It was a victor on

land and sea, the recognized savior of Greece; and the people of Athens

returned to the ashes of their city not in woe and dismay, but in pride

and exultation. They were victors over the greatest empire then on the

face of the earth, the admired of the nations, the leading power in

Greece, and their small loss weighed but lightly against their great

glory.



The Athens that rose in place of the old city was a marvel of beauty and

art, adorned with hall and temple, court and gymnasium, colonnade and

theatre, while under the active labors of its sculptors it became so

filled with marble inmates that they almost equalled in numbers its

living inhabitants. Such sculptors as Phidias and such painters as

Zeuxis adorned the city with the noblest products of their art. The

great theatre of Dionysus was completed, and to it was added a new one,

called the Odeon, for musical and poetical representations. On the

Acropolis rose the Parthenon, the splendid temple to Minerva, or

Athene, the patron goddess of the city, whose ruins are still the

greatest marvel of architectural art. Other temples adorned the

Acropolis, and the costly Propylaea, or portals, through which passed the

solemn processions on festival days, were erected at the western side of

the hill. The Acropolis was further adorned with three splendid statues

of Minerva, all the work of Phidias, one of ivory in the Parthenon,

forty-seven feet high, the others of bronze, one being of such colossal

height that it could be seen from afar by mariners at sea.



The city itself was built upon a scale to correspond with this richness

of architectural and artistic adornment, and such was its encouragement

to the development of thought and art, that poets, artists, and

philosophers flocked thither from all quarters, and for many years

Athens stood before the world as the focal point of the human intellect.



Not the least remarkable feature in this great growth was the celerity

with which it was achieved. The period between the Persian and the

Peloponnesian war was only sixty years in duration. Yet in that brief

space of time the great growth we have chronicled took place, and the

architectural splendor of the city was consummated. The devastation of

the unhappy Peloponnesian war put an end to this external growth, and

left the Athens of old frozen into marble, a thing of beauty forever.

But the intellectual growth went on, and for centuries afterwards Athens

continued the centre of ancient thought.



And now the question in point is how all this came about, and what made

Athens great and glorious among the cities of Greece. It all flowed

naturally from her eminence in the Persian war. During that war there

had been a league of the states of Greece, with Sparta as its accepted

leader. After the war the need of being on the alert against Persia

continued, and Greece became in great part divided into two

leagues,--one composed of Sparta and most of the Peloponnesian states,

the other of Athens, the islands of the archipelago, and many of the

towns of Asia Minor and Thrace. This latter was called the League of

Delos, since its deputies met and its treasure was kept in the temple of

Apollo on that island.



This League of Delos developed in time to what has been called the

Athenian Empire, and in this manner. Each city of the league pledged

itself to make an annual contribution of a certain number of ships or a

fixed sum of money, to be used in war against Persia or for the defence

of members of the league. The amount assessed against each was fixed by

Aristides, in whose justice every one trusted. In time the money payment

was considered preferable to that of ships, and most of the states of

the league contributed money, leaving Athens to provide the fleet.



In this way all the power fell into the hands of Athens, and the other

cities of the league became virtually payers of tribute. This was shown

later on when some of the island cities declined to pay. Athens sent a

fleet, made conquest of the islands, and reduced them to the state of

real tribute payers. Thus the league began to change into an Athenian

dominion.



In 459 B.C. the treasure was removed from Delos to Athens. And in the

end Chios, Samoa, and Lesbos were the only free allies of Athens. All

the other members of the league had been reduced to subjection. Several

of the states of Greece also became subject to Athens, and the Athenian

Empire grew into a wealthy, powerful, and extended state.






The treasure laid up at Athens in time became great. The payments

amounted to about six hundred talents yearly, and at one time the

treasury of Athens held the great sum of nine thousand seven hundred

talents, equal to over eleven million dollars,--a sum which meant far

more then than the equivalent amount would now.



It was this money that made Athens great. It proved to be more than was

necessary for defensive war against Persia, or even for the aggressive

war which was carried on in Asia Minor and Egypt. It also more than

sufficed for sending out the colonies which Athens founded in Italy and

elsewhere. The remainder of the fund was used in Athens, part of it in

building great structures and in producing splendid works of art, part

for purposes of fortification. The Piraeus, the port of Athens, was

surrounded by strong walls, and a double wall--the famous "Long

Walls"--was constructed from the city to the port, a distance of four

miles. These walls, some two hundred yards apart, left a grand highway

between, the channel of a steady traffic which flowed from the sea to

the city, and which for years enabled Athens to defy the cutting off its

resources by attack from without. Through this broad avenue not only

provisions and merchandise, but men in multitudes, made their way into

Athens, until that city became fuller of bustle, energy, political and

scholarly activity, and incessant industry than any of the other cities

of the ancient world.



In a city like this, free and equal as were its citizens, and democratic

as were its institutions, some men were sure to rise to the surface and

gain controlling influence. In the period in question there were two

such men, Cimon and Pericles, men of such eminence that we cannot pass

them by unconsidered. Cimon was the son of Miltiades, the hero of

Marathon, and became the leader of aristocratic Athens. Pericles was the

great-grandson of Cleisthenes, the democratic law-giver, and, though of

the most aristocratic descent, became the leader of the popular party of

his native city.



The struggle for precedence between these two men resembled that between

Themistocles and Aristides. Cimon was a strong advocate of an alliance

with Sparta, which Pericles opposed. He was brilliant as a soldier,

gained important victories against Persia, but was finally ostracized as

a result of his friendship for Sparta. He came back to Athens

afterwards, but his influence could not be regained.



It is, however, of Pericles that we desire particularly to

speak,--Pericles, who found Athens poor and made her magnificent, found

her weak and made her glorious. This celebrated statesman had not the

dashing qualities of his rival. He was by nature quiet but deep, serene

but profound, the most eloquent orator of his day, and one of the most

learned and able of men. He was dignified and composed in manner,

possessed of a self-possession which no interruption could destroy, and

gifted with a luminous intelligence that gave him a controlling

influence over the thoughtful and critical Athenians of his day.



Pericles was too wise and shrewd to keep himself constantly before the

people, or to haunt the assembly. He sedulously remained in the

background until he had something of importance to say, but he then

delivered his message with a skill, force, and animation that carried

all his hearers irresistibly away. His logic, wit, and sarcasm, his

clear voice, flashing eyes, and vigorous power of declamation, used only

when the occasion was important, gave him in time almost absolute

control in Athens, and had he sought to make himself a despot he might

have done so with a word; but happily he was honest and patriotic enough

to content himself with being the First Citizen of the State.



To make the people happy, and to keep Athens in a condition of serene

content, seem to have been leading aims with Pericles. He entertained

them with quickly succeeding theatrical and other entertainments, solemn

banquets, splendid shows and processions, and everything likely to add

to their enjoyment. Every year he sent out eighty galleys on a six

months' cruise, filled with citizens who were to learn the art of

maritime war, and who were paid for their services. The citizens were

likewise paid for attending the public assembly, and allowances were

made them for the time given to theatrical representations, so that it

has been said that Pericles converted the sober and thrifty Athenians

into an idle, pleasure-loving, and extravagant populace. At the same

time, that things might be kept quiet in Athens, the discontented

overflow of the people were sent out as colonists, to build up daughter

cities of Attica in many distant lands.



Thus it was that Athens developed from the quiet country town of the old

regime into the wealthiest, gayest, and most progressive of Grecian

cities, the capital of an empire, the centre of a great commerce, and

the home of a busy and thronging populace, among whom the ablest

artists, poets, and philosophers of that age of the world were included.

Here gathered the great writers of tragedy, beginning with AEschylus,

whose noble works were performed at the expense of the state in the

great open-air theatre of Dionysus. Here the comedians, the chief of

whom was Aristophanes, moved hosts of spectators to inextinguishable

laughter. Here the choicest lyric poets of Greece awoke admiration with

their unequalled songs, at their head the noble Pindar, the laureate of

the Olympic and Pythian games. Here the sophists and philosophers argued

and lectured, and Socrates walked like a king at the head of the

aristocracy of thought. Here the sculptors, headed by Phidias, filled

temples, porticos, colonnades, and public places with the most exquisite

creations in marble, and the painters with their marvellous

reproductions of nature. Here, indeed, seemed gathered all that was best

and worthiest in art, entertainment, and thought, and for half a century

and more Athens remained a city without a rival in the history of the

world.