History of the Greek congress or synedrion during the Persian war.

1. In the present article it will be my object to trace the foreign influence which Sparta possessed at the time of the Persian war, and for what length of time her supremacy in Greece remained uncontested and unshaken. This is chiefly seen in the proceedings of the congress of the allied Greek states: to ascertain which with precision, it will be first necessary to fix the chronology of the successive stages of the Persian war.

In the course of the year 481 B.C. (Olymp. 74.¾) Xerxes set out from his residence at Susa (Herod. VII. 20), found the great army assembled in Cappadocia, and marched to Sardis, from which town he sent ambassadors to the Greek cities (ib. 32). Having wintered here, the army marched in the spring of 480 B.C. (Olymp. 74. 4) to Abydosa; when it had reached the passes of Pieria, the Persian envoys returned (ib. 131.). Soon after this, they met at Thermopylæ the Greek forces, which had set out before the 75th Olympiad and the Carnean games, about June 480 B.C. Battles of Thermopylæ and Artemisium in μέσον θέϱος (VIII. 12.) both perhaps a short time before the Olympic festival (VIII. 26). Conquest of Attica, four months after the beginning of the διάβασις τοῦ ʿΕλλησπόν (VIII. 51).

The gerusia of Sparta, Crete, and Elis; and the kings of Sparta and other Doric states.

1. This result was chiefly brought about by the aristocratical counterpoise to the popular assembly, the gerusia, which was never wanting in a genuine Doric state, the “council of elders,” as the name signifies. In this respect it is opposed to the senate (βουλὴ,) which represented the people; although the latter name, as being the more general term, is sometimes used for the council, but never the converse. Thus in the Persian war a senate assembled at Argos, which had full powers to decide concerning peace and war; this was therefore of an aristocratic character, since the government of Argos had not then become democratical. The Homeric assembly, which was of a purely aristocratical form, is called βουλὴ γερόντων or γερουσία; it consisted of the older men of the ruling families, and decided both public business and judicial causes conjointly with the kings, properly so called, frequently however in connexion with an ἀγορά. In this assembly lay, but as yet undeveloped, the political elements of the Doric gerusia. At Sparta the name was taken in the strictest sense, as the national opinion laid the greatest importance upon age in the management of public affairs; the young men were appointed for war: and accordingly none but men of sixty or more years of age had admission to this council.

On the institution of marriage and other customs in the Doric states.

1. We now proceed to describe the different relations in the domestic life of the Dorians; and first, that between man and wife. Here it will be necessary to contradict the idea, that the duties of private life were but little esteemed by the Doric race, particularly at Sparta, and were sacrificed to the duty owed to the community. The Lacedæmonian maxim was in direct opposition to this doctrine; viz. that the door of his court was the boundary of every man's freedom: without, all owned the authority of the state; within, the master of the house ruled as lord on his own ground; and the rights of domestic life, notwithstanding their frequent collision with the public institutions, were more respected than at Athens. At the same time, however, a peculiar national custom, which pervaded the whole system of legislation, prevailed throughout these relations with a force and energy, which we, taking the accounts of the ancients as our guide, will endeavour now to examine. It has been above remarked how, in accordance with the manners of the east, but in direct opposition to the later habits of the Greeks, a free intercourse in public was permitted by the Dorians to the youth of both sexes, who were brought into contact particularly at festivals and choruses.

The settlements of the Dorians without the Peloponnese.

1. On account of the multiplicity of subjects which it will be now necessary to consider, we shall be compelled to shorten the discussion of several points, and to take for granted many collateral questions, except where we may be encouraged to enter into greater detail by the hope of disclosing fresh fields for the inquiries of others.

It will be the most convenient method to make the mother-states the basis of our arrangement, as these are known with far greater certainty than the dates of the foundation of their respective colonies; by which means we shall also be enabled to take in a regular order those settlements which lie near to, and were connected with, one another.

First, the colonies of Argos, Epidaurus, and Trœzen. We will treat of these together, as they all lie in the same direction, and as the colonies of the two last states more or less recognised the supremacy of Argos, and not unfrequently followed a common leader. These extend as far as the southern extremity of Asia Minor.

The Dorians on the south-western coast of Asia Minor derived their origin, according to Herodotus, from the Peloponnese. And indeed they were generally considered as an Argive colony (from which state Strabo derives Rhodes, Halicarnassus, Cnidus, and Cos), led by princes of the Heraclidæ, from whom the noble families of Rhodes, for example the Eratidæ or Diagoridæ at Ialysus, claimed to be descended.

On the comic, tragic, and lyric poetry of the Dorians.

1. At Athens, a coarse and ill-mannered jest was termed a Megarian joke; which may be considered as a certain proof of the decided propensity of that people to humour. This is confirmed by the claims of the Megarians, who disputed the invention of comedy with the Athenians, and perhaps not without justice, if indeed the term invention be at all applicable to the rise of the several branches of poetry, which sprung so gradually, and at such different times, from the particular feelings excited by the ancient festival rites, that it is difficult, and perhaps impossible, to fix upon the period at which the species of composition to which each gave rise was sufficiently advanced to be called a particular kind of poetry. Yet it is in the highest degree probable that the Athenians were indebted for the earliest form of their comic poetry to the Megarians. The Megarian comedy is ridiculed by Ecphantides, one of the early comic poets of Athens, as of a rude and unpolished kind, which circumstance alone makes its higher antiquity probable. Ecphantides, whom Aristophanes, Cratinus, and others ridicule as rough and unpolished, looks down in his turn on those who had introduced comedy from Megara, and claims the merit of first seasoning the uncouth Megarian productions with Attic salt.

On the worship of Diana in the Doric and other states.

1. We now proceed to consider the worship of Diana; a subject which need not be so fully examined as that of Apollo, as it does not, like the worship of that god, every where present the same fundamental notions, and therefore cannot, in all its first beginnings, be derived from the religion of the Dorians. But as in general the Grecian mythology adopted the most various and inconsistent religious views and ideas, so in the name of the single goddess Diana were united almost opposite branches of ancient worship, which we must attempt to separate. Lest, however, it should be supposed that we are unable to trace the association of ideas, which saw a simple character in the “various forms of that great goddess, who, having her origin in the interior of Asia, passed from thence into Greece, and was worshipped as the moon, the goddess of the woods, the huntress, the nurse of children, and a nurse of the universe, as well by the choruses of the virgins of Caryæ, as in the dances of the temples;” we will endeavour to ascertain some historical criterion, which may distinguish the worship of Diana from that of any other deity, and which must not be one of the ideas or symbols of the worship itself, since it is concerning the possibility or impossibility of their connexion that we are to inquire.

General outline of the country.

1. In the Thermaic bay, the modern gulf of Salonichi, three rivers of considerable size fall into the sea at very short distances from one another, but which meet in this place in very different directions. The largest of the three comes from the north-west, and is now called (as indeed it was in the time of Tzetzes and Anna Comnena) the Bardares (or Vardar), and was in ancient days celebrated under the name of Axius. Its stream is increased by large tributary branches on both sides, and chiefly by the Erigon, which flows from the mountains of Illyria. The river next in order runs from the west; it is now called in the interior of the country Potova, and on the coast Carasmac; its ancient name, as is evident from passages in Herodotus and Strabo, was Lydias, or Ludias. And, lastly, after many turnings and windings, the Haliacmon, now called Bichlista, flows from the south-west; in the time of Herodotus it fell into the sea through the same mouth as the Lydias, probably being widened by marshes; and in modern maps the interval between the two rivers is represented as very small.