chapter xi

, of this History, vol. iii, p. 145, respecting the Solonian declaration here adverted to.

[314] See the two speeches of Periklês in Thucyd. ii, 35-46, and ii, 60-64. Compare the reflections of Thucydidês upon the two democracies of Athens and Syracuse, vi, 69 and vii, 21-55.

[315] Thucyd. vii, 69. Πατρίδος τε τῆς ἐλευθερωτάτης ὑπομιμνήσκων καὶ τῆς ἐν αὐτῇ ἀνεπιτακτοῦ πᾶσιν ἐς τὴν δίαιταν ἐξουσίας, etc.

The attachment of an Athenian citizen to his democratical constitution comprised two distinct veins of sentiment: first, his rights, protection, and advantages derived from it,—next, his obligations of exertion and sacrifice towards it and with reference to it. Neither of these two veins of sentiment was ever wholly absent; but according as the one or the other was present at different times in varying proportions, the patriotism of the citizen was a very different feeling. That which Herodotus remarks is, the extraordinary efforts of heart and hand which the Athenians suddenly displayed,—the efficacy of the active sentiment throughout the bulk of the citizens; and we shall observe even more memorable evidences of the same phenomenon in tracing down the history from Kleisthenês to the end of the Peloponnesian war: we shall trace a series of events and motives eminently calculated to stimulate that self-imposed labor and discipline which the early democracy had first called forth. But when we advance farther down, from the restoration of the democracy after the Thirty Tyrants to the time of Demosthenês,—I venture upon this brief anticipation, in the conviction that one period of Grecian history can only be thoroughly understood by contrasting it with another,—we shall find a sensible change in Athenian patriotism. The active sentiment of obligation is comparatively inoperative,—the citizen, it is true, has a keen sense of the value of the democracy as protecting him and insuring to him valuable rights, and he is, moreover, willing to perform his ordinary sphere of legal duties towards it; but he looks upon it as a thing established, and capable of maintaining itself in a due measure of foreign ascendency, without any such personal efforts as those which his forefathers cheerfully imposed upon themselves. The orations of Demosthenês contain melancholy proofs of such altered tone of patriotism,—of that languor, paralysis, and waiting for others to act, which preceded the catastrophe of Chæroneia, notwithstanding an unabated attachment to the democracy as a source of protection and good government.[316] That same preternatural activity which the allies of Sparta, at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, both denounced and admired in the Athenians, is noted by the orator as now belonging to their enemy Philip.

[316] Compare the remarkable speech of the Corinthian envoys at Sparta (Thucyd. i, 68-71), with the φιλοπραγμοσύνη which Demosthenês so emphatically notices in Philip (Olynthiac. i, 6, p. 13): also Philippic. i, 2, and the Philippics and Olynthiacs generally.

Such variations in the scale of national energy pervade history, modern as well as ancient, but in regard to Grecian history, especially, they can never be overlooked. For a certain measure, not only of positive political attachment, but also of active self-devotion, military readiness, and personal effort, was the indispensable condition of maintaining Hellenic autonomy, either in Athens or elsewhere; and became so more than ever when the Macedonians were once organized under an enterprising and semi-Hellenized prince. The democracy was the first creative cause of that astonishing personal and many-sided energy which marked the Athenian character, for a century downward from Kleisthenês. That the same ultra-Hellenic activity did not longer continue, is referable to other causes, which will be hereafter in part explained. No system of government, even supposing it to be very much better and more faultless than the Athenian democracy, can ever pretend to accomplish its legitimate end apart from the personal character of the people, or to supersede the necessity of individual virtue and vigor. During the half-century immediately preceding the battle of Chæroneia, the Athenians had lost that remarkable energy which distinguished them during the first century of their democracy, and had fallen much more nearly to a level with the other Greeks, in common with whom they were obliged to yield to the pressure of a foreign enemy. I here briefly notice their last period of languor, in contrast with the first burst of democratical fervor under Kleisthenês, now opening,—a feeling which will be found, as we proceed, to continue for a longer period than could have been reasonably anticipated, but which was too high-strung to become a perpetual and inherent attribute of any community.

##