READING HALL

THE DOORS OF WISDOM

GEORGE GROTE'S HISTORY OF GREECE

CHAPTER 65.

FROM THE BATTLES OF PLATAEA 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, 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 t 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 Thermopylae than by the victors at Salamis, Greece owed her salvation chiefly to the imbecility, cowardice, and credulous rashness, of Xerxes. 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 cooperation, than that which they actually manifested.

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,—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 Plataea. 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: Demosthenes and Brasidas, the Cyreian army and Xenophon, Agesilaus, Iphikrates, Epaminondas, Philip of Macedon, Alexander: 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.

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 manoeuvring 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,—ability in command, with vigor in execution.

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 Plataea 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 Plataea, 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 Mykale, 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, Themistokles; next, Aristeides. 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 Themistocles 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 Platea, 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 Troezen, Aegina, 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. 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 Aeginetans, 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. But while sending an embassy to Athens, to offer a friendly remonstrance against the project of refortifying 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.

A statesman like Themistokles 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, Themistocles himself was presently despatched thither, ns one among three envoys instructed to enter into explanations with the Spartan authorities; but his two colleagues, Aristeides and Abroniclius, 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 Aristeides and Abroniclius, 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 Aeginetans sent them positive intelligence that the wall was rapidly advancing. Themistokles, 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 obtained for some time unqualified credit, until fresh messengers again raised suspicions in the minds of the Spartans. In reply to these, Themistokles 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. Aristeides and Abronichus had now arrived,—the wall was announced to be of a height at least above contempt,—and Themistocles 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.

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 Themistocles, 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,—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.

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. 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.

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 Thucydides 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 Kallirhoe. 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.

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 Themistocles, 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 Themistocles, 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 and fortification of the Peiraeus. This again was only the prosecution of an enterprise previously begun: for he had already, while in office two or three years before, made his countrymen sensible that the open roadstead of Phalerum was thoroughly insecure, and had prevailed upon them to improve and employ in part the more spacious harbors of Peiraeus 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 Themistokles 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. Peiraeus 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, 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. 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. 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 walk, 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.” 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 Peiraeus 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. We may even suspect that if Themistokles could have followed his own feelings, he would have altered the site of the city from Athens to Piraeus: the attachment of the people to their ancient and holy reck 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.

Forty-five years afterwards, at the beginning of the Pelopon­nesian war, we shall hear from Perikles, who espoused and carried out the large ideas of Themistocles, 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 Themistocles 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 Thucydides 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, Peiraeus 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, Themistocles proposed to exempt them from the metoikion, or non-freeman’s annual tax : 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 Piraeus 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 Acharnae,—and the fish obtained in abundance near the coast,—all found opulent buyers and a constant demand from the augmenting town population.

We are farther told that Themistocles 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.

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

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 Plataea (bc 478) set sail for Asia under the Spartan Pausanias. Twenty ships from the various cities of Peloponnesus were under his command: the Athenians alone furnished thirty, under the orders of Aristeides 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, 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.

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, 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 Plataea, he had acquired a renown unparalleled in Grecian experience, together with a prodigious share of the plunder: the concubines, horses, 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 Lacedemonians 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. 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 Boeotia) to supersede Megabates 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.”

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, 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, 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. Kleonice, 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. 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.

In spite of the flagrant conduct of Pausanias, the Lacedaemonians 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, 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, Aristeides and Cimon, 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; entreating to be allowed to serve under Athens as leader instead of Sparta. Plutarch tells us that Aristeides 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. 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 Thucydides. To give the Spartans a just ground of indignation, would have been glaring imprudence on the part of Aristeides: 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.

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 Hetoemaridas, 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. 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. 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 Leotychides, 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, Leotychides was sent with an army into Thessaly to put down the Aleuadae 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 Lacedaemonians condemned him to banishment, and razed his house to the ground: he died afterwards in exile at Tegea. Two such instances were well calculated to make the Lacedaemonians 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.

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 Plataea and Mykale,—when the town of Plataea 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 Platea, towards Sparta. 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.

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 Aristeides as the representative of Athens, might have sufficed to bring them into harmonious cooperation. 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 Themistokles 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 Themistocles; but to employ in his stead the well-known, we might almost say the ostentatious, probity of Aristeides. This must be accounted good fortune, since at the moment when Aristeides 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.

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. Thucydides, in his brief sketch, makes us clearly understand the difference between presiding Athens, with her autonomous and regularly assembled allies in 476 BC, and imperial Athens, with her subject allies in 432 BC; 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 Hellenotamiae, 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, 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.

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 maybe 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, widespread, and voluntary movement which then brought together the maritime and insular Greeks distributed throughout the Aegean 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 Hellenotamiae, 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 Aegean 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 Aegean 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, which are not specified to us. We may thus understand why the Greek cities on and near the Chalcidic peninsula,—Argilus, Stageirus, Akanthus, Skolus, Olynthus, Spartdlus, etc.,—which we know to have joined under the first assessment of Aristeides, were not less anxious 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 Aeolic Lesbos and Tenedos, or continental towns such as Miletus and Byzantium: by all of whom adhesion to this alliance must have been contemplated, in 477 or 476 bc, 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 Lacedaemonian Antalcidas, 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.

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 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 Hermione, 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: 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 Kolonte 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: 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.

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, 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. 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; 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, 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.

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 lie 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 Thucydides 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 Taenarus, under the belter 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, alter 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 Athene Chalcioekus (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 Tamarus, 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,—not recognized by Thucydides, 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 Kaeadas, 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 Athene, 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, Athene, 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.

Thus perished a Greek who reached the pinnacle of renown simply from the accidents of his lofty descent, and of his being general at Plataea, 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 Themistocles.

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 Themistocles, 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 Themistocles, 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 Themistocles and Aristeides had been greatly appeased by the invasion of Xerxes, which had imposed upon both the peremptory necessity of cooperation 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. Themistokles stands forward as the contriver of the city walls and architect of Peiraeus: Aristeides 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 Themistocles 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 Cimon, 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, 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 cither 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 Peiraeus,—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.

The political change arising from hence in Athens was not less important than the military. “The maritime multitude, authors of the victory of Salamis,” 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 wav 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 Kleisthenes. At the time when that constitution was first established, 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 Aristeides ; 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 strategi, 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.

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 strategi 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 Peiraeus,—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 strategi, we know him afterwards only as a civil magistrate, administering justice to the metics, or non-freemen, while the strategi 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,—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 Peiraeus, cannot have com­menced until after this period, when Peiraeus had been raised by Themistokles 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 Peiraeus than in the city. 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 strategi; assigning the foreign and military department entirely to the strategi, 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.

With this expansion both of democratical feeling and of military activity at Athens, Aristeides 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 Themistocles 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 Aristeides, and far more violent in their antipathy than Aristeides himself. Of these, the chief were Cimon—son of Miltiades—and Alkmaeon; moreover, it seems that the Lacedaemonians, though full of esteem for Themistocles 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 Peiraeus. The Lacedaemonian influence, then not inconsiderable in Athens, was employed to second the political combinations against him. 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 Aristobule, or Artemis of admirable counsel; just as Pausanias had irritated the Lacedaemonians by inscribing his own single name on the Delphian tripod, and as the friends of Aristeides had displeased the Athenians by endless encomiums upon his justice. 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. Themistocles, 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 Themistocles,— the poet Timocreon 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 Timocreon, personally incensed on this ground against Themistocles, 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. Timocreon is as emphatic in his admiration of Aristeides as in his censure of Themistocles, whom he denounces as “a lying and unjust traitor.”

Such conduct as that described by this new Archilochus, even making every allowance for exaggeration, must have caused Themistocles 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 Themistocles had rendered preeminent 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 Themistocles also, when combined with the corrupt proceedings which stained his public conduct: we must recollect, also, that Themistocles 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 Lacedaemonians, hostile to Themistocles 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. But no satisfactory proof could be furnished of the accusation, which Themistocles himself strenuously denied, not without emphatic appeals to his illustrious services. In spite of violent invectives against him from Alkmaeon and Cimon, tempered, indeed, by a generous moderation on the part of Aristeides, 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 bis 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.

Such a charge, and such a failure, must have exasperated to the utmost the animosity between him and his chief opponents,—Aristeides, Cimon, Alkmaeon, 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 extraconstitutional proceedings,—especially when one of those parties was Themistocles, 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 Aristeides: and lastly, the friends of Themistocles 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 Themistocles.

He retired into exile, and was residing at Argos, whither he carried a considerable property, yet occasionally visiting other parts of Peloponnesus,—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 Thucydides seems to have considered as real and sufficient, of the privity of Themistokles. 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 cooperate in them,—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 Lacedemonians 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. Whether this latter request would have been granted, or whether Themistokles 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 Corcyra. 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,—Admetus, king of the Molossians. Fortunately for him, at the moment when he arrived, Admetus was not at home; and Themistocles, 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 Admetus returned, Themistocles 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. Admetus 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 merchantship 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 Themistocles : on the other band, 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.

Thus did Themistocles, after a series of perils, find himself safe on the Persian side of the Aegean. 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. The poverty of Aristeides at the end of his life presents an impressive contrast to the enrichment of his rival.

The escape of Themistocles, 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 Thucydides. 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 Mandane, 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 Mandane: 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, which make us value more highly the narrative of Thucydides. Indeed, Ephorus, Deino, Cleitarchus, and Herakleides, from whom these anecdotes appear mostly to be derived, even affirmed that Themistocles had found Xerxes himself alive and seen him : whereas, Thucydides 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.

According to Thucydides, 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, Themistokles, 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, 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” .

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 Themistokles the Athenian,”—as some of Plutarch’s authors informed him. In the course of the year granted, Themistocles 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 Thucydides, 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 Meander, 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. Not knowing the amount of these two latter items, we cannot determine how much revenue Themistokles 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, 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 Thucydides 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 Themistocles 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 Thucydides, 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 Themistokles in their own market-place, were persuaded that his bones were really inclosed within it.

Aristeides died about three or four years after the ostracism of Themistokles, 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 Craterus, and strenuously rejected by Plutarch, represents Aristeides as having been falsely accused before the Athenian judicature and condemned to a fine of fifty mime. 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 Phalerum 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 Aristeides, 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. On all these points the contrast is marked when we compare Aristeides with Themistokles. 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 Themistocles, attended the lectures of the philosopher Ammonius at Athens, as the comrade and friend of Plutarch himself.

CHAPTER 66

PROCEEDINGS OF THE CONFEDERACY UNDER ATHENS AS HEAD

FIRST FORMATION AND RAPID EXPANSION OF THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE.