The Historians' History of the World 04 [Greece to the Roman Conquest]

Ruins of the Erechtheum, Athens

The evil was not that the stream of population was violently absorbed, but that it flowed feebly, because there was an influence at work which tended to dry up the fountain-head. Marriages were rare and unfruitful through the prevalence of indifference or aversion toward the duties and enjoyments of domestic life. The historian traces this unhealthy state of feeling to a taste for luxury and ostentation. But this explanation, which could only apply to the wealthy, seems by no means adequate to the result. The real cause struck deeper, and was much more widely spread. Described in general terms, it was a want of reverence for the order of nature, for the natural revelation of the will of God; and the sanction of infanticide was by no means the most destructive, or the most loathsome form in which it manifested itself. This was the cancer which had been for many generations eating into the life of Greece.

How little the vices of the Roman government had to do with the decrease of population in Greece, becomes still more apparent as we follow its course through the history of the empire. The change from republican to monarchical institutions was in general beneficial to the provinces, and especially to Greece, which was not only exempt from the danger of arbitrary oppression, but was distinguished by many marks of imperial favour. Within the space of a few years, about the beginning of this period, three new colonies animated the south coast of the Corinthian Gulf. Pompey planted a settlement of pirates in the solitude of Dyme. His great rival restored Corinth, and, if he had lived longer, would perhaps have opened a canal through the Isthmus. Though the commerce, which at the fall of Corinth had been diverted to Delos, and afterwards dispersed by the Mithridatic War, may not have wholly returned into its ancient channel, still there can be no question that the advantages of this restoration were very largely felt throughout Greece. Augustus founded another populous Roman colony at Patræ, which enjoyed the privileges of a free city. Nicopolis indeed was rather designed as a monument of his victory, than to promote the prosperity of Greece: for it was peopled from the decayed towns of the adjacent regions, and the effect was to turn Acarnania and Ætolia into a wilderness.

Athens too had soon repaired the loss it suffered through Sulla’s massacre, though Piræus did not rise out of its ruins. But the Athenian population was recruited, as it had long been, by the lavish grant or cheap sale of the franchise. It was like the galley of Theseus, retaining nothing but the name and semblance of the old Athenian people, without any real natural identity of race; so that it was no exaggeration, when Piso called it a jumble of divers nations. The poverty indeed of the city, which had been a main cause of its unfortunate accession to the side of Mithridates, still continued, and was but slightly relieved by the bounty of benefactors like Pomponius and Herodes Atticus, or even by the growing influx of wealthy strangers who came to pursue rhetorical or philosophical studies there.

While its splendour was increased by the magnificent structures added to it by Hadrian and Herodes, perhaps the larger part of the freemen was never quite secure of their daily meal. Still the good will of the early emperors was unequivocally manifested. They seem always to have lent a favourable ear to the complaints and petitions of the province, and Nero went so far as to reward the Greeks for their skilful flattery of his musical talents by an entire and general exemption from provincial government, which may have compensated for the presents he exacted from them. The Greeks, it is said, abused their new privileges by discord and tumults, and Vespasian restored the proconsular administration, and above all the tribute—which was perhaps his real motive—with the remark that they had forgotten the use of liberty. But it is evident that on the whole, from the reign of Augustus to that of Trajan, the increase of the population was not checked by oppression or by any calamity. Yet at the end of this period we find Plutarch declaring, that Greece had shared more largely than any other country in the general failure of population which had been caused by the wars and civil conflicts of former times over almost all the world, so that it could then hardly furnish three thousand heavy-armed soldiers—the number raised by Megara alone for the Persian War; and his assertion is confirmed by the pictures drawn by another contemporary witness.

In times when the present was so void and cheerless, the future so dark and hopeless, it was natural that men should seek consolation in the past, even though it had been less full, than was the case among the Greeks, of power and beauty, prosperity and glory. Nor was it necessary then to evoke its images by learned toil out of the dust of libraries or archives. The whole land was covered with its monuments in the most faultless productions of human genius and art. There was no region so desolate, no corner so secluded, as to be destitute of them. Even the rapacity of the Romans could not exhaust these treasures. Though Mummius was said to have filled Italy with the sculptures which he carried away, it is probable that in the immense multitude which remained, their absence, in point of number, might be scarcely perceived. If Nero robbed Delphi of five hundred statues, there might still be more than two thousand left there.

The expressive silence of these memorials was interpreted by legends which lived in the mind and the heart of the people; and so long as any inhabitants remained in a place, a guide was to be found thoroughly versed in this traditional lore. The town of Panopeus at the northern foot of Parnassus, though celebrated by Homer as a royal residence, had been reduced, when it was visited by Pausanias,f to a miserable assemblage of huts, in which the traveller could find nothing to deserve the name of a city, as it contained neither an archive, nor a gymnasium, nor a theatre, nor a market-place, nor a fountain; but the people remembered that they were not of Phocian, but of Phlegyan origin: they could show the grave which covered the vast bulk of the great Tityus, and the remnants of the clay out of which Prometheus had moulded the human race. Relics of like antiquity were at the same period reverently treasured in most parts of Greece. The memory of the past was still more effectually preserved by a great variety of festivals, games, public sacrifices, and other religious solemnities. After the extinction of the national independence, the battle of Platæa did not cease to be commemorated by the Feast of Liberty; as notwithstanding the absence of all political interests, the forms of deliberation were kept up in the Amphictyonic, the Achæan, Phocian, and Bœotian councils. The heroes both of the mythical and the historical age were still honoured with anniversary rites—Aratus and Demosthenes, and the slain at Marathon, no less than Ajax and Achilles, Temenus, Phoroneus, and Melampus.