2023年7月27日发(作者：)

The Greek Cities

THE GREEK CITIES THAT WERE REALLY STATES

WE modern people love the sound of the word “big.” We pride ourselves upon the fact that we

belong to the “biggest" country in the world and possess the “biggest” navy and grow the

“biggest” oranges and potatoes, and we love to live in cities of “millions” of inhabitants and

when we are dead we are buried in the “biggest cemetery of the whole state.”

A citizen of ancient Greece, could he have heard us talk, would not have known what we meant.

“Moderation in all things” was the ideal of his life and mere bulk did not impress him at all. And

this love of moderation was not merely a hollow phrase used upon special occasions: it influenced

the life of the Greeks from the day of their birth to the hour of their death. It was part of their

literature and it made them build small but perfect temples. It found expression in the clothes

which the men wore and in the rings and the bracelets of their wives. It followed the crowds that

went to the theatre and made them hoot down any playwright who dared to sin against the iron law

of good taste or good sense.

The Greeks even insisted upon this quality in their politicians and in their most popular athletes.

When a powerful runner came to Sparta and boasted that he could stand longer on one foot than

any other man in Hellas the people drove him from the city because he prided himself upon an

accomplish- ment at which he could be beaten by any common goose. “That is all very well,”

you will say, “and no doubt it is a great virtue to care so much for moderation and perfection, but

why should the Greeks have been the only people to develop this quality in olden times?” For an

answer I shall point to the way in which the Greeks lived.

The people of Egypt or Mesopotamia had been the “subjects" of a mysterious Supreme Ruler

who lived miles and miles away in a dark palace and who was rarely seen by the masses of the

population. The Greeks on the other hand, were “free citizens” of a hundred independent little

“cities" the largest of which counted fewer inhabitants than a large modern village. When a

peasant who lived in Ur said that he was a Babylonian he meant that he was one of millions of

other people who paid tribute to the king who at that particular moment happened to be master of

western Asia. But when a Greek said proudly that he was an Athenian or a Theban he spoke of a

small town, which was both his home and his country and which recognised no master but the will

of the people in the market-place.

To the Greek, his fatherland was the place where he was born; where he had spent his earliest

years playing hide and seek amidst the forbidden rocks of the Acropolis; where he had grown into

manhood with a thousand other boys and girls, whose nicknames were as familiar to him as those

of your own schoolmates. His Fatherland was the holy soil where his father and mother lay buried.

It was the small house within the high city-walls where his wife and children lived in safety. It was

a complete world which covered no more than four or five acres of rocky land. Don’t you see how

these surroundings must have influenced a man in everything he did and said and thought? The

people of Babylon and Assyria and Egypt had been part of a vast mob. They had been lost in the multitude. The Greek on the other hand had never lost touch with his immediate surroundings. He

never ceased to be part of a little town where everybody knew every one else. He felt that his

intelligent neighbours were watching him. Whatever he did, whether he wrote plays or made

statues out of marble or composed songs, he remembered that his efforts were going to be judged

by all the free-born citizens of his home-town who knew about such things. This knowledge

forced him to strive after perfection, and perfection, as he had been taught from childhood, was

not possible without moderation.

In this hard school, the Greeks learned to excel in many things. They created new forms of

government and new forms of literature and new ideals in art which we have never been able to

surpass. They performed these miracles in little villages that covered less ground than four or five

modern city blocks.

And look, what finally happened!

In the fourth century before our era, Alexander of Macedonia conquered the world. As soon as he

had done with fighting, Alexander decided that he must bestow the benefits of the true Greek

genius upon all mankind. He took it away from the little cities and the little villages and tried to

make it blossom and bear fruit amidst the vast royal residences of his newly acquired Empire. But

the Greeks, removed from the familiar sight of their own temples, removed from the well- known

sounds and smells of their own crooked streets, at once lost the cheerful joy and the marvellous

sense of moderation which had inspired the work of their hands and brains while they laboured for

the glory of their old city-states. They became cheap artisans, content with second-rate work. The

day the little city-states of old Hellas lost their independence and were forced to become part of a

big nation, the old Greek spirit died. And it has been dead ever since.

Greek Self-Government

THE GREEKS WERE THE FIRST PEOPLE TO TRY THE DIFFICULT EXPERIMENT OF

SELF-GOVERNMENT

IN the beginning, all the Greeks had been equally rich and equally poor. Every man had owned a

certain number of cows and sheep. His mud-hut had been his castle. He had been free to come and

go as he wished. Whenever it was necessary to discuss matters of public importance, all the

citizens had gathered in the market-place. One of the older men of the village was elected

chairman and it was his duty to see that everybody had a chance to express his views. In case of

war, a particularly energetic and self-confident villager was chosen commander-in-chief, but the

same people who had voluntarily given this man the right to be their leader, claimed an equal right

to deprive him of his job, once the danger had been averted.

But gradually the village had grown into a city. Some people had worked hard and others had been

lazy. A few had been unlucky and still others had been just plain dishonest in dealing with their neighbours and had gathered wealth. As a result, the city no longer consisted of a number of men

who were equally well-off. On the contrary it was inhabited by a small class of very rich people

and a large class of very poor ones.

There had been another change. The old commander-in- chief who had been willingly recognised

as “headman” or “King” because he knew how to lead his men to victory, had disappeared

from the scene. His place had been taken by the nobles–a class of rich people who during the

course of time had got hold of an undue share of the farms and estates.

These nobles enjoyed many advantages over the common crowd of freemen. They were able to

buy the best weapons which were to be found on the market of the eastern Mediterranean. They

had much spare time in which they could prac- tise the art of fighting. They lived in strongly built

houses and they could hire soldiers to fight for them. They were constantly quarrelling among

each other to decide who should rule the city. The victorious nobleman then assumed a sort of

Kingship over all his neighbours and governed the town until he in turn was killed or driven away

by still another ambitious nobleman.

Such a King, by the grace of his soldiers, was called a “Tyrant” and during the seventh and sixth

centuries before our era every Greek city was for a time ruled by such Tyrants, many of whom, by

the way, happened to be exceedingly capa- ble men. But in the long run, this state of affairs

became unbearable. Then attempts were made to bring about reforms and out of these reforms

grew the first democratic government of which the world has a record.

It was early in the seventh century that the people of Athens decided to do some housecleaning

and give the large number of freemen once more a voice in the government as they were supposed

to have had in the days of their Achaean ancestors. They asked a man by the name of Draco to

provide them with a set of laws that would protect the poor against the aggressions of the rich.

Draco set to work. Unfortunately he was a professional lawyer and very much out of touch with

ordinary life. In his eyes a crime was a crime and when he had finished his code, the people of

Athens discovered that these Draconian laws were so severe that they could not possibly be put

into effect. There would not have been rope enough to hang all the criminals under their new

system of jurisprudence which made the stealing of an apple a capital offence.

The Athenians looked about for a more humane reformer. At last they found some one who could

do that sort of thing better than anybody else. His name was Solon. He belonged to a noble family

and he had travelled all over the world and had studied the forms of government of many other

countries. After a careful study of the subject, Solon gave Athens a set of laws which bore

testimony to that wonderful principle of moderation which was part of the Greek character. He

tried to improve the condition of the peasant without however destroying the prosperity of the

nobles who were (or rather who could be) of such great service to the state as soldiers. To protect

the poorer classes against abuse on the part of the judges (who were always elected from the class

of the nobles because they received no salary) Solon made a provision whereby a citizen with a

grievance had the right to state his case before a jury of thirty of his fellow Athenians.

Most important of all, Solon forced the average freeman to take a direct and personal interest in

the affairs of the city. No longer could he stay at home and say “oh, I am too busy today” or “it

is raining and I had better stay indoors.” He was expected to do his share; to be at the meeting of

the town council; and carry part of the responsibility for the safety and the prosperity of the state.

This government by the “demos,” the people, was often far from successful. There was too much

idle talk. There were too many hateful and spiteful scenes between rivals for official honor. But it

taught the Greek people to be independent and to rely upon themselves for their salvation and that

was a very good thing.

Athens vs. Sparta

HOW ATHENS AND SPARTA FOUGHT A LONG AND DISASTROUS WAR FOR THE

LEADERSHIP OF GREECE

ATHENS and Sparta were both Greek cities and their people spoke a common language. In every

other respect they were different. Athens rose high from the plain. It was a city exposed to the

fresh breezes from the sea, willing to look at the world with the eyes of a happy child. Sparta, on

the other hand, was built at the bottom of a deep valley, and used the surrounding mountains as a

barrier against foreign thought. Athens was a city of busy trade. Sparta was an armed camp where

people were soldiers for the sake of being soldiers. The people of Athens loved to sit in the sun

and discuss poetry or listen to the wise words of a philosopher. The Spartans, on the other hand,

never wrote a single line that was considered literature, but they knew how to fight, they liked to

fight, and they sacrificed all human emotions to their ideal of military preparedness.

No wonder that these sombre Spartans viewed the success of Athens with malicious hate. The

energy which the defence of the common home had developed in Athens was now used for

purposes of a more peaceful nature. The Acropolis was rebuilt and was made into a marble shrine

to the Goddess Athena. Pericles, the leader of the Athenian democracy, sent far and wide to find

famous sculptors and painters and scientists to make the city more beautiful and the young

Athenians more worthy of their home. At the same time he kept a watchful eye on Sparta and built

high walls which connected Athens with the sea and made her the strongest fortress of that day.

An insignificant quarrel between two little Greek cities led to the final conflict. For thirty years the

war between Athens and Sparta continued. It ended in a terrible disaster for Athens.

During the third year of the war the plague had entered the city. More than half of the people and

Pericles, the great leader, had been killed. The plague was followed by a period of bad and

untrustworthy leadership. A brilliant young fellow by the name of Alcibiades had gained the favor

of the popular assembly. He suggested a raid upon the Spartan colony of Syracuse in Sicily. An

expedition was equipped and everything was ready. But Alcibiades got mixed up in a street brawl

and was forced to flee. The general who succeeded him was a bungler. First he lost his ships and then he lost his army, and the few surviving Athenians were thrown into the stone-quarries of

Syracuse, where they died from hunger and thirst.

The expedition had killed all the young men of Athens. The city was doomed. After a long siege

the town surrendered in April of the year 404. The high walls were demolished. The navy was

taken away by the Spartans. Athens ceased to exist as the center of the great colonial empire which

it had conquered during the days of its prosperity. But that wonderful desire to learn and to know

and to investigate which had distinguished her free citizens during the days of greatness and

prosperity did not perish with the walls and the ships. It continued to live. It became even more

brilliant.

Athens no longer shaped the destinies of the land of Greece. But now, as the home of the first

great university the city began to influence the minds of intelligent people far beyond the narrow

frontiers of Hellas.

1. How was Athens different from Sparta?

2. Why was rhetoric developed in the ancient Greece?