"It was necessary to create in the multitude, and through them to force upon the leading ambitious men, that rare and difficult sentiment which we may term a constitutional morality,—a paramount reverence for the forms of the constitution, enforcing obedience to the authorities acting under and within those forms, yet combined with the habit of open speech, of action, subject only to definite legal control, and unrestrained censure of those very authorities as to all their public acts,—combined, too, with the perfect confidence in the bosom of every citizen, amidst the bitterness of party contest, that the forms of the constitution will not be less sacred in the eyes of his opponents than in his own. This co-existence of freedom and self-imposed restraint—of obedience to authority with unmeasured censure of the persons exercising it—may be found in the aristocracy of England, (since about 1688,) as well as in the democracy of the American United States; and, because we are familiar with it, we are apt to suppose it a natural sentiment; though there seem to be few sentiments more difficult to establish and diffuse among a community, judging by the experience of history. We may see how imperfectly it exists, at this day, in the Swiss cantons; and the many violences of the French Revolution illustrate, amongst various other lessons, the fatal effects arising from its absence, even among a people high in the scale of intelligence. Yet the diffusion of such constitutional morality, not merely among the majority of any community, but throughout the whole, is the indispensable condition of a government at once free and peaceable; since even any powerful and obstinate minority may render the working of free institutions impracticable, without being strong enough to conquer ascendency for themselves."—Vol. iv. p. 205.
Then follow, close on the extract we have just made, some observations upon the famous law of Ostracism, which are well deserving of attention, and which we would willingly quote did our space allow of it. Perhaps it would be difficult, in following out the several applications of this law, to show that it had exactly the beneficial operation which—arguing on the theory of the institution,—is here assigned to it. But, at the very lowest, this much may be said of the law of Ostracism, that it gives to the stronger of two factions a means of deciding the contest without appeal to force, before the contest rose to its maximum of bitterness, and without necessity or excuse for those wholesale banishments which afflicted the republics of Italy. If such an institution had existed in the Florentine republic, we should not have heard of those cruel banishments that Guelph and Ghibelline, Bianchi and Neri, inflicted upon each other; such banishments as that, for instance, in which its great poet Dante was involved.
Of one remarkable event, characterising the working of the Athenian government, we do not assent to the view presented to us by Mr Grote. His last published volume brings down the affairs of Greece to the battle of Marathon and the death of Miltiades. In the sentence passed on the hero of Marathon, the operation of a popular government has been often disadvantageously traced; the Athenians have been accused of fickleness and ingratitude. Mr Grote repels the charge. With some observations upon this defence, which forms the conclusion of the fourth and last of the published volumes, we shall bring our own notice to a close.
Ingratitude, we readily admit, is not the proper word to be used on such an occasion. A citizen serves the state, and is honoured; if he commits a crime against the state he is not, on this account, to go unpunished. His previous services invest him with no privilege to break the laws, or act criminally. What man, capable of doing, a patriotic action, would wish for such a privilege, or dream of laying claim to it?
Not gratitude or ingratitude—but justice or injustice—is the issue to be tried between Miltiades and the Athenian assembly. And although Mr Grote is supported, in some measure, by Dr Thirlwall in the judgment he gives on this transaction, we prefer to side here with the opinion expressed by the earlier historian, Mr Mitford: we view the sentence passed on Miltiades not as the triumph of law or justice, but of mere party-spirit, the triumph of a faction gained through the unreasonable anger of the people.
Though the extract is rather long, we must, in justice, give the narrative of Mr Grote in his own language.
"His reputation (that of Miltiades) had been great before the battle (of Marathon), and after it the admiration and confidence of his countrymen knew no bounds; it appears indeed to have reached such a pitch, that his head was turned, and he lost both his patriotism and his prudence. He proposed to his countrymen to incur the cost of equipping an armament of seventy ships, with an adequate armed force, and to place it altogether at his discretion; giving them no intimation whither he intended to go, but merely assuring them that if they would follow him, he would conduct them to a land where gold was abundant, and thus enrich them. Such a promise, from the lips of the recent victor of Marathon, was sufficient, and the armament was granted; no man except Miltiades knowing what was its destination. He sailed immediately to the island of Paros, laid siege to the town, and sent in a herald to require from the inhabitants a contribution of one hundred talents, on pain of entire destruction. His pretence for this attack was, that the Parians had furnished a trireme to Datis for the Persian fleet at Marathon; but his real motive (so Herodotus assures us) was vindictive animosity against a Parian citizen named Lysagoras, who had exasperated the Persian general Hydarnes against him. The Parians amused him at first with evasions, until they had procured a little delay to repair the defective portions of their wall, after which they set him at defiance; and Miltiades in vain prosecuted hostilities against them for the space of twenty-six days: he ravaged the island, but his attacks made no impression on the town. Beginning to despair of success in his military operations, he entered into some negotiation (such at least was the tale of the Parians themselves,) with a Parian woman named Timô, priestess or attendant in the temple of Demeter (Ceres) near the town-gates; this woman, promising to reveal to him a secret which would place Paros in his power, induced him to visit by night a temple to which no male person was admissible. He leaped the exterior fence and approached the sanctuary; but on coming near was seized with a panic terror and ran away, almost out of his senses; on leaping the same fence to get back, he strained or bruised his thigh badly, and became utterly disabled. In this melancholy state he was placed on ship-board; the siege being raised, and the whole armament returning to Athens."
"Vehement was the indignation both of the armament and the remaining Athenians against Miltiades on his return; and Zanthippus, father of the great Perikles, became the spokesman of this feeling. He impeached Miltiades before the popular judicature as having been guilty of deceiving the people, and so having deserved the penalty of death. The accused himself, disabled by his injured thigh, which even began to show symptoms of gangrene, was unable to stand or to say a word in his own defence; he lay on his couch before the assembled judges, while his friends made the best case they could in his behalf. Defence, it appears, there was none; all they could do was to appeal to his previous services; they reminded the people largely and emphatically of the inestimable exploit of Marathon, coming in addition to his previous conquest of Lemnos. The assembled dikasts or jurors showed their sense of these powerful appeals, by rejecting the proposition of his accuser to condemn him to death; but they imposed on him the penalty of fifty talents 'for his iniquity.'" (Vol. iv. p. 488.)
He died shortly after from his wound.
On this narrative we must make one or two observations. The turn of expression which the writer has selected for conveying the meaning of the original Greek text of his authority, might lead us to imply that when the Athenians placed a force of seventy ships at the command of Miltiades they did not know on what kind of expedition he was about to employ them. "He would conduct them to a land where gold was abundant, and thus enrich them." Surely no one had an idea that it was a voyage of discovery, in search after some El Dorado that Miltiades was about to undertake. Every one in Athens knew that the fleet was to be directed against some of their neighbours: although, for very manifest reasons,—the advantage of taking their victim by surprise, and of leaving their general unfettered, to act according to circumstances,—the objects of attack were not revealed, and on this a perfect secrecy was allowed to be maintained. It should be also added to this account, that Zanthippes, father of Pericles, who made himself spokesman for the angry feeling of the Athenians, was also, as Dr Thirwall tells us, "the son of Ariphron, the chief of the rival house of the Alcmaonids," who were little pleased with the sudden rise of Miltiades.
From the same authority we may also learn, that "Paros was at this time one of the most flourishing amongst the Cyclades." Miltiades directed the expedition against Paros from personal motives, from vindictive animosity against a Parian citizen; but Paros was rich, and could therefore pay a ransom—the very object of the expedition; and the pretext under which alone Athens could extort a ransom or a tribute from its neighbours, that they had assisted the Persians, or failed in bringing aid to the common cause against them, applied to Paros; it had furnished, or was accused of having furnished, a trireme to Datis. Whatever baseness Miltiades betrayed in using a public force for his own private revenge, there is nothing to make it appear that the selection of Paros for the object of his attack was not in perfect consistency with the real public purpose of the enterprise.
What crime in all this had Miltiades committed against the Athenians? The injustice of the expedition they shared; for it would be childishness to suppose that they sent their general out with seventy ships, and had no idea that he would attack any one. The personal motives which led him to direct it against Paros, however mean and unworthy of him, are not shown to have been at variance with the professed objects of the expedition. Nor can any one doubt for a moment that if he had succeeded in extorting from the Parians, and others, a large sum of money, the Athenians would have welcomed him back with applause, as loud as the censure they bestowed on their defeated generals, who, instead of plunder, brought them back only the disgrace of having tried to plunder. There were those at hand ready to take advantage of the public irritation; they accused him, and obtained his condemnation. We are not claiming for Miltiades the praise of virtue; nor should we make any pathetic appeal in his behalf. He was not free from a moral delinquency; but, so far as the Athenians were concerned, his substantial offence was failure in his enterprise.
That his friends urged no other defence but that of his previous services, is no proof that other grounds for acquittal were not present to their minds. They were pleading before angry and irresponsible judges, whom it, was their object to soothe and propitiate. Would the strain of inculpatory observations that we have been making, have answered their purpose? To tell an angry man that he is angry, because he is disappointed, is not the way to abate his passion. That Miltiades had disappointed them was certain; undoubtedly the best method of defence was to remind them of the great services that he had formerly rendered them. It was not the demands of judicial reason his advocates had to satisfy: they were pleading before judges whose feelings of the moment were to be the law of the moment.
"Thus closed the life of the conqueror of Marathon. The last act of it," continues Mr Grote, "produces an impression so mournful, and even shocking—his descent from the pinnacle of glory, to defeat, mean tampering with a temple-servant, mortal bodily hurt, undefended ignominy, and death under a sentence of heavy fine, is so abrupt and unprepared—that readers, ancient and modern, have not been satisfied without finding some one to blame for it: we must except Herodotus, our original authority, who recounts the transaction without dropping a single hint of blame against any one. To speak ill of the people, as Machiavel has long ago observed, is a strain in which every one at all times, even under a democratical government indulges with impunity and without provoking any opponent to reply; and in this case the hard fate of Miltiades has been imputed to the vices of the Athenians and their democracy—it has been cited in proof partly of their fickleness, partly of their ingratitude. But however such blame may serve to lighten the mental sadness arising from a series of painful facts, it will not be found justified if we apply to those facts a reasonable criticism."
He thus vindicates the Athenians from the charge of fickleness, on the ground that it was not they, but Miltiades who had changed. The fugitive from Paros, and the victor of Marathon, were two very different persons. As any remarkable instance of fickleness we should certainly not be disposed to cite the case. The charge of ingratitude, we have admitted, is, presuming that he was guilty, entirely displaced. But when Mr Grote in his final summary says, "The fate of Miltiades thus, so far from illustrating either the fickleness or the ingratitude of his countrymen, attests their just appreciation of deserts," we must indeed demur. No, no: this was not the triumph of justice over the finer sensibilities of our nature, as Mr Grote would seem to imply. On the fairest review we can give to the whole of the circumstances, we find on the sentence passed upon Miltiades a gross instance of that old notorious injustice which pronounces an enterprise meritorious or criminal according to its success. The enterprise was altogether a disgraceful affair. But the Athenians must be supposed cognisant of the nature of the expedition for which they fitted out their seventy ships:—against them, we repeat, the only substantial offence committed was his failure; nor can we doubt that his welcome back to Athens would have been quite different had there been a different issue to the adventure. Justice there was none; unless it be justice for three freebooters to pass sentence upon the fourth.
Before concluding, we ought, perhaps, to take, some notice of the reform in our orthography of Greek words which Mr Grote is desirous of introducing, in order to assimilate the English to the Greek pronunciation. The principal of these is the substitution of k for c. Our own k, he justly observes, precisely coincides with the Greek k, while a c may be either k or s. He writes Perikles, Alkibiades. To this approximation of the English pronunciation to the Greek we can see nothing to object. A reader of Greek finds it a mere annoyance, and sort of barbarism, to be obliged to pronounce the same name one way while reading Greek, and another when speaking or reading English; and to the English reader it must be immaterial which pronunciation he finally adopts. Meanwhile, it must be allowed that the first changing of an old familiar name is a disagreeable operation. We must leave the popular and the learned taste to arrange it how they can together. Mr Grote has wisely left some names—as Thucydides—in the old English form; in matters of this kind nothing is gained by too rigid a consistency. It is not improbable that his orthography will be adopted, in the first place, by the more learned writers, and will from their pages find its way into popular use. Mr Grote also, in speaking of the Greek deities, calls them by their Greek names, and not by the Latin equivalents—As Zeus for Jupiter—Athene for Minerva.