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gus had established were once more victorious, it was proved that they must bleed, themselves, in order to preserve their rule. A greater war was lighted between the Athenians, with their allies, on one side, and the Peloponnesians and Boeotians, under the lead of Sparta, on the other; all willing to contend with one another rather than be at peace. Still, likewise, the contest with the Persians continued on the coasts and seas of Asia Minor; but the victories of the Greeks were too easily won and too narrowly enjoyed to satisfy their frenzy for arms and triumphs. The Athenians, contented neither with their enemies at home nor with those they had in Asia, sent out their armaments to support a revolt in Egypt against Persia; but though Cimon was in command of the second expedition, it resulted in nothing of any consequence. Some sort of a treaty appears to have been contracted between Athens and king Artaxerxes; 204 and the conflict in Greece was also allayed by a five years' truce 205 between the parties, who had lost much and gained nothing by their suicidal battles. In point, therefore, of dominion or foreign relations, there were but few changes, apparently, to affect the nation or the separate states of Greece; but the worm within was fed upon the evil spirit that might not show itself at once, but would be surely proved at last.

In Athens, for instance, the exile of Cimon had

204 Diod. Sic., XII. 4. Plut., 205 Plut., Cim., 18. A. C. Cim., 13; with which compare 451-446. Thirlwall's Greece, Ch. XVII. A. C. 450.

followed the humiliation of the Areopagus, which Ephialtes, a zealous and apparently an honest supporter of ardent democracy, was able to effect with the aid, and almost certainly at the suggestion, of Pericles. The tribunal, strong in judicial and, as they might be called, inquisitional powers, was in possession, chiefly, of the richer classes; and it was but yielding to the course prepared, at least as early as in the time of Clisthenes, that the Areopagus was now deprived of all its more important functions, which went, of course, to increase the already multiplied powers of the assembly. It is only important, at present, to observe the rapidity with which the Athenian democracy was brought forward by its leaders long in advance of the claims or the wishes of its members at large. So, in various cities, there occurred revolutions, more or less sudden and more or less partial, by which, whatever were the immediate consequences, the future turmoils and exhaustions of the nation were indubitably prepared. It was a season of twofold struggle: state with state and principle with principle were everywhere at variance, if not at

war.

The day of decline seems to be never far removed, when the day of triumph is spent in wars. But there was this additional trial to the freedom of

206 This was in A. C. 461. Plut., Cim., 15. Cicero tells the whole : "Athenienses quibusdam temporibus, sublato Areopago, nihil nisi populi scitis ac decretis agebant." De Rep., I. 27. The ques

tion, however, is usually made very complicated. As for the power and character of the assembly at or after this time, see Schömann's work on the subject, especially Book I. ch. 1. 4; Book II. ch. 3. 4.

the Greeks, that the struggles between the classes of the same state, rich and poor, slaves and masters, exposed the institutions which such as Solon and Lycurgus had devised to repeated failures and perpetual difficulties. It appears as if the destiny of the states into which the Grecian nation was divided had been marked for a rapid, and therefore, perhaps, for a temporary, development of their varied powers. To each was given the love of beauty, and to each the love of rivalry, of war, and of domination supplied the means of fostering simultaneously its highest and its lowest passions. Within the quarter of a century from Marathon, more voices than one were raised as if to deprecate the precipitation with which men were hurrying onwards and downwards. Pindar, the Bootian, did not chant the triumphs of his own generation without recalling the memories of the earlier heroes; nor were his praises for the victory at the games unmixed with fervent eulogy upon the virtue, as if he thought it superior to the triumph, of the victor.207 Eschylus, the tragic poet, not only of Greece, but of the whole ancient world," 208 was one of the warriors

207 Pindar was born A. C. 522, as is most probable, and died in 442. Two of the passages exemplifying his anxious times are subjoined:

̓Αλλ ̓ ἐμὲ χρὴ μναμοσύναν
Ανεγείροντα φράσαι, κ. τ. λ.
"But for me it is needful to wake
our memories and tell," etc. Ol.,
VIII. 97, 98.

Πολλοὶ δὲ διδακταῖς
̓Ανθρώπων ἀρεταῖς κλέος
Ωρουσαν ἑλέσθαι.

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*Ανευ δὲ θεοῦ, σεσιγα

μένον γ ̓ οὐ σκαιότερον χρῆσ μ ̓ ἕκαστον.

Many have girded themselves with the imparted virtues of men in order to gain renown. But aught done without the god is as well untold." Ol., IX. 153 et seq.

208 ̓Εκεῖνος εἶχε τὸν τραγωδικὸν θρόνον, "He held the tragic throne." Aristoph., Ranæ, 769.

in the great battles of both the Persian invasions but, instead of sharing in the intoxication and vehemence of his countrymen, he wrote of the higher powers and the remoter glories that they seemed to have forgotten. The shades he summoned from the silent dead, to confront with the men of Marathon and Salamis, came with sepulchral voices and awful forms; but they who beheld the images and listened to the thoughts of his creation complained that it was too much for them to bear, and broke away with murmurs. The poet would have called the gods themselves to his tribunal for their sufferance of the evils he seemed for ever to lament upon the earth; and though his spirit was essentially a religious one, he was the first to question the majesty and the eternity of the immortals.210

209

In the generation to whom the Persian war was already become an inheritance is the place of Herodotus, the father of history. A native of Halicarnassus, in Caria, a traveller for the greater part of his life, and finally a resident at Thurii, a newly colonized city in Italy, where he wrote his history 211 and died,212 he was nevertheless in every sense a Greek, - in language, knowledge, and inspiration. East and west, the civilized earth contributed its legends to swell the fresh and flowing narrative to which he gave his manhood and his age; but the most transparent fervor of its course

209 Aristoph., Ran., 1059 et seq. 210 See Prometheus, 938 et seq. Eschylus was born at Eleusis, A. C. 525, and died in Sicily, 456.

211 According to all probabilities, and to Pliny, Nat. Hist., XII. 8.

212 Some time after A. C. 408.

is when it reaches Athens or Ionia, or the world, as it was to him, of Greece, in his eyes superior to any other portion of the universe. Yet while we seek in Herodotus to trace in general the influences which the preceding pages may have partially explained, it is especially apparent that the old man at Thurii was moved to apprehension by the changes befalling the land he loved, and to which he still belonged. It was a spirit kindred to that of Æschylus which inspired Herodotus to become an historian, and to compose his simple and entrancing relation of the renown that was departing or departed. The answer of Leonidas to one who said that he had too few to fight with him at Thermopylae seems to belong to the whole generation, They are too many to die!" 213

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SECTION IV.

ILLUMINATION AND DECLINE.

THE remainder of the history of Greece has comparatively little connection with the history of liberty. It would be almost sufficient here to remark, that, through a course of internal and external wars, the evils that were beyond the sight or control of the first generations increased so swiftly and so thickly, both with private habits and in public institutions, that the fabrics of earlier fell under the floods of

213 Plut., De Herod. Mal., Tom. IX. p. 437, ed. Reiske.

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