The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]

Of the beginnings of these great solemnities we cannot presume to speak, except in mythical language; we know them only in their comparative maturity. But the habit of common sacrifice, on a small scale and between near neighbors, is a part of the earliest habits of Greece. The sentiment of fraternity, between two tribes or villages, first manifested itself by sending a sacred legation or Theoria to offer sacrifices to each other's festivals and to partake in the recreations which followed; thus establishing a truce with solemn guarantee, and bringing themselves into direct connexion each with the god of the other under his appropriate local surname. The pacific communion so fostered, and the increased assurance of intercourse, as Greece gradually emerged from the turbulence and pugnacity of the heroic age, operated especially in extending the range of this ancient habit: the village festivals became town festivals, largely frequented by the citizens of other towns, and sometimes with special invitations sent round to attract Theors from every Hellenic community—and thus these once humble assemblages gradually swelled into the pomp and immense confluence of the Olympic and Pythian games. The city administering such holy ceremonies enjoyed inviolability of territory during the month of their occurrence, being itself under obligation at that time to refrain from all aggression, as well as to notify by heralds the commencement of the truce to all other cities not in avowed hostility with it. Elis imposed heavy fines upon other towns—even on the powerful Lacedæmon—for violation of the Olympic truce, on pain of exclusion from the festival in case of non-payment.

Sometimes this tendency to religious fraternity took a form called an Amphictyony, different from the common festival. A certain number of towns entered into an exclusive religious partnership for the celebration of sacrifices periodically to the god of a particular temple, which was supposed to be the common property and under the common protection of all, though one of the number was often named as permanent administrator; while all other Greeks were excluded. That there were many religious partnerships of this sort, which have never acquired a place in history, among the early Grecian villages, we may perhaps gather from the etymology of the word Amphictyons—designating residents around, or neighbors, considered in the point of view of fellow-religionists—as well as from the indications preserved to us in reference to various parts of the country. Thus there was an Amphictyony of seven cities at the holy island of Caluria, close to the harbor of Troezen. Hermione, Epidaurus, Ægina, Athens, Prasiæ, Nauplia, and Orchomenus, jointly maintained the temple and sanctuary of Poseidon in that island—with which it would seem that the city of Troezen, though close at hand, had no connection—meeting there at stated periods, to offer formal sacrifices. These seven cities indeed were not immediate neighbors, but the speciality and exclusiveness of their interest in the temple is seen from the fact that when the Argians took Nauplia, they adopted and fulfilled these religious obligations on behalf of the prior inhabitants: so also did the Lacedæmonians when they had captured Prasiæ. Again, in Triphylia, situated between the Pisatid and Messenia in the western part of Peloponnesus, there was a similar religious meeting and partnership of the Triphylians on Cape Samicon, at the temple of the Samian Poseidon. Here the inhabitants of Maciston were intrusted with the details of superintendence, as well as with the duty of notifying beforehand the exact time of meeting (a precaution essential amidst the diversities and irregularities of the Greek calendar) and also of proclaiming what was called the Samian truce—a temporary abstinence from hostilities which bound all Triphylians during the holy period. This latter custom discloses the salutary influence of such institutions in presenting to men's minds a common object of reverence, common duties, and common enjoyments; thus generating sympathies and feelings of mutual obligation amid petty communities not less fierce than suspicious. So, too, the twelve chief Ionic cities in and near Asia Minor had their pan-Ionic Amphictyony peculiar to themselves: the six Doric cities, in and near the southern corner of that peninsula, combined for the like purpose at the temple of the Triopian Apollo, and the feeling of special partnership is here particularly illustrated by the fact that Halicarnassus, one of the six, was formally extruded by the remaining five in consequence of a violation of the rules. There was also an Amphictyonic union at Onchestus in Boeotia, in the venerated grove and temple at Poseidon: of whom it consisted we are not informed. There are some specimens of the sort of special religious conventions and assemblies which seem to have been frequent throughout Greece. Nor ought we to omit those religious meetings and sacrifices which were common to all the members of one Hellenic subdivision, such as the pan-Boeotia to all the Boeotians, celebrated at the temple of the Ionian Athene near Coroneia; the common observances, rendered to the temple of Apollo Pythæus at Argos, by all those neighboring towns which had once been attached by this religious thread to the Argian; the similar periodical ceremonies, frequented by all who bore the Achæan or Ætolian name; and the splendid and exhilarating festivals, so favorable to the diffusion of the early Grecian poetry, which brought all Ionians at stated intervals to the sacred island of Delos. This later class of festivals agreed with the Amphictyony in being of a special and exclusive character, not open to all Greeks.