Chapter VI: Part 6

Miltiades had belonged to the old order of things, being a born aristocrat, and for a time a despot. Themistocles and Aristides were children of the new state, democrats born, and reared to the new order of things. They were not the equals of Miltiades in birth, both being born of parents of no distinction. But, aside from this similarity, they differed essentially, alike in character and in their life records; Themistocles being aspiring and ambitious, Aristides, his political opponent, quiet and patriotic; the one considering most largely his own advancement, the other devoting his whole life to the good of his native city.

Themistocles displayed his nature strongly while still a boy. Idleness and play were not to his taste, and no occasion was lost by him to improve his mind and develop his powers in oratory. He cared nothing for accomplishments, but gave ardent attention to the philosophy and learning of his day. "It is true I cannot play on a flute, or bring music from the lute," he afterwards said; "all I can do is, if a small and obscure city were put into my hands, to make it great and glorious."

Of commanding figure, handsome face, keen eyes, proud and erect posture, sprightly and intellectual aspect, he was one to attract attention in any community, while his developed powers of oratory gave him the greatest influence over the speech-loving Athenians. In his eagerness to win distinction and gain a high place in the state, he cared not what enemies he might make so that he won a strong party to his support. So great was his thirst for distinction that the victory of Miltiades at Marathon threw him into a state of great depression, in which he said, "The glory of Miltiades will not let me sleep."

Themistocles was not alone ambitious and declamatory. He was far-sighted as well; and through his power of foreseeing the future he was enabled to serve Athens even more signally than Miltiades had done. Many there were who said that there was no need to dread the Persians further, that the victory at Marathon would end the war. "It is only the beginning of the war," said Themistocles; "new and greater conflicts will come; if Athens is to be saved, it must prepare."

We have elsewhere told how he induced the Athenians to build a fleet, and how this fleet, under his shrewd management, defeated the great flotilla of Xerxes and saved Greece from ruin and subjection. All that Themistocles did before and during this war it is not necessary to state. It will suffice here to say that he had no longer occasion to lose sleep on account of the glory of Miltiades. He had won a higher glory of his own; and in the end ambition ruined him, as it had his great predecessor.

To complete the tale of Themistocles we must take up that of another of the heroes of Greece, the Spartan Pausanias, the leader of the victorious army at Plataea. He, too, allowed ambition to destroy him. After taking the city of Byzantium, he fell in love with Oriental luxury and grew to despise the humble fare and rigid discipline of Sparta. He offered to bring all Greece under the domain of Persia if Xerxes would give him his daughter for wife, and displayed such pompous folly and extravagance that the Spartans ordered him home, where he was tried for treason, but not condemned.

He afterwards conspired with some of the states of Asia Minor, and when again brought home formed a plot with the Helots to overthrow the government. His treason was discovered, and he fled to a temple for safety, where he was kept till he starved to death.

Thus ambition ended the careers of two of the heroes of the Persian war. A third, Themistocles, ended his career in similar disgrace. In fact, he grew so arrogant and unjust that the people of Athens found him unfit to live with. They suspected him also of joining with Pausanias in his schemes. So they banished him by ostracism, and he went to Argos to live. While there it was proved that he really had taken part in the treason of Pausanias, and he was obliged to fly for his life.

The fugitive had many adventures in this flight. He was pursued by envoys from Athens, and made more than one narrow escape. While on shipboard he was driven by storm to the island of Naxos, then besieged by an Athenian fleet, and escaped only by promising a large reward to the captain if he would not land. Finally, after other adventures, he reached Susa, the capital of Persia, where he found that Xerxes was dead, and his son Artaxerxes was reigning in his stead.

He was well received by the new king, to whom he declared that he had been friendly to his father Xerxes, and that he proposed now to use his powers for the good of Persia. He formed schemes by which Persia might conquer Greece, and gained such favor with the new monarch that he gave him a Persian wife and rich presents, sent him to Magnesia, near the Ionian coast, and granted him the revenues of the surrounding district. Here Themistocles died, at the age of sixty-five, without having kept one of his alluring promises to the Persian king.

And thus, through greed and ambition, the three great leaders of Greece in the Persian war ended their careers in disgrace and death. We have now the story of a fourth great Athenian to tell, who through honor and virtue won a higher distinction than the others had gained through warlike fame.

Throughout the whole career of the brilliant Themistocles he had a persistent opponent, Aristides, a man, like him, born of undistinguished parents, but who by moral strength and innate power of intellect won the esteem and admiration of his fellow-citizens. He became the leader of the aristocratic section of the people, as Themistocles did of the democratic, and for years the city was divided between their adherents. But the brilliancy of Themistocles was replaced in Aristides by a staid and quiet disposition. He was natively austere, taciturn, and deep-revolving, winning influence by silent methods, and retaining it by the strictest honor and justice and a hatred of all forms of falsehood or political deceit.

For years these two men divided the political power of Athens between them, until in the end Aristides said that the city would have no peace until it threw the pair of them into the pit kept for condemned criminals. So just was Aristides that, on one of his enemies being condemned by the court without a hearing, he rose in his seat and begged the court not to impose sentence without giving the accused an opportunity for defence.

Aristides was one of the generals at Marathon, and was left to guard the spoils on the field of battle after the defeat of the Persians. At a later date, by dint of false reports, Themistocles succeeded in having him ostracized, obtaining the votes of the rabble against him. One of these, not knowing Aristides, asked him to write his own name on the tile used as a voting tablet. He did so, but first inquired, "Has Aristides done you an injury?" "No," was the answer; "I do not even know him, but I am tired of hearing him always called 'Aristides the Just.'" On leaving the city Aristides prayed that the people should never have any occasion to regret their action.

This occasion quickly came. In less than three years he was recalled to aid his country in the Persian invasion. Landing at Salamis, he served Athens in the manner we have already told. The command of the army which Aristides surrendered to Miltiades at the battle of Marathon fell to himself in the battle of Plataea, for on that great day he led the Athenians and played an important part in the victory that followed. He commanded the Athenian forces in a later war, and by his prudence and mildness won for Athens the supremacy in the Greek confederation that was afterwards formed.

At a later date, leader of the aristocrats as he was, to avert a revolution he proposed a change in the constitution that made Athens completely democratic, and enabled the lowliest citizen to rise to the highest office of the state. In 468 B.C. died this great and noble citizen of Athens, one of the most illustrious of ancient statesmen and patriots, and one of the most virtuous public men of any age or nation. He died so poor that it is said he did not leave enough money to pay his funeral expenses, and for several generations his descendants were kept at the charge of the state.

_HOW ATHENS ROSE FROM ITS ASHES._

The torch of Xerxes and Mardonius left Athens a heap of ashes. But, like the new birth of the fabled phoenix, there rose out of these ashes a city that became the wonder of the world, and whose time-worn ruins are still worshipped by the pilgrims of art. We cannot proceed with our work without pausing awhile to contemplate this remarkable spectacle.

The old Athens bore to the new much the same relation that the chrysalis bears to the butterfly. It was little more than an ordinary country town, the capital of a district comparable in size to a modern county. Pisistratus and his sons had built some temples, and had completed a part of the Dionysiac theatre, but the city itself was simply a cluster of villages surrounded by a wall; while the citadel had for defence nothing stronger than a wooden rampart. The giving of this city to the torch was no serious loss; in reality it was a gain, since it cleared the ground for the far nobler city of later days.

It is not often that a whole nation removes from its home, and its possessions are completely swept away. But such had been the case with the Attic state. For a time all Attica was afloat, the people of city and country alike taking to their ships; while a locust flight of Persians passed over their lands, ravaging and destroying all before them, and leaving nothing but the bare soil. Such was what remained to the people of Attica on their return from Salamis and the adjacent isles.

Athens lay before them a heap of ashes and ruin, its walls flung down, its dwellings vanished, its gardens destroyed, its temples burned. The city itself, and the citadel and sacred structures of its Acropolis, were swept away, and the business of life on that ravaged soil had to be begun afresh.

Yet Attica as a state was greater than ever before. It was a victor on land and sea, the recognized savior of Greece; and the people of Athens returned to the ashes of their city not in woe and dismay, but in pride and exultation. They were victors over the greatest empire then on the face of the earth, the admired of the nations, the leading power in Greece, and their small loss weighed but lightly against their great glory.

The Athens that rose in place of the old city was a marvel of beauty and art, adorned with hall and temple, court and gymnasium, colonnade and theatre, while under the active labors of its sculptors it became so filled with marble inmates that they almost equalled in numbers its living inhabitants. Such sculptors as Phidias and such painters as Zeuxis adorned the city with the noblest products of their art. The great theatre of Dionysus was completed, and to it was added a new one, called the Odeon, for musical and poetical representations. On the Acropolis rose the Parthenon, the splendid temple to Minerva, or Athene, the patron goddess of the city, whose ruins are still the greatest marvel of architectural art. Other temples adorned the Acropolis, and the costly Propylaea, or portals, through which passed the solemn processions on festival days, were erected at the western side of the hill. The Acropolis was further adorned with three splendid statues of Minerva, all the work of Phidias, one of ivory in the Parthenon, forty-seven feet high, the others of bronze, one being of such colossal height that it could be seen from afar by mariners at sea.

The city itself was built upon a scale to correspond with this richness of architectural and artistic adornment, and such was its encouragement to the development of thought and art, that poets, artists, and philosophers flocked thither from all quarters, and for many years Athens stood before the world as the focal point of the human intellect.

Not the least remarkable feature in this great growth was the celerity with which it was achieved. The period between the Persian and the Peloponnesian war was only sixty years in duration. Yet in that brief space of time the great growth we have chronicled took place, and the architectural splendor of the city was consummated. The devastation of the unhappy Peloponnesian war put an end to this external growth, and left the Athens of old frozen into marble, a thing of beauty forever. But the intellectual growth went on, and for centuries afterwards Athens continued the centre of ancient thought.

And now the question in point is how all this came about, and what made Athens great and glorious among the cities of Greece. It all flowed naturally from her eminence in the Persian war. During that war there had been a league of the states of Greece, with Sparta as its accepted leader. After the war the need of being on the alert against Persia continued, and Greece became in great part divided into two leagues,--one composed of Sparta and most of the Peloponnesian states, the other of Athens, the islands of the archipelago, and many of the towns of Asia Minor and Thrace. This latter was called the League of Delos, since its deputies met and its treasure was kept in the temple of Apollo on that island.

This League of Delos developed in time to what has been called the Athenian Empire, and in this manner. Each city of the league pledged itself to make an annual contribution of a certain number of ships or a fixed sum of money, to be used in war against Persia or for the defence of members of the league. The amount assessed against each was fixed by Aristides, in whose justice every one trusted. In time the money payment was considered preferable to that of ships, and most of the states of the league contributed money, leaving Athens to provide the fleet.

In this way all the power fell into the hands of Athens, and the other cities of the league became virtually payers of tribute. This was shown later on when some of the island cities declined to pay. Athens sent a fleet, made conquest of the islands, and reduced them to the state of real tribute payers. Thus the league began to change into an Athenian dominion.

In 459 B.C. the treasure was removed from Delos to Athens. And in the end Chios, Samoa, and Lesbos were the only free allies of Athens. All the other members of the league had been reduced to subjection. Several of the states of Greece also became subject to Athens, and the Athenian Empire grew into a wealthy, powerful, and extended state.

The treasure laid up at Athens in time became great. The payments amounted to about six hundred talents yearly, and at one time the treasury of Athens held the great sum of nine thousand seven hundred talents, equal to over eleven million dollars,--a sum which meant far more then than the equivalent amount would now.

It was this money that made Athens great. It proved to be more than was necessary for defensive war against Persia, or even for the aggressive war which was carried on in Asia Minor and Egypt. It also more than sufficed for sending out the colonies which Athens founded in Italy and elsewhere. The remainder of the fund was used in Athens, part of it in building great structures and in producing splendid works of art, part for purposes of fortification. The Piraeus, the port of Athens, was surrounded by strong walls, and a double wall--the famous "Long Walls"--was constructed from the city to the port, a distance of four miles. These walls, some two hundred yards apart, left a grand highway between, the channel of a steady traffic which flowed from the sea to the city, and which for years enabled Athens to defy the cutting off its resources by attack from without. Through this broad avenue not only provisions and merchandise, but men in multitudes, made their way into Athens, until that city became fuller of bustle, energy, political and scholarly activity, and incessant industry than any of the other cities of the ancient world.

In a city like this, free and equal as were its citizens, and democratic as were its institutions, some men were sure to rise to the surface and gain controlling influence. In the period in question there were two such men, Cimon and Pericles, men of such eminence that we cannot pass them by unconsidered. Cimon was the son of Miltiades, the hero of Marathon, and became the leader of aristocratic Athens. Pericles was the great-grandson of Cleisthenes, the democratic law-giver, and, though of the most aristocratic descent, became the leader of the popular party of his native city.

The struggle for precedence between these two men resembled that between Themistocles and Aristides. Cimon was a strong advocate of an alliance with Sparta, which Pericles opposed. He was brilliant as a soldier, gained important victories against Persia, but was finally ostracized as a result of his friendship for Sparta. He came back to Athens afterwards, but his influence could not be regained.

It is, however, of Pericles that we desire particularly to speak,--Pericles, who found Athens poor and made her magnificent, found her weak and made her glorious. This celebrated statesman had not the dashing qualities of his rival. He was by nature quiet but deep, serene but profound, the most eloquent orator of his day, and one of the most learned and able of men. He was dignified and composed in manner, possessed of a self-possession which no interruption could destroy, and gifted with a luminous intelligence that gave him a controlling influence over the thoughtful and critical Athenians of his day.

Pericles was too wise and shrewd to keep himself constantly before the people, or to haunt the assembly. He sedulously remained in the background until he had something of importance to say, but he then delivered his message with a skill, force, and animation that carried all his hearers irresistibly away. His logic, wit, and sarcasm, his clear voice, flashing eyes, and vigorous power of declamation, used only when the occasion was important, gave him in time almost absolute control in Athens, and had he sought to make himself a despot he might have done so with a word; but happily he was honest and patriotic enough to content himself with being the First Citizen of the State.

To make the people happy, and to keep Athens in a condition of serene content, seem to have been leading aims with Pericles. He entertained them with quickly succeeding theatrical and other entertainments, solemn banquets, splendid shows and processions, and everything likely to add to their enjoyment. Every year he sent out eighty galleys on a six months' cruise, filled with citizens who were to learn the art of maritime war, and who were paid for their services. The citizens were likewise paid for attending the public assembly, and allowances were made them for the time given to theatrical representations, so that it has been said that Pericles converted the sober and thrifty Athenians into an idle, pleasure-loving, and extravagant populace. At the same time, that things might be kept quiet in Athens, the discontented overflow of the people were sent out as colonists, to build up daughter cities of Attica in many distant lands.

Thus it was that Athens developed from the quiet country town of the old regime into the wealthiest, gayest, and most progressive of Grecian cities, the capital of an empire, the centre of a great commerce, and the home of a busy and thronging populace, among whom the ablest artists, poets, and philosophers of that age of the world were included. Here gathered the great writers of tragedy, beginning with AEschylus, whose noble works were performed at the expense of the state in the great open-air theatre of Dionysus. Here the comedians, the chief of whom was Aristophanes, moved hosts of spectators to inextinguishable laughter. Here the choicest lyric poets of Greece awoke admiration with their unequalled songs, at their head the noble Pindar, the laureate of the Olympic and Pythian games. Here the sophists and philosophers argued and lectured, and Socrates walked like a king at the head of the aristocracy of thought. Here the sculptors, headed by Phidias, filled temples, porticos, colonnades, and public places with the most exquisite creations in marble, and the painters with their marvellous reproductions of nature. Here, indeed, seemed gathered all that was best and worthiest in art, entertainment, and thought, and for half a century and more Athens remained a city without a rival in the history of the world.

_THE PLAGUE AT ATHENS._

During the period after the Persian war two great powers arose in Greece, which were destined to come into close and virulent conflict. These were the league of Delos, which developed into the empire of Athens, and the Peloponnesian confederacy, under the leadership of Sparta. The first of these was mainly an island empire, the second a mainland league; the first a group of democratic, the second one of aristocratic, states; the first a power with dominion over the seas, the second a power whose strength lay in its army. Such were the two rival confederacies into which Greece gradually divided, and between which hostile sentiment grew stronger year after year.

It became apparent as the years went on that a struggle was coming for supremacy in Greece. Outbreaks of active hostility between the rival powers from time to time took place. At length the situation grew so strained that a general conflict began, that devastating Peloponnesian war which for nearly thirty years desolated Greece, and which ended in the ruin of Athens, the home of poetry and art, and the supremacy of Sparta, the native school of war. The first great conflict of the Hellenic people, the Persian war, had made Greece powerful and glorious. The second great conflict, the Peloponnesian war, brought Greece to the verge of ruin, and destroyed that Athenian supremacy in which lay the true path of progress for that fair land.

In 431 B.C. the war broke out. Sparta and her allies declared war against Athens on the ground that that city was growing too great and grasping, and an army marched from the Peloponnesus northward to invade the Attic state. Meanwhile the Athenians, under the shrewd advice of Pericles, adopted a wise policy. It was with her fleet that Athens had defeated Persia, and her wise statesman advised that she should devote herself to the dominion of the sea, and leave to Sparta that of the land. Their walls would protect her people, their ships would bring them food from afar, they were not a fair match for Sparta on land, and could safely leave to that city of warriors the temporary dominion of Attic soil.

This advice was taken. When the Spartan army came near Attica all its people left their fields and homes and sought refuge, as once before, within the walls of their capacious capital city. Over the Attic plain marched the invaders, destroying the summer crops, burning the farmers' homesteads, yet recoiling in helpless rage before those strong walls behind which lay the whole population of the state. From the city, as we know, long and high walls stretched away to the sea and invested the seaport town of Piraeus, within whose harbor lay the powerful Athenian fleet. And in the treasury of the city rested an abundant supply of money,--the sinews of war,--with whose aid food and supplies could be brought from over the seas. In vain, then, did Sparta ravage the fields of Attica. The people of that desolated realm defied them from behind their city walls.

When winter came the invaders retired and the farmers went back to their fields. In the spring they ploughed and sowed as of yore, and watched in hope the growing crops. But with the summer the Spartans came again, to destroy their hopes of a harvest, and the country people once more fled for safety to their great city's defiant walls.

It was a strange spectacle, that of a powerful invading army wreaking their wrath year after year on deserted fields, and gnashing their teeth in impotent rage before lofty and well-defended walls and ramparts, behind which lay their foes, little the worse for all that their malice could perform.

Athens felt secure, and laughed her enemy to scorn. Unhappily for her, a new enemy was at hand, against whom the mightiest walls were of no avail. Sparta gained an unthought-of ally, and death stalked at large in the Athenian streets, silent and implacable, without clash of weapon or shout of war, yet more fatal and merciless than would have been the strongest army in the field.

Athens was crowded. The country people filled all available space. There was little attention to drainage or sanitary regulations. An open invitation was given to pestilence, and the invited enemy came. For some years before the plague had been at its deadly work in Egypt and Libya, and in parts of Persian Asia. Then it made its appearance in some of the Grecian islands. Finally its wings of destruction were folded over Athens, and it settled down in terrific form upon that devoted city.

The seeds of death found there fertile soil. Families were crowded together in close cabins and temporary shelters, to which they had been driven in multitudes from their ravaged fields. The plague first appeared in mid-April in the Piraeus,--brought, perhaps, by merchant-ships,--but soon spread to Athens, and as the heat of summer came on the inhabitants of that thronged city fell victims to it in appalling multitudes.

The plague, they called it. The disease seems to have been something like the small-pox, though not quite the same. Its victims were seized suddenly, suffered the greatest agonies, and most of them died on the seventh or the ninth day. Even when the patients recovered, some had lost their memory, others the use of their eyes, hands, feet, or some other member of the body. No remedy could be found. The physicians died as rapidly as their patients. As for the charms and incantations which many used, we can scarcely imagine that they saved any lives. Some said that their enemies had poisoned the water-cisterns, others that the gods were angry, and vain processions were made to the temples, to implore the mercy of the deities.

When nothing availed to stay the pestilence, Athens fell into deep despondency and despair. The sick lost courage, and lay down inertly to await death. Those who waited on the sick were themselves stricken down, and so great grew the terror that the patients were deserted and left to die alone. Fortunately the disease rarely attacked any one twice, and those who had been sick and recovered became the only nurses of the new victims of the disease.

So dread became the pestilence that the dead and the dying lay everywhere, in houses and streets, and even in the temples; half-dead sufferers gathered around the springs, tortured by violent thirst; the very dogs that meddled with the corpses died of the disease; vultures and other carrion birds avoided the city as if by instinct. Many bodies were burnt or buried with unseemly haste, many doubtless left to fester where they lay. Misery, terror, despair, overwhelmed all within the walls, while the foe without drew back in equal terror, lest the pestilence should leap the walls and assail them in their camps.

Nor have we yet told all. Other evils followed that of the plague. Law was forgotten, morality ignored. Men hesitated not at crime or the indulgence of evil passions, having no fear of punishment. Many gave themselves up to riot and luxurious living, with the hope of snatching an interval of enjoyment before yielding to death. The story we here tell is no new one. It has been realized again and again in the flight of the centuries, when pestilence has made its home in some crowded city. Human nature is everywhere the same, and the bonds of law and morality are loosened when death stalks abroad.

For two years this dread calamity continued to desolate Athens. Then, after a period of a year and a half, it came again, and raged for another year as furiously as before. The losses were frightful. Of the armed men of the state nearly five thousand were swept away. Of the poorer people the loss was beyond computation. Nothing the human enemy was capable of could have done so much to ruin Athens as this frightful visitation, and to the end of the war that city felt its weakening effects.

But perhaps the greatest of the losses of Athens was the death of Pericles. In him Athens lost its wisest man and ablest statesman. The strong hand which had so long held the rudder of the state was gone, and the subsequent misfortunes of Athens were due more to the loss of this wise counsellor than to the efforts of her foes.

_THE ENVOYS OF LIFE AND DEATH._

Near the coast of Asia Minor lies the beautiful island of Lesbos, the birthplace of the poets Sappho, Alcaeus, and Terpander, and of other famous writers and sages of the past. Here were green valleys and verdure-clad mountains, here charming rural scenes and richly-yielding fields, here all that seems necessary to make life serene and happy. But here also dwelt uneasy man, and hither came devastating war, bringing with it the shadow of a frightful tragedy from which the people of Lesbos barely escaped.

Lesbos was one of the islands that entered into alliance with Athens, and formed part of the empire that arose from the league of Delos. In 428 B.C. this island, and its capital, Mitylene, revolted from Athens, and struck for the freedom they had formerly enjoyed. Mitylene had never become tributary to Athens. It was simply an ally; and it retained its fleet, its walls, and its government; its only obligations being those common to all members of the League.

Yet even these seemed to have been galling to the proud Mitylenians. Athens was then at war with Sparta. It seemed a good time to throw off all bonds, and the political leaders of the Lesbians declared themselves absolved from all allegiance to the league.

The news greatly disturbed the Athenians. They had their hands full of war. But Mitylene had asked aid from Sparta, and unless brought under subjection to Athens it would become an ally of her enemy. No time was therefore to be lost. A fleet was sent in haste to the revolted city, hoping to take it by surprise. This failing, the city was blockaded by sea and land, and the siege kept up until starvation threatened the people within the walls. Until now hope of Spartan aid had been entertained. But the Spartans came not, the provisions were gone, death or surrender became inevitable, and the city was given up. About a thousand prisoners were sent to Athens, and Mitylene was held till the pleasure of its conquerors should be known.

This pleasure was a tragic one. The Athenians were deeply incensed against Mitylene, and full of thirst for revenge. Their anger was increased by the violent speeches of Cleon, a new political leader who had recently risen from among the ranks of trade, and whose virulent tongue gave him controlling influence over the Athenians at that period of public wrath. When the fate of Mitylene and its people was considered by the Athenian assembly this demagogue took the lead in the discussion, wrought the people up to the most violent passion by his acrimonious tongue, and proposed that the whole male population of the conquered city should be put to death, and the women and children sold as slaves. This frightful sentence was in accord with the feeling of the assembly. They voted death to all Mitylenians old enough to bear arms, and a trireme was sent to Lesbos, bearing orders to the Athenian admiral to carry this tragical decision into effect.

Slaughter like this would to-day expose its authors to the universal execration of mankind. In those days it was not uncommon, and the quality of mercy was sadly wanting in the human heart. Yet such cruelty was hardly in accord with the advanced civilization of Athens, and when the members of the assembly descended to the streets, and their anger somewhat cooled, it began to appear to them that they had sent forth a decree of frightful cruelty. Even the captain and seamen of the trireme that was sent with the order to Mitylene left the port with heavy hearts, and would have gladly welcomed a recall. But the assembly of Athens was the ruling power and from its decision there was no appeal.

Though it was illegal, the friends of Mitylene called a fresh meeting of the assembly for the next day. In this they were supported by the people, whose feeling had quickly and greatly changed. Yet at this new meeting it appeared at first as if Cleon would again win a fatal verdict, so vigorously did he again seek to stir up the public wrath. Diodotus, his opponent, followed with a strong appeal for mercy, and while willing that the leaders of the revolt, who had been sent to Athens, should be put to death, argued strongly in favor of pardoning the rest. When at length the assembly voted, mercy prevailed, but by so small a majority that for a time the decision was in doubt.

And now came a vital question. The trireme bearing the fatal order had left port twenty-four hours before. It was now far at sea, carrying its message of cold-blooded slaughter. Could it possibly be overtaken and the message of mercy made to fly more swiftly across the sea than that of death? As may well be imagined, no time was lost. A second trireme was got ready with all haste, and amply provisioned by the envoys from Mitylene then in Athens, those envoys promising large rewards to the crew if they should arrive in time.

The offers of reward were not needed. The seamen were as eager as those of the former trireme had been despondent. Across the sea rushed the trireme, with such speed as trireme never made before nor since. By good fortune the sea was calm; no storm arose to thwart the rowers' good intent; not for an instant were their oars relaxed; they took turns for short intervals of rest, while barley meal, steeped in wine and oil, was served to them for refreshment upon their seats.

Yet they strove against fearful odds. A start of twenty-four hours, upon so brief a journey, was almost fatal. Fortunately, the rowers of the first trireme had no spirit for their work. They were as slow and dilatory as the others were eager and persistent. And thus time moved slowly on, and the fate of Mitylene hung desperately in the balance. An hour more or less in this vital journey would make or mar a frightful episode in the history of mankind.

Fortune proved to be on the side of mercy. The envoys of life were in time; but barely in time. Those who bore the message of death had reached port and placed their dread order in the hands of the Athenian commander, and he was already taking steps for the fearful massacre, when the second trireme dashed into the waters of that island harbor, and the cheers of exultation of its rowers met the ears of the imperilled populace.

So near was Mitylene to destruction that the breaking of an oar would have been enough to doom six thousand men to death. So near as this was Athens to winning the execration of mankind, by the perpetration of an enormity which barbarians might safely have performed, but for which Athens could never have been forgiven. The thousand prisoners sent to Athens--the leading spirits of the revolt--were, it is true, put to death, but this merciless cruelty, as it would be deemed to-day, has been condoned in view of the far greater slaughter of the innocent from which Athens so narrowly escaped.

_THE DEFENCE OF PLATAEA._

At the foot of Mount Cithaeron, one of the most beautiful of the mountains of Greece, winds the small river Asopus, and between, on a slope of the mountain, may to-day be seen the ruins of Plataea, one of the most memorable of the cities of ancient Greece. This city had its day of glory and its day of woe. Here, in the year 479 B.C., was fought that famous battle which drove the Persians forever from Greece. And here Pausanias declared that the territory on which the battle was fought should forever be sacred ground to all of Grecian birth. Forever is seldom a very long period in human history. In this case it lasted just fifty years.

War had broken out between Sparta and its allies and Athens and its dominion, and all Greece was in turmoil. Of the two leading cities of Boeotia, Thebes was an ally of the Lacedaemonians, Plataea of the Athenians. The war broke out by an attack of the Thebans upon Plataea. Two years afterwards, in the year 429 B.C., Archidamus, the Spartan king, led his whole force against this ally of Athens. In his army marched the Thebans, men of a city but two hours' journey from Plataea, and citizens of the same state, yet its bitterest foes. The Plataeans were summoned to surrender, to consent to remain neutral, or to leave their city and go where they would; all of which alternatives they declined. Thereupon the Spartan force invested the city, and prepared to take it by dint of arms. And thus Sparta kept the pledge of Plataean sacredness made by her king Pausanias half a century before.

Plataea was a small place, probably not very strongly fortified, and contained a garrison of only four hundred and eighty men, of whom eighty were Athenians. Fortunately, all the women and children had been sent to Athens, the only women remaining in the town being about a hundred slaves, who served as cooks. Around this small place gathered the entire army of Sparta and her allies, a force against which it seemed as if the few defenders could not hold out a week. But these faithful few were brave and resolute, and for a year and more they defied every effort of their foes.

The story of this siege is of interest as showing how the ancients assailed a fortified town. Defences which in our times would not stand a day, in those times took months and years to overcome. The army of Sparta, defied by the brave garrison, at first took steps to enclose the town. If the defenders would not let them in, they would not let the defenders out. They laid waste the cultivated land, cut down the fruit-trees, and used these to build a strong palisade around the entire city, with the determination that not a Plataean should escape. This done, they began to erect a great mound of wood, stones, and earth against the city wall, forming an inclined plane up which they proposed to rush and take the city by assault. The sides of this mound were enclosed by cross-beams of wood, so as to hold its materials in place.

For seventy days and nights the whole army worked busily at this sloping mound, and at the end of this time it had reached nearly the height of the wall. But the Plataeans had not been idle while their foes were thus at work. They raised the height of their old wall at this point by an additional wall of wood, backed up by brickwork, which they tore down houses to obtain. In front of this they suspended hides, so as to prevent fire-bearing arrows from setting the wood on fire. Then they made a hole through the lower part of the town wall, and through it pulled the earth from the bottom of the mound, so that the top fell in.

The besiegers now let down quantities of stiff clay rolled up in wattled reeds, which could not be thus pulled away. Yet their mound continued to sink, in spite of the new materials they heaped on top, and they could not tell why. In fact, the Plataeans had dug an underground passage from within the town, and through this carried away the foundations of the mound. And thus for more than two months the besiegers built and the garrison destroyed their works.

Not content with this, the Plataeans built a new portion of wall within the town, joining the old wall on both sides of the mound, so that if the besiegers should complete their mound and rush up it in assault, they would find a new wall staring them in the face, and all their labor lost.

This was not all that was done. Battering engines were used against the walls to break them down. These the defenders caught by long ropes, pulling the heads of the engines upward or sideways. They also fixed heavy wooden beams in such a manner that when the head of an engine came near the wall they could drop a beam suddenly upon it, and break off its projecting beak.

In these rude ways the attack and defence went on, until three months had passed, and Archidamus and his army found themselves where they had begun, and the garrison still safe and defiant. The besiegers next tried to destroy the town by fire. From the top of the mound they hurled fagots as far as they could within the walls. They then threw in pitch and other quick-burning material, and finally set the whole on fire. In a brief time the flames burst out hotly, and burnt with so fierce a conflagration that the whole town was in imminent danger of destruction. Nothing could have saved it had the wind favored the flames. There is a story also that a thunder-storm came up to extinguish the fire,--but such opportune rains seem somewhat too common in ancient history. As it was, part of the town was destroyed, but the most of it remained, and the brave inmates continued defiant of their foes.

Archidamus was almost in despair. Was this small town, with its few hundred men, to defy and defeat his large army? He had tried the various ancient ways of attack in vain. The Spartans, with all their prowess in the field, lacked skill in the assault of walled towns, and were rarely successful in the art of siege. The Plataeans had proved more than their match, and there only remained to be tried the wearisome and costly process of blockade and famine.

Determined that Plataea should not escape, this plan was in the end adopted, and a wall built round the entire city, to prevent escape or the entrance of aid from without. In fact, two walls were built, sixteen feet apart, and these were covered in on top, so that they looked like one very thick wall. There were also two ditches, from which the bricks of the wall had been dug, one on the inside, and one without to prevent relief by a foreign force. The covered space within the walls served as quarters for the troops left on guard, its top as a convenient place for sentry duty. This done, the main army marched away. It needed no great host to keep the few Plataeans within their walls until they should consume all their food and yield to famine, a slower but more irresistible foe than all the Lacedaemonian power.

Fortunately for the besieged, they were well provisioned, and for more than a year remained in peace within their city, not attacked by their foes and receiving no aid from friends. Besides the eighty Athenians within the walls no help came to the Plataeans during the long siege. At length provisions began to fail. It was evident that they must die like rats in a cage, surrender to their foes, or make a desperate break for freedom.

The last expedient was proposed by their general. It was daring, and seemed desperate, to seek to escape over the blockading wall with its armed guards. So desperate did it appear that half the garrison feared to attempt it, deeming that it would end in certain death. The other half, more than two hundred in number, decided that it was better to dare death in the field than to meet death in the streets.

The wall was furnished with frequent battlements and occasional towers, and its whole circuit was kept under watch day and night. But as time went on the besiegers grew more lax in discipline, and on wet nights sought the shelter of the towers, leaving the spaces between without guards. This left a chance for escape which the Plataeans determined to embrace.

By counting the layers of bricks in the blockading wall they were able to estimate its height, and prepared ladders long enough to reach its top. Then they waited for a suitable time. At length it came, a cold, dark, stormy December night, with a roaring wind, and showers of rain and sleet.

The shivering guards cowered within their sheltering towers. Out from their gates marched the Plataeans, lightly armed, and, to avoid any sound, with the right foot naked. The left was shod, that it might have firmer hold on the muddy ground. Moving with the wind in their faces, and so far apart that their arms could not strike and clatter, they reached and crossed the ditch and lifted their ladders against the wall. Eleven men, armed only with sword and breastplate, mounted first. Others bearing spears followed, leaving their shields for their comrades below to carry up and hand to them. This first company was to attack and master the two towers right and left. This they did, surprising and slaying the guards without the alarm having spread. Then the others rapidly mounted the wall.

At this critical moment one of them struck a loose tile with his foot and sent it clattering down the wall. This unlucky accident gave the alarm. In an instant shouts came from the towers, and the garrison below sprang to arms and hurried to the top of the wall. But they knew not where to seek the foe, and their perplexity was increased by the garrison within the city, which made a false attack on the other side.

Not knowing what to do or where to go, the blockaders remained at their posts, except a body of three hundred men, who were kept in readiness to patrol the outside of the outer ditch. Fire-signals were raised to warn their allies in Thebes, but the garrison in the town also kindled fire-signals so as to destroy the meaning of those of the besiegers.

Meanwhile the escaping warriors were actively engaged. Some held with spear and javelin the towers they had captured. Others drew up the ladders and planted them against the outer wall. Then down the ladders they hurried, waded across the outer ditch, and reached level ground beyond. Each man, as he gained this space, stood ready with his weapons to repel assault from without. When all the others were down, the men who had held the towers fled to the ladders and safely descended.

The outer ditch was nearly full of water from the rain and covered with thin ice. Yet they scrambled through it, and when the three hundred of the outer guard approached with torches, they suddenly found themselves assailed with arrows and javelins from a foe invisible in the darkness. They were thus kept back till the last Plataean had crossed the ditch, when the bold fugitives marched speedily away, leaving but one of their number a prisoner in the hands of the foe.

They first marched towards Thebes, while their pursuers took the opposite direction. Then they turned, struck eastward, entered the mountains, and finally--two hundred and twelve in number--made their way safely to Athens, to tell their families and allies the thrilling story of their escape.

A few who lost heart returned from the inner wall to the town, and told those within that the whole band had perished. The truth was only learned within the town when on the next morning a herald was sent out to solicit a truce for burial of the dead bodies. The herald brought back the glad tidings that there were no dead to bury, that the whole bold band had escaped.

Happy had it been for the remaining garrison had they also fled, even at the risk of death. With the provisions left they held out till the next summer, when they were forced to yield. In the end, after the form of a trial, they were all slaughtered by their foes, and the city itself was razed to the ground by its Theban enemies, only the Heraeum, or temple of Here, being left. Such was the fate of a city to which eternal sacredness had been pledged.

_HOW THE LONG WALLS WENT DOWN._

The retreat of the Persians from Athens left that city without a wall or a home. On the return of the Athenians, and the rebuilding of their ruined homes, a new wall became a necessity, and, under the wise advice of Themistocles, the citizens determined that the new wall should be much larger in circuit than the old,--wide enough to hold all Attica in case of war.

But no sooner was this begun than a protest arose from rival states. The Spartans in particular raised such a clamor on the subject that Themistocles went to that city and denied that he was fortifying Athens. If they did not believe him, they might send there and see. They did so, and the Spartan ambassadors, on arriving there, found the walls completed and themselves held as hostages for the safe return of Themistocles. Not only Athens was thus fortified, but a still stronger wall was built around Piraeus, the port, four miles away.

Years afterwards, when Athens was in a position to defy the protest of Sparta, her famous Long Walls were built, extending from the city to the port, and forming a great artery through which the food and products brought in ships from distant lands could flow to the city from the sea, in defiance of foes. These walls it was that enabled Athens to survive and flourish when all the soil of Attica lay in the hands of the Spartan enemy. But the time came when these walls were to fall, and Athens to lie helpless in the hands of her mortal foe.

The Peloponnesian war was full of incident, victories and defeats, marches and countermarches, making and breaking of truces, loss of provinces and fleets, triumphs of one side and the other, and still the years rolled on, and neither party became supreme. Athens had its ill-advisers, who kept it at war when it could have won far more by concluding peace, and who induced it to forget the advice of Pericles and make war on land when its great strength lay in its fleet.

Its great error, however, was an attempt at foreign conquest, when it had quite enough to occupy it at home. War broke out between Athens and Sicily, and a strong fleet was sent to blockade and seek to capture the city of Syracuse. This expedition fatally sapped the strength of the Athenian empire. Ships and men were supplied in profusion to take part in a series of military blunders, of which the last were irreparable. The fleet, with all on board, was finally blocked up in the harbor of Syracuse, defeated in battle, and forced to yield, while of forty thousand Athenian troops but a miserable remnant survived to end their lives as slaves in Syracusan quarries. It was a disaster such as Athens in its whole career had not endured, and whose consequences were inevitable. From that time on the supremacy of Athens was at an end.

Yet for nine years more the war continued, with much the same succession of varying events as before. But during this period Sparta was learning an important lesson. If she would defeat Athens, she must learn how to win victories on sea as well as on land. After every defeat of a fleet she built and equipped another, and gradually grew stronger in ships, and her seamen more skilful and expert, until the old difference between Athenian and Spartan seamen ceased to exist. Persia also came to the aid of Sparta, supplied her with money, and enabled her to replace her lost ships with ever new ones, while the ship-building power of Athens declined.