Egypt, which country he is said to have visited; of Croesus, | Boeotians and Chalcidians, crossed into Euboea, and king of Lydia, whose pride and vanity he rebuked; and of the first Cyrus, the founder of the Persian empire. With the legislation of Solon (B.C. 594), Athenian history begins to assume a more definite form, and the same epoch marks the historical commencement of that series of events which brought the inhabitants of the countries east of the Tigris into connexion with the south of Europe. Tradition assigned to Theseus the credit of laying the foundation of their democracy. (Plut. Thes. c. 25.) Of the regulations (eouoi) of Dracon (B.C. 624), the predecessor of Solon in legislation, we know little, except that his criminal code was so severe as to require an almost entire change. [See DRACON.] The constitution of Solon was designed to maintain the chief political power just where it was-in the hands of the rich, whom he divided into three classes, according to their property; and to them alone he gave the privilege of filling public offices: but by allowing the fourth or poorest class to be members of the ecclesia, and to be the dicasts or jurymen in the courts of justice, he laid, perhaps unintentionally, the foundation of a pure democracy. Besides the nine Archons, the administration was managed by the senate (Bovλ) of 400, each of the four tribes supplying 100 members. [See AREOPAGUS, SOLON.] The usurpation of Pisistratus (B.C. 560), who by fraud and force seized on the supreme executive power, did not change the laws of Solon, it is said, though it certainly must have changed, for the time at least, a great part of the constitutional forms of Athens. Under the title of tyrant (rúpavvoc), a term at that time not necessarily implying the abuse of power, Pisistratus governed with equity and moderation. He was twice expelled from Athens, but a battle on the field of Marathon at last secured his power, which he transmitted to his son Hippias. [See PISISTRATUS.] His successor had neither the ability nor the good fortune of his father, and he was finally driven out of Athens (B.C. 510) by the aristocratical faction of the Alemæonidæ, who, by corrupting the oracle of Delphi, brought against Hippias the power of Lacedæmon. Cleomenes, the mad king of the Lacedæmonians, was employed on this business. Hippias being expelled retired with his family to Sigeium on the Hellespont, a possession which had been acquired by the arms of his father. Pisistratus and his sou held the tyranny of Athens for thirty-six years (Herod. v. 65), during which time we may reasonably infer that all tendency towards a democratical form of government was suppressed; but the arts began to flourish under their rule, and the foundation of the temples of Apollo Pythius and Jupiter Olympius is assigned to the period of their government. The downfall of this antient (see Herod. v. 65) and powerful family was the signal for the commencement of party strife, and for the consequent development of the democratical principle.

Two factions now divided Athens, headed respectively by Cleisthenes of the family of the Alemæonidæ, and Isagoras the son of Tisander. [See CLEISTHENES.] Cleisthenes changed the number of tribes (pvλai) from four to ten, and by that and other measures he gained the favour of the people. The senate (Bovλn) of 400 was changed into one of 500, fifty members being annually chosen from each tribe. His rival called in to his aid Cleomenes, who, though at first successful, was finally baffled in his attempts on Athens. This invasion of Cleomenes is worthy of notice for having led to the first recorded communication between the Athenians and Persians. The Athenians, wishing to strengthen themselves against another threatened invasion, sent ambassadors to Artaphernes, the Persian governor of Sardis. The haughty satrap, after asking who the Athenians were, and where they lived, promised help on condition of their giving to the king of Persia earth and water, the usual signs of submission required by the great king. The ambassadors incautiously assented, and, on their return home, were well abused for their pains.

The issue of the Spartan attack, which was so much apprehended by the Athenians, was more favourable than they had anticipated: the Corinthians, who had joined in the invasion, changed their minds and went home; the two Lacedæmonian kings, Cleomenes and his colleague Demaratus, quarrelled at Eleusis just before a battle was expected, and the Peloponnesian army consequently dispersed; and the Athenians were thus left at liberty to deal with the Boeotians and Chalcidians, who, acting in concert with the Peloponnesians, had crossed the frontier. The Athenians gained a complete victory over the

placed four thousand Athenian colonists in the territory of Chalcis. Thus the Athenians, who were said to have originally colonized Chalcis, got a firmer footing in this fertile island, which was on subsequent occasions considered more important than most of their foreign possessions. About this time, Hippias the exiled tyrant came to the Peloponnesus, on the invitation of the Lacedæmonians, and urged his claims to be restored to the sovereignty of Athens. Though supported by the leading state of Peloponnesus, Hippias failed in obtaining the consent of the rest of the Peloponnesian confederacy, and he retired to Sigeium, where he endeavoured to maintain his desperate cause by exciting Artaphernes against the Athenians. An event soon happened which was favourable to his views. The Athenians, at the instigation of Aristagoras of Miletus, sent twenty ships, to which the Eretrians of Eubœa added five, to assist the Ionian Greeks, who had revolted against Darius. The confederate forces succeeded in burning Sardis, which was the immediate cause of the invasion of Greece. An immense armament, under the command of Datis and Ar taphernes, crossed the Ægean, besieged and took Eretria in Euboea, and landed on the opposite coast of Attica. The aged exile Hippias led the Persians to the plain of Marathon, the scene of his father's victory, a spot well adapted for the movements of the cavalry in the Asiatic army. The Athenians, supported only by the Plateans. under the command of Miltiades, defeated the formidable army of the invaders (B.C. 490), who retreated in their ships across the Ægean. [See DARIUS, MARATHON.] Ten years later, Xerxes, the son of Darius, led in person against Greece one of the largest forces of which we have any trustworthy record. The army, accompanied by the fleet which attended its movements along the coast, advanced through Thrace, Macedonia, and Thessaly, to the pass of Thermopylæ, where the gallantry of Leonidas for a short time opposed its progress. The treachery of the Boeotians, and the cowardice, or lukewarmness of the Peloponnesians, allowed the Persian army to march unopposed through Boeotia into Attica, while the fleet followed the coast and took its station near Salamis. The Athenians were compelled to leave their city to the invaders, and embark on board their navy. Fortunately for them in this contingency, they had already a considerable naval force, which at the advice of Themistocles they had raised for the purpose of contending with their troublesome neighbours in the island of Ægina. In the sea-fight of Salamis (B.C. 480), the Persian fleet was entirely ruined by the combined naval force of the Athenians and the other Greeks, and the Persian king made an inglorious and hasty retreat into Asia, leaving behind him Mardonius with about 300,000 men. Mardonius, having entered Athens a second time with the Persians, and made a second vain attempt to detach the Athenians from the alliance, burnt and destroyed all that Xerxes had left untouched, and reduced Athens almost to a heap of ruins. In the year after the battle of Salamis, Mardonius was completely defeated at Platea by the combined Grecian forces under the command of Pausanias the Lacedæmonian. [See XERXES, SALAMIS, and PLATEA.]

The period between the battle of Platæa (B.C. 479) and the commencement of the Peloponnesian war (B.C. 431), is one of the most interesting in Athenian history, but it has not been transmitted to us with that accuracy or detail which we desire. Though the Persians reduced Athens almost to a heap of ruins, it is probable that they did not completely destroy all the public buildings. Herodotus (v. 77) saw the fetters of the vanquished Baotians and Chalcidians sus pended on some walls on the Acropolis, which were scorched with the Persian flames. Still we may consider the city as substantially rebuilt after the year B.C. 479, and it would be difficult to point out ar y monument now existing at Athens of a date prior to the invasion of Xerxes (though there were some existing in the time of Pausanias), except it may be the north wall of the Acropolis, which is called the Pelasgicum. Under the direction of Themistocles, the walls of Athens were rebuilt, the Peiræus was fortified, and the Athenians were taught to look to their navy as the true means of defence against their enemies. By a law of Aristides, passed B.C. 479, the constitutional forms were so far changed, that every citizen was eligible to all the offices in the state, and thus the democratical principle received a still further development: its direction and control belonged

After the battles of Platæa and Mycale, and the capture of Sestos on the Hellespont, it was still thought desirable among the confederate Greeks to prosecute the war against Persia. The Lacedæmonians, hitherto considered the head of the confederation, were little disposed for foreign service, and Pausanias, their commander on the Hellespont, com-sonal satire, and sometimes of the coarsest invective and pletely alienated all the allies by his absurd and tyrannical behaviour. The lead was thus transferred to the Athenians (B.C. 477), who in a short time contrived to turn this to their own profit. A certain quota or rating of men and ships had been fixed for all the allies; some who were averse to service commuted their contingent of men and ships for a regular money payment, with which the Athenians formed and maintained a force by which they ultimately reduced many (who were hitherto allies) to the condition of dependent and tributary states.

the head of a combined Greek and Persian fleet. About the same time as the battle of Coroneia, he entirely destroyed the Lacedæmonian fleet under the command of Pisander, off Cnidus in Asia Minor. This event restored the naval supremacy of Athens. Conon appeared before the Peiræus with the fleet which the Persian satrap Pharnabazus entrusted to him, and a sum of money for rebuilding the walls. To Conon belongs the glory of restoring, after a victory over his enemies, the bulwarks of Athens (see Demosth. Leptin. cap. 16), which Themistocles had first erected by deceiving the Lacedæmonians. [See AGESILAUS, CONON.] The peace of Antalcidas (B.c. 387 or 386) marks an epoch in the general history of Greece, though the real efficiency of it for promoting peace was just as worthless as if it had never been made.

The period to the battle of Mantineia (B.C. 362) is one of little interest for Athenian history. Thebes, hitherto a second-rate power among the states of European Greece, contended, under Pelopidas and Epaminondas, with the Spartans for the supremacy of Greece. Athens, during this period, played an unimportant part, though her naval superiority still protected her against the Lacedæmonians, and made her assistance of some weight in the balance. In B.C. 376, Chabrias defeated Pollis, the Lacedæmonian commander, who was cruizing about Ægina, Ceos, and Andros, with the view of stopping the Athenian grain ships with their supplies of corn, which were waiting at Geræstos in Euboea; and Timotheus gained another naval victory over the Lacedæmonians in the same year. [See CHABRIAS.] The result of the wars between Thebes and Sparta was, that there remained no state in Southern Greece which possessed a decided political superiority. Athens, still powerful by sea, was detested by the dependent towns and islands for the oppressive exactions made both by the state itself and by the commanders of the fleets. Cos, Rhodes, Chios, and Byzantium united in a league (B.C. 358); Chabrias fell in an attack on Chios (B.C. 357), and an attempt to reduce Byzantium also failed. This, which is sometimes called the Social War, lasted three years. But at this time a northern power, Macedonia, which hitherto had exercised comparatively little influence south of the straits of Thermopyla, gradually began to mingle directly in the affairs of Greece. The Holy war, or Phocian war [see PHOCIAN WAR], as it is also called, which arose from apparently small beginnings, brought the Athenians, who joined the Phocians, into a contest with the Thebans and their allies, who proressed to carry into effect the decrees of the Amphictyons (B.C. 356). A long and bloody war which ensued was favourable to the views of Philip of Macedon, who, after setting his foot firmly in Thessaly, soon got an influence in the Amphictyonic council, and thus gained the opportunity of forming a party in Athens, and putting an end to the war (B.C. 346), which had lasted ten years. The history of Athens, during the period of Philip, requires a minute detail [see PHILIP, DEMOSTHENES]. The victory of Charoneia (B.C. 338), in which the Athenians and Thebans, with their allies, were defeated by Philip, completely established the Macedonian supremacy in Greece. In a public assembly at Corinth, Philip was chosen generalissimo of the Greek nation in the intended war against Persia; and after his assassination (B.C. 336), the same honour was conferred on his son Alexander, who carried into effect that which his father had designed.

avai.ed themselves, made the study of oratory an indispen sable branch of education for all who aspired to eminence in the state. The school of Isocrates was of a different cha racter from those which preceded it, being almost exclusively devoted to teach the formation of a phrase, and to the rhythm of expression. Demosthenes, the great master of Athenian eloquence, was trained in the most laborious dis cipline of that period; from Isocrates he learned to form a rounded sentence; Isæus instructed him how to handle the matter; and his own genius furnished him with the fervour and the impulse of a complete orator.

After the time of Sophocles and Euripides, we find no tragic writer who enjoyed any high reputation among the Athenians, with the exception perhaps of Agathon, of whose works a few fragments remain. But the dramatic art was by no means neglected. Comedy assumed a new form in the hands of Alexis and Antiphanes, whose fecundity equalled that of any former writers. The actors themselves rose to greater importance during this period, not only because their art was valued for the pleasure which it gave, but also for its close connexion with the successful practice of eloquence, the path to political rank. The actor gained wealth by his profession, and became also the instructor of the orator in that which we may call the dramatic part of his study. Demosthenes himself was indebted to the actors Satyrus and Andronicus for his superiority in action. On one occasion, we find Aristodemus, an actor, sent on an embassy to Philip, partly perhaps because the Macedonian king was fond of his art,-partly, also, because Aristodemus could assume on all public occasions as dignified a manner as that which characterized Philip himself. (See Schlosser, i. Th. 2 Abth.; and ESCHINES.)

Anaxagoras introduced into Athens the speculative philosophy of the Ionian school, and he found a pupil and supporter in the great Pericles, and in the poet Euripides. From this period we may consider philosophy as in opposition to the popular creed, since the speculations on the origin of things and the nature of man were entirely at variance with those symbolical forms which constituted a chief part of the exterior shape of religion, and, in the eyes of the people, its substance. From the Eleatic school, which was early divided into two branches, sprang the subtle dialectic which established itself at Athens. Socrates himself was a master in this science; his school, chiefly known through his disciple Plato, requires a history by itself. [See SOCRATES, PLATO.] The teaching of Aristotle belongs to the next period. [See ARISTOTLE.] In historical writing, Athenian literature has transmitted to us the history of the Peloponnesian war by Thucydides, a work in which the dryness of the annalistic style is relieved by the profound reflections, which the author generally puts into the mouths of his speakers. Xenophon, a pupil of Socrates, has left us, in his Anabasis, one of the most attractive military histories that ever was written, a model of simplicity and good sense, in this respect equal to the Commentaries of Cæsar, but superior to the work of the Roman general in all that renders a narrative interesting. Xenophon was also an historian, a philosopher, and an economical writer (as the term was then understood), but his fame must rest on his history of the Expedition of the younger Cyrus, and perhaps on the philosophical romance (the Cyropædeia) which has disguised the history of the first Cyrus, the founder of the Persian monarchy.

Various modern writers have attempted to determine the From the age of Pericles to the time of Alexander, Athens, population of Athens from the few data left by antient writers, though almost constantly engaged in wars, had not neglected and from such other considerations as appear applicable to to cultivate those arts which have associated her name with the question. Their results are very different, as might be the history of civilization. Her public buildings were con- expected in a case where even an approximation to truth is tinually increasing in number and magnificence, which was not attainable. We may always reasonably distrust the mainly due to Lycurgus, the orator, the son of Lycophron, accuracy of antient statistics; and when to this we add the who built the Panathenaic Stadium, and provided for the discrepancies in extant authorities, and the errors to which security of the city by the magazines on the Acropolis, and they have been exposed from transcription, we cannot place by the dock-yards in the Peiræus. He is said also to have any confidence at all in the results that have been deduced completed the great Dionysiac theatre, and to have repaired as to the antient population of this city. The question is the Odeium of Pericles. Public speaking, without which also mixed up with the population of the whole province there is no road to political power in a democratical state, [see ATTICA], and it is not easy to assign the proportions had been cultivated in Athens ever since the downfall of belonging to the capital and to the rest of the country. the family of Pisistratus restored the constitutional forms; Colonel Leake (Topog. of Athens, p. 380) states the popuand Themistocles, Aristides, and others, owed their influ-lation of the city at about 116,000, in the most flourishing ence to their skill in oratory as well as to their abilities or character. Antiphon [see ANTIPHON] first formed oratory into an art at Athens, or was the first who professed to teach it; and the introduction about the same time of the dialectics of the sophists, of which both oratory and philosophy

No. 138.

times of the republic: he makes the citizens, 40,000; the Metoci, or resident aliens, 13,000; the slaves, 53,000; and paupers and others of Athenian race, not having rights of citizenship,' 10,000. We can hardly express a positive opinion as to the probability of 116,000 being above or below

During the wars between the last Philip of Macedonia and the Romans, the Athenians, together with Attalus, king of Pergamus, took the part of the foreign invaders. Athens, though weak in the field, was still strong within her walls, the Macedonian king attacked both the Peiræus and the city before the Romans could come to their assistance (B.C. 200); but failing in his object, he turned his vengeance against the suburbs, and the numerous beautiful temples which adorned the Attic plain. Not content (Livy, xxxi. 26) with destroying the temples and statues, he broke in pieces the very marble of which they were built.' There can be no doubt that the invasion of Philip was most destructive to the monuments of Attica, though Eleusis and Athens itself escaped. [See PHILIP.]

the truth; but various objections may be made to the reasons | desecration from the unbridled licentiousness of this second by which the details of this investigation are supported. Alcibiades (Plutarch, Demetr. 23, 24). Antigonus Gonatas Boeckh (Public Economy of Athens, ii. p. 56, Trans.) has got possession of Athens for a short time (Pausan. 3, 6) estimated the greatest population of the city and the ports B.C. 269. at 180,000. But the only fact of any weight on which this assumption rests, is the circumstance of the houses in Athens being above 10,000 in the time of Xenophon. The author, to give some additional degree of probability to this result, estimates the population of the mining district at 20,000, which, added to the population of the city and ports, makes a total of 200,000. He then assumes the area of the city and ports, together with the mining district, at thirty-two square miles, which he thinks will not give too great a population for each square mile. But these considerations only obscure the question. Boeckh estimates the circuit of the city and sea-ports at 200 stadia, which is considerably above the truth [see ATHENS, p. 11]; but he says nothing of the area of the city and the ports, which certainly was not above three square miles. We have thus twenty-nine square miles for the mining district, which may be above or below the truth; but as we do not know the dimensions of this district, except that it was reckoned sixty stadia in one direction, nothing positive can be said about it. Though Boeckh's arguments as to the population of the city are inconclusive, we cannot help thinking that the population which he assigns to it is more in harmony with all known facts than the lower estimate of Colonel Leake. Mr. Clinton (Fasti Hellenici, p. 394) is disposed to assign about 160,000 inhabitants to the city and the ports; but some of his arguments are liable to objection, and especially so far as they rest on his assertion of the space enclosed being larger than Paris, and nearly equal to Rome in the time of Augustus. That this could not be the case will be evident, if we compare, as Colonel Leake has not neglected to do, the form of the walls of Rome with those of Athens; the circuit of the two walls might be nearly equal, but the space included was very different.

The population of the city depended, to a considerable amount, on foreign corn, which was derived from Euboea, the north coast of the Black Sea, and also from other places. The corn trade between the Black Sea, and Ægina and the Peloponnesus, existed as early as B.c. 480 (see Herod. vii. 147), and perhaps earlier. In the time of Demosthenes (Oration against Leptines) the importation of corn into Attica was very large, and the regulations respecting this trade formed an important part of the public economy of the city. The political history of Athens, during and after the age of Alexander, is of little importance. The city was often involved in the revolutions and movements of the Macedonian kingdom; but on the whole it enjoyed internal tranquillity to the time of the Roman occupation of Greece, which it owed chiefly to the control exercised by the various rulers of Macedonia. Soon after the death of Alexander the Lamian war broke out, in which the city showed almost the last feeble spark of that military spirit which once led it to triumph over the armies of the east. The result of the campaign was the occupation of Munychia by a Macedonian garrison (B.c. 322); and the death of Phoción, which took place soon after, left Athens without a representative of her antient statesmen. [See ANTIPATER, LEOSTHENES, and LAMIAN WAR.]

Cassander, having got possession of Athens (B. c. 317), appointed Demetrius of Phalerum, supported by a Macedonian garrison, the governor of the city. During ten years Demetrius secured to Athens, if not prosperity, at least peace: under him Philo the architect added a portico to the great temple at Eleusis, and built the large arsenal in the Peiræus. Demetrius was a mere rhetorician, and a pretender to philosophy; but he was the friend of the comic poets Diphilus and Menander, the ornaments of the new Athenian comedy. Under his administration the character of the Athenians sunk still lower; and public morals, perhaps never pure in Athens, at least since the days of Pericles, became prepared for the excesses of Demetrius Poliorcetes, who found the corrupted Athenian ready to anticipate his most extravagant wishes and demands. Demetrius the Phalerian was expelled (B. c. 307), and the forms of the constitution were for a time revived.

Demetrius Poliorcetes was a soldier, a man of talent, and a lover of pleasure. During his second residence at Athens (B.C. 301), he received the honours which were due only to the gods; temples were erected to his mistresses; nor did the abode of the Virgin-Goddess herself on the Acropolis escape

The next great calamity of Athens was its capture by the Romans under Sulla (B. C. 86). Athens had espoused the cause of Mithridates, and admitted his general, Archelaus, into the Peiræus. The city was taken by assault (Plut. Sulla, 14), and the Roman soldiers made the streets swim with Athenian blood. This was the first time that the fortifications of Athens had been forced by an enemy. Sulla demolished the walls of the Peiræus, together with the great arsenal of Philo, and from this time the commerce of Athens was annihilated. [See SULLA.]

Under Roman government, Athens, though she had lost her political power and her commerce, was still the centre of the arts and of philosophy, and a favourite residence of the wealthy Romans. From the time of Julius Cæsar to that of Hadrian it was occasionally honoured by the visits of the masters of the Roman world, and to them it owed much of that splendour which Pausanias admired in the second century of our æra. As a school of learning, it was frequented by the Romans who aspired to perfect themselves in the language and philosophy of Greece. The poet Horace was a student here when the civil wars broke out after the assassination of Julius Cæsar; and Cicero addresses one of his moral treatises to his son Marcus, who was then studying here under Cratippus. (See Officia, lib. i. cap. 1.)

'No other city ever enjoyed her fortune in the prosperity which attended her so long after the loss of her political importance. Even the respect which has been paid to Rome, since the decline of her temporal power, is but a feeble representation of that enjoyed by Athens during five centuries, among all the nations into which Grecian civilization had penetrated. We cannot have a stronger proof of this fact than that the most remarkable buildings erected in Athens, after the decline of her naval power, were executed at the expense of foreign potentates. (Leake's Topography of Athens, pref. p. xxv.) To compress within reasonable limits the history of Athens, from the epoch indicated in the above extract, we shall arrange in chronological order those events which are worthy of record as denoting the influence or the interest of foreign powers in this city, which the world at one time regarded as the parent and nurse of arts and philosophy.

B. C. 275. Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of Egypt, built a gymnasium near the temple of Theseus, and gave his name to a new tribe at Athens.

B. C. 240? Attalus, king of Pergamus, had also the honour of giving name to a tribe, and ornamented the Notium, or S.E. wall of the Acropolis, with four compositions in statuary, one of which commemorated his own victory over the Gauls (Pausan. i. 25.)

B.C. 167. Antiochus Epiphanes, assisted by the architect Cossutius, commenced the great temple of Jupiter Olympius, which was not finished till the time of Hadrian.

Ariobarzanes II., king of Cappadocia, repaired the Odeum, or Music Hall of Pericles.

Julius Cæsar contributed to the erection of the Propylæum of the New Agora, which still exists.

A. D. 117-138. Hadrian, the imperial architect, was the great benefactor of Athens. He finished the great temple of Jupiter, adorned the city with numerous other public works, and furnished the new quarter of the Hadrianopolis with water by an aqueduct. Antoninus and M. Aurelius continued to extend to Athens the munificence of their predecessor; and at the same time Herodes Atticus, a native of Marathon, erected the theatre which bore the name of his wife Regilla,