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to enjoy, without an inconvenient sacrifice, their franchise in the popular assembly, and to offer themselves for the different magistracies, which up to this time had been practically open only to men of means and leisure.

      Furthermore, Pericles introduced or extended the practice of supplying all the citizens with free tickets to the theatre and other places of amusement, and of banqueting the people on festival days at the public expense.

      STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS OF THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE.—Under Pericles Athens had become the most powerful naval state in the world. In one of his last speeches, made at the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, in which he recounts the resources of the Athenian empire, Pericles says to his fellow-citizens: "There is not now a king, there is not any nation in the universal world, able to withstand that navy which at this juncture you can launch out to sea."

      But the most significant feature of this new imperial power was the combination of these vast material resources with the most imposing display of intellectual resources that the world had ever witnessed. Never before had there been such a union of the material and intellectual elements of civilization at the seat of empire. Literature and art had been carried to the utmost perfection possible to human genius. Art was represented by the inimitable creations of Phidias and Polygnotus. The drama was illustrated by the incomparable tragedies of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and by the comedies of Aristophanes, while the writing of the world's annals had become an art in the graceful narrations of Herodotus.

      But there were elements of weakness in the splendid imperial structure. The subject cities of the empire were the slaves of Athens. To her they paid tribute. To her courts they were dragged for trial. Naturally they regarded Athens as the destroyer of Hellenic liberties, and watched impatiently for the first favorable moment to revolt, and throw off the hateful yoke that she had imposed upon them. Hence the Athenian empire rested upon a foundation of sand.

      Had Athens, instead of enslaving her confederates of the Delian league, only been able to find out some way of retaining them as allies in an equal union—a great and perhaps impossible task in that age of the world—as head of the federated Greek race, she might have secured for Hellas the sovereignty of the Mediterranean, and the history of Rome might have ended with the first century of the Republic.

      Furthermore, in his system of payment for the most common public services, and of wholesale public gratuities, Pericles had introduced or encouraged practices that had the same demoralizing effects upon the Athenians that the free distribution of grain at Rome had upon the Roman populace. These pernicious customs cast discredit upon labor, destroyed frugality, and fostered idleness, thus sapping the virtues and strength of the Athenian democracy.

      Illustrations of these weaknesses, as well as of the strength of the

       Athenian empire, will be afforded by the great struggle between Athens and

       Sparta known as the Peloponnesian War, the causes and chief incidents of

       which we shall next rehearse.

CHAPTER XV.

       Table of Contents

      THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR: THE SPARTAN AND THE THEBAN SUPREMACY.

      1. THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR (431–404 B.C.).

      CAUSES OF THE WAR.—During the closing years of the life of Pericles, the growing jealousy between Athens and Sparta broke out in the long struggle known as the Peloponnesian War. Pericles had foreseen the coming storm: "I descry war," said he, "lowering from the Peloponnesus." His whole later policy looked toward the preparation of Athens for the "irrepressible conflict."

      The immediate causes of the war were, first, the interference of Athens, on the side of the Corcyræans, in a quarrel between them and their mother city Corinth; and secondly, the blockade by the Athenians of Potidæa, on the Macedonian coast. This was a Corinthian colony, but it was a member of the Delian league, and was now being chastised by Athens for attempted secession. Corinth, as the ever-jealous naval rival of Athens, had endeavored to lend aid to her daughter, but had been worsted in an engagement with the Athenians.

      With affairs in this shape, Corinth, seconded by other states that had causes of complaint against Athens, appealed to Sparta, as the head of the Dorian alliance, for aid and justice. The Spartans, after listening to the deputies of both sides, decided that the Athenians had been guilty of injustice, and declared for war. The resolution of the Spartans was endorsed by the Peloponnesian confederation, and apparently approved by the Delphian oracle, which, in response to an inquiry of the Spartans as to what would be the issue of the proposed undertaking, assured them that "they would gain the victory, if they fought with all their might."

      COMPARISON OF THE RESOURCES OF SPARTA AND OF ATHENS.—The resources of Hellas were, at the outbreak of the war, very evenly divided between the two parties. With Sparta were all the states of the Peloponnesus, save Argos and Achaia, while beyond the Isthmus the Boeotian League, headed by Thebes, and other states were her allies. Together, these states could raise a land force of sixty thousand men, besides a considerable naval armament, Corinth being especially strong in ships.

      Athens commanded all the resources of the subject cities—about three hundred in number, with twice as many smaller towns—of her great maritime empire. Her independent allies were Chios, Lesbos, Corcyra, and other states. Of course the chief strength of Athens lay in her splendid navy.

      THE BEGINNING: ATTACK UPON PLATÆA BY THE THEBANS.—The first act in the long and terrible drama was enacted at night, within the walls of Platæa. This city, though in Boeotia, was under the protection of Athens, and would have nothing to do with the Boeotian League.

      Anxious to get possession of this place before the actual outbreak of the war which they saw to be inevitable, the Thebans planned its surprise and capture. Three hundred Thebans gained access to the unguarded city in the dead of night, and marching to the public square, summoned the Platæans to exchange the Athenian for a Boeotian alliance.

      The Platæans were upon the point of acceding to all the demands made upon them, when, discovering the small number of the enemy, they attacked and overpowered them in the darkness, and took a hundred and eighty of them prisoners. These captives they afterwards murdered, in violation, as the Thebans always maintained, of a sacred promise that their lives should be spared. This wretched affair at Platæa precipitated the war (431 B.C.).

      INVASION OF ATTICA: PESTILENCE AT ATHENS.—A Spartan army was soon overrunning Attica, while an Athenian fleet was ravaging the coasts of the Peloponnesus. Pericles persuaded the country people of Attica to abandon their villas and hamlets and gather within the defences of the city. He did not deem it prudent to risk a battle in the open fields. From the walls of Athens the people could see the flames of their burning villages and farmhouses, as the enemy ravaged the plains of Attica up to the very gates of the city. It required all the persuasion of Pericles to restrain them from issuing in a body from behind the ramparts and rushing to the defence of their homes.

      The second year the Lacedæmonians again ravaged the fields about Athens, and drove the Athenians almost to frenzy with the sight of the flame and smoke of such property as had escaped the destruction of the previous year. To increase their misery, a pestilence broke out within the crowded city, and added its horrors to the already unbearable calamities of war. No pen could picture the despair and gloom that settled over the city. Athens lost, probably, one-fourth of her fighting men. Pericles, who had been the very soul and life of Athens through these dark days, fell a victim to the plague (429 B.C.). In dying, he said he considered his greatest praise to be that "he had never caused an Athenian to put on mourning."

      After the death of Pericles the leadership of affairs at Athens fell into the hands of unprincipled demagogues, of whom Cleon was chief. The mob element got control of the popular assembly, so that hereafter we shall find many of its actions characterized neither by virtue nor wisdom.

      DESPERATE AND CRUEL CHARACTER OF THE WAR.—On both sides the war was

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