Alexander's Empire

NO READER OF THIS history should omit to have beside him Plutarch’s Lives, and there study the picturesque details of the life of the men of this age, for which there is no space in this short book. Nowhere is Plutarch more picturesque than in the opening chapters of his sketch of Aratus, drawn, no doubt, from that politician’s once well-known “Memoirs.” The habit of keeping notes of one’s own life, and leaving them as memoirs to posterity, was already fashionable, so that instead of the severe political history of Thucydides, which scorns personal details, most of our authorities now give us plenty of piquant anecdotes, witty sayings, and clever stratagems. The course of serious history is often obscured by these sallies; great national movements come to be attributed to the accident of this or that man’s action; for people are always glad to find some definite personal cause for a great vague movement, the growth of which they cannot grasp. If, however, we lose in political insight by this biographical way of treating history, we gain immensely in our knowledge of social and moral phases, in our appreciation of human nature, in the color and richness of our picture, even when it varies considerably from the reality which it professes to copy.

Aratus, like Pyrrhus, narrowly escaped death in his infancy at the hands of one of the many tyrants who in succession seized the rule of Sicyon. We see this kind of thing happening all through Greece, where any ambitious man, who could by a massacre or otherwise make himself ruler, could count on the support of Antigonus Gonatas, or of Ptolemy, as these kings found it far easier to deal with Greek cities when represented by one man, than by the changing humor of a public assembly. When this particular tyrant Abantidas murdered Cleinias, father of Aratus, and sought to slay the child, he escaped and wandered in terror and alone till he came to the house of his uncle, who was married to a sister of the tyrant. This good woman hid him, and sent him away safely to Argos.

Though an exile he grew up among rich friends and apparently with ample means and it was noted that instead of being educated in philosophy or in the science of strategy, he devoted himself to athletics, so as to compete in the Pentathlum or five events of the public games. It is characteristic of the time to note that this was thought an inferior training, for not only was he no polished writer or speaker, but he had no nerve in regular warfare; his whole appearance in his statues savored of the coarse athletic habit, and he was eminently successful only in night surprises, or in equally surreptitious devices of a tortuous diplomacy. This, too, is remarkable, that while he was noted as the bitterest enemy of local tyrants, he always valued the favor of great kings, Ptolemy and Antigonus, and was eminently a courtier. For these sovrans were now conceded to have a lawful and even a divine right, while the upstart tyrants were fellow citizens, whom the inborn Greek jealousy could not tolerate over them, however just or enlightened was their rule.

His great ambition was to free his native town, where one tyrant had succeeded another, and Plutarch has told us, evidently from the autobiography of Aratus, the thrilling narrative of the successful adventure, which he did not undertake till he had in vain solicited the help of the kings. First the tyrant’s spies at Argos had their suspicions disarmed by seeing him among his companions in youthful revelry. When they saw garlands and wreaths of flowers, and singing girls being sent to his house for a feast, they laughed at their master’s fears from such a youth as this. And yet the rumors about his designs were correct. Then comes the preparation of scaling ladders, the attempt to secure the dogs of the gardener, who dwelt beside the easiest spot of the walls of Sicyon. The party arrives before dawn, and set up their ladders in spite of the barking of the two little dogs, which had escaped when their master was seized and were very “pugnacious and uncompromising.” The party had to lie down while the night watch passed along the wall, and now the cocks began to crow about the country, and they feared the early people would be coming in to market; but the barking of the gardener’s dogs, and the sullen answer of a large sporting dog, kept as a watch in one of the towers on the wall, were taken to be a response to the bell of the night watch, and so at last the conspirators got in, and without any massacre seized the town, and burned the tyrant’s house, while he escaped for his life.

Aratus’s next and most politic act was to put Sicyon (B.C. 250) under the Achaean League, which was still small and obscure, so that it seemed great condescension for a Doric city to join them. Even then he saw that without large funds, the return of exiles would be ruinous, for when they reclaimed their property it was impossible to satisfy them without banishment of the new occupiers. It was then that he undertook his adventurous ^ journey to Egypt, and begged from Philadelphus one hundred and fifty talents, wherewith he satisfied all the rival claims, before a court of fifteen arbitrators. We are told that he gained the favor of Ptolemy by presents of artistic value—statues and pictures, for which Sicyon was then very remarkable, and of which he was an excellent judge. His policy was to play the part of Egypt against Macedonia, his nearer enemy. His capture of Corinth, in 243 B.C., is a story no less romantic than that of Sicyon, and was a great blow to Antigonus in his old age. This strengthened the League, and gave it a claim to extend itself all over Northern Peloponnesus. The extreme old age and death of Antigonus no doubt weakened the activity of Macedonia at this juncture and gave Aratus time for the prosecution of his plans. Still they depended on foreign help for sufficient funds, and Ptolemy Euergetes was appointed the head of the League in war both by sea and land. This, of course, threw Antigonus necessarily into alliance with the Aetolians, the rival federation in the north of Greece. As the obscurest province of the Peloponnesus now took the lead under Aratus, so the obscurest and most uncultivated part of Northern Greece also took the lead. These Aetolians were only a great combination for mutual defense; their League was not a true political system, though a very serious military power, and their influence on Greek history was very disastrous; but we shall not describe the principles and constitution of these federations, so interesting especially for Americans, till we have noticed another new departure in the Peloponnesus—the revolutionary attempt of King Agis of Sparta.

CHAPTER XVII.KING AGIS OF SPARTA – THE POLITICAL THEORISTS OF THE DAY

We have noticed that Aratus was not a philosopher or a theorist, but a practical man, often a mere diplomatist, carrying out a peculiar policy perhaps from ambition, perhaps from a higher principle, but as we shall see, never without jealousy and selfishness. He lived in an age when practical philosophy had taken deep hold of the nobler minds and such men were eager to carry their theories into life. Some philosophers like those at Sicyon who were friends of Abantidas, and enticed him to a discussion in their garden where he was murdered, were determined opponents of monarchy, and still held by the old Greek instinct of Republican liberty. So strong was this feeling in Epirus, that when the daughter of Pyrrhus, Queen Deidamia, lost her two sons, the heirs to the throne of Pyrrhus, th people insisted on abolishing the royalty (about 234 B.C.) though an old and hereditary one, with a glorious past, and established a federation of towns, no doubt on the model of Achaea. On the other hand, earnest thinkers, especially Stoics, saw in the rule of one superior man the only safeguard from socialism and the violence of the mob. Some wrote tracts in favor of it; others even grasped at such power themselves in order that they might carry their theories into practice. This must have been the case with the gallant Lydiades, the tyrant of Megalopolis, who (about the same time 235 B.C.) when he found that the risks and danger to the public weal exceeded the advantages he had hoped to confer, voluntarily surrendered his rule, and became with his city a loyal and valuable member of the Achaean League.

There was one state in Greece, Sparta, where monarchy was indeed so ancient and respectable, that there if anywhere the name of king could excite no malevolence; but then the divided throne and the power of the ephors had long since reduced the kingship to a position not unlike that of the sovran of England, who has all the prestige of royalty, and a great influence in a political crisis, but no control of the ordinary government of the country. It was an attractive idea, to recover again the reality of this ancient and hereditary power, and to try the experiment of real monarchy in Greece, not with an upstart tyrant, but with the high title and recognized homage frankly accorded to the lineal descendants of Herakles.

The account given by Plutarch of the Sparta of that day is most curious. While the old forms of the Constitution remained, the social conditions of the country were so changed, that of the full-blooded Spartans seven hundred only remained, and one hundred houses held all the property ; the rest being paupers, and therefore of unequal civil rights. Moreover a great part of the property lay in the hands of women—evidently from the habit of making daughters heiresses by will, to the exclusion of sons. We may suppose that the Spartan of that day thought that his sons might quite well earn an independence and even wealth as...