Outlines of Universal History, Designed as a Text-book and for Private Reading. George Park Fisher
in connection with lyric poetry. The Greeks at first used the four-stringed lyre. Terpander made an epoch (660 B.C.) by adding three strings. Olympus and Thaletas made further improvements. Greek lyric poetry flourished, especially from 670 to 440 B.C. The Aeolian lyrists of Lesbos founded a school of their own. The two great representatives are Alcaus, who sang of war and of love, and Sappho, who sang of love. "Probably no poet ever surpassed Sappho as an interpreter of passion in exquisitely subtle harmonies of form and sound." Anacreon, an Ionian, resembled in his style the Aeolian lyrists. He was most often referred to by the ancients as the poet of sensuous feeling of every sort. The Dorian lyric poetry was mostly choral and historic in its topics. Greek lyric poetry reaches the climax in Simonides and Pindar. The latter was a Boeotian, but of Dorian descent. Simonides was tender and polished; Pindar, fervid and sublime The extant works of Pindar are the Epinicia, or odes of victory.
HISTORICAL WRITING.—This age witnesses the beginnings of historical writing. But the logographers, as they were called, only wrote prose epics. They told the story of the foundation of families and cities, reconciling as best they could the myths, so far as they clashed with one another.
PHILOSOPHY: THE IONIAN SCHOOL.—The Greeks were the first to investigate rationally the causes of things, and to try to comprehend the world as a complete system. The earliest phase of this movement was on the side of physics, or natural philosophy. Homer and Hesiod had accounted for the operations of nature by referring them to the direct personal action of different divinities. The earliest philosophers brought in the conception of some kind of matter as the foundation and source of all things. The Ionian School led the way in this direction. Thales of Miletus (about 600 B.C.) made this primary substance to be water. Anaximander (611-? B.C.) made all things spring out of a primitive stuff, without definite qualities, and without bounds. He taught that the earth is round, invented the sun-dial, engraved a map on a brass tablet, and made some astronomical calculations. Anaximenes (first half, 6th C.) derived all things from air, which he made to be eternal and infinite.
THE ELEATIC SCHOOL.—The Eleatic School conceived of the world as one in substance, and held that the natural phenomena which we behold, in all their variety and change, are unreal. Xenophanes (who flourished from 572 to 478 B.C.) asserted this. Parmenides (504–460 B.C.) taught that succession, change, the manifold forms of things, are only relative; that is, are only our way of regarding the one universal essence. Zeno sought to vindicate this theory logically by disproving the possibility of motion.
OTHER PHILOSOPHERS.—Another set of philosophers attempted definitely to explain the appearances of things, the changing phenomena, which had been called unreal. Heraclitus made the world to be nothing but these: There is no substratum of things: there is only an endless flux, a cycle. All things begin and end in fire, the symbol of what is real. Empedocles ascribed all things to fire, air, earth, and water, which are wrought into different bodies by "love" and "hate;" or, as we should say, attraction and repulsion. Democritus was the founder of the Atomists, who made all things spring out of the motions and combinations of primitive atoms. Anaxagoras brought in intelligence, or reason, as giving the start to the development of matter—this principle doing nothing more, however, and being inherent in matter itself.
PYTHAGORAS.—A different spirit in philosophy belonged to Pythagoras (580–500 B.C.), who was born in Samos, traveled extensively, and settled in Croton, in southern Italy. His theory was, that the inner substance of all things is number. Discipline of character was a prime object. Pythagoras was sparing in his diet, promoted an earnest culture, in which music was prominent, and gave rise to a mystical school, in which moral reform and religious fueling were connected with an ascetic method of living.
COLONIES.—It was during the era of the oligarchies and tyrannies that the colonizing spirit was most active among the Greeks. Most of the colonies were established between 800 and 550 B.C. Their names alone would make a very long catalogue. They were of two classes: first, independent communities, connected, however, with the parent city by close ties of friendship; and secondly, kleruchies, which were of the nature of garrisons, where the settlers retained their former rights as citizens, and the mother city its full authority over them. In Sicily, on the eastern side, were the Ionian communities—Naxos, Catana, etc. Syracuse (founded by Corinth 734 B.C.), Gela, and Agrigentum, which were among the chief Dorian settlements, lay on the south-eastern and south-western coasts. The oldest Greek town in Italy was Cumae (not far from Naples), said to have been founded in 1050 B.C. Tarentum (Dorian), Sybaris, and Croton (Aeolic) were settled in the latter part of the eighth century. Locri (Aeolic) and Rhegium (Ionic) were on the south. The south-western portion of Italy was termed Magna Graecia. Massilia (Marseilles) was founded by the Phocaean Ionians (about 600 B.C.). In the western Mediterranean the Greeks were hindered from making their settlements as numerous as they would have done, by the fact that Carthage and her colonies stood in the way. Cyrene, on the coast of Africa, was a Dorian colony (630 B.C.), planted from Thera, an earlier Spartan settlement. Cyrene founded Barca. Corcyra was colonized by Corinth (about 700 B.C.). Along the coast of Epirus were other Corinthian and Corcyrasan settlements. Chalcis planted towns in the peninsula of Chalcidice, and from thence to Selymbria (or Byzantium), which was founded by Megara (657 B.C.). The northern shores of the Ægean and the Propontis, and the whole coast of the Euxine were strewn with Greek settlements. The Greek towns, especially Miletus, on the western coast of Asia Minor, themselves sent out colonies—as Cyzicus and Sinope, south of the Propontis and the Euxine. The foregoing statements give only a general idea of the wide extent of Greek colonization.
An exhaustive statement of the Greek colonies is given in Rawlinson's Manual of Ancient History, p. 148 seq. See also Abbott, A History of Greece, I. 333 seq.
PERIOD II. THE FLOURISHING ERA OF GREECE.
CHAPTER I. THE PERSIAN WARS.
THE IONIAN REVOLT.—Hardly were the Greeks in possession of liberty when they were compelled to measure their strength with the mighty Persian Empire. The cities of Asia Minor groaned under the tyranny of their Persian rulers, and sighed for freedom. At length, under propitious circumstances, Miletus rose in revolt under the lead of Aristagoras. Alone of the Grecian cities, Athens, and Eretria on the island of Euboea, sent help. The insurrection was extinguished in blood: its leaders perished. Miletus was destroyed by the enemy 495 B.C.; and the Ionian towns were again brought under the Persian yoke, which was made heavier than before. The Persian monarch, Darius, swore vengeance upon those who had aided the rebellion.
THE BATTLE OF MARATHON.—Mardonius, the son-in-law of Darius, moved with a fleet and an army along the Ægean coast. A storm shattered the fleet upon the rocky promontory of Athos, and the land force was partly destroyed by the Thracians. Mardonius retreated homeward. The heralds who came to demand, according to the Persian custom, "water and earth" of Athens and Sparta, were put to death. Enraged at these events, Darius sent a stronger fleet under Datis and Artaphernes. They forced Naxos and the other Cyclades to submission, captured and destroyed Eretria, and sent off its inhabitants as slaves to the interior of Asia. Guided on their path of destruction by the Athenian refugee, Hippias, the Persians landed on the coast of Attica, and encamped on the shore adjacent to the plain of Marathon. The Athenians sent Philippides, one of the swiftest of couriers, to Sparta for assistance, who reached that city, a hundred and thirty-five or a hundred and forty miles distant, the next day after he started. He brought back for answer that the Spartans were deterred by religious scruples from marching to war before the full moon, which would be ten days later. There was a Greek, as well