The Delian

festival.

Purifica

tion of Delos.

Pisistratean

edition of Homer.

Pisistratus strongly asserted the claim of Athens to be the mother and leader of the Ionian branch of the Greek race. The temple of Apollo in Delos, the island of his mythical birth, had been long a religious centre of the Ionians on both sides of the Aegean. There, as an ancient hymn sang, "the long-robed Ionians gather with their children and their wives," to honour Apollo with dance and song and games: "a stranger who came upon the Ionians in their throng, seeing the men and the fair-girdled women and the swift ships and all their wealth, would say that they were beings free for ever from death and eld." Pisistratus "purified" the sacred spot by digging up all the tombs that were within sight of the sanctuary and removing the bones of the dead to another part of the island.

And Athens took not only the Ionian festival under her special care, but also the great Ionian epics. It was probably towards the end of his reign that Pisistratus and his son Hipparchus took in hand the work of arranging and writing down the Homeric poems. Since the poet of Chios had composed the Iliad, since another Ionian poet had framed the Odyssey, new parts had been added by their successors; such as the Catalogue of the Ships and the poem of Dolon. The minstrels who recited Homer, at the Delian festival for example, adhered to no very strict order of parts in their recitations, and discrepancies were inevitable both in the order and in the text. At the instance of Pisistratus, some men of letters undertook the task of fixing definitely the text of both poems, and wrote them down in the old Attic alphabet. Thus Athens became one of the birth-cities of Homer; the Iliad and Odyssey assumed their final shape there. But what the Athenians did for Homer was entirely an achievement in literary criticism; it was in no way a work of original composition. We may say that the Pisistratean revision of Homer was the beginning of literary criticism in Europe. Some liberties indeed were taken with the text; a line or two were added, a line or two may have been omitted, for the sake of the political interest or the vanity of Athens. We have met an instance in regard to Salamis. The Homeric enterprise of Pisistratus was thoroughly successful; Athens grew to be the centre of the Greek book trade, and the Athenian text was circulated through the whole Greek world. But before this circulation began, it had been copied out in a new shape. About half a century later, Athenian poets began to give up the old Attic alphabet and use the more convenient Ionic alphabet instead. Homer was then copied out of the Attic letters into the Ionic, and our texts are still disfigured by some errors which arose in the process.

The immediate purpose of the revision of Pisistratus was to regulate the Homeric recitations which he had made a feature of the

theum

==

house of

Athena

added

great Panathenaic festival. This feast had been remodelled, if not The Panfounded, shortly before he seized the tyranny, and, on the pattern of athenaic the national gatherings at Olympia and Delphi, was held feast. fourth every year. It was celebrated with athletic and musical contests, but the Athena (1) Temples of centre and motive of the feast was the great procession which went on the site up to the house of Athena on her hill, to offer her a robe woven by of the later the hands of Athenian maidens. The "rich fane" of Athena, Erechwherein she accorded Erechtheus a place, had the distinction of passing into the Homeric poems. It was situated near the northern Athena cliff; and to the south of it a new house had been reared for the and goddess of the city to inhabit, close to the ruins of the palace of the Erech theus, ancient kings. It had been built before the days of Pisistratus, but (2) the it was probably he who encompassed it with a Doric colonnade. HecatomFrom its length this temple was known as the House of the Hundred pedon = Feet, and many of the lowest stones of the walls, still lying in their temple of places, show us its site and shape. The triangular gables displayed Polias. what Attic sculptors of the day could achieve. Hitherto the favour- Peristasis ite material of these sculptors had been the soft marly limestone and of the Piraeus, and by a curious stroke of luck some striking pediments specimens of such work - Zeus encountering the three-headed probably Typhon, Heracles destroying the Hydra-have been partly preserved, in Pisisthe early efforts of an art which a hundred and fifty years would tratean bring to perfection. But now in the second half of the sixth age, Pedimental century-Greek sculptors have begun to work in a nobler and harder sculptures material; and on one of the pediments of the renovated temple of (c. 600 Athena Polias the battle of the Gods and Giants was wrought in B. c.). Parian marble. Athena herself in the centre of the composition, Use of slaying Enceladus with her spear, may still be seen and admired. sculpture. But the tyrant planned a greater work than the new sanctuary on Giganthe hill. Down below, south-eastward from the citadel, on the banks tomachy in of the Ilisus, he began the building of a great Doric temple for the the PisisOlympian Zeus. He began but never finished it, nor his sons after him. So immense was the scale of his plan that Athens, even when she reached the height of her dominion and fulfilled many of the aspirations of Pisistratus, never ventured to undertake the burden of completing it. A full completion was indeed to come, though in a Completed shape far different from the old Athenian's plan; but not until by the Athens and Greece had been gathered under the wings of a power Hadrian. Emperor which had all Europe at its feet. The richly ornamented capitals of the few lofty pillars which still stand belong to the work of the Roman emperor, but we must remember that the generations of Athenians, with whom this history has to do, saw only plain Doric columns there, the monument of the wealth and ambition of the tyrant who had done more for their city than they cared to think.

marble in

tratean

pediment.

Pisistratus was indeed scrupulous and zealous in all matters concerned with religion, and his sons more than himself. But no act of his was more fruitful in results than what he did for the worship of Dionysus. In the marshes on the south side of the Areopagus the Lenaeum; bacchic god had an ancient sanctuary, of which the foundations have the temple of Dionysus in Limnae.

The

been recently uncovered; but Pisistratus built him a new house at the foot of the Acropolis, and its ruins have not yet wholly disappeared. In connexion with this temple Pisistratus instituted a new festival, called the Great Dionysia of the City, and it completely overshadowed the older feast of the Winepress (Lenaea), which still continued to be held in the first days of spring at the temple of the Marshes. The

chief feature of the Dionysiac feasts was the choir of satyrs, the god's attendants, who danced around the altar clothed in goat-skins, and sang their "goat song." But it became usual for the leader of the dancers, who was also the composer of the song, to separate himself from his fellows and hold speech with them, assuming the character of some person connected with the events which the song celebrated, and wearing an appropriate dress. Such performances, which at the rural feasts had been arranged by private enterprise, were made an official part of the Great Dionysia, and thus taken under state protection, in the form of a "tragic" contest, two or more choruses competing for a prize. It was the work of a generation to develop these simple representations into a true drama, by differentiating the satyric element. Legends not connected with DifferenDionysus were chosen for representation, and the dancers appeared, tiation of not in the bacchic goat-dress, but in the costume suitable for their tragedy from part in the story. This performance was divided into three acts; satyric the dancers changed their costumes for each act; and only at the end drama. did they come forward in their true goat-guise and perform a piece (Trilogy.) which preserved the original satyric character of "tragedy." Then (Satyric their preponderant importance was by degrees diminished, and a drama.) second actor was introduced; and by a development of this kind, hidden from us in its details, the goat song of the days of Pisistratus grew into the tragedy of Aeschylus.

vases.

amphorae,

The popularity of the worship of Dionysus at Athens in the Dionysiac days of Pisistratus might be observed in the workshops of the subjects on potters. No subject was more favoured than Dionysiac scenes by the artists-Exekias and his fellows-who painted the black-figured jars of this period. There is another thing which the student of Heracles on history may learn among the graceful vessels of the potters of blackAthens. On the jars of the Pisistratean age the deeds of Heracles figured are a favourite theme, while Theseus is little regarded. But before the etc. (c. 570golden age of vase-painting sets in, about the time of the fall of 510 B.C.). the Pisistratids, Theseus has begun to seize the popular imagination Theseus on as the great Attic hero, and this is reflected in paintings on the cups cylixes, red-figured of Euphronius and the other brilliant masters of the red-figured etc. (c. 510style. If we remember that Theseus was specially associated with 470 B.C.). the hill country of north Attica, which was the stronghold of the Pisistratean party, we may be tempted to infer that the glorification of Theseus was partly due to the policy of Pisistratus.

But besides caring for the due honours of the gods, the tyrant busied himself with such humbler matters as the improvement of the water-supply of Athens. West and south-west of the Acropolis, in the rocky valley between the Areopagus and the Pnyx, his water- Aqueducts. works have recently come to light. A cistern there received the

Tegeate

war, c.

the con

quest of

Tegea and the bones of

Orestes.

waters which an aqueduct conveyed from the upper stream of the Ilisus. It is indeed on this side of Athens, south and west of the oldest Athens of all, that the chief stone memorials of the age of Pisistratus stood, apart from what he may have built on the Acropolis itself. But he not only built; he also demolished. He pulled down the old city-wall, and for more than half a century Athens was an unwalled town.

SECT. 3. GROWTH OF SPARTA, AND THE PELOPONNESIAN

LEAGUE

While a tyrant was moulding the destinies of Athens, the growth of the Spartan power had changed the political aspect of the Peloponnesus. About the middle of the sixth century Sparta won successes against her northern neighbours Tegea and Argos; and in consequence of these successes she became the predominant power in the peninsula.

town

Then,

Eastern Arcadia is marked by a large plain, high above the sealevel; the villages in the north of this plain had coalesced into the 560-50 (?). of Mantinea, those in the south had been united in Tegea. Sparta had gradually pressed up to the borders of the Tegean Legend of territory, and a long war was the result. This war is associated with an interesting legend based on the tradition that the Laconian hero Orestes was buried in Tegea. When the Spartans asked the Delphic Oracle whether they might hope to achieve the conquest of Arcadia, they received a promise that the god would give them Tegea. on account of this answer, they went forth against Tegea with fetters, but were defeated; and bound in the fetters which they had brought to bind the Tegeates were compelled to till the Tegean plain. Herodotus professed that in his day the very fetters hung in the temple of Athena Alea, the protectress of Tegea. War went on, and the Spartans, invariably defeated, at last consulted the oracle again. The god bade them bring back the bones of Orestes, but they could find no trace of the hero's burying-place, and they asked the god once more. This time they received an oracle couched in obscure enigmatic words:

Among Arcadian hills a level space

Holds Tegea, where blow two blasts perforce
And woe is laid on woe and face to face

Striker and counter-striker; there the corse

Thou seekest lies, even Agamemnon's son ;
Convey him home and victory is won.

This did not help them much.

But it befell that, during a truce with

the Tegeates, a certain Lichas, a Spartan man, was in Tegea and