A.C. 480.

During the invasion of Xerxes, all the Grecian cities in his passage were subdued or felt the disastrous effects of his vengeance. The Athenians, too proud to submit, and too weak to defend themselves alone by land, sent to consult the oracle at Delphi. The god replied: “It is only within walls of wood the city will find safety.” Themistocles persuaded the people that Apollo ordered them to instantly quit their city, and embark on board a good fleet, after having provided places of security for their wives and children. In consequence of this advice, they embarked, after having sent their aged, their women, and their children, to Trozene, in the Peloponnesus. We cannot imagine a more affecting spectacle than the departure of this fleet; the unfortunate inhabitants kept their eyes, bathed in tears, fixed upon their abandoned homes till distance or darkness rendered them invisible. The very animals shared the common grief, running along the shore, and seeming to call back their masters by their cries. It is said that a dog belonging to Xantippus, the father of Pericles, threw himself into the sea, and swam by the side of his vessel till it reached Salamis, where it sunk exhausted upon the beach and died. This imaginative people erected a monument to this faithful dog, called “The Grave of the Dog.” In the mean time, the Persian army entered Athens, forced the citadel, defended to the last by a small number of self-devoted men, and reduced the superb city to ashes.

SECOND SIEGE, A.C. 404.

After the battle of PlatÆÆ, the citizens of Athens returned to their country, and built a superb city upon the ruins of the ancient one. By recovering its splendour, it attracted the jealousy of its rival Sparta, the capital of LacedÆmonia. This was the commencement of the famous Peloponnesian war. In the twenty-ninth year of this war, Lysander, having conquered the Athenians at Ægospotamos, marched directly against Athens. Though without vessels, without provisions, without hope, the Athenians defended themselves for eight months, and then surrendered, conquered alone by famine. The Spartans disgraced themselves by destroying the walls of the first city of Greece to the sound of musical instruments; and they established a government of thirty tyrants, in order to subdue the spirit of the unfortunate inhabitants.

This servitude did not last long; Athens was delivered from the yoke of the Thirty, by means of five hundred soldiers, raised by a simple Syracusan orator, named Lysias, out of veneration for the common country of eloquence. The expulsion of the thirty tyrants took place the same year that the kings were expelled from Rome.

After being opposed strongly to Philip, and submissive to Alexander, Athens was taken successively by his successors, Antipater, Demetrius, and Antigonus; its wealth being a rich bait for these captains, whose vanity was continually wounded by the haughtiness of the city, which gave rise to aggressions often but little merited.

THIRD SIEGE, A.C. 87.

Archelaus, a general of Mithridates, king of Pontus, entered Athens by means of a sophist named Aristion, to whom he gave the principal authority of the place. The Athenians claimed the assistance of the Romans, and Sylla took the matter upon his own hands.

Upon Sylla’s arrival in Greece, all the cities opened their gates to him, with the exception of Athens, which, subject to Aristion, was obliged unwillingly to oppose him. When the Roman general entered Attica, he divided his forces into two bodies, the one of which he sent to besiege Aristion, in the city of Athens, and with the other he marched in person to the port PirÆus, which was a kind of second city, where Archelaus had shut himself up, relying upon the strength of the place, the walls being sixty feet high, and all of hewn stone. This had been the work of Pericles, during the Peloponnesian war.

The height of the walls did not amaze Sylla. He employed all kinds of engines in battering them, and made continual assaults. If he would have waited a little, he might have taken the higher city without striking a blow, for it was reduced to the last extremity by famine; but being in haste to return to Rome, where he apprehended changes might happen in his absence, he spared neither danger, attacks, nor expense, to hasten the conclusion of this war. Without enumerating the rest of the warlike stores and equipage, twenty thousand mules were perpetually employed in working the machines alone. Wood falling short, from the great consumption of it in the machines, which were constantly being broken, in consequence of the vast weight they carried, or burnt by the enemy, he did not spare the sacred groves. He cut down the beautiful avenues of the Academy and the LycÆum, and caused the high walls which joined the port to the city to be demolished, for the sake of the ruins, which were useful to him in the works he was carrying on. Having occasion for a great deal of money, both for the expenses of the war, and as a stimulus to the soldiers, he had recourse to the hitherto inviolable treasures of the temples, and caused the finest and most precious gifts, consecrated at Epidamus and Olympia, to be brought thence. He wrote to the Amphyctions, assembled at Delphi, “That they would act wisely in sending him the treasures of the god, because they would be more secure in his hands; and that if he should be obliged to make use of them, he would return the value after the war.” At the same time he sent one of his friends, named Caphis, a native of Phocis, to Delphi, to receive all those treasures by weight. When Caphis arrived at Delphi, he was afraid, through reverence for the god, to meddle with the consecrated gifts, and bewailed with tears, in the presence of the Amphyctions, the necessity imposed upon him. Upon which some person there having said that he heard the sound of Apollo’s lyre from the interior of the sanctuary, Caphis, whether he really believed it or not, was willing to take advantage of the circumstance to impress Sylla with a religious awe, and wrote him an account of it. Sylla, deriding his simplicity, replied, “That he was surprised he should not comprehend that singing was a sign of joy, and by no means of anger and resentment; and, therefore, he had nothing to do but to take the treasures boldly, and be assured that the god saw him do so with pleasure, and gave them to him himself.” Plutarch, on this occasion, notices the difference between the ancient Roman generals and those of the times we now speak of. The former, whom merit alone had raised to office, and who had no other views from their employments but the public good, knew how to make the soldiers respect and obey them, without descending to use low and unworthy methods for that purpose. They commanded troops that were steady, disciplined, and well enured to execute the orders of their generals, without reply or delay. Truly kings, says Plutarch, in the grandeur and nobility of their sentiments, but simple and modest private persons in their train and equipage, they put the state to no other expense, in the discharge of their offices, than was reasonable and necessary, conceiving it more shameful in a captain to flatter his soldiers than to fear his enemies. Things were much changed in the time we now speak of. The Roman generals, abandoned to insatiable ambition and luxury, were obliged to make themselves slaves to their soldiers, and to buy their services by gifts proportioned to their avidity, and often by the toleration and impunity of the greatest crimes.

Sylla was exceedingly anxious about this siege, and was, as we have said, in great want of money. He was desirous of depriving Mithridates of the only city he held in Greece, which might almost be considered as a key to Asia, whither the Romans were eager to follow the king of Pontus. If he returned to Rome without achieving this conquest, he would find Marius and his faction more formidable than ever. He was besides sensibly galled by the keen raillery which Aristion vented every day against him and his wife Metella.

It is difficult to say whether the attack or defence was conducted with the most vigour; for both sides behaved with incredible courage and firmness. The sallies were frequent, and were, in character, almost battles, in which the slaughter was great, and the loss generally not unequal. The besieged were supported by several seasonable reinforcements by sea. What did them most damage was the secret treachery of two Athenian slaves, who were in the PirÆus. These slaves, whether out of affection for the Roman interest, or desirous of providing for their own safety in case the place were taken, wrote upon leaden balls all that was going forward within, and threw them from slings to the Romans; so that, how prudent soever were the measures adopted by Archelaus, none of them succeeded. He resolved to make a general sally; the traitor slung a leaden ball, inscribed, “To-morrow, at such an hour, the fort will attack your works, and the horse your camp.” Sylla laid ambushes, and repulsed the besieged with loss. A convoy of provisions, sadly wanted, was to be thrown into the city by night; upon advice, conveyed in the same way, the provisions were intercepted.

Notwithstanding all these disappointments, the Athenians defended themselves bravely. They found means either to burn most of the machines erected against their walls, or, by undermining them, to throw them down, and break them to pieces. The Romans, on their side, behaved with no less vigour. By means of mines, they made a way to the bottom of the walls, under which they hollowed the ground; and having propped the foundation with beams of wood, they afterwards set fire to the props, with a great quantity of pitch, sulphur, and tar. When these beams were burnt, part of the wall fell down with a horrible noise, and a large breach was opened, through which the Romans advanced to the assault. This battle was contested with great obstinacy, but at length the Romans were obliged to retire.

The next day they renewed the attack. The besieged had built a fresh wall during the night, in the form of a crescent, in the place of that which had been destroyed, and the Romans found it impossible to force it.

Sylla, discouraged by so obstinate a defence, resolved to make no more assaults, but to take the place by famine. The city, on the other hand, was at the last extremity. A bushel of barley had been sold for a thousand drachmas (about £25 sterling). The inhabitants did not only eat the grass and roots which they found about the citadel, but the flesh of horses, and the leather of their shoes, which they boiled soft. In the midst of the public misery, the tyrant passed his days and nights in revelling. The senators and priests went to throw themselves at his feet, imploring him to have pity on the city, and to obtain a capitulation from Sylla; he had them dispersed with a shower of arrows, and in that brutal manner drove them from his presence.

He did not demand a cessation of arms, or send a deputation to Sylla, till reduced to the last extremity. As those deputies made no proposals, and asked nothing of him to the purpose, but ran on in praise of Theseus, Eumelpus, and the exploits of the Athenians against the Medes, Sylla was annoyed by their discourse, and interrupted them by saying:—“Gentlemen orators, you may go back, and keep your rhetorical flourishes for yourselves; for my part, I was not sent to Athens to be made acquainted with your ancient prowess, but to chastise your modern revolt.”

During this audience, some spies having entered the city by chance, overheard some old men talking in the Ceramicus, and blaming the tyrant exceedingly for not guarding a part of the wall, which was the only place where the enemy might easily take the city by escalade. At their return to the camp, they related what they had heard to Sylla. The parley had been to no purpose. Sylla did not neglect the intelligence given him. The next night he went in person to take a view of the place, and finding the wall actually accessible, he ordered ladders to be raised against it, began the attack there, and having made himself master of the walls, after a weak resistance, he entered the city. He would not suffer it to be set on fire, but abandoned it to be plundered by the soldiers, who in several houses found human flesh, which had been dressed to be eaten. A dreadful slaughter ensued. The following day all the slaves were sold by auction, and liberty was granted to the citizens who had escaped the swords of the soldiers, but their numbers were but few. Sylla at once besieged the citadel, where Aristion, and those who had taken refuge there, were soon so much reduced by famine that they were forced to surrender. The tyrant, his guards, and all who had been in any office under him, were put to death. Some few days after, Sylla made himself master of the PirÆus, and burnt all its fortifications, especially the arsenal, which had been built by Philo, the celebrated architect, and was a wonderful fabric. Archelaus, by means of his fleet, had retired to Munichia, another port of Attica. To do this commander justice, he deserved to have conquered, for he had failed in neither courage nor skilful exertions during the siege. With his own hand he set fire to one of the Roman galleries, and destroyed all the machines upon it. On another occasion, his soldiers being repulsed, took to flight, and he in vain endeavoured to rally them. He was soon left so completely alone, that he had to be drawn up the wall by ropes. His bravery formed a strong contrast with the cowardice and infamous debaucheries of Aristion.

Sylla restored the Athenians their liberty, but not that consideration generally the companion of power. During several ages Athens was still considered the common country of tasteful knowledge; people went thither for the purpose of instructing themselves in the arts of thinking and speaking correctly. By degrees her talents were extinguished, and her renown was eclipsed. Succumbing by turn to all the barbarians who invaded the Roman empire, she changed masters as often as she saw enemies at her gates. The Turks destroyed what were left of her splendid edifices. Twice the Venetians paid the honours of a siege to Setine, built upon its ruins. After so much destruction and so many sieges, the traveller can scarcely discover the ruins of Athens upon the soil where formerly stood that celebrated city.

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