The History of Greece from Its Earliest Beginnings to the Hellenistic Age. John Bagnell Bury
testified to the greatness of the Phocian city, received, after this, its familiar name “Corinthian” from the city of the Isthmus.
One of the consequences of this war was the establishment of a close connexion between Delphi and the Amphictiony of Anthela. The Delphic shrine became a second place of meeting, and the league was often called the Delphic Amphictiony. The temple was taken under the protection of the league; the administration of the property of the god was placed in the hands of the Hieromnemones or sacred councillors, who met twice a year in spring and autumn, both at Anthela and at Delphi. Two Hieromnemones were sent as its representatives by each member of the league. The oracle and the priestly nobles of Delphi thus won a position of independence; their great career of prosperity and power began. The Pythian games were now reorganised on a more splendid scale, and the ordering of them was one of the duties of the Amphictions. The festival became, like the Olympian, a four-yearly celebration, being held in the middle of each Olympiad; gymnastic contests were introduced, whereas before there had been only a musical competition; and money-prizes were abolished for a wreath of bay. Cleisthenes won the laurel in the first chariot-race in the new hippodrome which was built in the plain below the ruins of Crisa. Hard by was the stadion or racecourse in which the athletes ran and wrestled; and it was not till after many years had passed that the new stadion was built high up above Delphi itself, close under the cliffs. Cleisthenes was remembered as having taken a prominent part both in the Sacred War and in the institution of the games; and he commemorated the occasion of his victory by founding Pythian games at Sicyon, which afterwards, by a stroke of the irony of history, became associated with the hated hero Adrastus. Before the Sacred War it would seem that Sicyon had a treasure-house within the Delphic precinct; some traces of its round form, some traces possibly of its primitive sculptures, have been discovered; but not long after the war, the old building had to make way for a larger house in the shape of a Doric temple, and it is hard not to believe that it was Cleisthenes himself who erected this lordlier treasury for Sicyon.
Much about the same time two other Panhellenic festivals were instituted at Isthmus and at Nemea. It is uncertain whether the Isthmian games in honour of Poseidon were founded by Periander, or in commemoration of the abolition of tyranny at Corinth after the death of Psammetichus. The games in honour of Nemean Zeus were administered by the little town of Cleonae, and seem to have been established by the influence of Cleisthenes. Both the Isthmian and the Nemean festivals were two-yearly. Thus from the beginning of the sixth century four Panhellenic festivals are celebrated, two in the Peloponnesus, one on the isthmus, one in the north; and throughout the course of Grecian history the prestige of these gatherings never wanes.
These four Panhellenic festivals helped to maintain a feeling of fellowship among all the Greeks; and we may suspect that the promotion of this feeling was the deliberate policy of the rulers who raised these games to Panhellenic dignity. But it must not be overlooked that the festivals were themselves only a manifestation of a tendency towards unity, which had begun in the eighth century. We have already seen how this tendency was promoted by colonisation, and confirmed by the introduction of a common name for the Greek race. About the middle of the seventh century, we meet the name “Panhellenes” in a poem of Archilochus. The Panhellenic idea, the conception of a common Hellenic race with common interests, was displayed above all in the reconstruction of the history of the past. The Trojan war had come to be regarded as a common enterprise of all the Greeks; and this, as we saw, was the idea which inspired the composer of the Homeric Catalogue of the Ships, a work of the seventh century. This poet was studious that nearly all the states of Greece should be represented at Troy; and, as the Catalogue became part of the Iliad in its final shape, the fiction won universal acceptance. The Homeric poems were a bond among all men of Greek speech. The feeling of community was also displayed in the recognition of the Pythian Apollo as the chief and supreme oracle of Greece. The growth of the prestige of the Delphic god might almost have been used as a touchstone for measuring the growth of the feeling of community. As a meeting-place for pilgrims and envoys from all quarters of the Greek world, Delphi served to keep distant cities in touch with one another, and to spread news; purposes which were effected in a less degree by the Panhellenic the festivals. The tendencies to unity were also shown by the leagues, chiefly of a religious kind, which were formed among neighbouring states. The maritime league of Calauria is an instance; the northern Amphictiony of Anthela is another; and we shall presently have a glimpse of the Ionic federation of Delos. Early in the sixth century we find the cities of Italy bound together by a sort of commercial league, which was indicated in the character of their coinage. We shall soon see Sparta uniting a large part of the Peloponnesus in a confederacy under her presidency.
These tendencies to unity never resulted in a political union of all Hellas. The Greek race never became a Greek nation; for the Panhellenic idea was weaker than the love of local independence. But an ideal unity was realised; it was realised in those beliefs and institutions which we have just been considering. They fostered in the hearts of the Greeks a lively feeling of fellowship and a deep pride in Hellas; though there was no political tie. And it is to be noted that the Delphic oracle made no efforts to promote political unity, though unintentionally it promoted unity of another kind. If it had made any such efforts, they would certainly have failed; for the oracle had little influence in initiation. Greek states did not ask Apollo to originate or direct their policy; they only sought his authority for what they had already determined.
We saw that the Boeotians were a member of the northern Amphictiony. The unity of Boeotia itself had taken the form of a federation, in which Thebes was the dominant power, being not only the federal capital, but—at all events in later times—being represented by two members on the board of Boeotarchs, as the federal magistrates were called, whereas each of the other cities returned only one Boeotarch. Its religious centre—for like all old Greek federations it was religious before it became political—was the sanctuary of Poseidon at Onchestus. In the seventh century it did not yet include all Boeotia; Orchomenus still resisted. But at length Thebes forced Orchomenus to join, and in the course of the sixth century the Graian land of Oropus was annexed. The unity of Boeotia, thus completed, had its weak points; its maintenance depended upon the power of Thebes; some of the cities were reluctant members. Above all, Plataea chafed; she had kept herself pure from mixture with the Boeotian settlers, and her whole history—of which some remarkable episodes will pass before us—may be regarded as an isolated continuation of the ancient struggle between the elder Greek inhabitants of the land and the Boeotian conquerors.
The Union of Attica and the Foundation of the Athenian Democracy
SECT. 1. THE UNION OF ATTICA
When recorded history begins, the story of Athens is the story of Attica, the inhabitants of Attica are Athenians. But Attica, like its neighbour Boeotia and other countries of Greece, was once occupied by a number of independent states. Some of these little kingdoms are vaguely remembered in legends which tell of the giant Pallas who ruled at Pallene under the north-eastern slopes of Hymettus, of the dreaded Cephalus lord of the southern region of Thoricus, or of Porphyrion of mighty stature whose domain was at Athmonon under Mount Pentelicus. The hill of Munychia was, in the distant past, an island, and was crowned by a stronghold; the name Piraeus has been supposed to preserve the memory of days when the lords of Munychia looked across to the mainland and spoke of the “opposite shore.” At a later stage we find neighbouring villages uniting themselves together by political or religious bonds. Thus in the north, beyond Pentelicus, Marathon and Oenoe and two other towns formed a tetrapolis. Again Piraeus, adjacent Phaleron, and two other places joined in the common worship of the god Heracles, and were called the Four-Villages. Of all the lordships between Mount Cithaeron and Cape Sunium the two most important were those of Eleusis and Athens, severed from one another by the hill-chain of Aegaleos.
It was upon Athens, the stronghold in the midst of the Cephisian plain, five miles from the sea, that destiny devolved the task of working out the unity of Attica. This Cephisian plain, on the south side open to the Saronic gulf, is enclosed by hills, on the west by Aegaleos, on the north-west by Parnes, on