THE KING'S WATER-WAY.

Otago Witness, Issue 3215, 27 October 1915, Page 72

THE KING'S WATER-WAY.

By Jessie Mackay.

(Continued.)

The defeat suffered by the proud Persian King at Marathon won 10 years’ peace for Greece. Darius was gathered to his fathers; but his successor, the weaker, more passionate Xerxes, still brooded over that mischance, and planned revenge. In 4SI n.c. he came with a vast force to the Hellespont, and caused a fleet of ships to be lashed together to form a bridge over the narrowest part of it. But the storm was a friend to Greece. Before the Persian horde could swarm over to the hilly Chersonese, their ships were shattered. The enraged despot commanded the sea to be scourged and fetters to be flung on the rebellious waves. A year later he renewed his building, and landed his army in Thrace, to march south through Macedonia, while his fleet went to Salonika. The full force of the Persian onslaught was aimed against Athens, standing alone among her sister States, save for one tiny band of Spartans, under their King, Leonidas. Long as the mountains of Thessalian Thermopylae stand will the story of Leonidas and his three hundred be remembered. They knew of the oncoming horde ; but the laws of Lacedoemonia forbade flight, whatever the odds, and dearly did the little band sell their lives in that narrow pass, where all, save one, met their death. Though the Persians were not turned, their doom was preparing. A few months afterwards, in 479 13. C., the army of Xerxes was decisively beaten by the Athenians at Platrea. The scattered Persians came back no more across the Hellespont, and the great lonian cities down the Asiatic coast were to a large extent emancipated from the Persian yoke. From Plat tea to the opening of the Peloponnesian wars, about 430 b.c., was the most glorious period in the history of Athens. That period saw the laws of Pericles, the greatest of Athenian statesmen, the writings of historians and playwrights, the expansion of far colonies, and the spread of all peaceful arts. She was becoming the worldcentre of philosophy, which she remained oven in her political decline, till Alexandria took the palm in Roman days. And the King’s Waterway was still Athenian in these golden days, while yet the canker was taking root below. For Athens was becoming purse-proud and dictatorial. Among other genuine grievances of the smaller States was her cuckoo habit of planting settlements of her own citizens in weak spots of neighbour States that attracted the trading or colonising instincts of her people—a foreshadowing, though less blameworthy, of the Stuart settlements in Ireland,

But when Pericles himself led the brilliant expedition northward that sailed from Athens to strike at the pirates who infested the narrow road to the Black Sea, there was no question of the wisdom that reinforced the weakened Athenian colony of the Chersonese by 10,000 men of the mother city. The golden half-century was then .half through, and men still remembered the deliverance from Xerxes 50 years before, and looked for long peace as the barbarian corsairs gave way before the ordered power of Pericles. Ono doubts not that the warlike lawgiver, on this triumphant vindication of Athenian order and justice, paid pious homage to the most sacred and romantic shrine in all these parts of Greater Grccia. This was the tomb of Protesilans, a Thessalian hero of the Trojan war. In the first landing of the Greeks on the coast of Troy Protcsilaus fell, pierced by a Dardanian weapon. The legend told of the grief of his new-made wife, the lovely Laodamia, whose strong prayers moved the gods to grant her husband's return to earth for three hours. As the ghostly call came for the fated bridegroom, Laodamia herself laid clown her life, and went hand in hand with her beloved to the Land of Spirits. This story, akin to the legends of Alcestis and Orpheus, fired the soul of many generations of Greeks. The tomb of Protesilans was reared on a hill south of the Chersonese, near the modern Gape TTelles and the ancient town of Elans—for the colony bore flourishing towns in these remote days, chief of them being Sestos, famous in many a tale of love and war. In later years the Laodamia legend was linked with genuine history. The tomb of Protesilans was, as we have said, a hallowed spot to the Greeks. In the Persian wars a cruel and dissolute satrap named Artayctes was made master of the Chersonese, and thought to break the spirit of the conquered people by profaning their chosen altar to pure and pious love with his own wild orgies. The insult fired them to greater exertions; the wicked satrap was taken; his son was stoned before his eyes, and he himself was crucified on the seaward hill beside the broken tomb —a doom which showed how nassion could override the comparative mildness of the Athenian temper on such provocation. The tomb was rebuilt in splendour. When, in the following century, Alexander of Macedonia took the King’s Seaway at the outset of his conquest of Asia, he was careful to sacrifice at the tomb, to bring a happier landing on the eastern coast, and he was still mindful of the old talc when, not long after, he sent back all the bridegrooms in his army to cheer their Laodarnias for a brief season before returning to the King with reinforcements. Dear, too, to the Grecian heart was that later and slighter love tole of Hero and Leander, who swam again and again the narrowed strait between Sestos and Abydos, till one night of sudden storm ended the romance and the life of the gallant swimmer. Byron could not hut try the feat in far hater days, and reached the shore at the expense of an attack of

ague. But to resume the thread of our narrative : Pericles, the uncrowned King of Athens, sailed home, well content, to Aspasia and the city beloved of Pallas. Did he know that even then a canker lay in the rose, and that Athens was piling up enemies in the Morea, or, as the peninsula was called then, the Peloponnesus? Be that as it may, some 15 years later, in 430, the discontent of Sparta and the smaller southern States broke out in the first Peloponnesian war. We are not now following the mixed origin of the war, called by later historians “ the suicide of Hellas,” nor the course of the campaigners, which as time went on grew less and less favourable for Athens. It was practically a duel between the only two great Powers in Hellas —Athens and Sparta,—though smaller States took sides. Suffice it to say that the broken beaches of the Thracian Chersonese, where now' the shrunken tyranny of Turkey is making its stand against the men of our own free islands, saw the last act of the war drama that destroyed Athenian empire. It was at iEgospotami (Goat Creek), in the Dardanelles, not far from Sestos, that the last fleet of Athens was shattered in 405 n.c. The “ suicide of Hellas ” was essentially accomplished. Persia, herself far on the road to decay, rose again. The semi-alien rule of Macedonia in the following century ended the brief ascendancy of Sparta and of Thebes, leading the way for Roman overlordship no great while after. There has been an over-bald stating of this war as a straight fight between Athenian democracy and the stern oligarchy of Sparta, a military power through and through. That truly was the tendency. Athens evolved the first great ground plan of democracy ; but there "were two rocks on which her greatness was bound to strike and founder. She cherished the almost universal institution of slavery, that never failed to destroy the master too, and her estimate of woman had fallen far below that of the freer. Homeric age —a certain doom declared against the manhood of any nation blinded by sex-prejudice. Corruption of life and politics had increased apace these later years, despite the scintillation of penius that still make the age of Pericles luminous. Her generals had lost the old integrity and patriotism that repelled the Persian hordes. iEgospotami was less a victory for Sparta than a judgment on the incompetent raid unfaithful leaders who betrayed their trust as Athenians. {To be concluded.)