those jealousies recommenced. Sparta meanly opposed the rebuilding of deserted Athens, which Themistocles pressed forward—men, women, slaves, and even children, joining their efforts; when Athens, in a very short time, rose from her ruins, with a great accession of strength and splendour. The harbour of the Piræus was enlarged and fortified, so as to form the completest arsenal that then belonged to any nation, and joined it to Athens by what were called "the long walls” (477).

8. The expulsion of the Persians wrought an entire change in the internal and external relations of Greece. From being the aggressed, the Greeks became the aggressors: to free their Asiatic countrymen from the Persian yoke, and to clear the Egean and Mediterranean Seas of their hostile squadrons, was now the chief object or pretext for continuing so profitable a war. The combined Grecian fleet was commanded by the Spartan Pausanias (brother of Leonidas), with Aristides and Cimon (son of Miltiades) under him. Cyprus was attacked, and Byzantium was taken after a short siege, when its great wealth became the prize of the conquerors, 470. The share obtained by Pausanias proved fatal to him. It led him to desire to make himself the supreme master of Greece, to solicit the daughter of Xerxes in marriage, and to propose to assist him in the conquest of Greece. His letters were intercepted. He was recalled and brought to trial, but was acquitted; when, on fresh evidence being obtained against him, he was warned of his danger, and fled for safety to the temple of Minerva. The Spartans did not dare to drag the traitor from that sanctuary; but his mother showed a virtue truly Lacedæmonian, in laying a stone at the door of the temple, which was followed by others, until blocked up. The Ephori, then ordered a wall to be built round the temple, when the traitor was starved to death, 469. Themistocles was implicated in the treason. He appears to have been acquainted with the plot, but denied that it had ever received his sanction. He was banished by ostracism for ten years; but the malice of his enemies pursued him in his exile, and obliged him to seek refuge at the Persian court, 466. Artaxerxes I. received the banished statesman with marks of distinction and regard, assigning the revenues of three cities for his support. In the revolt under Inarus, Themistocles was sent with a Persian fleet to prevent the Athenians assisting the Egyptians; and that he might neither be ungrateful to his magnanimous protector, nor an enemy to his country, he ended his life by poison, 457.

9. The treason of Pausanias led the allies to transfer the supreme direction of affairs to the Athenians, which had a decided effect on all the future relations of Greece, by increasing the jealousy between Sparta and Athens. A permanent confederacy was established, comprising most of the Grecian states, without Peloponnesus, especially the islands; and Aristides

was appointed by general consent to fix the contributions to be annually furnished by each for the prosecution of the Persian war. The loss of Themistocles was supplied by Cimon, who, to purer politics, united equal talents. He protracted the war against the Persians, in order to maintain the union of the Greeks. After expelling the Persians from Thrace and many of their possessions in Asia Minor, Cimon attacked and defeated the Persians by sea and land, on the same day, at the mouth of the river Eurymedon, 470 or 466 B. C. The consequence of these victories was, that hostilities ceased between Persia and Greece for several years.

10. Whilst the Athenians were acquiring wealth and glory in the war against Persia, Laconia was laid waste by an earthquake, which destroyed 120,000 of its inhabitants, and overwhelmed the city of Sparta (464). The oppressed Helots and the Messenians took advantage of this calamity to make a vigorous effort for the recovery of their freedom. Archidamus, the Spartan king, repulsed their first attacks; but they made themselves masters of the city of Ithome, which they fortified. Sparta, at this crisis, solicited aid from Athens, which was only granted by the influence of Cimon, who was sent with 4,000 men; but, from the opposition which the application had met with, the Spartans refused the proffered aid. The popular feeling then burst forth against Cimon, who was accused of being in the interest of Sparta, and banished for five years, (464 B.C.)

11. The death of Aristides, which had happened some years before (468), and the banishment of Cimon, concurred in elevating Pericles to the head of affairs. A war between Sparta and Athens soon followed, in which most of the states of Greece took a part. The Athenians were defeated at Haliæ; and in their turn routed the enemy; and then carried the war against Ægina, which they subdued. In the course of this war, Cimon, though in exile, eager to show that he had no favour for the Spartans, came to the Athenian camp with one hundred of his friends, who had gone into voluntary banishment with him; but the Athenians refused his services, and forced him to retire, when his generous friends, forming themselves into a separate band, precipitated themselves upon the Spartans, and were all cut off. This incident had a powerful effect in removing the popular prejudices against this illustrious man, and Pericles, perceiving that his own popularity might suffer by opposing his recall from banishment, took the merit of being the first to propose it.

12. On his return (456), Cimon endeavoured to re-establish the domestic tranquillity of Greece, and at the same time to renew the war against the Persians. After a lapse of five years he succeeded in his object; and the consequence was a victorious expedition against the Persians, in which their naval and military power was completely broken by repeated defeats, when

Artaxerxes I. had the prudence to sue for peace. (See page 90.) The last fifty years were the period of the highest glory of the Greeks; and they owed their prosperity entirely to their union. The peace with Persia, and the death of the man whose grand political object was to preserve union among the Greeks, dissolving that connection, brought back the jealousies between the predominant states, the intestine disorders of each, and the national weakness.

13. The martial and the patriotic spirit began visibly to decline in Athens. An acquaintance with Asia, and an importation of her wealth, introduced a relish for Asiatic manners and luxuries. With the Athenians, however, this luxurious spirit was under the guidance of taste and genius. It led to the cultivation of the fine arts; and the age of Pericles, though the national glory was in its wane, is the era of the highest internal splendour and magnificence of Greece.

SECTION XXIII.

THE HISTORY OF GREECE.

The Third Period-Age of Pericles-The Peloponnesian WarThe Thirty Tyrants at Athens.

1. REPUBLICS, equally with monarchies, are generally regulated by a single will; only, in the former, there is a more frequent change of masters. The death of Cimon left Pericles for some time without a rival, and he ruled Athens with little less than arbitrary sway: and Athens pretended at this time to the command of Greece. She held the allied states in the most absolute subjection, and lavished their subsidies, bestowed for the national defence, in magnificent buildings, games, and festivals, for her own citizens. The tributary states loudly complained, but durst not call this domineering republic to account; and the event which now took place silenced all inquiries of that nature, dividing the nation into two great parties, and binding the lesser cities to the strictest subordination on the predominant powers -Athens and Sparta.

2. The Peloponnesian War, 431-404 B. C.-The state of Corinth had been included in the last treaty between Athens and Sparta. The Corinthians had for some time been at war with the people of Corcyra, an ancient colony of their own, when both parties solicited the aid of Athens, who, on the persuasion of Pericles, took part with the latter-a measure which the Corinthians, with great justice, complained of, not only as an infraction of the treaty with Sparta, but as a breach of a general rule of the national policy, that a foreign power should never

interfere in the disputes between a colony and its parent state. War was proclaimed on this ground between Athens and Lacedæmon, each supported by its respective allies. The greater part of the continental states of Greece declared for Sparta; whilst the islands, dreading the naval power of Athens, took part with that republic.* Sparta therefore presented herself as the deliverer of Greece from the domination of Athens. The Lacedæmonian army amounted to upwards of 60,000 men, or more than double that of the Athenians and their allies; but this inequality was balanced by the great superiority of the Athenian navy. The plan of hostilities of each was, therefore, entirely different. The Athenian fleet ravaged the coasts of Peloponnesus; while the Lacedæmonian army desolated the territory of Attica and its allied states, and proceeded, with little resistance, almost to the gates of Athens.

3. The limited plan of this work renders it necessary to exclude even the outlines of this war, which continued for twentyseven years, with various and alternate success. The detail of the first twenty-one years is to be found in Thucydides, one of the best historians, as well as the greatest generals, of antiquity; and the transactions of the remaining period are to be found detailed by Xenophon in his Grecian history. Pericles died before its termination—a splendid ornament of his country, but reproached as a corrupter of her manners, by fostering the spirit of luxury. Alcibiades ran a similar career, with equal talents, equal ambition, and still less purity of moral principle. In the interval of a truce with Sparta, he inconsiderately projected the conquest of Sicily; and, failing in the attempt, was, on his return to Athens, condemned to death for treason, from which he only escaped by flight. He hesitated not to wreak his vengeance against his country, by selling his services, first to Sparta, and afterwards to Persia. Finally, he purchased his peace with his country by betraying the power which protected him, and returned to Athens the idol of a populace as versatile as worthless. 4. The fatal defeat of the Athenian fleet at Egos Potamos, by Lysander, reduced Athens to the last extremity. Of 300 ships which sailed from the Piræus, only eight returned to the coast of Attica. The Lacedæmonians blockaded the city by land and sea, and reduced the Athenians to the last extremity. After sustaining a blockade of six months, the war was ended by the absolute submission of the Athenians, who agreed to demolish the fortifications of the harbour of Piræus; to limit their fleet to twelve ships; and undertake for the future no military enterprise,

*Confederates of the Athenians :-Islands, Chios, Samos, Lesbos, all those of the Archipelago (Thera and Melos excepted, which remained neutral), Corcyra, Zacynthus; the Grecian Colonies in Asia Minor, and on the coast of Thrace and Macedonia; in Greece itself, the cities of Naupactus, Platæa, and those of Acarnania. Confederates of the Spartans:-All the Peloponnesians (Argos and Achaia excepted, which remained neutral), Megara, Locris, Phocis, Boeotia, the cities of Ambracia and Anactorium, and the island of Leucas.

Such

but under the command of the Lacedæmonians, 405 B. C. was the issue of the famous Peloponnesian war, after a continuance of twenty-seven years; and with it ceased the dominion of Athens.

5. It is to the same Lysander, who terminated this destructive war so gloriously for Lacedæmon, that history ascribes the first great breach of the constitution of his country, by procuring the abrogation of that ancient law which prohibited the introduction of gold into that republic. It was not, however, allowed a free circulation, but was deposited in the public treasury, to be employed solely for the uses of the state. It was declared a capital offence if any should be found in the possession of a private citizen. Lysander, after the reduction of Athens, abolished the popular government in that state, and substituted in its place an oligarchy of thirty governors (who were termed tyrants by the Greek historians), whose power was absolute. He likewise placed a Spartan garrison in the citadel. It is computed by Xenophon, with some exaggeration, that a greater number of Athenian citizens lost their lives by these tyrants, in the short space of eight months, than had fallen during the whole of the Peloponnesian war. The people were awed into silence, and the most eminent of the citizens left their country in despair; but a band of patriots, headed by Thrasybulus, attacked, vanquished, and expelled the usurpers, and once more re-established the democracy.

6. One event which happened during the reign of terror, under the thirty tyrants, reflected more disgrace on the Athenian name than their national humiliation. This was the persecution and death of the illustrious Socrates; he who, in the words of Cicero, "first brought philosophy from heaven to dwell upon earth; who familiarized her to the acquaintance of man; who applied her divine doctrines to the common purposes of life, and the advancement of human happiness, and the true discernment of good and evil." This good man, who was himself the patron of every virtue which he taught, became an object of hatred and disgust to the corrupted Athenians. He had excited the jealousy of the Sophists, whose futile logic he derided and exposed: they represented him as an enemy to the religion of his country, because, without regard to the popular superstitions, he led the mind to the knowledge of a Supreme Being, the Creator and ruler of the Universe, and the belief of a future state of retribution. His defence he made himself, with the manly fortitude of conscious innocence; but in vain: his judges were his personal enemies; and he was condemned to die by poison, 397 B. C. (See Section XXXIII. § 5.) He drank the poisoned cup without the smallest emotion, and in the agony of death showed his friends an example of tranquillity which their

*Plato, in his Apologia Socrates, has given an ample account of it.