and poured a libation; and after having prayed at the same time that of their tyrant Theomesto the gods of the lower world, solemnly invited tor, who had been rewarded for the zeal and ine brave men who had fallen in defence of their courage he had shown in the service of the incountry to share the banquet which her grati-vaders in the battle of Salamis, with the supreme tude had provided for them. So little could the Greeks be in the midst of their greatness. power in his native country. The chief spokesman among the Samians was Hegesistratus, a man of ready eloquence, who endeavoured to convince the Spartan king that he had only to show himself on the coast of Ionia to excite the Ionians to a general insurrection; that the Persians either would not wait for his approach, or would fall a rich and easy prey to his arms; finally, he said that himself and his colleagues were willing to abide the event of the enterprise, as hostages, on board the allied fleet. It was only some weeks before that Leotychides, as we have seen, had received and rejected a similar proposal from Chios, which, like this, was made by a few individuals who professed to represent the wishes of the whole nation, but who might be suspected of being No enemy now remained in the field to call for the farther stay of the allies in Boeotia; but the honour of Greece required that they should not withdraw before they had punished the Thebans, who had not merely submitted to the barbarian, but had zealously lent their aid to enslave their country. According to the strict construction of the oath which had been taken the year before at the Isthmus, the offending city should have been compelled to dedicate a tenth of all it possessed to the Delphic god. It was known, however, that it had been forced into the part it acted by the power of a small faction, seconded by the arms of the Persians, and that it was a reluctant instrument in their hands. Justice and prudence, therefore, pre-blinded by their private passions and interests. scribed that the vengeance should fall on the Yet now the Spartan king was strongly inclined guilty few. Ten days after the battle the allied to listen to the call. His former doubts and army appeared before the walls of Thebes, and fears had probably, in a great degree, subsided demanded the surrender of the traitors, and es- during his stay at Delos. He may in that inpecially of Timagenidas and Attaginus. Their terval have gained more information as to the influence, however, was still great enough to spirit prevailing in Ionia, and the strength of prevail on their fellow-citizens to resist the de- the Persians: a new summons from another mand and to sustain a siege, though the con- quarter was in itself an argument that both federates had declared their purpose never to were grounded on a reasonable prospect of sucretire till they had extorted compliance. For cess; he had, besides, been long enough in the twenty days they blockaded the town and rav- same station to grow tired of inaction. Whataged its territory. Then the party which had ever was his motive, he did not long resist the brought this evil upon Thebes, either perceiving suit of the Samians, and in his present mood that they could no longer hold out, or hoping to the name of Hegesistratus (leader of armies) elude punishment, consented to be delivered struck him as so happy an omen that he affectup. Attaginus, however, made his escape; his ed to ground his compliance upon it, and when children and his adherents were put into the the other envoys returned home, he kept Hegehands of the besiegers. Pausanias spared and sistratus with him. The sacrifices, too, condismissed the family of the offender, which had ducted by a soothsayer who claimed an herednot shared his guilt. His accomplices had ex-itary gift of divination, seconded the inclination pected to be brought to a regular trial before of the commander. Thus encouraged, he set the commanders of the allied army, and had sail for Samos. relied on the power of gold to secure a majority among their judges. But Pausanias, foreseeing this danger, frustrated their hopes by an arbitrary step, the first indication that appears of his imperious character: he dismissed the forces of his allies, and carried his prisoners to Corinth, where he put them to death, it seems, without any form of trial. On arriving there, he found one part of the prediction of the envoys fulfilled. The Persian admirals did not venture to meet him on the sea, and, at his approach, sent away the Phonician squadron, and with the remainder of the fleet sailed across to the mainland to seek the protection of the land force which was stationed, under the command of Tigranes, on the On the same day that the victory at Platæa coast, at the foot of the mountains that end in put an end to the undertakings of the Persians the promontory of Mycalè, opposite the southfor the conquest of Greece, they suffered the ern extremity of Samos. This army was sixty first signal blow that the Greeks struck at their thousand strong; it had been left by Xerxes, power on their own continent. The fleet under when he began his expedition, for the security Leotychides was still stationed at Delos, watch-of Ionia: he himself was still at Sardis. The ing from a distance the movements of the Per- ships were drawn up on the beach at the foot sian fleet, but much more anxious about the of the mountain, and enclosed within a wall proceedings of the two armies, which were hastily constructed of stones and timber. The known to be on the eve of a momentous strug-army was posted on the shore in front of it gle. During this interval of suspense three envoys arrived to lay before Leotychides the wishes of a strong party in Samos, who were desirous of shaking off the yoke of Persia, and pressly notices-the dresses which once formed a part of the offerings. If, according to Dr. Arnold's very probable Conjecture, they were consumed, we may suppose that they used to be heaped on the pile mentioned by Plutarch, at which the victim was sacrificed. Perhaps in Plutarch's time poverty had induced the Plateans to drop this part of the ceremony. The Greeks were at first confounded by the retreat of the enemy, and by the new position he had taken, and debated for a time whether they should return to Delos, or make for the Hellespont. At length, however, they resolved not to give way to the unexpected obstacle, but to cross over to Mycalè and offer battle. When they came near the shore, Leotychides repeated the stratagem which Themistocles had used on the retreat from Artemisium for a similar ains, which were guarded by the Milesians. The Persians, however, on reaching the camp, made a stand against their pursuers, as they came in small bodies, and maintained the contest even after the loss of their general Tigranes, and of one of the admirals. The arrival of the Spartans decided the conflict, and put them to a total rout. In the mean while, the disarmed Samians, as soon as they saw the battle begin to turn, had lent all the assistance they could to the Greeks, and the other Ionians soon followed their example, and fell upon the Persians. Even of those who escaped from the carnage into the mountain, a part were betrayed by the Milesians, who, instead of guiding them to the summit, led them into tracks which brought them upon the enemy, and themselves joined in destroying them. Only a small remnant gained the heights in safety, where they remained till the Greeks had retired, and then made for Sardis. The Greeks, after having collected the booty, and burned the ships and the palisade, returned to Samos. purpose. When his galley was within hearing | betook themselves to the passes of the mountof the Persian troops, he addressed a proclamation by the voice of a herald to the Ionians, in which he exhorted them, in the approaching battle, to remember first the liberty of their country, and next the watchword which he gave them. All who heard him he desired to convey the same summons to the absent. This contrivance succeeded in the principal object; the Persians believed that a plan of desertion and revolt had been already formed among the Ionians, to be carried into execution at the first favourable opportunity, and that they had just received the signal. When, therefore, Leotychides, finding that the enemy had no intention of coming to an engagement at sea, landed his men to attack them on the shore, they disarmed the Samians, who were most strongly suspected of disaffection, and removed the Milesians from the camp, under the pretext of posting them on the top of Mycalè to guard the passes. The Persians were drawn up at the foot of the mountain behind the breast work, which, according to their usual practice, they formed with their serried shields. As the Greeks approached, a herald's staff was found lying on the beach. Whether it had been purposely placed there, whether it suggested or only appeared to confirm a rumour for which all minds were ripe, must be left to conjecture. But at this critical moment a report flew through the Grecian ranks that their countrymen had gained a victory over Mardonius in Boeotia. Nothing could be more natural than such a rumour, whether it be considered as the effect of accident or design: that it should af terward have been found to coincide with the truth, is one of those marvels which would be intolerable in a fictitious narrative, and yet now and then occur in the real course of events. Being believed, however, without any reason, it was much more efficacious in raising the confidence and courage of the Greeks than if it had been transmitted through any ordinary channel on the strongest evidence; for now the favour of the gods seemed visible, not only in the substance, but in the manner of the tidings. Cheered with the assurance that Greece was already delivered, they advanced to combat, not any longer for safety and a home, but for the mastery of the islands and the Hellespont. Here they held a council on the plan to be adopted for the protection of the Ionians, if they should be induced to engage in a general revolt. As long as a Greek fleet commanded the Egean, the islanders were safe; but the Ionian cities on the continent could not be permanently secured against the power of Persia without the constant presence of a Greek force. The Peloponnesian commanders, therefore, proposed that the Ionians, who prized independence above every other good, should quit their country, and that the Greeks who had taken part with the barbarian should be compelled to resign their maritime regions to them. But the Athenians vehemently opposed this project, and denied the right of the Peloponnesians to interfere in the management of their colonies. Their allies readily dropped the scheme, which, perhaps, they had scarcely meditated in earnest, and it was agreed that the continental Ionians should be left to make the best terms they could with the Persians, but that Chios, Lesbos, Samos, and the other islands of the Egean should be solemnly admitted into the Greek confederacy, and should bind themselves never to abandon it. When this question had been settled, the fleet steered its course to the Hellespont, where the bridges were supposed to be still standing. When it was found that they were already removed, Leotychides and the Peloponnesians, conceiving that every object of their expedition had been attained, proposed to sail away home: Xanthippus and the Athenians wished to remain, and make an attempt to recover the ancient dominion of Miltiades in the Chersonesus. This was a conquest in which the allies took no interest, and they left the Athenians to accomplish it as they could by themselves. The Athenians, who occupied one wing, with the troops of Corinth, Sicyon, and Træzen, which were drawn up next to them, composing about half of the army, having only smooth ground between them and the enemy, came up first, and immediately began the attack, certain of victory, and only eager that it should be entirely their own. The Spartans in the other wing, and the rest of the forces, were parted from the scene of action by the bed of a torrent, and by a spur of the mountain, which compelled Xanthippus immediately laid siege to Sestus, them to make a longer circuit, and retarded their the strongest place of the whole peninsula, march Before they had arrived, the Athenian where many Persians from the neighbouring wing had forced the slight barrier on which the towns, on hearing of the approach of the GrePersians chiefly relied for protection, and at cian fleet, had sought refuge. The governor, length drove their antagonists, and probably a a Persian named Artayctes, had abused his still greater number who were never engaged, power, which extended over the whole Cherto take refuge in the inclosure that contained sonesus, by wanton acts of tyrannical insolence. their ships. They themselves entered with the One above all provoked the indignation of the fugitives, and the greater part of the barbari-Greeks under his government. The town of ans, without any attempt at farther resistance, Elæus, on the southeast coast of the Cherso by the war, and to meet the so Set tire ea- mes brescot of powering the grave of the been commed by the principal Persians, was a bere Proces are who had fe jen by the band of trap tế muas The subur nodes were drained Humor 2 be leased, the fing of all the hot of Azaru sum on the Trojas abone He was bornrat e Leuwt a tract of monyerged groot and a temore, we had been gradUz end was forty deregu Its weath Sonny on the expiety of Anaye, and when Xertes pressed themes Sextus on bis mIT wwards Greece de prayed the king to grant At the some of a Greek who bad draded his bom troue and say ng met with the death be deserted, was bersed in the neighbourhood. Xerxes, not suspecting what he was giving away, granted the wort Artavetes not only sponed the temple of ts treasures, but ploughed and wowed the sacred engosure, and even stadously profaned the sanctuary by selecting at for the scene of his grossest debauchery. He was now surprised by the arrival of the Atheman fleet before he had made any preparations for sustaining a siege, which he had so little reason to expect. The fort Seations, indeed, were strong enough to resist all the attacks of the besiegers, and as the autumn was advan- | The restoration of the private dwellings was eing, they began to grow impatient of their left to their owners; they were rebuilt, as lengthened absence from home, and importuned · Rome after its destruction, without any uniform their commanders to lead them back to Attica; or regular design, and upon a scale more suitabut Xanthippus and his colleagues refused to ble to the indigent condition of the citizens than abandon the undertaking without orders, and to the future greatness of the state. Almost the blockade was continued throughout the win-, all were small and mean, and overhung and enter: the stores of the besieged were the sooner cumbered the narrow, crooked streets with unexhausted, as their numbers had received an' sightly projections, which soon became so inextraordinary addition; and when the spring convenient that, at the instance of Themistocame, famine began to make ravages among cles and Aristides, the Areopagus exercised its them: the scarcity became such that they were authority in removing or limiting them. But driven to boil and eat the leathern stays of their the city never outgrew these defects in its oribedding. In this extremity, Artayctes and an-ginal construction, and, after the lapse of nearly other Persian of high rank named Eobazus, two centuries, and all the changes effected duwith the greater part of their countrymen, at-ring that period by the progress of luxury, a tempted to make their escape, and they suc- stranger who entered it for the first time was ceeded in passing through the Athenian lines in the night-time. The next morning, as soon, as their flight was discovered, the Greek inhabitants of the town opened their gates to the besiegers. The fugitives were closely pursued. Cobazus, however, who had left the city soon est, found his way out of the Chersonesus; but only to fall into the hands of the wild Absinthians, who sacrificed him to one of their gods. Artayctes was doomed to perhaps a still more cruel fate. He was overtaken with his son, and brought to Xanthippus: he had forfeited all claim to merey, but he attempted to purchase his life. He offered a hundred talents as amends to the hero for his sacrilege, and two hundred more as ransom for himself and his son to the Athenians. But the people of Elæus would accept no atonement but the last punishment of the offender, and Xanthippus abandoned him to their vengeance. It was inflicted in a form borrowed from Persian manners; he was nailed to a cross, and his son was stoned to death before his eyes. After this conquest, the Athenian fleet sailed away home, carrying with it, among other treasures, the remains of the cables that had been employed in the bridges, the chains of the now delivered Hellespont, to be dedicated in the temples of the Attic gods. When the Athenians returned to their country, they found a wasted land, and a city which, with the exception of a few houses that had ready to doubt whether what he saw could be Athens. The rebuilding of the ruined temples was reserved for another season. The thoughts of Themistocles and Aristides were engaged by a more urgent care; that of providing for the immediate security and the permanent strength of the city. Only a few fragments of the wall had been left standing. It was necessary to replace it; and the widening prospects and towering hopes of Athens demanded that the new wail should enclose a larger compass. In the mean while, however, the allies of Athens were viewing her situation, and watching her steps with feelings which the recent deliverance ought to have suppressed, but which, unhappily, it only served to excite. They considerednot what she had suffered in the common cause, but what she had done; and this, instead of admiration and gratitude, awakened their jealousy and their fears. Her maritime rivals, Ægina and Corinth, were, perhaps, the first to take the alarm; and Sparta was easily persuaded to seize the favourable opportunity of checking the growth of a power which might soon become formidable to herself. Before, therefore, the new fortification was begun, Spartan envoys came to Athens with a message that sounded like the language of friendship. Instead of raising new walls, which might * Heracl. Pont., 1. + Dicearchus, Bíos 'EX weal, it was desirable that Athens should have a free voice in the counsels of Greece; but with such a voice she could only speak so long as she stood on an equal footing with her allies." The Spartans possessed the art of keeping their countenance in perfection; they dissembled their vexation, and only expressed their regret that what had been meant merely as a friendly suggestion should have been construed as a serious design of encroaching on the right of the Athenians to do as they would in their own territory. So the envoys on both sides returned home, without any farther complaints or reproaches; the city walls were quietly completed; but, in their irregular structure, they exhibited a lasting monument of the clashing interests and jarring passions by which their ill-assorted parts had been brought together, at the expense of much that was dear, beautiful, and sacred. When this necessary labour was finished, Themistocles turned his thoughts to the prosecution of a still greater work, which was to de hereafter, as Thebes had already done, serve to that the fortification of Athens was advanced shelter the barbarians in a fresh invasion, the too far to be stopped, addressed them with a Athenians would do better if they joined the wholesome admonition: "When they and their Spartans in throwing down all that were still allies sent ambassadors again to Athens, to standing north of the Isthmus. Peloponnesus deal with the Athenians as with reasonable would always afford a sufficient refuge, and a men, who could discern what belonged to their place of arms for the united forces of Greece own safety, and what to the general interests to assemble in." That Sparta should wish to of Greece. They had not needed the counsels see the peninsula become the sole fortress of of Sparta when they left their city and commitGreece was perfectly natural; for as the for-ted themselves to their ships, and they thought tress would command the country, so Laconia they might now trust their own judgment in would be the citadel that commanded the for-rebuilding their walls. Even for the common tress. This, however, was not the state of things for which Athens had been spending her blood and treasure. She was at no loss for an answer, but it was not a time for words. It was clear that men who did not blush to spread so thin a veil over their unjust designs would not scruple to accomplish them by open force, and, since the Athenians were not yet able to resist violence, prudence required that they should elude it. The occasion was especially suited to the genius of Themistocles, and he undertook the task of defeating the Spartans with their own weapons. By his advice, their envoys were dismissed with a promise that an embassy should forthwith be sent to treat on their proposal at Sparta. He himself immediately set out on this mission; but he directed that the colleagues who should be appointed to share it with him should delay their departure till the walls had been raised to such a height as would sustain an attack; that, for this purpose, every Athenian capable of labour, without distinction of age or sex, should lend a hand to the work; and that no building, public or pri-termine the character and prospects of Athens, vate, sacred or profane, that could supply materials should be spared. This was done; all the citizens, old and young, men and women, took their parts in the task, and pushed it forward with restless activity; houses, temples, the monuments of the dead, were the quarries from which they drew. In the mean while Themistocles arrived at Sparta; but, as he did not ask for an audience, or take any steps to wards opening his commission, the ephors inquired the cause of his delay. "He was wait-provided with the means of becoming mistress ing," he said, "for his colleagues, whom he had of it. To establish this dominion was the final left behind to despatch some very urgent busi- aim of the policy of Themistocles. He had laid ness, but whom he expected daily, and had the first foundation of it in the navy, which hoped to have seen before." The Spartans raised Athens at once above all her maritime were satisfied with this excuse, till tidings neighbours; but the enlarged navy required the reached them from various quarters that the protection of a spacious and fortified port. In walls, the subject of the negotiation, had been the times when Athens made war with Megara begun, and were rapidly rising. They could for Salamis, and borrowed succours from Coscarcely doubt the report, yet it was no more rinth against the superior force of Ægina, she than hearsay; and Themistocles, the man whom was content with Phalerum, the easternmost they had so lately covered with honours, begged and smallest of the three harbours which lay them to suspend their belief till they had ascer- nearest to the city. The largest basin, which tained the truth by the eyes of some of their contained three distinct ports capable of being own citizens. They accordingly sent some of closed by separate bars, and all opening into the their gravest and most trustworthy men to Ath-sea by a narrow outlet, had hitherto been negens; and Themistocles, at the same time, by a lected by the state, though Piræus, from which secret message, bade the Athenians detain them it took its name, was an ancient deme. The with as little show of violence as possible till plan of Themistocles was to fortify the three he and his fellows should return; for he had ports, Phalerum, Munychia, and Piræus, by a been already joined by Aristides and another double range of walls; one on the land side enambassador, who announced to him that the closing space for a considerable city, the other walls were high enough to stand a siege. It following the windings of the rocky shore bewas now time to drop the mask, and to let the tween the mouth of Phalerum and that of PiSpartans hear the voice of truth. At his next ræus, so as to take in the peninsula of Munyaudience, Themistocles, after informing them chia, by which Piræus is sheltered from the and was the last step to the object which had been the mark of his whole political career. He had long seen, and it was now clearer than ever, that the days had passed by when Athens, safe in unenvied obscurity, might content herself with cultivating and protecting her little territory. Henceforward, to be secure, she must be powerful: on land nature had confined her within narrow limits; but while she was thus forced towards the sea, she was amply east. indeed, had the arrogant inscription erased, and substituted for it a list of the cities which had shared the glorious expedition; but such an act awakened suspicions which the conduct of Pausanias soon confirmed. After the capture of Byzantium, he laid aside the manners of his country to adopt those of the barbarians, and carried himself towards the allies under his command as if he regarded them as his sub Already in his archonship (B.C. 493*) | views of which he had already betrayed some he had persuaded the people to begin this vast indications. He had been vain and indiscreet undertaking on a scale which should deter all enough to cause the tripod dedicated to Apollo hostile assaults. The wall had been carried from the spoil taken at Platæa to be inscribed to half its intended height; it was of a breadth with a couple of verses in which his name alone which allowed two wagons to pass each other, was mentioned, and the victory and the offerand this space was entirely filled with hewning were both attributed to him. The Spartans, stones exactly fitted together within, and joined together on the outside by iron cramps and molten lead. The invasions, first of Darius, and then of Xerxes, had interrupted the labour, but had not destroyed the work it was now carried on with fresh ardour; the walls rose to the height of sixty feet; Piræus was converted into an entirely new town, which was no longer to be considered as a deme, but as the lower part of Athens. Themistocles engaged Hippod-jects. The secret springs that moved him, and amus, a Milesian architect, the first among the ancients who invented designs for new cities, and a theory of the best form of government, to trace the plan. The same artist is said to have designed some streets in the city; but, in general, the regularity and symmetry of the port must have formed a contrast with the upper town very unfavourable to the latter. The new quarter was adorned with numerous temples, a theatre, and a market-place-in a word, with all that Grecian life required for use and pleas-iour appears so strange that it is difficult to exure; it drew into it all whose occupations con- plain it without supposing that his sudden elenected them with the sea, especially the for- vation to his high rank, the wonderful success eigners who came to exercise their arts or which crowned his first military undertaking, trades at Athens. It was the great aim of and the dazzling prospects that it opened to Themistocles to turn the attention of the Athe-him, had made him giddy, and had not only innians towards Piræus as their surest strong-spired him with an extravagant ambition, but hold, and their natural refuge in danger; and, therefore, he is said to have changed the position of the seats on the hill of Pnyx, where the people held their assemblies, that they might have before their eyes the sea and Piræus, not the land and the Rock.§ Thus Athens was armed at all points for the station to which Themistocles had taught her to aspire; but it was still filled by a jealous rival, who could not have been expected to resign without a struggle. Now, however, fortune came to her aid, and finished the work which industry and prudence had begun. In the year following the fall of Sestus (B.C. 477) the allied fleet again put to sea; its entire force is not recorded, but the Peloponnesian states equipped twenty ships, Athens thirty, which were commanded by Aristides and Cimon the son of Miltiades, who was now fast rising to wards the place which his father had once held in the public esteem. Pausanias was at the head of the whole armament. It first sailed to Cyprus, and wrested the greater part of the island from the Persians, and then steered for the north of the Ægean, and laid siege to Byzantium, which soon surrendered. While the allies remained in this station, the Spartan regent began more fully to unfold a character and * On the date of the archonship of Themistocles, see Appendix V. † On a ridiculous story related by Diodorus (xi., 41-43) about the precautions taken by Themistocles in setting about this undertaking, see Appendix v. That is, if we may infer the original height from that to which they appear to have been carried when restored by Conon, Appian., Mithrid., 30. It seems, even after the latest observations made on the spot, to be very doubtful in what this change consisted. Perhaps all that was done was to lower some ground which intercepted the view of the sea. the designs he had conceived, were not brought to light till many years after; but it was clear enough that his views were no longer confined to Sparta, and that he had ceased to feel himself proud of being a Spartan citizen; and there was, therefore, reason to doubt his fidelity to the cause of Greece. Even now it is not quite certain what motives were predominant in the breast of Pausanias; and whatever they may have been, his behav had blinded him to the dangers he was encountering, and to the conditions necessary for effecting his designs. It is, however, beyond a doubt that, before he set out on this second expedition, he had formed a project of exchanging his limited and temporary office for a station which appeared to him higher and happier; that of a vassal of the King of Persia, enriched with the rewards of treachery to his country and to Greece. That he should have conceived such a wish, that he should have been unable to endure the thought of descending in a few years to a private station, and have been irritated by the restraints laid upon his authority by the jealousy of the ephors, is not surprising; it only proves that his character was weak, and that he was incapable of understanding the nature of real greatness and dignity. But our wonder is excited by the infatuation of his selfconfidence, by his inability to measure his means with his ends, and by his reckless neglect of the most obvious precautions. He began by opening a negotiation with Xerxes, for which he found a favourable occasion in the capture of Byzantium. Among the prisoners he took there were some Persians of high rank, connected with the royal family. He did not venture openly to release them, but he secretly furnished them with the means of escaping, and then sent a trusty messenger to Xerxes to claim the merit of this service, and to offer one still more important. He wrote, as a man who had the fate of Greece in his hand, that if Xerxes would give him his daughter in marriage, he would lay Sparta and the rest of Greece at his feet. and requested that the king would send some one on whom he relied to concert a plan wila him for this end. Xerxes might naturally ima |