was safe.

I spoke in a former chapter of the Roman who was 'lynched' because he killed a cat. The same thing would no doubt have happened a century later, for Juvenal tells of the atrocities which occurred in a local quarrel between Ombi and Tentyra (Satir. xv.), and the picture of that Roman Swift cannot be wholly imaginary. Dion, indeed, admits particularly (p. 404) the very religious character of the people. But he tells them plainly that while their religion consists in violent emotions, in miracles, in omens, in strange providences, in a multiplicity of gods, true religion consists in rational views, in ordinary providence, in the conduct of everyday life; not in madness and in mystery. The deeper religion of the day must be reserved for another place, and so must the opposition between the Jewish and the Hellenistic spirit, which was so prominent in Alexandria.

There is but one common feature belonging to the two cities we have contrasted-their political insignificance. To the Rhodians the orator can hold out no higher ambition than the giving of splendid feasts, which (like the Exhibitions in our capitals) would bring together visitors, and spread the popularity of the city, and thus its wealth and social influence. To the Alexandrians the highest hope he protends is a possible visit from the emperor himself, if he hears of their good conduct.1 We know from Philo that they had been grievously disappointed by the death of Caligula, who had determined upon a state visit of this kind. Yet when Hadrian came, a generation later, the result was not mutual satisfaction, but estrangement.

1 i. 398, 433.

CHAPTER XII

THE CONDITION OF GREECE FROM AUGUSTUS TO VESPASIAN -THE HELLENISM OF THE EARLY EMPERORS

WE come back to the true home of Greek life, the inmost hearth from which the sacred fire of Greek culture has often been carried with such copious hands as to leave scarce a spark to illumine the old country. Yet over and over again, after brilliant centuries of Asiatic or western Hellenedom or Hellenism, the old rough nurse of liberty, of art, and of refinement has reasserted her pre-eminence and proved that no other land can ever appropriate her title to be the foster-mother, if not the mother, of European culture.

Were we to trust implicitly the eloquence of Dion addressed to the Rhodians, this decadence of Greece had reached its nadir in his day. He refuses to take the example of Athens as any precedent: 'Athens, which has hailed as Olympian some nobody, not even a born citizen, but a Phoenician, and not even from Tyre and Sidon, but from some inland village; which has not only set up in bronze, but beside Menander, some cheap poet, who exhibited here before you. This may well be cited in pity for the condition into which the whilome leaders of the Greeks have now fallen.'1 And again: Formerly the reputation of Greece

1 i. 383.

was sustained by many-the Athenians, Spartans, Thebans, nay, Corinthians and Argives in turn. But now they are all gone some actually destroyed, while others are disgraced by the acts you hear of, and are ruining their ancient fame, thinking this a luxury, poor souls, and a gain, if no one prevents them from degrading themselves. So far as these are concerned, there is no reason that the Greeks were not long since below the level of Phrygians and Thracians. There is nothing but the stones and the ruins of their buildings to show the old splendour of Greece, since even the Mysians would repudiate the present inhabitants and politicians as their descendants. Hence it is that I even consider the totally destroyed cities as the most fortunate, since our memories of them at least are safe and not soiled by recent events; for is it not better that the bodies of the dead should be buried out of our sight than that they should putrefy before our eyes?' And with this agrees the letter of Apollonius of Tyana, in which he writes to the Museum of Alexandria: 'I have become barbarised, not by staying away from, but by staying in, Greece.' 2 In estimating these texts we must, however, make considerable allowance for the desire at the moment to extol Rhodes, and indeed Asiatic Hellenism, at the expense of the ancient capitals of Hellenic life.

For there is considerable reason to think that the days of Dion were by no means the worst which Greece had seen, but that a considerable revival had taken place since its complete exhaustion after the great civil wars with their terrible requisitions upon life and property. It is true, and very remarkable, that Asia Minor revived, and recovered her

1 i. 397.

2 Εργ. 34.—έβαρβαρώθην οὐ χρόνιος ὤν ἀφ ̓ Ἑλλάδος ἀλλὰ χρόνιος ὤν ἐν Ἑλλάδι.

XII

CONDITION OF GREECE

251

commercial prosperity with promptitude and lasting success, whereas that of Greece can hardly ever be called flourishing again till the trade in silk and in currants made some stir in Justinian's time. Still there were always certain articles of export which, in other days and with other habits, would have employed much industry. Horses from the now extended pastures of the depopulated country, oil from other provinces as well as Attica, honey from the slopes of Mount Hymettus, were always prized. Far more profitable to labour was the production--no longer as a fine art, but as a trade-of statues at Athens and elsewhere for the adornment of Asiatic and Italian temples;1 so were the famous marble quarries of the Cyclades, which seem, however, like the gold and silver mines, to have been often a monopoly of the Roman fiscus, and thus less productive than might be expected.2

But the effect of this trade is only seen in scattered and special localities, such as Corinth, Patræ, Tithorea, and Hypata; the last two described by Plutarch and Apuleius (if we can believe him) as flourishing, evidently owing to recent and special causes. In most parts of Greece landed property had passed into the hands of large proprietors; the Latifundia, which had long since destroyed the yeomanry of Italy, had done the same in the Hellenic peninsula; the general influx of the pauper rural population into the towns,

1 Cf. the curious chapter in Philostratus (Vita Apoll. v. 20). Plutarch tells us (Life of Publicola, 17) that the pillars for the restored Capitol under Domitian were made at Athens of Pentelic marble, and of admirable proportions, but were spoilt by repolishing at Rome, which made them too slight for their height.

2 Prince Victor of Hohenlohe, who has tried several specimens of Parian marble for his statues, tells me that the old Greeks seem to have exhausted the sound parts of that quarry. All the pieces brought to him had cracks or flaws, which made them useless.

3 Sylla, 15, and the opening of the Metamorphoses of Apuleius.

upon which I wrote in a former volume,1 had increased the evil; and we now find a population which appears to do nothing but assemble in sham political unions, or attend public feasts and games, to enjoy the amusements provided for them by the liberality either of the State or of wealthy individuals, to pass resolutions and decrees of gratitude and of deification to those who satisfied their sordid wants, and occasionally to riot for amusement or some trivial cause of offence.

The only serious disputes of this age seem to be about boundaries of territory, and yet each such dispute of which we hear seems to have occupied years of litigation and arbitration. Such was a dispute between the community of Daulis and one of its rich citizens as to the boundaries of an estate he had acquired, as it bordered on or invaded the public land of the commune. But what was this quarrel of perhaps ten years, which we could easily match with a chancery suit, compared with the ancient feud between Sparta and Messene, which took the form of a claim of both for the ager Dentheliates on the west slope of Taygetus? After many decisions and reversals of decisions the affair was apparently settled by Tiberius and the Senate, after hearing all the claims and counterclaims since the first Messenian war, in favour of Messene.3 A very similar case between Delphi on the one hand and Amphissa and Anticyra

1 Greek Life and Thought, p. 326 sq.

2 Cf. Hertzberg, ii. 152, who gives the details from an inscription in Boeckh's CIG No. 1739. Other cases in S. Reinach's Epigraphie, p. 44. 3 Tac. Ann. iv. 43. Cf. the other evidence cited by Hertzberg (ii. 31 sq.) Since his book appeared there have been found eight coins of Thuria in that district marked AA, which indicate that the dispute was not even then over (in Trajan's time), but had recently been again settled by reverting to the decision of Augustus in favour of Sparta, to which Pausanias (in the second century) refers--so interminable was this dispute. Cf. the article by Weil in MDI vii. 211 sq., who also cites a dispute at Delphi settled in the same reign by Nigrinus (CIL iii. No. 567).