CHAPTER XLIV.

FROM THE BATTLES OF PLATÆA AND MYKALE DOWN TO THE DEATHS OF THEMISTOKLES AND ARISTEIDES.

After having in the last chapter followed the repulse of the Carthaginians by the Sicilian Greeks, we now return to the central Greeks and the Persians,—a case in which the triumph was yet more interesting to the cause of human improvement generally. The disproportion between the immense host assembled by Xerxes, and the little which he accomplished, naturally provokes both contempt for Persian force and an admiration for the comparative handful of men by whom they were so ignominiously beaten. Both these sentiments are just, but both are often exaggerated beyond the point which attentive contemplation of the facts will justify. The Persian mode of making war (which we may liken to that of the modern Turks,[493] now that the period of their energetic fanaticism has passed away) was in a high degree disorderly and inefficient: the men indeed, individually taken, especially the native Persians, were not deficient in the qualities of soldiers, but their arms and their organization were wretched,—and their leaders yet worse. On the other hand, the Greeks, equal, if not superior, in individual bravery, were incomparably superior in soldier-like order as well as in arms: but here too the leadership was defective, and the disunion a constant source of peril. Those who, like Plutarch (or rather the Pseudo-Plutarch) in his treatise on the Malignity of Herodotus, insist on acknowledging nothing but magnanimity and heroism in the proceedings of the Greeks throughout these critical years, are forced to deal very harshly with the inestimable witness on whom our knowledge of the facts depends,—and who intimates plainly that, in spite of the devoted courage displayed, not less by the vanquished at Thermopylæ than by the victors at Salamis, Greece owed her salvation chiefly to the imbecility, cowardice, and credulous rashness, of Xerxes.[494] Had he indeed possessed either the personal energy of Cyrus or the judgment of Artemisia, it may be doubted whether any excellence of management, or any intimacy of union, could have preserved the Greeks against so great a superiority of force; but it is certain that all their courage as soldiers in line would have been unavailing for that purpose, without a higher degree of generalship, and a more hearty spirit of coöperation, than that which they actually manifested.

[493] Mr. Waddington’s Letters from Greece, describing the Greek revolution of 1821, will convey a good idea of the stupidity of Turkish warfare: compare also the second volume of the Memoirs of Baron de Tott, part iii.

[494] Thucyd. i, 69. ἐπιστάμενοι καὶ τὸν βάρβαρον αὐτὸν περὶ αὑτῷ τὰ πλείω σφαλέντα, etc.: compare Thucyd. vi, 33.

One hundred and fifty years after this eventful period, we shall see the tables turned, and the united forces of Greece under Alexander of Macedon becoming invaders of Persia. We shall find that in Persia no improvement has taken place during this long interval,—that the scheme of defence under Darius Codomannus labors under the same defects as that of attack under Xerxes,—that there is the same blind and exclusive confidence in pitched battles with superior numbers,[495]—that the advice of Mentor the Rhodian, and of Charidemus, is despised like that of Demaratus and Artemisia,—that Darius Codomannus, essentially of the same stamp as Xerxes, is hurried into the battle of Issus by the same ruinous temerity as that which threw away the Persian fleet at Salamis,—and that the Persian native infantry (not the cavalry) even appear to have lost that individual gallantry which they displayed so conspicuously at Platæa. But on the Grecian side, the improvement in every way is very great: the orderly courage of the soldier has been sustained and even augmented, while the generalship and power of military combination has reached a point unexampled in the previous history of mankind. Military science may be esteemed a sort of creation during this interval, and will be found to go through various stages: Demosthenês and Brasidas, the Cyreian army and Xenophon, Agesilaus, Iphikratês, Epaminondas, Philip of Macedon, Alexander:[496] for the Macedonian princes are borrowers of Greek tactics, though extending and applying them with a personal energy peculiar to themselves, and with advantages of position such as no Athenian or Spartan ever enjoyed. In this comparison between the invasion of Xerxes and that of Alexander we contrast the progressive spirit of Greece, serving as herald and stimulus to the like spirit in Europe, with the stationary mind of Asia, occasionally roused by some splendid individual, but never appropriating to itself new social ideas or powers, either for war or for peace.

[495] Thucyd. i, 142. πλήθει τὴν ἀμαθίαν θρασύνοντες, etc.

[496] See a remarkable passage in the third Philippic of Demosthenês, c. 10, p. 123.

It is out of the invasion of Xerxes that those new powers of combination, political as well as military, which lighten up Grecian history during the next two centuries, take their rise. They are brought into agency through the altered position and character of the Athenians—improvers, to a certain extent, of military operations on land, but the great creators of marine tactics and manœuvring in Greece,—and the earliest of all Greeks who showed themselves capable of organizing and directing the joint action of numerous allies and dependents,—thus uniting the two distinctive qualities of the Homeric Agamemnon,[497]—ability in command, with vigor in execution.

[497]

Ἀμφότερον, βασιλεύς τ’ ἀγαθὸς, κρατερός τ’ αἰχμήτης. Homer, Iliad, iii, 179.

In the general Hellenic confederacy, which had acted against Persia under the presidency of Sparta, Athens could hardly be said to occupy any ostensible rank above that of an ordinary member: the post of second dignity in the line at Platæa had indeed been adjudged to her, but only after a contending claim from Tegea. But without any difference in ostensible rank, she was in the eye and feeling of Greece no longer the same power as before. She had suffered more, and at sea had certainly done more, than all the other allies put together: even on land at Platæa, her hoplites had manifested a combination of bravery, discipline, and efficiency against the formidable Persian cavalry superior even to the Spartans: nor had any Athenian officer committed so perilous an act of disobedience as the Spartan Amompharetus. After the victory of Mykalê, when the Peloponnesians all hastened home to enjoy their triumph, the Athenian forces did not shrink from prolonged service for the important object of clearing the Hellespont, thus standing forth as the willing and forward champions of the Asiatic Greeks against Persia. Besides these exploits of Athens collectively, the only two individuals gifted with any talents for command, whom this momentous conquest had thrown up, were both of them Athenians: first, Themistoklês; next, Aristeidês. From the beginning to the end of the struggle, Athens had displayed an unreserved Pan-Hellenic patriotism, which had been most ungenerously requited by the Peloponnesians; who had kept within their isthmian walls, and betrayed Attica twice to hostile ravage; the first time, perhaps, unavoidably,—but the second time a culpable neglect, in postponing their outward march against Mardonius. And the Peloponnesians could not but feel, that while they had left Attica unprotected, they owed their own salvation at Salamis altogether to the dexterity of Themistoklês and the imposing Athenian naval force.

Considering that the Peloponnesians had sustained little or no mischief by the invasion, while the Athenians had lost for the time even their city and country, with a large proportion of their movable property irrecoverably destroyed,—we might naturally expect to find the former, if not lending their grateful and active aid to repair the damage in Attica, at least cordially welcoming the restoration of the ruined city by its former inhabitants. Instead of this, we find the same selfishness again prevalent among them; ill-will and mistrust for the future, aggravated by an admiration which they could not help feeling, overlays all their gratitude and sympathy. The Athenians, on returning from Salamis after the battle of Platæa, found a desolate home to harbor them. Their country was laid waste,—their city burnt or destroyed; so that there remained but a few houses standing, wherein the Persian officers had taken up their quarters,—and their fortifications for the most part razed or overthrown. It was their first task to bring home their families and effects from the temporary places of shelter at Trœzen, Ægina, and Salamis. After providing what was indispensably necessary for immediate wants, they began to rebuild their city and its fortifications on a scale of enlarged size in every direction.[498] But as soon as they were seen to be employed on this indispensable work, without which neither political existence nor personal safety was practicable, the allies took the alarm, preferred complaints to Sparta, and urged her to arrest the work: in the front of these complainants, probably, stood the Æginetans, as the old enemies of Athens, and as having most to apprehend from her might at sea. The Spartans, perfectly sympathizing with the jealousy and uneasiness of their allies, were even disposed, from old association, to carry their dislike of fortifications still farther, so that they would have been pleased to see all the other Grecian cities systematically defenceless like Sparta itself.[499] But while sending an embassy to Athens, to offer a friendly remonstrance against the project of re-fortifying the city, they could not openly and peremptorily forbid the exercise of a right common to every autonomous community,—nor did they even venture, at a moment when the events of the past months were fresh in every one’s remembrance, to divulge their real jealousies as to the future. They affected to offer prudential reasons against the scheme, founded on the chance of a future Persian invasion; in which case it would be a dangerous advantage for the invader to find any fortified city outside of Peloponnesus to further his operations, as Thebes had recently seconded Mardonius. They proposed to the Athenians, therefore, not merely to desist from their own fortifications, but also to assist them in demolishing all fortifications of other cities beyond the limits of Peloponnesus,—promising shelter within the isthmus, in case of need, to all exposed parties.

[498] Thucyd. i. 89.

[499] Thucyd. i, 90. τὰ μὲν καὶ αὐτοὶ ἥδιον ἂν ὁρῶντες μήτε ἐκείνους μητ’ ἄλλον μηδένα τεῖχος ἔχοντα, τὸ δὲ πλέον, τῶν ξυμμάχων ἐξοτρυνόντων καὶ φοβουμένων τοῦ τε ναυτικοῦ αὐτῶν τὸ πλῆθος, ὃ πρὶν οὐχ ὑπῆρχε, καὶ τὴν ἐς τὸν Μηδικὸν πόλεμον τόλμαν γενομένην.

A statesman like Themistoklês was not likely to be imposed upon by this diplomacy: but he saw that the Spartans had the power of preventing the work if they chose, and that it could only be executed by the help of successful deceit. By his advice, the Athenians dismissed the Spartan envoys, saying that they would themselves send to Sparta and explain their views. Accordingly, Themistoklês himself was presently despatched thither, as one among three envoys instructed to enter into explanations with the Spartan authorities; but his two colleagues, Aristeidês and Abronichus, by previous concert, were tardy in arriving,—and he remained inactive at Sparta, making use of their absence as an excuse for not even demanding an audience, but affecting surprise that their coming was so long delayed. But while Aristeidês and Abronichus, the other two envoys, were thus studiously kept back, the whole population of Athens labored unremittingly at the walls. Men, women, and children, all tasked their strength to the utmost during this precious interval: neither private houses, nor sacred edifices, were spared to furnish materials; and such was their ardor in the enterprise, that, before the three envoys were united at Sparta, the wall had already attained a height sufficient at least to attempt defence. Yet the interval had been long enough to provoke suspicion, even in the slow mind of the Spartans, while the more watchful Æginetans sent them positive intelligence that the wall was rapidly advancing. Themistoklês, on hearing this allegation, peremptorily denied the truth of it; and the personal esteem entertained towards him was at that time so great, that his assurance[500] obtained for some time unqualified credit, until fresh messengers again raised suspicions in the minds of the Spartans. In reply to these, Themistoklês urged the ephors to send envoys of their own to Athens, and thus convince themselves of the state of the facts. They unsuspectingly acted upon his recommendation, while he at the same time transmitted a private communication to Athens, desiring that the envoys might not be suffered to depart until the safe return of himself and his colleagues, which he feared might be denied them when his trick came to be divulged. Aristeidês and Abronichus had now arrived,—the wall was announced to be of a height at least above contempt,—and Themistoklês at once threw off the mask: he avowed the stratagem practised,—told the Spartans that Athens was already fortified sufficiently to insure the safety and free will of its inhabitants,—and warned them that the hour of constraint was now past, the Athenians being in a condition to define and vindicate for themselves their own rights and duties in reference to Sparta and the allies. He reminded them that the Athenians had always been found competent to judge for themselves, whether in joint consultation, or in any separate affair, such as the momentous crisis of abandoning their city and taking to their ships: they had now, in the exercise of this self-judgment, resolved upon fortifying their city, as a step indispensable to themselves and advantageous even to the allies generally. Nor could there be any equal or fair interchange of opinion unless all the allies had equal means of defence: either all must be unfortified, or Athens must be fortified as well as the rest.[501]

[500] Thucyd. i. 91, τῷ μὲν Θεμιστοκλεῖ ἐπείθοντο διὰ φιλίαν αὐτοῦ.

[501] Thucyd. i. 91, Οὐ γὰρ οἷόν τε εἶναι μὴ ἀπὸ ἀντιπάλου παρασκευῆς ὁμοῖόν τι ἢ ἴσον ἐς τὸ κοινὸν βουλεύεσθαι. Ἢ πάντας οὖν ἀτειχίστους ἔφη χρῆναι ξυμμαχεῖν ἢ καὶ τάδε νομίζειν ὀρθῶς ἔχειν.

Mortified as the Spartans were by a revelation which showed that they had been not only detected in a dishonest purpose, but completely outwitted,—they were at the same time overawed by the decisive tone of Themistoklês, whom they never afterwards forgave. To arrest beforehand erection of the walls would have been practicable, though not perhaps without difficulty; to deal by force with the fact accomplished, was perilous in a high degree: moreover, the inestimable services just rendered by Athens became again predominant in their minds, so that sentiment and prudence for the time coincided. They affected therefore to accept the communication without manifesting any offence, nor had they indeed put forward any pretence which required to be formally retracted. The envoys on both sides returned home, and the Athenians completed their fortifications without obstruction,[502]—yet not without murmurs on the part of the allies, who bitterly reproached Sparta afterwards for having let slip this golden opportunity of arresting the growth of the giant.[503]

[502] We are fortunate enough to possess this narrative, respecting the rebuilding of the walls of Athens, as recounted by Thucydidês. It is the first incident which he relates, in that general sketch of events between the Persian and Peloponnesian war, which precedes his professed history (i, 89-92). Diodorus (xi, 39, 40), Plutarch (Themistoklês, c. 19), and Cornelius Nepos (Themist. c. 6, 7), seem all to have followed Thucydidês, though Plutarch also notices a statement of Theopompus, to the effect that Themistoklês accomplished his object by bribing the ephors. This would not be improbable in itself,—nor is it inconsistent with the narrative of Thucydidês; but the latter either had not heard or did not believe it.

[503] Thucyd. i, 69. Καὶ τῶνδε ὑμεῖς αἴτιοι (says the Corinthian envoy addressing the Lacedæmonians), τό τε πρῶτον ἐάσαντες αὐτοὺς (the Athenians) τὴν πόλιν μετὰ τὰ Μηδικὰ κρατῦναι, καὶ ὕστερον τὰ μακρὰ στῆσαι τείχη, etc.

If the allies were apprehensive of Athens before, the mixture of audacity, invention, and deceit, whereby she had just eluded the hindrance opposed to her fortifications, was well calculated to aggravate their uneasiness. On the other hand, to the Athenians, the mere hint of intervention to debar them from that common right of self-defence which was exercised by every autonomous city except Sparta, must have appeared outrageous injustice,—aggravated by the fact that it was brought upon them by their peculiar sufferings in the common cause, and by the very allies who, without their devoted forwardness, would now have been slaves of the Great King. And the intention of the allies to obstruct the fortifications must have been known to every soul in Athens, from the universal press of hands required to hurry the work and escape interference; just as it was proclaimed to after-generations by the shapeless fragments and irregular structure of the wall, in which even sepulchral stones and inscribed columns were seen imbedded.[504] Assuredly, the sentiment connected with this work, performed as it was alike by rich and poor, strong and weak,—men, women, and children,—must have been intense as well as equalizing: all had endured the common miseries of exile, all had contributed to the victory, all were now sharing the same fatigue for the defence of their recovered city, in order to counterwork the ungenerous hindrance of their Peloponnesian allies. We must take notice of these stirring circumstances, peculiar to the Athenians and acting upon a generation which had now been nursed in democracy for a quarter of a century, and had achieved unaided the victory of Marathon,—if we would understand that still stronger burst of aggressive activity, persevering self-confidence, and aptitude as well as thirst for command,—together with that still wider spread of democratical organization,—which marks their character during the age immediately following.

[504] Thucyd. i, 93. Cornelius Nepos (Themist. c. 7) exaggerates this into a foolish conceit.

The plan of the new fortification was projected on a scale not unworthy of the future grandeur of the city. Its circuit was sixty stadia, or about seven miles, with the acropolis nearly in the centre: but the circuit of the previous walls is unknown, so that we are unable to measure the extent of that enlargement which Thucydidês testifies to have been carried out on every side. It included within the town the three hills of the Areopagus, the Pnyx, and the Museum; while on the south of the town it was carried for a space even on the southern bank of the Ilissus, thus also comprising the fountain Kallirhoê.[505] In spite of the excessive hurry in which it was raised, the structure was thoroughly solid and sufficient against every external enemy: but there is reason to believe that its very large inner area was never filled with buildings. Empty spaces, for the temporary shelter of inhabitants driven in from the country with their property, were eminently useful to a Grecian city-community; to none more useful than to the Athenians, whose principal strength lay in their fleet, and whose citizens habitually resided in large proportion in their separate demes throughout Attica.

[505] For the dimensions and direction of the Themistoklean walls of Athens, see especially the excellent Treatise of Forchhammer—Topographie von Athen—published in the Kieler Philologische Studien. Kiel, 1841.

The plan of Athens, prepared by Kiepert after his own researches and published among his recent maps, adopts for the most part the ideas of Forchhammer, as to the course of the walls.

The first indispensable step, in the renovation of Athens after her temporary extinction, was now happily accomplished: the city was made secure against external enemies. But Themistoklês, to whom the Athenians owed the late successful stratagem, and whose influence must have been much strengthened by its success, had conceived plans of a wider and more ambitious range. He had been the original adviser of the great maritime start taken by his countrymen, as well as of the powerful naval force which they had created during the last few years, and which had so recently proved their salvation. He saw in that force both the only chance of salvation for the future, in case the Persians should renew their attack by sea,—a contingency at that time seemingly probable,—and boundless prospects of future ascendency over the Grecian coasts and islands: it was the great engine of defence, of offence, and of ambition. To continue this movement required much less foresight and genius than to begin it, and Themistoklês, the moment that the walls of the city had been finished, brought back the attention of his countrymen to those wooden walls which had served them as a refuge against the Persian monarch. He prevailed upon them to provide harbor-room at once safe and adequate, by the enlargement end fortification of the Peiræus. This again was only the prosecution of an enterprise previously begun: for he had already, while in office two or three years before,[506] made his countrymen sensible that the open roadstead of Phalêrum was thoroughly insecure, and had prevailed upon them to improve and employ in part the more spacious harbors of Peiræus and Munychia,—three natural basins, all capable of being closed and defended. Something had then been done towards the enlargement of this port, though it had probably been subsequently ruined by the Persian invaders: but Themistoklês now resumed the scheme on a scale far grander than he could then have ventured to propose,—a scale which demonstrates the vast auguries present to his mind respecting the destinies of Athens. Peiræus and Munychia, in his new plan, constituted a fortified space as large as the enlarged Athens, and with a wall far more elaborate and unassailable. The wall which surrounded them, sixty stadia in circuit,[507] was intended by him to be so stupendous, both in height and thickness, as to render assault hopeless, and to enable the whole military population to act on shipboard, leaving only old men and boys as a garrison.[508] We may judge how vast his project was, when we learn that the wall, though in practice always found sufficient, was only carried up to half the height which he had contemplated.[509] In respect to thickness, however, his ideas were exactly followed: two carts meeting one another brought stones which were laid together right and left on the outer side of each, and thus formed two primary parallel walls, between which the interior space—of course, at least as broad as the joint breadth of the two carts—was filled up, “not with rubble, in the usual manner of the Greeks, but constructed, throughout the whole thickness, of squared stones, cramped together with metal.”[510] The result was a solid wall, probably not less than fourteen or fifteen feet thick, since it was intended to carry so very unusual a height. In the exhortations whereby he animated the people to this fatiguing and costly work, he labored to impress upon them that Peiræus was of more value to them than Athens itself, and that it afforded a shelter into which, if their territory should be again overwhelmed by a superior land-force, they might securely retire, with full liberty of that maritime action in which they were a match for all the world.[511] We may even suspect that if Themistoklês could have followed his own feelings, he would have altered the site of the city from Athens to Peiræus: the attachment of the people to their ancient and holy rock doubtless prevented any such proposition. Nor did he at that time, probably, contemplate the possibility of those long walls which in a few years afterwards consolidated the two cities into one.

[506] Thucyd. i. 93. ἔπεισε δὲ καὶ τοῦ Πειραιέως τὰ λοιπὰ ὁ Θεμιστοκλῆς οἰκοδομεῖν (ὑπῆρκτο δ’ αὐτοῦ πρότερον ἐπὶ τῆς ἐκείνου ἀρχῆς, ἧς κατ’ ἐνιαυτὸν Ἀθηναίοις ἦρξε).

Upon which words the Scholiast observes (Κατ’ ἐνιαυτὸν)—κατά τινα ἐνιαυτὸν ~ἡγεμὼν~ ἐγένετο· πρὸ δὲ τῶν Μηδικῶν ἦρξε Θεμιστοκλῆς ἐνιαυτὸν ἕνα.

It seems hardly possible, having no fuller evidence to proceed upon, to determine to which of the preceding years Thucydidês means to refer this ἀρχὴ of Themistoklês. Mr. Fynes Clinton, after discussing the opinions of Dodwell and Corsini (see Fasti Hellenici, ad ann. 481 B. C. and Preface, p. xv), inserts Themistoklês as archon eponymus in 481 B. C., the year before the invasion of Xerxes, and supposes the Peiræus to have been commenced in that year. This is not in itself improbable: but he cites the Scholiast as having asserted the same thing before him (πρὸ τῶν Μηδικῶν ἦρξε Θεμιστοκλῆς ~ἐνιαυτὸν ἕνα~), in which I apprehend that he is not borne out by the analogy of the language: ἐνιαυτὸν ἕνα, in the accusative case, denotes only the duration of the ἀρχὴ, not the position of the year (compare Thucyd. iii, 68).

I do not feel certain that Thucydidês meant to designate Themistoklês as having been archon eponymus, or as having been one of the nine archons. He may have meant, “during the year when Themistoklês was stratêgus (or general),” and the explanation of the Scholiast, who employs the word ἡγεμὼν, rather implies that he so understood it. The stratêgi were annual as well as the archons. Now we know that Themistoklês was one of the generals in 480 B. C., and that he commanded in Thessaly, at Artemisium, and at Salamis. The Peiræus may have been begun in the early part of 480 B. C., when Xerxes was already on his march, or at least at Sardis.

[507] Thucyd. ii, 13.

[508] Thucyd. i, 93.

[509] Thucyd. i, 93. Τὸ δὲ ὕψος ἥμισυ μάλιστα ἐτελέσθη οὗ διενοεῖτο· ἐβούλετο γὰρ τῷ μεγέθει καὶ τῷ πάχει ἀφιστάναι τὰς τῶν πολεμίων ἐπιβουλάς, ἀνθρώπων δὲ ἐνόμιζεν ὀλίγων καὶ τῶν ἀχρειοτάτων ἀρκέσειν τὴν φυλακὴν, τοὺς δ’ ἄλλους ἐς τὰς ναῦς ἐσβήσεσθαι.

[510] Thucyd. i, 93. The expressions are those of Colonel Leake, derived from inspection of the scanty remnant of these famous walls still to be seen—Topography of Athens, ch. ix, p. 411: see edit. p. 293, Germ. transl. Compare Aristophan. Aves, 1127, about the breadth of the wall of Nephelokokkygia.

[511] Thucyd. i, 93 (compare Cornel. Nepos, Themistok. c. 6) ταῖς ναυσὶ πρὸς ἅπαντας ἀνθίστασθαι.

Forty-five years afterwards, at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, we shall hear from Periklês, who espoused and carried out the large ideas of Themistoklês, this same language about the capacity of Athens to sustain a great power exclusively or chiefly upon maritime action. But the Athenian empire was then an established reality, whereas in the time of Themistoklês it was yet a dream, and his bold predictions, surpassed as they were by the future reality, mark that extraordinary power of practical divination which Thucydidês so emphatically extols in him. And it proves the exuberant hope which had now passed into the temper of the Athenian people, when we find them, on the faith of these predictions, undertaking a new enterprise of so much toil and expense; and that too when just returned from exile into a desolated country, at a moment of private distress and public impoverishment. However, Peiræus served other purposes besides its direct use as a dockyard for military marine: its secure fortifications and the protection of the Athenian navy, were well calculated to call back those metics, or resident foreigners, who had been driven away by the invasion of Xerxes, and who might feel themselves insecure in returning, unless some new and conspicuous means of protection were exhibited. To invite them back, and to attract new residents of a similar description, Themistoklês proposed to exempt them from the metoikion, or non-freeman’s annual tax:[512] but this exemption can only have lasted for a time, and the great temptation for them to return must have consisted in the new securities and facilities for trade, which Athens, with her fortified ports and navy, now afforded. The presence of numerous metics was profitable to the Athenians, both privately and publicly: much of the trading, professional, and handicraft business was in their hands: and the Athenian legislation, while it excluded them from the political franchise, was in other respects equitable and protective to them. In regard to trading pursuits, the metics had this advantage over the citizens,—that they were less frequently carried away for foreign military service. The great increase of their numbers, from this period forward, while it tended materially to increase the value of property all throughout Attica, but especially in Peiræus and Athens, where they mostly resided, helps us to explain the extraordinary prosperity, together with the excellent cultivation, prevalent throughout the country before the Peloponnesian war. The barley, vegetables, figs, and oil, produced in most parts of the territory,—the charcoal prepared in the flourishing deme of Acharnæ,[513]—and the fish obtained in abundance near the coast,—all found opulent buyers and a constant demand from the augmenting town population.

[512] Diodor. xi, 43.

[513] See the lively picture of the Acharnian demots in the comedy of Aristophanês so entitled.

Respecting the advantages derived from the residence of metics and from foreign visitors, compare the observations of Isokratês, more than a century after this period, Orat. iv, De Pace, p. 163, and Xenophon, De Vectigalibus, c. iv.

We are farther told that Themistoklês[514] prevailed on the Athenians to build every year twenty new ships of the line,—so we may designate the trireme. Whether this number was always strictly adhered to, it is impossible to say: but to repair the ships, as well as to keep up their numbers, was always regarded among the most indispensable obligations of the executive government.

[514] Diodor. xi, 43.

It does not appear that the Spartans offered any opposition to the fortification of the Peiræus, though it was an enterprise greater, more novel, and more menacing, than that of Athens. But Diodorus tells us, probably enough, that Themistoklês thought it necessary to send an embassy to Sparta,[515] intimating that his scheme was to provide a safe harbor for the collective navy of Greece, in the event of future Persian attack.

[515] Diodor. xi, 41, 42, 43. I mean, that the fact of such an embassy being sent to Sparta is probable enough,—separating that fact from the preliminary discussions which Diodorus describes as having preceded it in the assembly of Athens, and which seem unmeaning as well as incredible. His story—that Themistoklês told the assembly that he had a conceived scheme of great moment to the state, but that it did not admit of being made public beforehand, upon which the assembly named Aristeidês and Xanthippus to hear it confidentially and judge of it—seems to indicate that Diodorus had read the well-known tale of the project of Themistoklês to burn the Grecian fleet in the harbor of Pagasæ, and that he jumbled it in his memory with this other project for enlarging and fortifying the Peiræus.

Works on so vast a scale must have taken a considerable time, and absorbed much of the Athenian force; yet they did not prevent Athens from lending active aid towards the expedition which, in the year after the battle of Platæa (B. C. 478) set sail for Asia under the Spartan Pausanias. Twenty ships from the various cities of Peloponnesus[516] were under his command: the Athenians alone furnished thirty, under the orders of Aristeidês and Kimon: other triremes also came from the Ionian and insular allies. They first sailed to Cyprus, in which island they liberated most of the Grecian cities from the Persian government: next, they turned to the Bosphorus of Thrace, and undertook the siege of Byzantium, which, like Sestus in the Chersonese, was a post of great moment, as well as of great strength,—occupied by a considerable Persian force, with several leading Persians and even kinsmen of the monarch. The place was captured,[517] seemingly after a prolonged siege: it might probably hold out even longer than Sestus, as being taken less unprepared. The line of communication between the Euxine sea and Greece was thus cleared of obstruction.

[516] Thucyd. i, 94; Plutarch, Aristeidês, c. 23. Diodorus (xi, 44) says that the Peloponnesian ships were fifty in number: his statement is not to be accepted, in opposition to Thucydidês.

[517] Thucyd. i, 94.

The capture of Byzantium proved the signal for a capital and unexpected change in the relations of the various Grecian cities; a change, of which the proximate cause lay in the misconduct of Pausanias, but towards which other causes, deep-seated as well as various, also tended. In recounting the history of Miltiades,[518] I noticed the deplorable liability of the Grecian leading men to be spoiled by success: this distemper worked with singular rapidity on Pausanias. As conqueror of Platæa, he had acquired a renown unparalleled in Grecian experience, together with a prodigious share of the plunder: the concubines, horses,[519] camels, and gold plate, which had thus passed into his possession, were well calculated to make the sobriety and discipline of Spartan life irksome, while his power also, though great on foreign command, became subordinate to that of the ephors when he returned home. His newly-acquired insolence was manifested immediately after the battle, in the commemorative tripod dedicated by his order at Delphi, which proclaimed himself by name and singly, as commander of the Greeks and destroyer of the Persians: an unseemly boast, of which the Lacedæmonians themselves were the first to mark their disapprobation, by causing the inscription to be erased, and the names of the cities who had taken part in the combat to be all enumerated on the tripod.[520] Nevertheless, he was still sent on the command against Cyprus and Byzantium, and it was on the capture of this latter place that his ambition and discontent first ripened into distinct treason. He entered into correspondence with Gongylus the Eretrian exile (now a subject of Persia, and invested with the property and government of a district in Mysia), to whom he intrusted his new acquisition of Byzantium, and the care of the valuable prisoners taken in it. These prisoners were presently suffered to escape, or rather sent away underhand to Xerxes; together with a letter from the hand of Pausanias himself, to the following effect: “Pausanias, the Spartan commander, having taken these captives, sends them back, in his anxiety to oblige thee. I am minded, if it so please thee, to marry thy daughter, and to bring under thy dominion both Sparta and the rest of Greece: with thy aid, I think myself competent to achieve this. If my proposition be acceptable, send some confidential person down to the seaboard, through whom we may hereafter correspond.” Xerxes, highly pleased with the opening thus held out, immediately sent down Artabazus (the same who had been second in command in Bœotia) to supersede Megabatês in the satrapy of Daskylium; the new satrap, furnished with a letter of reply bearing the regal seal, was instructed to further actively the projects of Pausanias. The letter was to this purport: “Thus saith King Xerxes to Pausanias. Thy name stands forever recorded in my house as a well-doer, on account of the men whom thou hast saved for me beyond sea at Byzantium: and thy propositions now received are acceptable to me. Relax not either night or day in accomplishing that which thou promisest, nor let thyself be held back by cost, either gold or silver, or numbers of men, if thou standest in need of them, but transact in confidence thy business and mine jointly with Artabazus, the good man whom I have now sent, in such manner as may be best for both of us.”[521]

[518] See the volume of this history immediately preceding, ch. xxxvi, p. 372.

[519] Herodot. ix, 81.

[520] In the Athenian inscriptions on the votive offerings dedicated after the capture of Eion, as well as after the great victories near the river Eurymedon, the name of Kimon the commander is not even mentioned (Plutarch, Kimon, c. 7; Diodor. xi, 62).

A strong protest, apparently familiar to Grecian feeling, against singling out the general particularly, to receive the honors of victory, appears in Euripid. Andromach. 694: striking verses, which are said to have been indignantly repeated by Kleitus, during the intoxication of the banquet wherein he was slain by Alexander (Quint. Curtius, viii, 4, 29 (viii, 4); Plutarch, Alexand. c. 51).

[521] These letters are given by Thucydidês verbatim (i, 128, 129): he had seen them or obtained copies (ὡς ὕστερον ἀνευρέθη)—they were, doubtless, communicated along with the final revelations of the confidential Argilian slave. As they are autographs, I have translated them literally, retaining that abrupt transition from the third person to the first, which is one of their peculiarities. Cornelius Nepos, who translates the letter of Pausanias, has effaced this peculiarity, and carries the third person from the beginning to the end (Cornel. Nep. Pausan. c. 2).

Throughout the whole of this expedition, Pausanias had been insolent and domineering, degrading the allies at quarters and watering-places in the most offensive manner as compared with the Spartans, and treating the whole armament in a manner which Greek warriors could not tolerate, even in a Spartan Herakleid, and a victorious general. But when he received the letter from Xerxes, and found himself in immediate communication with Artabazus, as well as supplied with funds for corruption,[522] his insane hopes knew no bounds, and he already fancied himself son-in-law of the Great King, as well as despot of Hellas. Fortunately for Greece, his treasonable plans were not deliberately laid and veiled until ripe for execution, but manifested with childish impatience. He clothed himself in Persian attire—(a proceeding which the Macedonian army, a century and a half afterwards, could not tolerate,[523] even in Alexander the Great)—he traversed Thrace with a body of Median and Egyptian guards,—he copied the Persian chiefs, both in the luxury of his table and in his conduct towards the free women of Byzantium. Kleonikê, a Byzantine maiden of conspicuous family, having been ravished from her parents by his order, was brought to his chamber at night: he happened to be asleep, and being suddenly awakened, knew not at first who was the person approaching his bed, but seized his sword and slew her.[524] Moreover, his haughty reserve, with uncontrolled bursts of wrath, rendered him unapproachable; and the allies at length came to regard him as a despot rather than a general. The news of such outrageous behavior, and the manifest evidences of his alliance with the Persians, were soon transmitted to the Spartans, who recalled him to answer for his conduct, and seemingly the Spartan vessels along with him.[525]

[522] Diodor. xi, 44.

[523] Arrian. Exp. Alex. iv, 7, 7; vii, 8, 4; Quint. Curt. vi, 6, 10 (vi, 21, 11).

[524] Plutarch, Kimon, c. 6; also Plutarch, De Ser. Numin. Vind. c. 10, p. 555. Pausanias, iii, 17, 8. It is remarkable that the latter heard the story of the death of Kleonikê from the lips of a Byzantine citizen of his own day, and seems to think that it had never found place in any written work.

[525] Thucyd. i, 95-131: compare Duris and Nymphis apud Athenæum, xii, p. 535.

In spite of the flagrant conduct of Pausanias, the Lacedæmonians acquitted him on the allegations of positive and individual wrong; yet, mistrusting his conduct in reference to collusion with the enemy, they sent out Dorkis to supersede him as commander. But a revolution, of immense importance for Greece, had taken place in the minds of the allies. The headship, or hegemony, was in the hands of Athens, and Dorkis the Spartan found the allies not disposed to recognize his authority.

Even before the battle of Salamis, the question had been raised,[526] whether Athens was not entitled to the command at sea, in consequence of the preponderance of her naval contingent. The repugnance of the allies to any command except that of Sparta, either on land or water, had induced the Athenians to waive their pretensions at that critical moment. But the subsequent victories had materially exalted the latter in the eyes of Greece: while the armament now serving, differently composed from that which had fought at Salamis, contained a large proportion of the newly-enfranchised Ionic Greeks, who not only had no preference for Spartan command, but were attached to the Athenians on every ground,—as well from kindred race, as from the certainty that Athens with her superior fleet was the only protector upon whom they could rely against the Persians. Moreover, it happened that the Athenian generals on this expedition, Aristeidês and Kimon, were personally just and conciliating, forming a striking contrast with Pausanias. Hence the Ionic Greeks in the fleet, when they found that the behavior of the latter was not only oppressive towards themselves but also revolting to Grecian sentiment generally, addressed themselves to the Athenian commanders for protection and redress, on the plausible ground of kindred race;[527] entreating to be allowed to serve under Athens as leader instead of Sparta. Plutarch tells us that Aristeidês not only tried to remonstrate with Pausanias, who repelled him with arrogance,—which is exceedingly probable,—but that he also required, as a condition of his compliance with the request of the Ionic allies, that they should personally insult Pausanias, so as to make reconciliation impracticable: upon which a Samian and a Chian captain deliberately attacked and damaged the Spartan admiral-ship in the harbor of Byzantium.[528] The historians from whom Plutarch copied this latter statement must have presumed in the Athenians a disposition to provoke that quarrel with Sparta which afterwards sprung up as it were spontaneously: but the Athenians had no interest in doing so, nor can we credit the story,—which is, moreover, unnoticed by Thucydidês. To give the Spartans a just ground of indignation, would have been glaring imprudence on the part of Aristeidês: but he had every motive to entertain the request of the allies, and he began to take his measures for acting as their protector and chief. And his proceedings were much facilitated by the circumstance that the Spartan government about this time recalled Pausanias to undergo an examination, in consequence of the universal complaints against him which had reached them. He seems to have left no Spartan authority behind him,—even the small Spartan squadron accompanied him home: so that the Athenian generals had the best opportunity for insuring to themselves and exercising that command which the allies besought them to undertake. So effectually did they improve the moment, that when Dorkis arrived to replace Pausanias, they were already in full supremacy; while Dorkis, having only a small force, and being in no condition to employ constraint, found himself obliged to return home.[529]

[526] Herodot. viii, 2, 3. Compare the language of the Athenian envoy, as it stands in Herodotus (vii, 155) addressed to Gelo.

[527] Thucyd. i, 95. ἠξίουν αὐτοὺς ἡγεμόνας σφῶν γενέσθαι κατὰ τὸ ξυγγενὲς καὶ Παυσανίᾳ μὴ ἐπιτρέπειν ἤν που βιάζηται.

[528] 2 Plutarch, Aristeidês, c. 23.

[529] Thucyd. i, 95; Diodorus, xi, 44-47.

This incident, though not a declaration of war against Sparta, was the first open renunciation of her authority as presiding state among the Greeks; the first avowed manifestation of a competitor for that dignity, with numerous and willing followers; the first separation of Greece—considered in herself alone and apart from foreign solicitations, such as the Persian invasion—into two distinct organized camps, each with collective interests and projects of its own. In spite of mortified pride, Sparta was constrained, and even in some points of view not indisposed, to patient acquiescence: for she had no means of forcing the dispositions of the Ionic allies, while the war with Persia altogether,—having now become no longer strictly defensive, and being withal maritime as well as distant from her own territory,—had ceased to be in harmony with her home routine and strict discipline. Her grave senators, especially an ancient Herakleid named Hetœmaridas, reproved the impatience of the younger citizens, and discountenanced the idea of permanent maritime command as a dangerous innovation: they even treated it as an advantage, that Athens should take the lead in carrying on the Persian war, since it could not be altogether dropped; nor had the Athenians as yet manifested any sentiments positively hostile, to excite their alarm.[530] Nay, they actually took credit in the eyes of Athens, about a century afterwards, for having themselves advised this separation of command at sea from command on land.[531] Moreover, if the war continued under Spartan guidance, there would be a continued necessity for sending out their kings or chief men to command: and the example of Pausanias showed them the depraving effect of such military power, remote as well as unchecked. The example of their king Leotychidês, too, near about this time, was a second illustration of the same tendency. At the same time, apparently, that Pausanias embarked for Asia to carry on the war against the Persians, Leotychidês was sent with an army into Thessaly to put down the Aleuadæ and those Thessalian parties who had sided with Xerxes and Mardonius. Successful in this expedition, he suffered himself to be bribed, and was even detected with a large sum of money actually on his person: in consequence of which the Lacedæmonians condemned him to banishment, and razed his house to the ground: he died afterwards in exile at Tegea.[532] Two such instances were well calculated to make the Lacedæmonians distrust the conduct of their Herakleid leaders when on foreign service, and this feeling weighed much in inducing them to abandon the Asiatic headship in favor of Athens. It appears that their Peloponnesian allies retired from this contest at the same time as they did, so that the prosecution of the war was thus left to Athens as chief of the newly-emancipated Greeks.[533]

[530] Thucyd. i, 95. Following Thucydidês in his conception of these events, I have embodied in the narrative as much as seems consistent with it in Diodorus (xi, 50), who evidently did not here copy Thucydidês, but probably had Ephorus for his guide. The name of Hetœmaridas, as an influential Spartan statesman on this occasion, is probable enough; but his alleged speech on the mischiefs of maritime empire, which Diodorus seems to have had before him, composed by Ephorus, would probably have represented the views and feelings of the year 350 B. C., and not those of 476 B. C. The subject would have been treated in the same manner as Isokratês, the master of Ephorus, treats it, in his Crat. viii, De Pace, pp. 179, 180.

[531] Xenophon, Hellen. vi, 5, 34. It was at the moment when the Spartans were soliciting Athenian aid, after their defeat at Leuktra. ὑπομιμνήσκοντες μὲν, ὡς τὸν βάρβαρον κοινῇ ἀπεμαχέσαντο—ἀναμιμνήσκοντες δὲ, ὡς Ἀθηναῖοί τε ὑπὸ τῶν Ἑλλήνων ᾑρέθησαν ἡγεμόνες τοῦ ναυτικοῦ, καὶ τῶν κοινῶν χρημάτων φύλακες, τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων ταῦτα συμβουλομένων· αὐτοί τε κατὰ γῆν ὁμολογουμένως ὑφ’ ἁπάντων τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἡγεμόνες προκριθείησαν, συμβουλομένων αὖ ταῦτα τῶν Ἀθηναίων.

[532] Herodot. vi, 72; Diodor. xi, 48; Pausanias, iii, 7, 8: compare Plutarch, De Herodoti Malign. c. 21, p. 859.

Leotychidês died, according to Diodorus, in 476 B. C.: he had commanded at Mykalê in 479 B. C. The expedition into Thessaly must therefore have been in one of the two intermediate years, if the chronology of Diodorus were, in this case, thoroughly trustworthy. But Mr. Clinton (Fasti Hellenici, Appendix, ch. iii, p. 210) has shown that Diodorus is contradicted by Plutarch, about the date of the accession of Archidamus,—and by others, about the date of the revolt at Sparta. Mr. Clinton places the accession of Archidamus and the banishment of Leotychidês (of course, therefore, the expedition into Thessaly) in 469 B. C. I incline to believe that the expedition of Leotychidês against the Thessalian Aleuadæ took place in the year or in the second year following the battle of Platæa, because they had been the ardent and hearty allies of Mardonius in Bœotia, and because the war would seem not to have been completed without putting them down and making the opposite party in Thessaly predominant.

Considering how imperfectly we know the Lacedæmonian chronology of this date, it is very possible that some confusion may have arisen in the case of Leotychidês, from the difference between the date of his _banishment_ and that of his _death_. King Pleistoanax afterwards, having been banished for the same offence as that committed by Leotychidês, and having lived many years in banishment, was afterwards restored: and the years which he had passed in banishment were counted as a part of his reign (Fast. Hellen. l. c. p. 211). The date of Archidamus may, perhaps, have been reckoned in one account from the _banishment_ of Leotychidês,—in another, from his _death_; the rather, as Archidamus must have been very young, since he reigned forty-two years even after 469 B. C. And the date which Diodorus has given as that of the death of Leotychidês, may really be only the date of his banishment, in which he lived until 469 B. C.

[533] Thucyd. i, 18.

It was from these considerations that the Spartans were induced to submit to that loss of command which the misconduct of Pausanias had brought upon them. Their acquiescence facilitated the immense change about to take place in Grecian politics. According to the tendencies in progress prior to the Persian invasion, Sparta had become gradually more and more the president of something like a Pan-Hellenic union, comprising the greater part of the Grecian states. Such at least was the point towards which things seemed to be tending; and if many separate states stood aloof from this union, none of them at least sought to form any counter-union, if we except the obsolete and impotent pretensions of Argos. The preceding volumes of this history have shown that Sparta had risen to such ascendency, not from her superior competence in the management of collective interests, nor even in the main from ambitious efforts on her own part to acquire it,—but from the converging tendencies of Grecian feeling, which required some such presiding state, and from the commanding military power, rigid discipline, and ancient undisturbed constitution, which attracted that feeling towards Sparta. The necessities of common defence against Persia greatly strengthened these tendencies, and the success of the defence, whereby so many Greeks were emancipated who required protection against their former master, seemed destined to have the like effect still more. For an instant, after the battles of Platæa and Mykalê,—when the town of Platæa was set apart as a consecrated neutral spot for an armed confederacy against the Persian, with periodical solemnities and meetings of deputies,—Sparta was exalted to be the chief of a full Pan-Hellenic union, Athens being only one of the principal members: and had Sparta been capable either of comprehensive policy, of self-directed and persevering efforts, or of the requisite flexibility of dealing, embracing distant Greeks as well as near,—her position was now such, that her own ascendency, together with undivided Pan-Hellenic union, might long have been maintained. But she was lamentably deficient in all the requisite qualities, and the larger the union became, the more her deficiency stood manifest. On the other hand, Athens, now entering into rivalry as a sort of leader of opposition, possessed all those qualities in a remarkable degree, over and above that actual maritime force which was the want of the day; so that the opening made by Spartan incompetence and crime, so far as Pausanias was concerned, found her in every respect prepared. But the sympathies of the Peloponnesians still clung to Sparta, while those of the Ionian Greeks had turned to Athens: and thus not only the short-lived symptoms of an established Pan-Hellenic union, but even all tendencies towards it from this time disappear. There now stands out a manifest schism, with two pronounced parties, towards one of which nearly all the constituent atoms of the Grecian world gravitate: the maritime states, newly enfranchised from Persia, towards Athens,—the land-states, which had formed most part of the confederate army at Platæa, towards Sparta.[534] Along with this national schism and called into action by it, appears the internal political schism in each separate city between oligarchy and democracy. Of course, the germ of these parties had already previously existed in the separate states, but the energetic democracy of Athens, and the pronounced tendency of Sparta to rest upon the native oligarchies in each separate city as her chief support, now began to bestow, on the conflict of internal political parties, an Hellenic importance, and an aggravated bitterness, which had never before belonged to it.

[534] Thucyd. i, 18. Καὶ μεγάλου κινδύνου ἐπικρεμασθέντος οἵ τε Λακεδαιμόνιοι τῶν ξυμπολεμησάντων Ἑλλήνων ἡγήσαντο δυνάμει προὔχοντες, καὶ οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι, διανοηθέντες ἐκλιπεῖν τὴν πόλιν καὶ ἀνασκευασάμενοι, ἐς τὰς ναῦς ἐμβάντες ναυτικοὶ ἐγένοντο. Κοινῇ δὲ ἀπωσάμενοι τὸν βάρβαρον, ὕστερον οὐ πολλῷ διεκρίθησαν πρός τε Ἀθηναίους καὶ Λακεδαιμονίους, οἵ τε ἀποστάντες βασιλέως Ἕλληνες καὶ οἱ ξυμπολεμήσαντες. Δυνάμει γὰρ ταῦτα μέγιστα διεφάνη· ἴσχυον γὰρ οἱ μὲν κατὰ γῆν, οἱ δὲ ναυσί. Καὶ ὀλίγον μὲν χρόνον συνέμεινεν ἡ ~ὁμαιχμία~, ἔπειτα δὲ διενεχθέντες οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι καὶ οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι ἐπολέμησαν μετὰ τῶν ξυμμάχων πρὸς ἀλλήλους· καὶ τῶν ἄλλων Ἑλλήνων εἴτινές που διασταῖεν, πρὸς τούτους ἤδη ἐχώρουν. Ὥστε ~ἀπὸ τῶν Μηδικῶν ἐς τόνδε ἀεὶ τὸν πόλεμον~, etc.

This is a clear and concise statement of the great revolution in Grecian affairs, comparing the period before and after the Persian war. Thucydidês goes on to trace briefly the consequences of this bisection of the Grecian world into two great leagues,—the growing improvement in military skill, and the increasing stretch of military effort on both sides from the Persian invasion down to the Peloponnesian war;—he remarks also, upon the difference between Sparta and Athens in their way of dealing with their allies respectively. He then states the striking fact, that the military force put forth separately by Athens and her allies on the one side, and by Sparta and her allies on the other, during the Peloponnesian war, were each of them greater than the entire force which had been employed by both together in the most powerful juncture of their confederacy against the Persian invaders,—Καὶ ἐγένετο ~αὐτοῖς~ ἐς τόνδε τὸν πόλεμον ~ἡ ἰδία παρασκευὴ~ μείζων ἢ ὡς τὰ κράτιστά ~ποτε μετὰ ἀκραιφνοῦς τῆς ξυμμαχίας~ ἤνθησαν (i, 19).

I notice this last passage especially (construing it as the Scholiast seems to do), not less because it conveys an interesting comparison, than because it has been understood by Dr. Arnold, Göller, and other commentators, in a sense which seems to me erroneous. They interpret thus: αὐτοῖς to mean the Athenians only, and not the Lacedæmonians,—ἡ ἰδία παρασκευὴ to denote the forces equipped by Athens herself, apart from her allies,—and ἀκραιφνοῦς ξυμμαχίας to refer “to the Athenian alliance only, at a period a little before the conclusion of the thirty years’ treaty, when the Athenians were masters not only of the islands, and the Asiatic Greek colonies, but had also united to their confederacy Bœotia and Achaia on the continent of Greece itself.” (Dr. Arnold’s note.) Now so far, as the words go, the meaning assigned by Dr. Arnold might be admissible; but if we trace the thread of ideas in Thucydidês, we shall see that the comparison, as these commentators conceive it, between Athens alone and Athens aided by her allies—between the Athenian empire as it stood during the Peloponnesian war, and the same empire as it _had_ stood before the thirty years’ truce—is quite foreign to his thoughts. Nor had Thucydidês said one word to inform the reader, that the Athenian empire at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war had diminished in magnitude, and thus was no longer ἀκραιφνής: without which previous notification, the comparison supposed by Dr. Arnold could not be clearly understood. I conceive that there are two periods, and two sets of circumstances, which, throughout all this passage, Thucydidês means to contrast: first, confederate Greece at the time of the Persian war; next, bisected Greece in a state of war, under the double headship of Sparta and Athens. Αὐτοῖς refers as much to Sparta as to Athens—ἀκραιφνοῦς τῆς ξυμμαχίας means what had been before expressed by ὁμαιχμία—and ποτε set against τόνδε τὸν πόλεμον, is equivalent to the expression which had before been used—ἀπὸ τῶν Μηδικῶν ἐς τόνδε ἀεὶ τὸν πόλεμον.

The departure of the Spartan Dorkis left the Athenian generals at liberty; and their situation imposed upon them the duty of organizing the new confederacy which they had been chosen to conduct. The Ionic allies were at this time not merely willing and unanimous, but acted as the forward movers in the enterprise; for they stood in obvious need of protection against the attacks of Persia, and had no farther kindness to expect from Sparta or the Peloponnesians. But even had they been less under the pressure of necessity, the conduct of Athens, and of Aristeidês as the representative of Athens, might have sufficed to bring them into harmonious coöperation. The new leader was no less equitable towards the confederates than energetic against the common enemy. The general conditions of the confederacy were regulated in a common synod of the members, appointed to meet periodically for deliberative purposes, in the temple of Apollo and Artemis at Delos,—of old, the venerated spot for the religious festivals of the Ionic cities, and at the same time a convenient centre for the members. A definite obligation, either in equipped ships of war or in money, was imposed upon every separate city; and the Athenians, as leaders, determined in which form contribution should be made by each: their assessment must of course have been reviewed by the synod, nor had they at this time power to enforce any regulation not approved by that body. It had been the good fortune of Athens to profit by the genius of Themistoklês on two recent critical occasions (the battle of Salamis and the rebuilding of her walls), where sagacity, craft, and decision were required in extraordinary measure, and where pecuniary probity was of less necessity: it was no less her good fortune now,—in the delicate business of assessing a new tax and determining how much each state should bear, without precedents to guide them, when unimpeachable honesty in the assessor was the first of all qualities,—_not_ to have Themistoklês; but to employ in his stead the well-known, we might almost say the ostentatious, probity of Aristeidês. This must be accounted good fortune, since at the moment when Aristeidês was sent out, the Athenians could not have anticipated that any such duty would devolve upon him. His assessment not only found favor at the time of its original proposition, when it must have been freely canvassed by the assembled allies—but also maintained its place in general esteem, as equitable and moderate, after the once responsible headship of Athens had degenerated into an unpopular empire.[535]

[535] Thucyd. v, 18; Plutarch, Aristeidês, c. 24. Plutarch states that the allies expressly asked the Athenians to send Aristeidês for the purpose of assessing the tribute. This is not at all probable: Aristeidês, as commander of the Athenian contingent under Pausanias, was at Byzantium when the mutiny of the Ionians against Pausanias occurred, and was the person to whom they applied for protection. As such, he was the natural person to undertake such duties as devolved upon Athens, without any necessity of supposing that he was specially asked for to perform it.

Plutarch farther states that a certain contribution had been levied from the Greeks towards the war, even during the headship of Sparta. This statement also is highly improbable. The headship of Sparta covers only one single campaign, in which Pausanias had the command: the Ionic Greeks sent their ships to the fleet, which would be held sufficient, and there was no time for measuring commutations into money.

Pausanias states, but I think quite erroneously, that the name of Aristeidês was robbed of its due honor because he was the first person who ἔταξε φοροὺς τοῖς Ἕλλησι (Pausan. viii, 52, 2). Neither the assessment nor the name of Aristeidês was otherwise than popular.

Aristotle employs the name of Aristeidês as a symbol of unrivalled probity (Rhetoric. ii, 24, 2).

Respecting this first assessment, we scarcely know more than one single fact,—the aggregate in money was four hundred and sixty talents, equal to about one hundred and six thousand pounds sterling. Of the items composing such aggregate,—of the individual cities which paid it,—of the distribution of obligations to furnish ships and to furnish money,—we are entirely ignorant: the little information which we possess on these points relates to a period considerably later, shortly before the Peloponnesian war, under the uncontrolled empire then exercised by Athens. Thucydidês, in his brief sketch, makes us clearly understand the difference between _presiding_ Athens, with her autonomous and regularly assembled allies in 476 B. C., and _imperial_ Athens, with her subject allies in 432 B. C.; the Greek word equivalent to _ally_ left either of these epithets to be understood, by an ambiguity exceedingly convenient to the powerful states,—and he indicates the general causes of the change: but he gives us few particulars as to the modifying circumstances, and none at all as to the first start. He tells us only that the Athenians appointed a peculiar board of officers, called the Hellênotamiæ, to receive and administer the common fund,—that Delos was constituted the general treasury, where the money was to be kept,—and that the payment thus levied was called the _phorus_;[536] a name which appears then to have been first put into circulation, though afterwards usual,—and to have conveyed at first no degrading import, though it afterwards became so odious as to be exchanged for a more innocent synonym.

[536] Thucyd. i, 95, 96.

Endeavoring as well as we can to conceive the Athenian alliance in its infancy, we are first struck with the magnitude of the total sum contributed; which will appear the more remarkable when we reflect that many of the contributing cities furnished ships besides. We may be certain that all which was done at first was done by general consent, and by a freely determining majority: for Athens, at the time when the Ionic allies besought her protection against Spartan arrogance, could have had no power of constraining unwilling parties, especially when the loss of supremacy, though quietly borne, was yet fresh and rankling among the countrymen of Pausanias. So large a total implies, from the very first, a great number of contributing states, and we learn from hence to appreciate the powerful, wide-spread, and voluntary movement which then brought together the maritime and insular Greeks distributed throughout the Ægean sea and the Hellespont. The Phenician fleet, and the Persian land-force, might at any moment reappear, nor was there any hope of resisting either except by confederacy: so that confederacy, under such circumstances, became, with these exposed Greeks, not merely a genuine feeling, but at that time the first of all their feelings. It was their common fear, rather than Athenian ambition, which gave birth to the alliance, and they were grateful to Athens for organizing it. The public import of the name Hellênotamiæ, coined for the occasion,—the selection of Delos as a centre, and the provision for regular meetings of the members,—demonstrate the patriotic and fraternal purpose which the league was destined to serve. In truth, the protection of the Ægean sea against foreign maritime force and lawless piracy, as well as that of the Hellespont and Bosphorus against the transit of a Persian force, was a purpose essentially public, for which all the parties interested were bound in equity to provide by way of common contribution: any island or seaport which might refrain from contributing, was a gainer at the cost of others: and we cannot doubt that the general feeling of this common danger as well as equitable obligation, at a moment when the fear of Persia was yet serious, was the real cause which brought together so many contributing members, and enabled the forward parties to shame into concurrence such as were more backward. How the confederacy came to be turned afterwards to the purposes of Athenian ambition, we shall see at the proper time: but in its origin it was an equal alliance, in so far as alliance between the strong and the weak can ever be equal,—not an Athenian empire: nay, it was an alliance in which every individual member was more exposed, more defenceless, and more essentially benefited in the way of protection, than Athens. We have here in truth one of the few moments in Grecian history wherein a purpose at once common, equal, useful, and innocent, brought together spontaneously many fragments of this disunited race, and overlaid for a time that exclusive bent towards petty and isolated autonomy which ultimately made slaves of them all. It was a proceeding equitable and prudent, in principle as well as in detail; promising at the time the most beneficent consequences,—not merely protection against the Persians, but a standing police of the Ægean sea, regulated by a common superintending authority. And if such promise was not realized, we shall find that the inherent defects of the allies, indisposing them to the hearty appreciation and steady performance of their duties as equal confederates, are at least as much chargeable with the failure as the ambition of Athens. We may add that, in selecting Delos as a centre, the Ionic allies were conciliated by a renovation of the solemnities which their fathers, in the days of former freedom, had crowded to witness in that sacred island.

At the time when this alliance was formed, the Persians still held not only the important posts of Eion on the Strymon and Doriskus in Thrace, but also several other posts in that country,[537] which are not specified to us. We may thus understand why the Greek cities on and near the Chalkidic peninsula,—Argilus, Stageirus, Akanthus, Skôlus, Olynthus, Spartôlus, etc.,—which we know to have joined under the first assessment of Aristeidês, were not less anxious[538] to seek protection in the bosom of the new confederacy, than the Dorian islands of Rhodes and Kos, the Ionic islands of Samos and Chios, the Æolic Lesbos and Tenedos, or continental towns such as Milêtus and Byzantium: by all of whom adhesion to this alliance must have been contemplated, in 477 or 476 B. C., as the sole condition of emancipation from Persia. Nothing more was required, for the success of a foreign enemy against Greece generally, than complete autonomy of every Grecian city, small as well as great,—such as the Persian monarch prescribed and tried to enforce ninety years afterwards, through the Lacedæmonian Antalkidas, in the pacification which bears the name of the latter: some sort of union, organized and obligatory upon each city, was indispensable to the safety of all. Nor was it by any means certain, at the time when the confederacy of Delos was first formed, that, even with that aid, the Asiatic enemy would be effectually kept out; especially as the Persians were strong, not merely from their own force, but also from the aid of internal parties in many of the Grecian states,—traitors within, as well as exiles without.

[537] Herodot. vii, 106. ὕπαρχοι ἐν τῇ Θρηΐκῃ καὶ τοῦ Ἑλλησπόντου ~πανταχῇ~. Οὗτοι ὦν ~πάντες~, οἵ τε ἐκ Θρηΐκης καὶ τοῦ Ἑλλησπόντου, πλὴν τοῦ ἐν Δορίσκῳ, ὑπὸ Ἑλλήνων ὕστερον ταύτης τῆς στρατηλασίης ἐξῃρέθησαν, etc.

[538] Thucyd. v, 18. Τὰς δὲ πόλεις, φερούσας τὸν φόρον τὸν ἐπ’ Ἀριστείδου, αὐτονόμους εἶναι.... εἰσὶ δὲ, Ἄργιλος, Στάγειρος, Ἄκανθος, Σκῶλος, Ὄλυνθος, Σπάρτωλος.

Among these, the first in rank as well as the most formidable, was the Spartan Pausanias. Summoned home from Byzantium to Sparta, in order that the loud complaints against him might be examined, he had been acquitted[539] of the charges of wrong and oppression against individuals; yet the presumptions of _medism_, or treacherous correspondence with the Persians, appeared so strong that, though not found guilty, he was still not reappointed to the command. Such treatment seems to have only emboldened him in the prosecution of his designs against Greece, and he came out with this view to Byzantium in a trireme belonging to Hermionê, under pretence of aiding as a volunteer without any formal authority in the war. He there resumed his negotiations with Artabazus: his great station and celebrity still gave him a strong hold on men’s opinions, and he appears to have established a sort of mastery in Byzantium, from whence the Athenians, already recognized heads of the confederacy, were constrained to expel him by force:[540] and we may be very sure that the terror excited by his presence as well as by his known designs tended materially to accelerate the organization of the confederacy under Athens. He then retired to Kolônæ in the Troad, where he continued for some time in the farther prosecution of his schemes, trying to form a Persian party, despatching emissaries to distribute Persian gold among various cities of Greece, and probably employing the name of Sparta to impede the formation of the new confederacy:[541] until at length the Spartan authorities, apprized of his proceedings, sent a herald out to him, with peremptory orders that he should come home immediately along with the herald: if he disobeyed, “the Spartans would declare war against him,” or constitute him a public enemy.

[539] Cornelius Nepos states that he was fined (Pausanias, c. 2), which is neither noticed by Thucydidês, nor at all probable, looking at the subsequent circumstances connected with him.

[540] Thucyd. i, 130, 131. Καὶ ἐκ τοῦ Βυζαντίου βίᾳ ὑπὸ τῶν Ἀθηναίων ἐκπολιορκηθεὶς, etc.: these words seem to imply that he had acquired a strong position in the town.

[541] It is to this time that I refer the mission of Arthmius of Zeleia (an Asiatic town, between Mount Ida and the southern coast of the Propontis) to gain over such Greeks as he could by means of Persian gold. In the course of his visit to Greece, Arthmius went to Athens: his purpose was discovered, and he was compelled to flee: while the Athenians, at the instance of Themistoklês, passed an indignant decree, declaring him and his race enemies of Athens, and of all the allies of Athens,—and proclaiming that whoever should slay him would be guiltless; because he had brought in Persian gold to bribe the Greeks. This decree was engraven on a brazen column, and placed on record in the acropolis, where it stood near the great statue of Athênê Promachos, even in the time of Demosthenês and his contemporary orators. See Demosthen. Philippic. iii, c. 9, p. 122, and De Fals. Legat. c. 76, p. 428; Æschin. cont. Ktesiphont. ad fin. Harpokrat. v. Ἄτιμος—Deinarchus cont. Aristogeiton, sects. 25, 26.

Plutarch (Themistoklês, c. 6, and Aristeidês, tom. ii, p. 218) tells us that Themistoklês proposed this decree against Arthmius and caused it to be passed. But Plutarch refers it to the time when Xerxes was on the point of invading Greece. Now it appears to me that the incident cannot well belong to that point of time. Xerxes did not rely upon bribes, but upon other and different means, for conquering Greece: besides, the very tenor of the decree shows that it must have been passed after the formation of the confederacy of Delos,—for it pronounces Arthmius to be an enemy of Athens and of all the allies of Athens. To a native of Zeleia it might be a serious penalty to be excluded and proscribed from all the cities in alliance with Athens; many of them being on the coast of Asia. I know no point of time to which the mission of Arthmius can be so conveniently referred as this,—when Pausanias and Artabazus were engaged in this very part of Asia, in contriving plots to get up a party in Greece. Pausanias was thus engaged for some years,—before the banishment of Themistoklês.

As the execution of this threat would have frustrated all the ulterior schemes of Pausanias, he thought it prudent to obey; the rather, as he felt entire confidence of escaping all the charges against him at Sparta by the employment of bribes,[542] the means for which were abundantly furnished to him through Artabazus. He accordingly returned along with the herald, and was, in the first moments of indignation, imprisoned by order of the ephors; who, it seems, were legally competent to imprison him, even had he been king instead of regent. But he was soon let out, on his own requisition, and under a private arrangement with friends and partisans, to take his trial against all accusers.[543] Even to stand forth as accuser against so powerful a man was a serious peril: to undertake the proof of specific matter of treason against him was yet more serious: nor does it appear that any Spartan ventured to do either. It was known that nothing short of the most manifest and invincible proof would be held to justify his condemnation, and amidst a long chain of acts carrying conviction when taken in the aggregate, there was no single treason sufficiently demonstrable for the purpose. Accordingly, Pausanias remained not only at large but unaccused, still audaciously persisting both in his intrigues at home and his correspondence abroad with Artabazus. He ventured to assail the unshielded side of Sparta by opening negotiations with the Helots, and instigating them to revolt; promising them both liberation and admission to political privilege;[544] with a view, first, to destroy the board of ephors, and render himself despot in his own country,—next, to acquire through Persian help the supremacy of Greece. Some of those Helots to whom he addressed himself revealed the plot to the ephors, who, nevertheless, in spite of such grave peril, did not choose to take measures against Pausanias upon no better information,—so imposing was still his name and position. But though some few Helots might inform, probably many others both gladly heard the proposition and faithfully kept the secret: we shall find, by what happened a few years afterwards, that there were a large number of them who had their spears in readiness for revolt. Suspected as Pausanias was, yet by the fears of some and the connivance of others, he was allowed to bring his plans to the very brink of consummation; and his last letters to Artabazus,[545] intimating that he was ready for action, and bespeaking immediate performance of the engagements concerted between them, were actually in the hands of the messenger. Sparta was saved from an outbreak of the most formidable kind, not by the prudence of her authorities, but by a mere accident, or rather by the fact that Pausanias was not only a traitor to his country, but also base and cruel in his private relations.

[542] Thucyd. i, 131. Ὁ δὲ βουλόμενος ὡς ἥκιστα ὕποπτος εἶναι καὶ πιστεύων χρήμασι διαλύσειν τὴν διαβολὴν, ἀνεχώρει τὸ δεύτερον ἐς Σπάρτην.

[543] Thucyd. i, 131. Καὶ ἐς μὲν τὴν εἱρκτὴν ἐσπίπτει τὸ πρῶτον ὑπὸ τῶν ἐφόρων· ἔπειτα διαπραξάμενος ὕστερον ἐξῆλθε, καὶ καθίστησιν ἑαυτὸν ἐς κρίσιν τοῖς βουλομένοις περὶ αὐτῶν ἐλέγχειν.

The word διαπραξάμενος indicates, first, that Pausanias himself originated the efforts to get free,—next, that he came to an underhand arrangement: very probably by a bribe, though the word does not necessarily imply it. The Scholiast says so, distinctly,—χρήμασι καὶ λόγοις διαπραξάμενος δηλόνοτι διακρουσάμενος τὴν κατηγορίαν. Dr. Arnold translates διαπραξάμενος, “having settled the business.”

[544] Aristotel. Politic. iv, 13, 13; v, 1, 5; v, 6, 2; Herodot. v, 32. Aristotle calls Pausanias _king_, though he was only _regent_: the truth is, that he had all the power of a Spartan king, and seemingly more, if we compare his treatment with that of the Prokleid king Leotychidês.

[545] Thucyd. i, 132. ὁ μέλλων ~τὰς τελευταίας~ βασιλεῖ ἐπιστολὰς πρὸς Ἀρτάβαζον κομιεῖν, ἀνὴρ Ἀργίλιος, etc.

The messenger to whom these last letters were intrusted was a native of Argilus in Thrace, a favorite and faithful slave of Pausanias; once connected with him by that intimate relation which Grecian manners tolerated, and admitted even to the full confidence of his treasonable projects. It was by no means the intention of this Argilian to betray his master; but, on receiving the letter to carry, he recollected, with some uneasiness, that none of the previous messengers had ever come back. Accordingly, he broke the seal and read it, with the full view of carrying it forward to its destination, if he found nothing inconsistent with his own personal safety: he had farther taken the precaution to counterfeit his master’s seal, so that he could easily reclose the letter. On reading it, he found his suspicions confirmed by an express injunction that the bearer was to be put to death,—a discovery which left him no alternative except to deliver it to the ephors. But those magistrates, who had before disbelieved the Helot informers, still refused to believe even the confidential slave with his master’s autograph and seal, and with the full account besides, which doubtless he would communicate at the same time, of all that had previously passed in the Persian correspondence, not omitting copies of those letters between Pausanias and Xerxes, which I have already cited from Thucydidês—for in no other way can they have become public. Partly from the suspicion which, in antiquity, always attached to the testimony of slaves, except when it was obtained under the pretended guarantee of torture, partly from the peril of dealing with so exalted a criminal,—the ephors would not be satisfied with any evidence less than his own speech and their own ears. They directed the Argilian slave to plant himself as a suppliant in the sacred precinct of Poseidon, near Cape Tænarus, under the shelter of a double tent, or hut, behind which two of them concealed themselves. Apprized of this unexpected mark of alarm, Pausanias hastened to the temple, and demanded the reason: upon which the slave disclosed his knowledge of the contents of the letter, and complained bitterly that, after long and faithful service,—with a secrecy never once betrayed, throughout this dangerous correspondence,—he was at length rewarded with nothing better than the same miserable fate which had befallen the previous messengers. Pausanias, admitting all these facts, tried to appease the slave’s disquietude, and gave him a solemn assurance of safety if he would quit the sanctuary; urging him at the same time to proceed on the journey forthwith, in order that the schemes in progress might not be retarded.

All this passed within the hearing of the concealed ephors; who at length thoroughly satisfied, determined to arrest Pausanias immediately on his return to Sparta. They met him in the public street, not far from the temple of Athênê Chalkiœkus (or of the Brazen House); but as they came near, either their menacing looks, or a significant nod from one of them, revealed to this guilty man their purpose; and he fled for refuge to the temple, which was so near that he reached it before they could overtake him. He planted himself as a suppliant, far more hopeless than the Argilian slave whom he had so recently talked over at Tænarus, in a narrow-roofed chamber belonging to the sacred building; where the ephors, not warranted in touching him, took off the roof, built up the doors, and kept watch until he was on the point of death by starvation. According to a current story,[546]—not recognized by Thucydidês, yet consistent with Spartan manners,—his own mother was the person who placed the first stone to build up the door, in deep abhorrence of his treason. His last moments being carefully observed, he was brought away just in time to expire without, and thus to avoid the desecration of the temple. The first impulse of the ephors was to cast his body into the ravine, or hollow, called the Kæadas, the usual place of punishment for criminals: probably, his powerful friends averted this disgrace, and he was buried not far off, until, some time afterwards, under the mandate of the Delphian oracle, his body was exhumed and transported to the exact spot where he had died. Nor was the oracle satisfied even with this reinterment: pronouncing the whole proceeding to be a profanation of the sanctity of Athênê, it enjoined that two bodies should be presented to her as an atonement for the one carried away. In the very early days of Greece,—or among the Carthaginians, even at this period,—such an injunction would probably have produced the slaughter of two human victims: on the present occasion, Athênê, or Hikesius, the tutelary god of suppliants, was supposed to be satisfied by two brazen statues; not, however, without some attempts to make out that the expiation was inadequate.[547]

[546] Diodor. xi, 45; Cornel. Nepos, Pausan. c. 5; Polyæn. viii, 51.

[547] Thucyd. i, 133, 134: Pausanias, iii, 17, 9.

Thus perished a Greek who reached the pinnacle of renown simply from the accidents of his lofty descent, and of his being general at Platæa, where it does not appear that he displayed any superior qualities. His treasonable projects implicated and brought to disgrace a man far greater than himself, the Athenian Themistoklês.

The chronology of this important period is not so fully known as to enable us to make out the full dates of particular events; but we are obliged—in consequence of the subsequent events connected with Themistoklês, whose flight to Persia is tolerably well marked as to date—to admit an interval of about nine years between the retirement of Pausanias from his command at Byzantium, and his death. To suppose so long an interval engaged in treasonable correspondence, is perplexing; and we can only explain it to ourselves very imperfectly by considering that the Spartans were habitually slow in their movements, and that the suspected regent may perhaps have communicated with partisans, real or expected, in many parts of Greece. Among those whom he sought to enlist as accomplices was Themistoklês, still in great power,—though, as it would seem, in declining power,—at Athens: and the charge of collusion with the Persians connects itself with the previous movement of political parties in that city.

The rivalry of Themistoklês and Aristeidês had been greatly appeased by the invasion of Xerxes, which had imposed upon both the peremptory necessity of coöperation against a common enemy. Nor was it apparently resumed, during the times which immediately succeeded the return of the Athenians to their country: at least we hear of both in effective service, and in prominent posts. Themistoklês stands forward as the contriver of the city walls and architect of Peiræus: Aristeidês is commander of the fleet, and first organizer of the confederacy of Delos. Moreover, we seem to detect a change in the character of the latter: he had ceased to be the champion of Athenian old-fashioned landed interest, against Themistoklês as the originator of the maritime innovations. Those innovations had now, since the battle of Salamis, become an established fact; a fact of overwhelming influence on the destinies and character, public as well as private, of the Athenians. During the exile at Salamis, every man, rich or poor, landed proprietor or artisan, had been for the time a seaman: and the anecdote of Kimon, who dedicated the bridle of his horse in the acropolis, as a token that he was about to pass from the cavalry to service on shipboard,[548] is a type of that change of feeling which must have been impressed more or less upon every rich man in Athens. From henceforward the fleet is endeared to every man as the grand force, offensive and defensive, of the state, in which character all the political leaders agree in accepting it: we ought to add, at the same time, that this change was attended with no detriment either to the land-force or to the landed cultivation of Attica, both of which will be found to acquire extraordinary development during the interval between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars. Still, the triremes and the men who manned them, taken collectively, were now the determining element in the state: moreover, the men who manned them had just returned from Salamis, fresh from a scene of trial and danger, and from a harvest of victory, which had equalized for the moment all Athenians as sufferers, as combatants, and as patriots. Such predominance of the maritime impulse, having become pronounced immediately after the return from Salamis, was farther greatly strengthened by the construction and fortification of the Peiræus,—a new maritime Athens, as large as the old inland city,—as well as by the unexpected formation of the confederacy at Delos, with all its untried prospects and stimulating duties.

[548] Plutarch, Kimon, c. 8.

The political change arising from hence in Athens was not less important than the military. “The maritime multitude, authors of the victory of Salamis,”[549] and instruments of the new vocation of Athens as head of the Delian confederacy, appear now ascendant in the political constitution also; not in any way as a separate or privileged class, but as leavening the whole mass, strengthening the democratical sentiment, and protesting against all recognized political inequalities. In fact, during the struggle at Salamis, the whole city of Athens had been nothing else than “a maritime multitude,” among which the proprietors and chief men had been confounded, until, by the efforts of all, the common country had been reconquered: nor was it likely that this multitude, after a trying period of forced equality, during which political privilege had been effaced, would patiently acquiesce in the full restoration of such privilege at home. We see by the active political sentiment of the German people, after the great struggles of 1813 and 1814, how much an energetic and successful military effort of the people at large, blended with endurance of serious hardship, tends to stimulate the sense of political dignity and the demand for developed citizenship: and if this be the tendency even among a people habitually passive on such subjects, much more was it to be expected in the Athenian population, who had gone through a previous training of near thirty years under the democracy of Kleisthenês. At the time when that constitution was first established,[550] it was perhaps the most democratical in Greece: it had worked extremely well and had diffused among the people a sentiment favorable to equal citizenship and unfriendly to avowed privilege: so that the impressions made by the struggle at Salamis found the popular mind prepared to receive them. Early after the return to Attica, the Kleisthenean constitution was enlarged as respects eligibility to the magistracy. According to that constitution, the fourth or last class on the Solonian census, including the considerable majority of the freemen, were not admissible to offices of state, though they possessed votes in common with the rest: no person was eligible to be a magistrate unless he belonged to one of the three higher classes. This restriction was now annulled, and eligibility extended to all the citizens. We may appreciate the strength of feeling with which such reform was demanded, when we find that it was proposed by Aristeidês; a man the reverse of what is called a demagogue, and a strenuous friend of the Kleisthenean constitution. No political system would work after the Persian war, which formally excluded “the maritime multitude” from holding magistracy. I rather imagine, as has been stated in the previous volume, that election of magistrates was still retained, and not exchanged for drawing lots until a certain time, though not a long time, afterwards. That which the public sentiment first demanded was the recognition of the equal and open principle: after a certain length of experience, it was found that poor men, though legally qualified to be chosen, were in point of fact rarely chosen: then came the lot, to give them an equal chance with the rich. The principle of sortition, or choice by lot, was never applied, as I have before remarked, to all offices at Athens,—never, for example, to the stratêgi, or generals, whose functions were more grave and responsible than those of any other person in the service of the state, and who always continued to be elected by show of hands.

[549] Aristotel. Politic. v, 3, 5. Καὶ πάλιν ~ὁ ναυτικὸς ὄχλος~, γενόμενος αἴτιος τῆς περὶ Σαλαμῖνα νίκης, καὶ διὰ ταύτης τῆς ἡγεμονίας καὶ διὰ τὴν κατὰ θάλασσαν δύναμιν, τὴν δημοκατίαν ἰσχυροτέραν ἐποίησεν.

Ὁ ναυτικὸς ὄχλος (Thucyd. viii, 72 and _passim_).

[550] For the constitution of Kleisthenês, see vol. iv, of this History, ch. xxxi, p. 142, _seqq._

In the new position into which Athens was now thrown, with so great an extension of what may be termed her foreign relations, and with a confederacy which imposed the necessity of distant military service, the functions of the stratêgi naturally tended to become both more absorbing and complicated; while the civil administration became more troublesome, if not more difficult, from the enlargement of the city, and the still greater enlargement of Peiræus,—leading to an increase of town population, and especially to an increase of the metics, or resident non-freemen. And it was probably about this period, during the years immediately succeeding the battle of Salamis,—when the force of old habit and tradition had been partially enfeebled by so many stirring novelties,—that the archons were withdrawn altogether from political and military duties, and confined to civil or judicial administration. At the battle of Marathon, the polemarch is a military commander, president of the ten stratêgi:[551] we know him afterwards only as a civil magistrate, administering justice to the metics, or non-freemen, while the stratêgi perform military duties without him. I conceive that this alteration, indicating as it does a change in the character of the archons generally, must have taken place at the time which we have now reached,[552]—a time when the Athenian establishments on all sides required a more elaborate distribution of functionaries. The distribution of so many Athenian boards of functionaries, part to do duty in the city, and part in the Peiræus, cannot have commenced until after this period, when Peiræus had been raised by Themistoklês to the dignity of town, fortress, and state-harbor. Such boards were the astynomi and agoranomi, who maintained the police of streets and markets,—the metronomi, who watched over weights and measures,—the sitophylakes, who carried into effect various state regulations respecting the custody and sale of corn,—with various others who acted not less in Peiræus than in the city.[553] We may presume that each of these boards was originally created as the exigency appeared to call for it, at a period later than that which we have now reached, most of these duties of detail having been at first discharged by the archons, and afterwards, when these latter became too full of occupation, confided to separate administrators. The special and important change which characterized the period immediately succeeding the battle of Salamis, was the more accurate line drawn between the archons and the stratêgi; assigning the foreign and military department entirely to the stratêgi, and rendering the archons purely civil magistrates,—administrative as well as judicial; while the first creation of the separate boards above named was probably an ulterior enlargement, arising out of increase of population, power, and trade, between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars. It was by some such steps that the Athenian administration gradually attained that complete development which it exhibits in practice during the century from the Peloponnesian war downward, to which nearly all our positive and direct information relates.

[551] Herod. vi, 109.

[552] Aristotel. Πολιτειῶν Fragm. xlvii, ed. Neumann; Harpokration, v. Πολέμαρχος; Pollux, viii, 91: compare Meier und Schömann, Der Attische Prozess, ch. ii, p. 50, _seqq._

[553] See Aristotel. Πολιτειῶν Fragm. ii, v, xxiii, xxxviii, l, ed. Neumann; Schömann, Antiqq. Jur. Publ. Græc. c. xli, xlii, xliii.

With this expansion both of democratical feeling and of military activity at Athens, Aristeidês appears to have sympathized; and the popularity thus insured to him, probably heightened by some regret for his previous ostracism, was calculated to acquire permanence from his straightforward and incorruptible character, now brought into strong relief from his function as assessor to the new Delian confederacy. On the other hand, the ascendency of Themistoklês, though so often exalted by his unrivalled political genius and daring, as well as by the signal value of his public recommendations, was as often overthrown by his duplicity of means and unprincipled thirst for money. New political opponents sprung up against him, men sympathizing with Aristeidês, and far more violent in their antipathy than Aristeidês himself. Of these, the chief were Kimon—son of Miltiades—and Alkmæon; moreover, it seems that the Lacedæmonians, though full of esteem for Themistoklês immediately after the battle of Salamis, had now become extremely hostile to him,—a change which may be sufficiently explained from his stratagem respecting the fortifications of Athens, and his subsequent ambitious projects in reference to the Peiræus. The Lacedæmonian influence, then not inconsiderable in Athens, was employed to second the political combinations against him.[554] He is said to have given offence by manifestations of personal vanity,—by continual boasting of his great services to the state, and by the erection of a private chapel, close to his own house, in honor of Artemis Aristobulê, or Artemis of admirable counsel; just as Pausanias had irritated the Lacedæmonians by inscribing his own single name on the Delphian tripod, and as the friends of Aristeidês had displeased the Athenians by endless encomiums upon his justice.[555] But the main cause of his discredit was, the prostitution of his great influence for arbitrary and corrupt purposes. In the unsettled condition of so many different Grecian communities, recently emancipated from Persia, when there was past misrule to avenge, wrong-doers to be deposed and perhaps punished, exiles to be restored, and all the disturbance and suspicions accompanying so great a change of political condition as well as of foreign policy,—the influence of the leading men at Athens must have been great in determining the treatment of particular individuals. Themistoklês, placed at the head of an Athenian squadron and sailing among the islands, partly for the purposes of war against Persia, partly for organizing the new confederacy,—is affirmed to have accepted bribes without scruple, for executing sentences just and unjust,—restoring some citizens, expelling others, and even putting some to death. We learn this from a friend and guest of Themistoklês,—the poet Timokreon of Ialysus in Rhodes, who had expected his own restoration from the Athenian commander, but found that it was thwarted by a bribe of three talents from his opponents; so that he was still kept in exile on the charge of _medism_. The assertions of Timokreon, personally incensed on this ground against Themistoklês, are doubtless to be considered as passionate and exaggerated: nevertheless, they are a valuable memorial of the feelings of the time, and are far too much in harmony with the general character of this eminent man to allow of our disbelieving them entirely. Timokreon is as emphatic in his admiration of Aristeidês as in his censure of Themistoklês, whom he denounces as “a lying and unjust traitor.”[556]

[554] Plutarch, Kimon, c. 16; Scholion 2, ad Aristophan. Equit. 84.

[555] Plutarch (Themistoklês, c. 22; Kimon, c. 5-8; Aristeidês, c. 25); Diodorus, xi, 54.

[556] Plutarch, Themist. c. 21

Such conduct as that described by this new Archilochus, even making every allowance for exaggeration, must have caused Themistoklês to be both hated and feared among the insular allies, whose opinion was now of considerable importance to the Athenians. A similar sentiment grew up partially against him in Athens itself, and appears to have been connected with suspicions of treasonable inclinations towards the Persians. As the Persians could offer the highest bribes, a man open to corruption might naturally be suspected of inclinations towards their cause; and if Themistoklês had rendered preëminent service against them, so also had Pausanias, whose conduct had undergone so fatal a change for the worse. It was the treason of Pausanias, suspected and believed against him by the Athenians even when he was in command at Byzantium, though not proved against him at Sparta until long afterwards,—which first seems to have raised the presumption of _medism_ against Themistoklês also, when combined with the corrupt proceedings which stained his public conduct: we must recollect, also, that Themistoklês had given some color to these presumptions, even by the stratagems in reference to Xerxes, which wore a double-faced aspect, capable of being construed either in a Persian or in a Grecian sense. The Lacedæmonians, hostile to Themistoklês since the time when he had outwitted them respecting the walls of Athens,—and fearing him also as a supposed accomplice of the suspected Pausanias,—procured the charge of _medism_ to be preferred against him at Athens; by secret instigations, and, as it is said, by bribes, to his political opponents.[557] But no satisfactory proof could be furnished of the accusation, which Themistoklês himself strenuously denied, not without emphatic appeals to his illustrious services. In spite of violent invectives against him from Alkmæon and Kimon, tempered, indeed, by a generous moderation on the part of Aristeidês,[558] his defence was successful. He carried the people with him and was acquitted of the charge. Nor was he merely acquitted, but, as might naturally be expected, a reaction took place in his favor: his splendid qualities and exploits were brought impressively before the public mind, and he seemed for the time to acquire greater ascendency than ever.[559]

[557] This accusation of treason brought against Themistoklês at Athens, _prior to his ostracism_, and at the instigation of the Lacedæmonians,—is mentioned by Diodorus (xi, 54). Thucydidês and Plutarch take notice only of the second accusation, _after_ his ostracism. But Diodorus has made his narrative confused, by supposing the first accusation preferred at Athens to have come after the full detection of Pausanias and exposure of his correspondence; whereas these latter events, coming after the first accusation, supplied new proofs before unknown, and thus brought on the second, after Themistoklês had been ostracized. But Diodorus has preserved to us the important notice of this first accusation at Athens, followed by trial, acquittal, and temporary glorification of Themistoklês,—and preceding his ostracism.

The indictment stated by Plutarch to have been preferred against Themistoklês by Leôbotas son of Alkmæon, at the instance of the Spartans, probably relates to the first accusation at which Themistoklês was acquitted. For when Themistoklês was arraigned after the discovery of Pausanias, he did not choose to stay, nor was there any actual trial: it is not, therefore, likely that the name of the accuser would be preserved,—Ὁ δὲ γραψάμενος αὐτὸν προδοσίας Λεωβώτης ἦν Ἀλκμαίωνος, ἅμα συνεπαιτιωμένων τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν (Plutarch, Themist. c. 23).

Compare the second Scholion on Aristophan. Equit. 84, and Aristeidês, Orat. xlvi, Ὑπὲρ τῶν Τεττάρων (vol. ii, p. 318, ed. Dindorf, p. 243, Jebb).

[558] Plutarch, Aristeidês, c. 25.

[559] Diodor. xi, 54. ~τότε μὲν~ ἀπέφυγε τὴν τῆς προδοσίας κρίσιν· διὸ καὶ τὸ μὲν πρῶτον μετὰ τὴν ἀπόλυσιν μέγας ἦν παρὰ τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις· ἠγάπων γὰρ αὐτὸν διαφερόντως οἱ πολῖται· ~μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα~, οἱ μὲν, φοβηθέντες αὐτοῦ τὴν ὑπερβολὴν, οἱ δὲ, φθονήσαντες τῇ δόξῃ, τῶν μὲν εὐεργεσιῶν ἐπελάθοντο, τὴν δὲ ἴσχυν καὶ τὸ φρόνημα ταπεινοῦν ἔσπευδον.

Such a charge, and such a failure, must have exasperated to the utmost the animosity between him and his chief opponents,—Aristeidês, Kimon, Alkmæon, and others; nor can we wonder that they were anxious to get rid of him by ostracism. In explaining this peculiar process, I have already stated that it could never be raised against any one individual separately and ostensibly,—and that it could never be brought into operation at all, unless its necessity were made clear, not merely to violent party men, but also to the assembled senate and people, including, of course, a considerable proportion of the more moderate citizens. We may well conceive that the conjuncture was deemed by many dispassionate Athenians well suited for the tutelary intervention of ostracism, the express benefit of which consisted in its separating political opponents when the antipathy between them threatened to push one or the other into extra-constitutional proceedings,—especially when one of those parties was Themistoklês, a man alike vast in his abilities and unscrupulous in his morality. Probably also there were not a few who wished to revenge the previous ostracism of Aristeidês: and lastly, the friends of Themistoklês himself, elate with his acquittal and his seemingly augmented popularity, might indulge hopes that the vote of ostracism would turn out in his favor, and remove one or other of his chief political opponents. From all these circumstances we learn without astonishment, that a vote of ostracism was soon after resorted to. It ended in the temporary banishment of Themistoklês.

He retired into exile, and was residing at Argos, whither he carried a considerable property, yet occasionally visiting other parts of Peloponnesus,[560]—when the exposure and death of Pausanias, together with the discovery of his correspondence, took place at Sparta. Among this correspondence were found proofs, which Thucydidês seems to have considered as real and sufficient, of the privity of Themistoklês. According to Ephorus and others, he is admitted to have been solicited by Pausanias, and to have known his plans,—but to have kept them secret while refusing to coöperate in them,[561]—but probably after his exile he took a more decided share in them than before; being well-placed for that purpose at Argos, a city not only unfriendly to Sparta, but strongly believed to have been in collusion with Xerxes at his invasion of Greece. On this occasion the Lacedæmonians sent to Athens, publicly to prefer a formal charge of treason against him, and to urge the necessity of trying him as a Pan-Hellenic criminal before the synod of the allies assembled at Sparta.[562] Whether this latter request would have been granted, or whether Themistoklês would have been tried at Athens, we cannot tell: for no sooner was he apprized that joint envoys from Sparta and Athens had been despatched to arrest him, than he fled forthwith from Argos to Korkyra. The inhabitants of that island, though owing gratitude to him and favorably disposed, could not venture to protect him against the two most powerful states in Greece, but sent him to the neighboring continent. Here, however, being still tracked and followed by the envoys, he was obliged to seek protection from a man whom he had formerly thwarted in a demand at Athens, and who had become his personal enemy,—Admêtus, king of the Molossians. Fortunately for him, at the moment when he arrived, Admêtus was not at home; and Themistoklês, becoming a suppliant to his wife, conciliated her sympathy so entirely, that she placed her child in his arms and planted him at the hearth in the full solemnity of supplication to soften her husband. As soon as Admêtus returned, Themistoklês revealed his name, his pursuers, and his danger,—entreating protection as a helpless suppliant in the last extremity. He appealed to the generosity of the Epirotic prince not to take revenge on a man now defenceless, for offence given under such very different circumstances; and for an offence too, after all, not of capital moment, while the protection now entreated was to the suppliant a matter of life or death. Admêtus raised him up from the hearth with the child in his arms,—an evidence that he accepted the appeal and engaged to protect him; refusing to give him up to the envoys, and at last only sending him away on the expression of his own wish to visit the king of Persia. Two Macedonian guides conducted him across the mountains to Pydna, in the Thermaic gulf, where he found a merchant-ship about to set sail for the coast of Asia Minor, and took a passage on board; neither the master nor the crew knowing his name. An untoward storm drove the vessel to the island of Naxos, at that moment besieged by an Athenian armament: had he been forced to land there, he would of course have been recognized and seized, but his wonted subtlety did not desert him. Having communicated both his name and the peril which awaited him, he conjured the master of the ship to assist in saving him, and not to suffer any one of the crew to land; menacing that if by any accident he were discovered, he would bring the master to ruin along with himself, by representing him as an accomplice induced by money to facilitate the escape of Themistoklês: on the other hand, in case of safety, he promised a large reward. Such promises and threats weighed with the master, who controlled his crew, and forced them to beat about during a day and a night off the coast, without seeking to land. After that dangerous interval, the storm abated, and the ship reached Ephesus in safety.[563]

[560] Thucyd. i, 137. ἦλθε γὰρ αὐτῷ ὕστερον ἔκ τε Ἀθηνῶν παρὰ τῶν φίλων, καὶ ἐξ Ἄργους ἃ ~ὑπεξέκειτο~, etc.

I follow Mr. Fynes Clinton, in considering the year 471 B. C. to be the date of the ostracism of Themistoklês. It may probably be so, nor is there any evidence positively to contradict it: but I think Mr. Clinton states it too confidently, as he admits that Diodorus includes, in the chapters which he devotes to one archon, events which must have happened in several different years (see Fast. Hellen. B. C. 471).

After the expedition under the command of Pausanias in 478 B. C., we have no one date at once certain and accurate, until we come to the death of Xerxes, where Diodorus is confirmed by the Canon of the Persian kings, B. C. 465. This last event determines by close approximation and inference, the flight of Themistoklês, the siege of Naxos, and the death of Pausanias: for the other events of this period, we are reduced to a more vague approximation, and can ascertain little beyond their order of succession.

[561] Thucyd. i, 135; Ephorus ap. Plutarch. de Malign. Herodoti, c. 5, p. 855; Diodor. xi, 54; Plutarch, Themist. c. 23.

[562] Diodor. xi, 55.

[563] Thucyd. i, 137. Cornelius Nepos (Themist. c. 8) for the most part follows Thucydidês, and professes to do so; yet he is not very accurate, especially about the relations between Themistoklês and Admêtus. Diodorus (xi, 56) seems to follow chiefly other guides: also to a great extent Plutarch (Themist. c. 24-26). There were evidently different accounts of his voyage, which represented him as reaching, not Ephesus, but the Æolic Kymê. Diodorus does not notice his voyage by sea.

Thus did Themistoklês, after a series of perils, find himself safe on the Persian side of the Ægean. At Athens, he was proclaimed a traitor, and his property confiscated: nevertheless, as it frequently happened in cases of confiscation, his friends secreted a considerable sum, and sent it over to him in Asia, together with the money which he had left at Argos; so that he was thus enabled liberally to reward the ship-captain who had preserved him. With all this deduction, the property which he possessed of a character not susceptible of concealment, and which was therefore actually seized, was found to amount to eighty talents, according to Theophrastus,—to one hundred talents, according to Theopompus. In contrast with this large sum, it is melancholy to learn that he had begun his political career with a property not greater than three talents.[564] The poverty of Aristeidês at the end of his life presents an impressive contrast to the enrichment of his rival.

[564] Plutarch, Themist. c. 25; also Kritias ap. Ælian. V. H. x, 17: compare Herodot. viii, 12.

The escape of Themistoklês, and his adventures in Persia, appear to have formed a favorite theme for the fancy and exaggeration of authors a century afterwards: we have thus many anecdotes which contradict either directly or by implication the simple narrative of Thucydidês. Thus we are told that at the moment when he was running away from the Greeks, the Persian king also had proclaimed a reward of two hundred talents for his head, and that some Greeks on the coast of Asia were watching to take him for this reward: that he was forced to conceal himself strictly near the coast, until means were found to send him up to Susa in a closed litter, under pretence that it was a woman for the king’s harem: that Mandanê, sister of Xerxes, insisted upon having him delivered up to her as an expiation for the loss of her son at the battle of Salamis: that he learned Persian so well, and discoursed in it so eloquently, as to procure for himself an acquittal from the Persian judges, when put upon his trial through the importunity of Mandanê: that the officers of the king’s household at Susa, and the satraps in his way back, threatened him with still farther perils: that he was admitted to see the king in person, after having received a lecture from the chamberlain on the indispensable duty of falling down before him to do homage, etc., with several other uncertified details,[565] which make us value more highly the narrative of Thucydidês. Indeed, Ephorus, Deinô, Kleitarchus, and Herakleidês, from whom these anecdotes appear mostly to be derived, even affirmed that Themistoklês had found Xerxes himself alive and seen him: whereas, Thucydidês and Charon, the two contemporary authors, for the former is _nearly_ contemporary, asserted that he had found Xerxes recently dead, and his son Artaxerxes on the throne.

[565] Diodor. xi, 56; Plutarch, Themist. c. 24-30.

According to Thucydidês, the eminent exile does not seem to have been exposed to the least danger in Persia. He presented himself as a deserter from Greece, and was accepted as such: moreover,—what is more strange, though it seems true,—he was received as an actual benefactor of the Persian king, and a sufferer from the Greeks on account of such dispositions,—in consequence of his communications made to Xerxes respecting the intended retreat of the Greeks from Salamis, and respecting the contemplated destruction of the Hellespontine bridge. He was conducted by some Persians on the coast up to Susa, where he addressed a letter to the king couched in the following terms, such as probably no modern European king would tolerate except from a Quaker: “I, Themistoklês, am come to thee, having done to thy house more mischief than any other Greek, as long as I was compelled in my own defence to resist the attack of thy father,—but having also done him yet greater good, when I could do so with safety to myself, and when his retreat was endangered. Reward is yet owing to me for my past service: moreover, I am now here, chased away by the Greeks, in consequence of my attachment to thee,[566] but able still to serve thee with great effect. I wish to wait a year, and then to come before thee in person to explain my views.”

[566] “Proditionem _ultrò imputabant_ (says Tacitus, Hist. ii, 60, respecting Paullinus and Proculus, the generals of the army of Otho, when they surrendered to Vitellius after the defeat at Bebriacum), spatium longi ante prœlium itineris, fatigationem Othonianorum, permixtum vehiculis agmen, ac _pleraque fortuita fraudi suæ assignantes_.—Et Vitellius credidit de perfidiâ, et fraudem absolvit.”

Whether the Persian interpreters, who read this letter to Artaxerxes Longimanus, exactly rendered its brief and direct expression, we cannot say. But it made a strong impression upon him, combined with the previous reputation of the writer, and he willingly granted the prayer for delay: though we shall not readily believe that he was so transported as to show his joy by immediate sacrifice to the gods, by an unusual measure of convivial indulgence, and by crying out thrice in his sleep, “I have got Themistoklês the Athenian,”—as some of Plutarch’s authors informed him.[567] In the course of the year granted, Themistoklês had learned so much of the Persian language and customs as to be able to communicate personally with the king, and acquire his confidence: no Greek, says Thucydidês, had ever before attained such a commanding influence and position at the Persian court. His ingenuity was now displayed in laying out schemes for the subjugation of Greece to Persia, which were eminently captivating to the monarch, who rewarded him with a Persian wife and large presents, sending him down to Magnesia, on the Mæander, not far from the coast of Ionia. The revenues of the district round that town, amounting to the large sum of fifty talents yearly, were assigned to him for bread: those of the neighboring seaport of Myus, for articles of condiment to his bread, which was always accounted the main nourishment: those of Lampsakus on the Hellespont, for wine.[568] Not knowing the amount of these two latter items, we cannot determine how much revenue Themistoklês received altogether: but there can be no doubt; judging from the revenues of Magnesia alone, that he was a great pecuniary gainer by his change of country. After having visited various parts of Asia,[569] he lived for a certain time at Magnesia, in which place his family joined him from Athens. How long his residence at Magnesia lasted we do not know, but seemingly long enough to acquire local estimation and leave mementos behind him. He at length died of sickness, when sixty-five years old, without having taken any step towards the accomplishment of those victorious campaigns which he had promised to Artaxerxes. That sickness was the real cause of his death, we may believe on the distinct statement of Thucydidês;[570] who at the same time notices a rumor partially current in his own time, of poison voluntarily taken, from painful consciousness on the part of Themistoklês himself that the promises made could never be performed,—a farther proof of the general tendency to surround the last years of this distinguished man with impressive adventures, and to dignify his last moments with a revived feeling, not unworthy of his earlier patriotism. The report may possibly have been designedly circulated by his friends and relatives, in order to conciliate some tenderness towards his memory (his sons still continued citizens at Athens, and his daughters were married there). These friends farther stated that they had brought back his bones to Attica, at his own express command, and buried them privately without the knowledge of the Athenians; no condemned traitor being permitted to be buried in Attic soil. If, however, we even suppose that this statement was true, no one could point out with certainty the spot wherein such interment had taken place: nor does it seem, when we mark the cautious expressions of Thucydidês,[571] that he himself was satisfied of the fact: moreover, we may affirm with confidence that the inhabitants of Magnesia, when they showed the splendid sepulchral monument erected in honor of Themistoklês in their own market-place, were persuaded that his bones were really inclosed within it.

[567] Plutarch, Themist. c. 28.

[568] Thucyd. i, 138; Diodor. xi, 57. Besides the three above-named places, Neanthês and Phanias described the grant as being still fuller and more specific: they stated that Perkôtê was granted to Themistoklês for bedding, and Palæskêpsis for clothing (Plutarch, Themist. c. 29; Athenæus, i, p. 29).

This seems to have been a frequent form of grants from the Persian and Egyptian kings, to their queens, relatives, or friends,—a grant nominally to supply some particular want or taste: see Dr. Arnold’s note on the passage of Thucydidês. I doubt his statement, however, about the land-tax, or rent; I do not think that it was a tenth or a fifth of the produce of the soil in these districts which was granted to Themistoklês, but the portion of regal revenue, or tribute, levied in them. The Persian kings did not take the trouble to assess and collect the tribute: they probably left that to the inhabitants themselves, provided the sum total were duly paid.

[569] Plutarch, Themistoklês, c. 31. πλανώμενος περὶ τὴν Ἀσίαν: this statement seems probable enough, though Plutarch rejects it.

[570] Thucyd. i, 138. Νοσήσας δὲ τελευτᾷ τὸν βίον· λέγουσι δέ τινες καὶ ἑκούσιον φαρμάκῳ ἀποθανεῖν αὐτὸν, ἀδύνατον νομίσαντα εἶναι ἐπιτελέσαι βασιλεῖ ἃ ὑπέσχετο.

This current story, as old as Aristophanês (Equit. 83, compare the Scholia), alleged that Themistoklês had poisoned himself by drinking bull’s blood (see Diodor. xi, 58), who assigns to this act of taking poison a still more sublime patriotic character by making it part of a design on the part of Themistoklês to restrain the Persian king from warring against Greece.

Plutarch (Themist. c. 31, and Kimon, c. 18) and Diodorus both state, as an unquestionable fact, that Themistoklês died by poisoning himself: omitting even to notice the statement of Thucydidês, that he died of disease. Cornelius Nepos (Themist. c. 10) follows Thucydidês. Cicero (Brutus, c. 11) refers the story of the suicide by poison to Clitarchus and Stratoklês, recognizing it as contrary to Thucydidês. He puts into the mouth of his fellow dialogist, Atticus, a just rebuke of the facility with which historical truth was sacrificed to rhetorical purpose.

[571] Thucyd. i, 138. τὰ δὲ ὀστᾶ ~φασὶ κομισθῆναι αὐτοῦ οἱ προσήκοντες οἴκαδε κελεύσαντος ἐκείνου~, καὶ τεθῆναι κρύφα Ἀθηναίων ἐν τῇ Ἀττικῇ· οὐ γὰρ ἐξῆν θάπτειν, ὡς ἐπὶ προδοσίᾳ φεύγοντος.

Cornelius Nepos, who here copies Thucydidês, gives this statement by mistake, as if Thucydidês had himself affirmed it: “Idem (sc. Thucydidês) ossa ejus clam in Atticâ ab amicis sepulta, quoniam legibus non concederetur, quod proditionis esset damnatus, memoriæ prodidit.” This shows the haste or inaccuracy with which these secondary authors so often cite: Thucydidês is certainly not a witness _for_ the fact: if anything, he may be said to count somewhat against it.

Plutarch (Themist. c. 32) shows that the burial-place of Themistoklês, supposed to be in Attica, was yet never verified before his time: the guides of Pausanias, however, in the succeeding century, had become more confident (Pausanias, i, 1, 3).

Aristeidês died about three or four years after the ostracism of Themistoklês;[572] but respecting the place and manner of his death, there were several contradictions among the authors whom Plutarch had before him. Some affirmed that he perished on foreign service in the Euxine sea; others, that he died at home, amidst the universal esteem and grief of his fellow-citizens. A third story, confined to the single statement of Kraterus, and strenuously rejected by Plutarch, represents Aristeidês as having been falsely accused before the Athenian judicature and condemned to a fine of fifty minæ, on the allegation of having taken bribes during the assessment of the tribute upon the allies,—which fine he was unable to pay, and was therefore obliged to retire to Ionia, where he died. Dismissing this last story, we find nothing certain about his death except one fact,—but that fact at the same time the most honorable of all,—that he died very poor. It is even asserted that he did not leave enough to pay funeral expenses,—that a sepulchre was provided for him at Phalêrum at the public cost, besides a handsome donation to his son Lysimachus, and a dowry to each of his two daughters. In the two or three ensuing generations, however, his descendants still continued poor, and even at that remote day, some of them received aid out of the public purse, from the recollection of their incorruptible ancestor. Near a century and a half afterwards, a poor man, named Lysimachus, descendant of the just Aristeidês, was to be seen at Athens, near the chapel of Iacchus, carrying a mysterious tablet, and obtaining his scanty fee of two oboli for interpreting the dreams of the passers by: Demetrius the Phalerean procured from the people, for the mother and aunt of this poor man, a small daily allowance.[573] On all these points the contrast is marked when we compare Aristeidês with Themistoklês. The latter, having distinguished himself by ostentatious cost at Olympia, and by a choregic victory at Athens, with little scruple as to the means of acquisition,—ended his life at Magnesia in dishonorable affluence, greater than ever, and left an enriched posterity both at that place and at Athens. More than five centuries afterwards, his descendant, the Athenian Themistoklês, attended the lectures of the philosopher Ammonius at Athens, as the comrade and friend of Plutarch himself.[574]

[572] Respecting the probity of Aristeidês, see an interesting fragment of Eupolis, the comic writer (Δῆμοι, Fragm, iv, p. 457, ed. Meineke).

[573] Plutarch, Arist. c. 26, 27; Cornelius Nepos. Arist. c. 3: compare Aristophan. Vesp. 53.

[574] Plutarch, Themist. c. 5-32.