Chapter XLV (2)

Disappointed as the Athenians were in this enterprise, they did not abandon the blockade of Thasos, which held out more than two years, and only surrendered in the third year. Its fortifications were razed; its ships of war, thirty-three in number, taken away:[600] its possessions and mining establishments on the opposite continent relinquished: moreover, an immediate contribution in money was demanded from the inhabitants, over and above the annual payment assessed upon them for the future. The subjugation of this powerful island was another step in the growing dominion of Athens over her confederates.

[600] Plutarch, Kimon, c. 14. Galêpsus and Œsymê were among the
Thasian settlements on the mainland of Thrace (Thucyd. iv, 108).

The year before the Thasians surrendered, however, they had taken a step which deserves particular notice, as indicating the newly-gathering clouds in the Grecian political horizon. They had made secret application to the Lacedæmonians for aid, entreating them to draw off the attention of Athens by invading Attica; and the Lacedæmonians, without the knowledge of Athens, having actually engaged to comply with this request, were only prevented from performing their promise by a grave and terrible misfortune at home.[601] Though accidentally unperformed, however, this hostile promise is a most significant event: it marks the growing fear and hatred on the part of Sparta and the Peloponnesians towards Athens, merely on general grounds of the magnitude of her power, and without any special provocation. Nay, not only had Athens given no provocation, but she was still actually included as a member of the Lacedæmonian alliance, and we shall find her presently both appealed to and acting as such. We shall hear so much of Athens, and that too with truth, as pushing and aggressive,—and of Sparta as homekeeping and defensive,—that the incident just mentioned becomes important to remark. The first intent of unprovoked and even treacherous hostility—the germ of the future Peloponnesian war—is conceived and reduced to an engagement by Sparta.

[601] Thucyd. i, 101. οἱ δὲ ὑπέσχοντο μὲν κρύφα τῶν Ἀθηναίων καὶ
ἔμελλον, διεκωλύθησαν δὲ ὑπὸ τοῦ γενομένου σεισμοῦ.

We are told by Plutarch, that the Athenians, after the surrender of Thasos and the liberation of the armament, had expected from Kimon some farther conquests in Macedonia,—and even that he had actually entered upon that project with such promise of success, that its farther consummation was certain as well as easy. Having under these circumstances relinquished it and returned to Athens, he was accused by Periklês and others of having been bought off by bribes from the Macedonian king Alexander; but was acquitted after a public trial.[602]

[602] Plutarch, Kimon, c. 14.

During the period which had elapsed between the first formation of the confederacy of Delos and the capture of Thasos (about thirteen or fourteen years, B. C. 477-463), the Athenians seem to have been occupied almost entirely in their maritime operations, chiefly against the Persians,—having been free from embarrassments immediately around Attica. But this freedom was not destined to last much longer; and during the ensuing ten years, their foreign relations near home become both active and complicated; while their strength expands so wonderfully, that they are found competent at once to obligations on both sides of the Ægean sea, the distant as well as the near.

Of the incidents which had taken place in Central Greece during the twelve or fifteen years immediately succeeding the battle of Platæa, we have scarcely any information. The feelings of the time, between those Greeks who had supported and those who had resisted the Persian invader, must have remained unfriendly even after the war was at an end, and the mere occupation of the Persian numerous host must have inflicted severe damage both upon Thessaly and Bœotia. At the meeting of the Amphiktyonic synod which succeeded the expulsion of the invaders, a reward was proclaimed for the life of the Melian Ephialtês, who had betrayed to Xerxes the mountain-path over Œta, and thus caused the ruin of Leonidas at Thermopylæ: moreover, if we may trust Plutarch, it was even proposed by Lacedæmon that all the _medizing_ Greeks should be expelled from the synod,[603]—a proposition which the more long-sighted views of Themistoklês successfully resisted. Even the stronger measure, of razing the fortifications of all the extra-Peloponnesian cities, from fear that they might be used to aid some future invasion, had suggested itself to the Lacedæmonians,—as we see from their language on the occasion of rebuilding the walls of Athens; and in regard to Bœotia, it appears that the headship of Thebes as well as the coherence of the federation was for the time almost suspended. The destroyed towns of Platæa and Thespiæ were restored, and the latter in part repeopled,[604] under Athenian influence; and the general sentiment of Peloponnesus as well as of Athens would have sustained these towns against Thebes, if the latter had tried at that time to enforce her supremacy over them in the name of “ancient Bœotian right and usage.”[605] The Theban government was then in discredit for its previous _medism_,—even in the eyes of Thebans themselves;[606] while the party opposed to Thebes in the other towns was so powerful, that many of them would probably have been severed from the federation to become allies of Athens like Platæa, if the interference of Lacedæmon had not arrested such a tendency. The latter was in every other part of Greece an enemy to organized aggregation of cities, either equal or unequal, and was constantly bent on keeping the little autonomous communities separate;[607] whence she sometimes became by accident the protector of the weaker cities against compulsory alliance imposed upon them by the stronger: the interest of her own ascendency was in this respect analogous to that of the Persians when they dictated the peace of Antalkidas,—of the Romans in administering their extensive conquests,—and of the kings of medieval Europe in breaking the authority of the barons over their vassals. But though such was the policy of Sparta elsewhere, her fear of Athens, which grew up during the ensuing twenty years, made her act differently in regard to Bœotia: she had no other means of maintaining that country as her own ally and as the enemy of Athens, except by organizing the federation effectively, and strengthening the authority of Thebes. It is to this revolution in Spartan politics that Thebes owed the recovery of her ascendency,[608]—a revolution so conspicuously marked, that the Spartans even aided in enlarging her circuit and improving her fortifications: nor was it without difficulty that she maintained this position, even when recovered, against the dangerous neighborhood of Athens, a circumstance which made her not only a vehement partisan of Sparta, but even more furiously anti-Athenian than Sparta, down to the close of the Peloponnesian war.

[603] Plutarch, Themistokl. c. 20.

[604] See the case of Sikinnus, the person through whom
Themistoklês communicated with Xerxes before the battle of
Salamis, and for whom he afterwards procured admission among the
batch of newly-introduced citizens at Thespiæ (Herodot. viii. 75).

[605] Τὰ τῶν Βοιωτῶν πάτρια—τὰ κοινὰ τῶν πάντων Βοιωτῶν πάτρια
(Thucyd. iii, 61-65).

[606] Thucyd. iii, 62.

[607] See, among many other evidences, the remarkable case of the
Olynthian confederacy (Xenophon, Hellen. v, 2, 16).

[608] Diodor. xi, 81; Justin, iii, 6.

The revolution, just noticed, in Spartan politics towards Bœotia, did not manifest itself until about twenty years after the commencement of the Athenian maritime confederacy. During the course of those twenty years, we know that Sparta had had more than one battle to sustain in Arcadia, against the towns and villages of that country, in which she came forth victorious: but we have no particulars respecting these incidents. We also know that a few years after the Persian invasion, the inhabitants of Elis concentrated themselves from many dispersed townships into the one main city of Elis:[609] and it seems probable that Lepreum in Triphylia, and one or two of the towns of Achaia, were either formed or enlarged by a similar process near about the same time.[610] Such aggregation of towns out of preëxisting separate villages was not conformable to the views, nor favorable to the ascendency, of Lacedæmon: but there can be little doubt that her foreign policy, after the Persian invasion, was both embarrassed and discredited by the misconduct of her two contemporary kings, Pausanias, who, though only regent, was practically equivalent to a king, and Leotychidês,—not to mention the rapid development of Athens and Peiræus. But in the year B. C. 464, the year preceding the surrender of Thasos to the Athenian armament, a misfortune of yet more terrific moment befell Sparta. A violent earthquake took place in the immediate neighborhood of Sparta itself, destroying a large portion of the town, and a vast number of lives, many of them Spartan citizens. It was the judgment of the earth-shaking god Poseidon, according to the view of the Lacedæmonians themselves, for a recent violation of his sanctuary at Tænarus, from whence certain suppliant Helots had been dragged away not long before for punishment,[611]—not improbably some of those Helots whom Pausanias had instigated to revolt. The sentiment of the Helots, at all times one of enmity towards their masters, appears at this moment to have been unusually inflammable: so that an earthquake at Sparta, especially an earthquake construed as divine vengeance for Helot blood recently spilt, was sufficient to rouse many of them at once into revolt, together with some even of the Periœki. The insurgents took arms and marched directly upon Sparta, which they were on the point of mastering during the first moments of consternation, had not the bravery and presence of mind of the young king Archidamus reanimated the surviving citizens and repelled the attack. But though repelled, the insurgents were not subdued: for some time they maintained the field against the Spartan force, and sometimes with considerable advantage, since Aeimnêstus, the warrior by whose hand Mardonius had fallen at Platæa, was defeated and slain with three hundred followers in the plain of Stenyklêrus, overpowered by superior numbers.[612] When at length defeated, they occupied and fortified the memorable hill of Ithômê, the ancient citadel of their Messenian forefathers. Here they made a long and obstinate defence, supporting themselves doubtless by incursions throughout Laconia: nor was defence difficult, seeing that the Lacedæmonians were at that time confessedly incapable of assailing even the most imperfect species of fortification. After the siege had lasted some two or three years, without any prospect of success, the Lacedæmonians, beginning to despair of their own sufficiency for the undertaking, invoked the aid of their various allies, among whom we find specified the Æginetans, the Athenians, and the Platæans.[613] The Athenian troops are said to have consisted of four thousand men, under the command of Kimon; Athens being still included in the list of Lacedæmonian allies.

[609] Diodor. xi. 54; Strabo, viii, p. 337.

[610] Strabo, viii, pp. 337, 348, 356.

[611] Thucyd. i, 101-128; Diodor. xi, 62.

[612] Herodot. ix. 64.

[613] Thucyd. i, 102; iii, 54; iv, 57.

So imperfect were the means of attacking walls at that day, even for the most intelligent Greeks, that this increased force made no immediate impression on the fortified hill of Ithômê. And when the Lacedæmonians saw that their Athenian allies were not more successful than they had been themselves, they soon passed from surprise into doubt, mistrust, and apprehension. The troops had given no ground for such a feeling, and Kimon, their general, was notorious for his attachment to Sparta; yet the Lacedæmonians could not help calling to mind the ever-wakeful energy and ambition of these Ionic strangers, whom they had introduced into the interior of Laconia, together with their own promise—though doubtless a secret promise—to invade Attica, not long before, for the benefit of the Thasians. They even began to fear that the Athenians might turn against them, and listen to solicitations for espousing the cause of the besieged. Under the influence of such apprehensions, they dismissed the Athenian contingent forthwith, on pretence of having no farther occasion for them; while all the other allies were retained, and the siege or blockade went on as before.[614]

[614] Thucyd. i, 102. τὴν μὲν ὑποψίαν οὐ δηλοῦντες, εἰπόντες δὲ
ὅτι οὐδὲν προσδέονται αὐτῶν ἔτι.

Mr. Fynes Clinton (Fast. Hellen. ann. 464-461 B. C.), following
Plutarch, recognizes two Lacedæmonian requests to Athens, and
two Athenian expeditions to the aid of the Spartans, both under
Kimon; the first in 464 B. C., immediately on the happening of
the earthquake and consequent revolt,—the second in 461 B. C.,
after the war had lasted some time.

In my judgment, there is no ground for supposing more than
one application made to Athens, and one expedition. The
duplication has arisen from Plutarch, who has construed too much
as historical reality the comic exaggeration of Aristophanês
(Aristoph. Lysistrat. 1138; Plutarch, Kimon, 16). The heroine
of the latter, Lysistrata, wishing to make peace between the
Lacedæmonians and Athenians, and reminding each of the services
which they had received from the other, might permit herself
to say to the Lacedæmonians: “Your envoy, Perikleidas, came to
Athens, pale with terror, and put himself a suppliant at the
altar to entreat our help as a matter of life and death, while
Poseidon was still shaking the earth, and the Messenians were
pressing you hard: then Kimon with four thousand hoplites went
and achieved your complete salvation.” This is all very telling
and forcible, as a portion of the Aristophanic play, but there is
no historical truth in it except the fact of an application made
and an expedition sent in consequence.

We know that the earthquake took place at the time when the
siege of Thasos was yet going on, because it was the reason
which prevented the Lacedæmonians from aiding the besieged by an
invasion of Attica. But Kimon commanded at the siege of Thasos
(Plutarch, Kimon, c. 14); accordingly, he could not have gone as
commander to Laconia at the time when this first expedition is
alleged to have been undertaken.

Next, Thucydidês acknowledges only one expedition: nor, indeed,
does Diodorus (xi, 64), though this is of minor consequence.
Now mere silence on the part of Thucydidês, in reference to the
events of a period which he only professes to survey briefly,
is not always a very forcible negative argument. But in this
case, his account of the expedition of 461 B. C., with its very
important consequences, is such as to exclude the supposition
that _he knew_ of any prior expedition, two or three years
earlier. Had he known of any such, he could not have written
the account which now stands in his text. He dwells especially
on the prolongation of the war, and on the incapacity of the
Lacedæmonians for attacking walls, as the reasons why they
invoked the Athenians as well as their other allies: he implies
that their presence in Laconia was a new and threatening
incident: moreover, when he tells us how much the Athenians were
incensed by their abrupt and mistrustful dismissal, he could
not have omitted to notice, as an aggravation of this feeling,
that, only two or three years before, they had rescued Lacedæmon
from the brink of ruin. Let us add, that the supposition of
Sparta, the first military power in Greece, and distinguished
for her unintermitting discipline, being reduced all at once
to a condition of such utter helplessness as to owe her safety
to foreign intervention,—is highly improbable in itself:
inadmissible, except on very good evidence.

For the reasons here stated. I reject the first expedition into
Laconia mentioned in Plutarch.

This dismissal, ungracious in the extreme, and probably rendered even more offensive by the habitual roughness of Spartan dealing, excited the strongest exasperation both among the Athenian soldiers and the Athenian people,—an exasperation heightened by circumstances immediately preceding. For the resolution to send auxiliaries into Laconia, when the Lacedæmonians first applied for them, had not been taken without considerable debate at Athens: the party of Periklês and Ephialtês, habitually in opposition to Kimon, and partisans of the forward democratical movement, had strongly discountenanced it, and conjured their countrymen not to assist in renovating and strengthening their most formidable rival. Perhaps the previous engagement of the Lacedæmonians to invade Attica on behalf of the Thasians may have become known to them, though not so formally as to exclude denial; and even supposing this engagement to have remained unknown at that time to every one, there were not wanting other grounds to render the policy of refusal plausible. But Kimon, with an earnestness which even the philo-Laconian Kritias afterwards characterized as a sacrifice of the grandeur of Athens to the advantage of Lacedæmon,[615] employed all his credit and influence in seconding the application. The maintenance of alliance with Sparta on equal footing,—peace among the great powers of Greece, and common war against Persia,—together with the prevention of all farther democratical changes in Athens,—were the leading points of his political creed. As yet, both his personal and political ascendency was predominant over his opponents: as yet, there was no manifest conflict, which had only just begun to show itself in the case of Thasos, between the maritime power of Athens, and the union of land-force under Sparta: and Kimon could still treat both of these phenomena as coexisting necessities of Hellenic well-being. Though no way distinguished as a speaker, he carried with him the Athenian assembly by appealing to a large and generous patriotism, which forbade them to permit the humiliation of Sparta. “Consent not to see Hellas lamed of one leg, and Athens drawing without her yoke-fellow;”[616] such was his language, as we learn from his friend and companion, the Chian poet Ion: and in the lips of Kimon it proved effective. It is a speech of almost melancholy interest, since ninety years passed over before such an appeal was ever again addressed to an Athenian assembly.[617] The despatch of the auxiliaries was thus dictated by a generous sentiment, to the disregard of what might seem political prudence: and we may imagine the violent reaction which took place in Athenian feeling, when the Lacedæmonians repaid them by singling out their troops from all the other allies as objects of insulting suspicion,—we may imagine the triumph of Periklês and Ephialtês, who had opposed the mission,—and the vast loss of influence to Kimon, who had brought it about,—when Athens received again into her public assemblies the hoplites sent back from Ithômê.

[615] Plutarch, Kimon, c. 16.

[616] Plutarch, Kimon, c. 16. Ὁ δ’ Ἴων ἀπομνημονεύει καὶ τὸν
λόγον, ᾧ μάλιστα τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἐκίνησε, παρακαλὼν μήτε τὴν
Ἑλλάδα χωλὴν, μήτε τὴν πόλιν ἑτερόζυγα, περιϊδεῖν γεγενημένην.

[617] See Xenophon, Hellenic. vi, 3,—about 372 B. C.—a little
before the battle of Leuktra.

Both in the internal constitution, indeed,—of which more presently,—and in the external policy of Athens, the dismissal of these soldiers was pregnant with results. The Athenians immediately passed a formal resolution to renounce the alliance between themselves and Lacedæmon against the Persians. They did more: they looked out for land enemies of Lacedæmon, with whom to ally themselves. Of these by far the first, both in Hellenic rank and in real power, was Argos. That city, neutral during the Persian invasion, had now recovered from the effects of the destructive defeat suffered about thirty years before from the Spartan king Kleomenês: the sons of the ancient citizens had grown to manhood, and the temporary predominance of the Periœki, acquired in consequence of the ruinous loss of citizens in that defeat, had been again put down. In the neighborhood of Argos, and dependent upon it, were situated Mykenæ, Tiryns, and Midea,—small in power and importance, but rich in mythical renown. Disdaining the inglorious example of Argos, at the period of danger, these towns had furnished contingents both to Thermopylæ and Platæa, which their powerful neighbor had been unable either to prevent at the time, or to avenge afterwards, from fear of the intervention of Lacedæmon. But so soon as the latter was seen to be endangered and occupied at home, with a formidable Messenian revolt, the Argeians availed themselves of the opportunity to attack not only Mykenæ and Tiryns, but also Orneæ, Midea, and other semi-dependent towns around them. Several of these were reduced; and the inhabitants robbed of their autonomy, were incorporated with the domain of Argos: but the Mykenians, partly from the superior gallantry of their resistance, partly from jealousy of their mythical renown, were either sold as slaves or driven into banishment.[618] Through these victories Argos was now more powerful than ever, and the propositions of alliance made to her by Athens, while strengthening both the two against Lacedæmon, opened to her a new chance of recovering her lost headship in Peloponnesus. The Thessalians became members of this new alliance, which was a defensive alliance against Lacedæmon: and hopes were doubtless entertained of drawing in some of the habitual allies of the latter.

[618] Diodor. xi, 65; Strabo, viii, p. 372; Pausan. ii, 16,
17, 25. Diodorus places this incident in 468 B. C.: but as it
undoubtedly comes after the earthquake at Sparta, we must suppose
it to have happened about 463 B. C. See Mr. Fynes Clinton, Fasti
Hellenici, Appendix, 8.

The new character which Athens had thus assumed, as a competitor for landed alliances, not less than for maritime ascendency, came opportunely for the protection of the neighboring town of Megara. It appears that Corinth, perhaps instigated, like Argos, by the helplessness of the Lacedæmonians, had been making border encroachments on the one side upon Kleônæ, on the other side upon Megara:[619] on which ground the latter, probably despairing of protection from Lacedæmon, renounced the Lacedæmonian connection, and obtained permission to enrol herself as an ally of Athens.[620] This was an acquisition of signal value to the Athenians, since it both opened to them the whole range of territory across the outer isthmus of Corinth to the interior of the Krissæan gulf, on which the Megarian port of Pegæ was situated, and placed them in possession of the passes of Mount Geraneia, so that they could arrest the march of a Peloponnesian army over the isthmus, and protect Attica from invasion. It was, moreover, of great importance in its effects on Grecian politics: for it was counted as a wrong by Lacedæmon, gave deadly offence to the Corinthians, and lighted up the flames of war between them and Athens; their allies, the Epidaurians and Æginetans, taking their part. Though Athens had not yet been guilty of unjust encroachment against any Peloponnesian state, her ambition and energy had inspired universal awe; while the maritime states in the neighborhood, such as Corinth, Epidaurus, and Ægina, saw these terror-striking qualities threatening them at their own doors, through her alliance with Argos and Megara. Moreover, it is probable that the ancient feud between the Athenians and Æginetans, though dormant since a little before the Persian invasion, had never been appeased or forgotten: so that the Æginetans, dwelling within sight of Peiræus, were at once best able to appreciate, and most likely to dread, the enormous maritime power now possessed by Athens. Periklês was wont to call Ægina the eyesore of Peiræus:[621] but we may be very sure that Peiræus, grown into a vast fortified port, within the existing generation, was in a much stronger degree the eyesore of Ægina.

[619] Plutarch, Kimon, c. 17.

[620] Thucyd. i. 103.

[621] Plutarch, Periklês, c. 8.

The Athenians were at this time actively engaged in prosecuting the war against Persia, having a fleet of no less than two hundred sail, equipped by or from the confederacy collectively, now serving in Cyprus and on the Phenician coast. Moreover, the revolt of the Egyptians under Inaros, about 460 B. C., opened to them new means of action against the Great King; and their fleet, by invitation of the revolters, sailed up the Nile to Memphis, where there seemed at first a good prospect of throwing off the Persian dominion. Yet in spite of so great an abstraction from their disposable force, their military operations near home were conducted with unabated vigor: and the inscription which remains,—a commemoration of their citizens of the Erechtheid tribe, who were slain in one and the same year, in Cyprus, Egypt, Phenicia, the Halieis, Ægina, and Megara,—brings forcibly before us that energy which astonished and even alarmed their contemporaries. Their first proceedings at Megara were of a nature altogether novel, in the existing condition of Greece. It was necessary for the Athenians to protect their new ally against the superiority of Peloponnesian land-force, and to insure a constant communication with it by sea; but the city, like most of the ancient Hellenic towns, was situated on a hill at some distance from the sea, separated from its port Nisæa by a space of nearly one mile. One of the earliest proceedings of the Athenians was to build two lines of wall, near and parallel to each other, connecting the city with Nisæa, so that the two thus formed one continuous fortress, wherein a standing Athenian garrison was maintained, with the constant means of succor from Athens in case of need. These “long walls,” though afterwards copied in other places, and on a larger scale, were at that juncture an ingenious invention, for the purpose of extending the maritime arm of Athens to an inland city.

The first operations of Corinth, however, were not directed against Megara. The Athenians having undertaken a landing in the territory of the Halieis, the population of the southern Argolic peninsula, bordering on Trœzen and Hermionê, were defeated on land by the Corinthian and Epidaurian forces: possibly it may have been in this expedition that they acquired possession of Trœzen, which we find afterwards in their dependence, without knowing when it became so. But in a sea-fight which took place off the island of Kekryphaleia, between Ægina and the Argolic peninsula, the Athenians gained the victory. After this victory and defeat,—neither of them apparently very decisive,—the Æginetans began to take a more energetic part in the war, and brought out their full naval force, together with that of their allies,—Corinthians, Epidaurians, and other Peloponnesians: while Athens equipped a fleet of corresponding magnitude, summoning her allies also; though we do not know the actual numbers on either side. In the great naval battle which ensued off the island of Ægina, the superiority of the new nautical tactics, acquired by twenty years’ practice of the Athenians since the Persian war,—over the old Hellenic ships and seamen, as shown in those states where, at the time of the battle of Marathon, the maritime strength of Greece had resided,—was demonstrated by a victory most complete and decisive. The Peloponnesian and Dorian seamen had as yet had no experience of the improved seacraft of Athens, and when we find how much they were disconcerted with it, even twenty-eight years afterwards, at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, we shall not wonder at its destructive effect upon them in this early battle. The maritime power of Ægina was irrecoverably ruined: the Athenians captured seventy ships of war, landed a large force upon the island, and commenced the siege of the city by land as well as by sea.[622]

[622] Thucyd. i, 105; Lysias, Orat. Funebr. c. 10. Diodor. xi. 78.

If the Lacedæmonians had not been occupied at home by the blockade of Ithômê, they would have been probably induced to invade Attica as a diversion to the Æginetans; especially as the Persian Megabazus came to Sparta at this time on the part of Artaxerxes to prevail upon them to do so, in order that the Athenians might be constrained to retire from Egypt: this Persian brought with him a large sum of money, but was nevertheless obliged to return without effecting his mission.[623] The Corinthians and Epidaurians, however, while they carried to Ægina a reinforcement of three hundred hoplites, did their best to aid her farther by an attack upon Megara; which place, it was supposed, the Athenians could not possibly relieve without withdrawing their forces from Ægina, inasmuch as so many of their men were at the same time serving in Egypt. But the Athenians showed themselves equal to all these three exigencies at one and the same time,—to the great disappointment of their enemies. Myrônidês marched from Athens to Megara at the head of the citizens in the two extremes of military age, old and young; these being the only troops at home. He fought the Corinthians near the town, gaining a slight, but debatable advantage, which he commemorated by a trophy, as soon as the Corinthians had returned home. But the latter when they arrived at home, were so much reproached by their own old citizens, for not having vanquished the refuse of the Athenian military force,[624] that they returned back at the end of twelve days and erected a trophy on their side, laying claim to a victory in the past battle. The Athenians, marching out of Megara, attacked them a second time, and gained on this occasion a decisive victory. The defeated Corinthians were still more unfortunate in their retreat; for a body of them, missing their road, became entangled in a space of private ground, inclosed on every side by a deep ditch, and having only one narrow entrance. Myrônidês, detecting this fatal mistake, planted his hoplites at the entrance to prevent their escape, and then surrounded the enclosure with his light-armed troops, who, with their missile weapons, slew all the Corinthian hoplites, without possibility either of flight or resistance. The bulk of the Corinthian army effected their retreat, but the destruction of this detachment was a sad blow to the city.[625]

[623] Thucyd. i, 109.

[624] Lysias, Orat. Funebr. c. 10. ἐνίκων μαχόμενοι ἅπασαν τὴν
δύναμιν τὴν ἐκείνων τοῖς ἤδη ἀπειρηκόσι καὶ τοῖς οὔπω δυναμένοις,
etc.

The incident mentioned by Thucydidês about the Corinthians,
that the old men of their own city were so indignant against
them on their return, is highly characteristic of Grecian
manners,—κακιζόμενοι ὑπὸ τῶν ἐν τῇ πόλει πρεσβυτέρων, etc.

[625] Thucyd. i, 106. πάθος μέγα τοῦτο Κορινθίοις ἐγένετο.
Compare Diodor. xi, 78, 79,—whose chronology, however, is very
misleading.

Splendid as the success of the Athenians had been during this year, both on land and at sea, it was easy for them to foresee that the power of their enemies would presently be augmented by the Lacedæmonians taking the field. Partly on this account,—partly also from the more energetic phase of democracy, and the long-sighted views of Periklês, which were now becoming ascendent in the city,—the Athenians began the stupendous undertaking of connecting Athens with the sea by means of long walls. The idea of this measure had doubtless been first suggested by the recent erection of long walls, though for so much smaller a distance, between Megara and Nisæa: for without such an intermediate stepping-stone, the idea of a wall forty stadia long (equal to four and a half miles) to join Athens with Peiræus, and another wall of thirty-five stadia (equal to about four miles) to join it with Phalêrum, would have appeared extravagant even to the sanguine temper of Athenians,—as it certainly would have seemed a few years earlier to Themistoklês himself. Coming as an immediate sequel of great recent victories, and while Ægina, the great Dorian naval power, was prostrate and under blockade, it excited the utmost alarm among the Peloponnesians,—being regarded as the second great stride,[626] at once conspicuous and of lasting effect, in Athenian ambition, next to the fortification of Peiræus. But besides this feeling in the bosom of enemies, the measure was also interwoven with the formidable contention of political parties then going on at Athens. Kimon had been recently ostracized; and the democratical movement pressed by Periklês and Ephialtês—of which more presently—was in its full tide of success, yet not without a violent and unprincipled opposition on the part of those who supported the existing constitution. Now, the long walls formed a part of the foreign policy of Periklês, continuing on a gigantic scale the plans of Themistoklês when he first schemed the Peiræus. They were framed to render Athens capable of carrying on war against any superiority of landed attack, and of bidding defiance to the united force of Peloponnesus. But though thus calculated for contingencies which a long-sighted man might see gathering in the distance, the new walls were, almost on the same grounds, obnoxious to a considerable number of Athenians: to the party recently headed by Kimon, who were attached to the Lacedæmonian connection, and desired above all things to maintain peace at home, reserving the energies of the state for anti-Persian enterprise: to many landed proprietors in Attica, whom they seemed to threaten with approaching invasion and destruction of their territorial possessions: to the rich men and aristocrats of Athens, averse to a still closer contact and amalgamation with the maritime multitude in Peiræus: lastly, perhaps, to a certain vein of old Attic feeling, which might look upon the junction of Athens with the separate demes of Peiræus and Phalêrum as effacing the special associations connected with the holy rock of Athênê. When, to all these grounds of opposition, we add, the expense and trouble of the undertaking itself, the interference with private property, the peculiar violence of party which happened then to be raging, and the absence of a large proportion of military citizens in Egypt,—we shall hardly be surprised to find that the projected long walls brought on a risk of the most serious character both for Athens and her democracy. If any farther proof were wanting of the vast importance of these long walls, in the eyes both of friends and of enemies, we might find it in the fact, that their destruction was the prominent mark of Athenian humiliation after the battle of Ægos Potamos, and their restoration the immediate boon of Pharnabazus and Konon after the victory of Knidus.

[626] Καὶ τῶνδε ὑμεῖς αἴτιοι, τό τε πρῶτον ἐάσαντες αὐτοὺς
τὴν πόλιν μετὰ τὰ Μηδικὰ κρατῦναι, καὶ ὕστερον τὰ μακρὰ
στῆσαι τείχη,—is the language addressed by the Corinthians
to the Spartans, in reference to Athens, a little before the
Peloponnesian war (Thucyd. i, 69).

Under the influence of the alarm now spread by the proceedings of Athens, the Lacedæmonians were prevailed upon to undertake an expedition out of Peloponnesus, although the Helots in Ithômê were not yet reduced to surrender. Their force consisted of fifteen hundred troops of their own, and ten thousand of their various allies, under the regent Nikomêdês. The ostensible motive, or the pretence, for this march, was the protection of the little territory of Doris against the Phocians, who had recently invaded it and taken one of its three towns. The mere approach of so large a force immediately compelled the Phocians to relinquish their conquest, but it was soon seen that this was only a small part of the objects of Sparta, and that her main purposes, under instigation of the Corinthians, were directed against the aggrandizement of Athens. It could not escape the penetration of Corinth, that the Athenians might presently either enlist or constrain the towns of Bœotia into their alliance, as they had recently acquired Megara, in addition to their previous ally, Platæa: for the Bœotian federation was at this time much disorganized, and Thebes, its chief, had never recovered her ascendency since the discredit of her support lent to the Persian invasion. To strengthen Thebes, and to render her ascendency effective over the Bœotian cities, was the best way of providing a neighbor at once powerful and hostile to the Athenians, so as to prevent their farther aggrandizement by land: it was the same policy as Epaminondas pursued eighty years afterwards in organizing Arcadia and Messênê against Sparta. Accordingly, the Peloponnesian force was now employed partly in enlarging and strengthening the fortifications of Thebes herself, partly in constraining the other Bœotian cities into effective obedience to her supremacy: probably by placing their governments in the hands of citizens of known oligarchical politics,[627] and perhaps banishing suspected opponents. To this scheme the Thebans lent themselves with earnestness; promising to keep down for the future their border neighbors, so as to spare the necessity of armies coming from Sparta.[628]

[627] Diodor. xii, 81; Justin, iii, 6. Τῆς μὲν τῶν Θηβαίων πόλεως
μείζονα τὸν περίβολον κατεσκεύασαν, τὰς δ’ ἐν Βοιωτίᾳ πόλεις
ἠνάγκασαν ὑποτάττεσθαι τοῖς Θηβαίοις.

[628] Diodor. l. c. It must probably be to the internal affairs
of Bœotia, somewhere about this time, full as they were of
internal dissension, that the dictum and simile of Periklês
alludes,—which Aristotle notices in his Rhetoric. iii, 4, 2.

But there was also a farther design, yet more important, in contemplation by the Spartans and Corinthians. The oligarchical opposition at Athens were so bitterly hostile to the Long Walls, to Periklês, and to the democratical movement, that several of them opened a secret negotiation with the Peloponnesian leaders, inviting them into Attica, and entreating their aid in an internal rising for the purpose not only of putting a stop to the Long Walls, but also of subverting the democracy. And the Peloponnesian army, while prosecuting its operations in Bœotia, waited in hopes of seeing the Athenian malcontents in arms, encamping at Tanagra, on the very borders of Attica, for the purpose of immediate coöperation with them. The juncture was undoubtedly one of much hazard for Athens, especially as the ostracized Kimon and his remaining friends in the city were suspected of being implicated in the conspiracy. But the Athenian leaders, aware of the Lacedæmonian operations in Bœotia, knew also what was meant by the presence of the army on their immediate borders, and took decisive measures to avert the danger. Having obtained a reinforcement of one thousand Argeians and some Thessalian horse, they marched out to Tanagra, with the full Athenian force then at home; which must, of course, have consisted chiefly of the old and the young, the same who had fought under Myrônidês at Megara; for the blockade of Ægina was still going on. Nor was it possible for the Lacedæmonian army to return into Peloponnesus without fighting; for the Athenians, masters of the Megarid, were in possession of the difficult highlands of Geraneia, the road of march along the isthmus; while the Athenian fleet, by means of the harbor of Pegæ, was prepared to intercept them, if they tried to come by sea across the Krissæan gulf, by which way it would appear that they had come out. Near Tanagra, a bloody battle took place between the two armies, wherein the Lacedæmonians were victorious, chiefly from the desertion of the Thessalian horse, who passed over to them in the very heat of the engagement.[629] But though the advantage was on their side, it was not sufficiently decisive to favor the contemplated rising in Attica: nor did the Peloponnesians gain anything by it, except an undisturbed retreat over the highlands of Geraneia, after having partially ravaged the Megarid.

[629] Thucyd. i, 107.

Though the battle of Tanagra was a defeat, yet there were circumstances connected with it which rendered its effects highly beneficial to Athens. The ostracized Kimon presented himself on the field as soon as the army had passed over the boundaries of Attica, requesting to be allowed to occupy his station as an hoplite and to fight in the ranks of his tribe,—the Œnêis. But such was the belief, entertained by the members of the senate and by his political enemies present, that he was an accomplice in the conspiracy known to be on foot, that permission was refused and he was forced to retire. In departing, he conjured his personal friends, Euthippus, of the deme Anaphlystus, and others, to behave in such a manner as might wipe away the stain resting upon his fidelity, and in part also upon theirs. His friends retained his panoply, and assigned to it the station in the ranks which he would himself have occupied: they then entered the engagement with desperate resolution, and one hundred of them fell side by side in their ranks. Periklês, on his part, who was present among the hoplites of his own tribe, the Akamantis, aware of this application and repulse of Kimon, thought it incumbent upon him to display not merely his ordinary personal courage, but an unusual recklessness of life and safety, though it happened that he escaped unwounded. All these incidents brought about a generous sympathy and spirit of compromise among the contending parties at Athens, while the unshaken patriotism of Kimon and his friends discountenanced and disarmed those conspirators who had entered into correspondence with the enemy, at the same time that it roused a repentant admiration towards the ostracized leader himself. Such was the happy working of this new sentiment that a decree was shortly proposed and carried,—proposed too, by Periklês himself,—to abridge the ten years of Kimon’s ostracism, and permit his immediate return.[630] We may recollect that, under circumstances partly analogous, Themistoklês had himself proposed the restoration of his rival Aristeidês from ostracism, a little before the battle of Salamis:[631] and in both cases, the suspension of enmity between the two leaders was partly the sign, partly also the auxiliary cause, of reconciliation and renewed fraternity among the general body of citizens. It was a moment analogous to that salutary impulse of compromise, and harmony of parties, which followed the extinction of the oligarchy of Four Hundred, forty-six years afterwards, and on which Thucydidês dwells emphatically as the salvation of Athens in her distress,—a moment rare in free communities generally, not less than among the jealous competitors for political ascendency at Athens.[632]

[630] Plutarch, Kimon, c. 14; Periklês, c. 10. Plutarch
represents the Athenians as having recalled Kimon from fear of
the Lacedæmonians who had just beaten them at Tanagra, and for
the purpose of procuring peace. He adds that Kimon obtained
peace for them forthwith. Both these assertions are incorrect.
The extraordinary successes in Bœotia, which followed so quickly
after the defeat at Tanagra, show that the Athenians were under
no impressions of fear at that juncture, and that the recall of
Kimon proceeded from quite different feelings. Moreover, the
peace with Sparta was not made till some years afterwards.

[631] Plutarch, Themistoklês, c. 10.

[632] Plutarch, Kimon, c. 17; Periklês, c. 10; Thucyd. viii, 97.
Plutarch observes, respecting this reconciliation of parties
after the battle of Tanagra, after having mentioned that Periklês
himself proposed the restoration of Kimon—

Οὕτω τότε πολιτικαὶ μὲν ἦσαν αἱ διαφοραὶ, μέτριοι δὲ οἱ θυμοὶ
καὶ πρὸς τὸ κοινὸν εὐανάκλητοι σύμφερον, ἡ δὲ φιλοτιμία πάντων
ἐπικρατοῦσα τῶν παθῶν τοῖς τῆς πατρίδος ὑπεχώρει καίροις.

Which remarks are very analogous to those of Thucydidês, in
recounting the memorable proceedings of the year 411 B. C., after
the deposition of the oligarchy of Four Hundred (Thucyd. viii,
97).

Καὶ οὐχ ἥκιστα δὴ τὸν πρῶτον χρόνον ἐπί γε ἐμοῦ Ἀθηναῖοι
φαίνονται εὖ πολιτεύσαντες· μετρία γὰρ ἥ τε ἐς τοὺς ὀλίγους καὶ
τοὺς πολλοὺς ξύγκρασις ἐγένετο, καὶ ἐκ πονηρῶν τῶν πραγμάτων
γενομένων τοῦτο πρῶτον ἀνήνεγκε τὴν πόλιν. I may remark that
the explanatory note of Dr. Arnold on this passage is less
instructive than his notes usually are, and even involves, in
my judgment, an erroneous supposition as to the meaning. Dr.
Arnold says: “It appears that the constitution as now fixed, was
_at first_, in the opinion of Thucydidês, the best that Athens
had ever enjoyed within his memory; that is, the best since the
complete ascendancy of the democracy effected under Periklês.
But how long a period is meant to be included by the words τὸν
πρῶτον χρόνον, and when, and how, did the implied change take
place? Τὸν πρῶτον χρόνον can hardly apply to the whole remaining
term of the war, as if this improved constitution had been first
subverted by the triumph of the oligarchy under the Thirty, and
then superseded by the restoration of the old democracy after
their overthrow. Yet Xenophon mentions no intermediate change in
the government between the beginning of his history and the end
of the war,” etc.

Now I do not think that Dr. Arnold rightly interprets τὸν πρῶτον
χρόνον. The phrase appears to me equivalent to τοῦτον τὸν χρόνον
πρῶτον: the words τὸν πρῶτον χρόνον, apply the comparison
altogether to the period _preceding_ this event here described,
and not to the period _following_ it. “And it was _during this
period first_, in my time at least, that the Athenians most of
all behaved like good citizens: for the Many and the Few met
each other in a spirit of moderation, and this first brought up
the city from its deep existing distress.” No such comparison is
intended as Dr. Arnold supposes, between the first moments after
this juncture, and the subsequent changes: the comparison is
between the political temper of the Athenians at this juncture,
and their usual temper as far back as Thucydidês could recollect.

Next, the words εὖ πολιτεύσαντες are understood by Dr. Arnold
in a sense too special and limited,—as denoting merely the new
constitution, or positive organic enactments, which the Athenians
now introduced. But it appears to me that the words are of wider
import: meaning the general temper of political parties, both
reciprocally towards each other and towards the commonwealth:
their inclination to relinquish antipathies, to accommodate
points of difference, and to coöperate with each other heartily
against the enemy, suspending those ἰδίας φιλοτιμίας, ἰδίας
διαβολὰς περὶ τῆς τοῦ δήμου προστασίας (ii, 65) noticed as
having been so mischievous before. Of course, any constitutional
arrangements introduced at such a period would partake of
the moderate and harmonious spirit then prevalent, and would
therefore form a part of what is commended by Thucydidês: but
his commendation is not confined to them specially. Compare the
phrase ii, 38. ἐλευθέρως δὲ τά τε πρὸς τὸ κοινὸν πολιτεύομεν,
etc.

So powerful was this burst of fresh patriotism and unanimity after the battle of Tanagra, which produced the recall of Kimon, and appears to have overlaid the preëxisting conspiracy, that the Athenians were quickly in a condition to wipe off the stain of their defeat. It was on the sixty-second day after the battle that they undertook an aggressive march under Myrônidês into Bœotia: the extreme precision of this date,—being the single case throughout the summary of events between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars, wherein Thucydidês is thus precise, marks how strong an impression it made upon the memory of the Athenians. At the battle of Œnophyta, engaged against the aggregate Theban and Bœotian forces,—or, if Diodorus is to be trusted, in two battles, of which that of Œnophyta was the last, Myrônidês was completely victorious. The Athenians became masters of Thebes as well as of the remaining Bœotian towns; reversing all the arrangements recently made by Sparta,— establishing democratical governments,—and forcing the aristocratical leaders, favorable to Theban ascendency and Lacedæmonian connection, to become exiles. Nor was it only Bœotia which the Athenians thus acquired: Phocis and Lokris were both successively added to the list of their dependent allies,—the former being in the main friendly to Athens and not disinclined to the change, while the latter were so decidedly hostile that one hundred of their chiefs were detained and sent to Athens as hostages. The Athenians thus extended their influence,—maintained through internal party-management, backed by the dread of interference from without in case of need,—from the borders of the Corinthian territory, including both Megara and Pêgæ, to the strait of Thermopylæ.[633]

[633] Thucyd. i, 108; Diodor. xi, 81, 82.

These important acquisitions were soon crowned by the completion of the Long Walls and the conquest of Ægina. That island, doubtless starved out by its protracted blockade, was forced to capitulate on condition of destroying its fortifications, surrendering all its ships of war, and submitting to annual tribute as a dependent ally of Athens. The reduction of this once powerful maritime city, marked Athens as mistress of the sea on the Peloponnesian coast not less than on the Ægean. Her admiral Tolmidês displayed her strength by sailing round Peloponnesus, and even by the insult of burning the Lacedæmonian ports of Methônê and of Gythium. He took Chalkis, a possession of the Corinthians, and Naupaktus belonging to the Ozolian Lokrians, near the mouth of the Corinthian gulf,—disembarked troops near Sikyon with some advantage in a battle against opponents from that town,—and either gained or forced into the Athenian alliance not only Zakynthus and Kephallênia, but also some of the towns of Achaia; for we afterwards find these latter attached to Athens without knowing when the connection began.[634]

[634] Thucyd. i, 108-115; Diodor. xi, 84.

During the ensuing year the Athenians renewed their attack upon Sikyon, with a force of one thousand hoplites under Periklês himself, sailing from the Megarian harbor of Pêgæ in the Krissæan gulf. This eminent man, however, gained no greater advantage than Tolmidês,—defeating the Sikyonian forces in the field and driving them within their walls: he afterwards made an expedition into Akarnania, taking the Achæan allies in addition to his own forces, but miscarried in his attack on Œniadæ and accomplished nothing. Nor were the Athenians more successful in a march undertaken this same year against Thessaly, for the purpose of restoring Orestes, one of the exiled princes or nobles of Pharsalus. Though they took with them an imposing force, including their Bœotian and Phocian allies, the powerful Thessalian cavalry forced them to keep in a compact body and confined them to the ground actually occupied by their hoplites; while all their attempts against the city failed, and their hopes of internal rising were disappointed.[635]

[635] Thucyd. i, 111; Diodor. xi, 85.

Had the Athenians succeeded in Thessaly, they would have acquired to their alliance nearly the whole of extra-Peloponnesian Greece: but even without Thessaly their power was prodigious, and had now attained a maximum height, from which it never varied except to decline. As a counterbalancing loss against so many successes, we have to reckon their ruinous defeat in Egypt, after a war of six years against the Persians (B. C. 460-455). At first, they had gained brilliant advantages, in conjunction with the insurgent prince Inarôs; expelling the Persians from all Memphis except the strongest part, called the White Fortress: and such was the alarm of the Persian king, Artaxerxes, at the presence of the Athenians in Egypt, that he sent Megabazus with a large sum of money to Sparta, in order to induce the Lacedæmonians to invade Attica. This envoy, however, failed, and an augmented Persian force being sent to Egypt under Megabyzus, son of Zopyrus,[636] drove the Athenians and their allies, after an obstinate struggle, out of Memphis into the island of the Nile called Prosôpîtis. Here they were blocked up for eighteen months, until at length Megabyzus turned the arm of the river, laid the channel dry, and stormed the island by land. A very few Athenians escaped by land to Kyrênê: the rest were either slain or made captive, and Inarôs himself was crucified. And the calamity of Athens was farther aggravated by the arrival of fifty fresh Athenian ships, which, coming after the defeat, but without being aware of it, sailed into the Mendesian branch of the Nile, and thus fell unawares into the power of the Persians and Phenicians; very few either of the ships or men escaping. The whole of Egypt became again subject to the Persians, except Amyrtæus, who contrived, by retiring into the inaccessible fens, still to maintain his independence. One of the largest armaments ever sent forth by Athens and her confederacy was thus utterly ruined.[637]

[636] Herodot. iii, 160.

[637] Thucyd. i, 104, 109, 110; Diodor. xi, 77; xii, 3. The story
of Diodorus, in the first of these two passages,—that most of
the Athenian forces were allowed to come back under a favorable
capitulation granted by the Persian generals,—is contradicted by
the total ruin which he himself states to have befallen them in
the latter passages, as well as by Thucydidês.

It was about the time of the destruction of the Athenian army in Egypt, and of the circumnavigation of Peloponnesus by Tolmidês, that the internal war, carried on by the Lacedæmonians, against the Helots or Messenians at Ithômê, ended. These besieged men, no longer able to stand out against a protracted blockade, were forced to abandon this last fortress of ancient Messenian independence, stipulating for a safe retreat from Peloponnesus with their wives and families, with the proviso, that if any one of them ever returned to Peloponnesus, he should become the slave of the first person who seized him. They were established by Tolmidês at Naupaktus, which had recently been taken by the Athenians from the Ozolian Lokrians,[638]—where they will be found rendering good service to Athens in the following wars.

[638] Thucyd. i, 103; Diodor. xi, 84.