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be friendly to Sparta. To secure these advantages, he razed the walls of Tanagra, and forced the Locrians of Opus to put 100 of their citizens-probably one member of each of the ruling families-as hostages into his hands. It was about the same time that the Athenians completed their long walls, which, as they gave their city the strength of an island, turned their views more unreservedly than ever towards the sea; and not long after, in the same year, the Eginetans capitulated on nearly the same terms which had been granted to the Thasians: demolition of their walls, surrender of their ships, and payment of tribute.

and, though they had been permitted to traverse | ile for the purpose of concluding the war through the Isthmus without any hinderance, they heard his mediation. But this account seems totally that the passes were now vigilantly guarded by inconsistent with the facts recorded by Thucydthe enemy. These were the ostensible reasons ides, and Cimon's return, if in any degree conwhich induced Nicomedes, who commanded in nected with the battle of Tanagra, appears to the stead of the young king, Pleistoanax, to turn have been separated from it by a much longer aside on his march through Boeotia, as if to de-interval. Only about three months after that liberate on the safest course, and to encamp at event, early in the year B.C. 456, the AtheniTanagra, near the borders of Attica. But he ans were again in the field to retrieve the credhad received secret advice from the oligarchical it which they had lost in Boeotia, where they faction at Athens, which led him to hope for had partisans whose political influence dependtheir co-operation in striking a great blow. ed on the success of their arms. Under the These intrigues were not so carefully conceal-command of Myronides they met the Boeotians, ed as to avoid all suspicion; but the apprehen- who were assembled in greatly superior numsions they excited only animated the sounder bers in a tract called, from its vineyards, Enopart of the Athenians to seek the enemy in-phyta, and gained a brilliant and long-celebrated stead of waiting for an attack in which force victory, which gave them undisputed possession might be seconded by treachery. They mus- both of Boeotia and of Phocis, or, at least, made tered their whole strength, which, with 1000 their interest there decidedly predominant. DiArgives and some other allied troops, chiefly odorus* says that Myronides made himself masfrom Ionia, amounted to 14,000 infantry; and a ter of all the Boeotian towns except Thebes. body of cavalry came to their aid from Thessa- But even there, as may be gathered from an ally. With this army they marched to Tanagra.lusion of Aristotle,† his victory established the While the two armies were here in presence of ascendency of a democratical party, which, if each other, and an engagement was daily ex-not absolutely dependant on Athens, could not pected, Cimon, who was in the neighbourhood, came to the Athenian camp, and requested leave to take his post among the men of his tribe. The Athenian generals either felt or affected a suspicion of his intentions, which, though groundless, was not, perhaps, unreasonable. All was not secure, as we have just seen, at Athens; and there were friends and partisans of Cimon in the army who formed a body of 100 men. Instead of breaking up this band, and distributing it over the army, the generals, according to Plutarch, referred Cimon's request to the council of Five Hundred, which ordered them to reject it.* Elsewhere Plutarch ascribes the refusal to the friends of Pericles, who was himself present, and probably in command. + Thus repulsed, Cimon is said to have left his armour with his friends, exhorting them by their deeds to refute the calumnies of those who charged them with preferring Sparta to their country. A hard-fought battle took place, in which Pericles signalized himself by extraordinary feats of valour, as if in emulation of Cimon's friends, who had placed his panoply in their ranks, and fought round it with inflexible | spirit till they fell, every one at his post; the most painful loss which the Athenians suffered on this disastrous day. The treachery of the Thessalians, who went over to the enemy in the midst of the action, contributed to decide it in favour of the Peloponnesians, though the slaughter was great on both sides, and the author followed by Diodorust represented the victory as doubtful, and that the battle was fol4 According to Diodorus, xi., 84, 1000 men had been vo lowed by a truce for four months. But Thu- ted to Tolmides for this expedition, to be selected by himcydides is clear as to the issue of the engage-self. But he took advantage of the power thus committed ment, and seems to know nothing of the truce. The Peloponnesians, as he relates, ravaged the Megarian territory, and finding the passes of Geranea now open, returned home over the Isthmus.

In the following year, 455, the Spartans were reminded that they were also liable to be attacked at home. An Athenian armament of fifty galleys, and, if we may trust Diodorus, with 4000 heavy-armed troops on board,‡ sailed round

makes two battles out of one; but observes, with great sim-
*xi., 83. By a blunder not uncommon with him, he
plicity, that for the first of these battles-though it was one
of the most memorable the Athenians ever fought—no his-
torian had assigned a place.

τευομένων ἡ δημοκρατία διεφθάρη, Pol, v. 2.
† Εν Θήβαις μετὰ τὴν ἐν Οινοφύτοις μάχην κακῶς πολι
Wachsmuth
(1. 2, p. 105, n. 10) suspects an error, and that Aristotle
meant to allude to the battle of Tanagrn, when the oligar
Thebes. But it seems quite as probable that not čupapn.
chy may be supposed to have recovered its ascendency at
but Kakus TоALTEVOμEVwv is to be joined immediately with
the preceding words; and that the meaning is, that after
at Thebes lost all moderation, and running into exceMES
the victory of Athens at Enophyta, the democratical party
like those committed at Megara, Syracuse, and Rhodes,
which are mentioned immediately after, provoked a reac-
tion, which finally overthrew it.

pretending that he should otherwise force them to serve.
to him to induce many to give in their names as volunteers,
When in this manner he had obtained 3000 names, he ex-
ercised his power by choosing 1000 more.
We feel great
doubt about the truth of the story in this form, and are in-

clined to suspect that, if it was well founded, it belongs to the later expedition, in which Tolmides lost his life. Even If Plutarch's information was accurate, the if he had the means of playing such a trick, it is not probaAthenians were not only worsted at Tanagra,ble that, after having undertaken, as Diodorus relates, to but were so disheartened by their defeat, and 60 apprehensive of an early invasion from Peloponnesus, that they recalled Cimon from his ex+ Per., 10.

* Cim., 17.

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80.

should have desired to take out four times that number; accomplish the objects of his expedition with 1000 men, he nor does it appear that so large a force was needed for his purpose, as we find that 1000 men sufficed Pericles for sin. lar, if not more extensive operations. Compare Plut, Per., 19.

dron of fifty galleys to the relief of their countrymen, which, arriving before the news of the recent disaster had reached them, entered the Mendesian branch of the Nile. They were here surprised by a combined attack of the Persian land force and a Phoenician fleet, and but few escaped to bear the mournful tidings to Athens.

Peloponnesus under Tolmides, burned the Spartan arsenal at Gythium, took a town named Chalcis belonging to the Corinthians, and defeated the Sicyonians, who attempted to oppose the landing of the troops.* But the most important advantage gained in the expedition was the capture of Naupactus, which belonged to the Ozolian Locrians, and now fell into the hands of the Athenians at a very seasonable juncture. The third Messenian war had just come to a close. The brave defenders of Ithomé had obtained honourable terms, granted, as the Spartans professed, in compliance with an oracle which enjoined their clemency. The besieged were permitted to quit Peloponnesus with their families, on condition of being detained in slavery if they ever returned. Tol-driven from his country, and applied to the mides now settled the homeless wanderers in Naupactus; a position full of hope for the exiles, as it was that from which the Dorians had crossed over to the conquest of their native land, and most useful to the Athenians for their operations in the Corinthian Gulf.

Yet even after this calamity we find the Athenians, not suing for peace, but bent on extending their power and annoying their enemies. Early in the next year (454) an opportunity offered itself of enlarging the range of their influence in the north of Greece. A Thessalian named Orestes, whose father, Echecratidas, is called by Thucydides king of the Thessalians, and had probably held the office of Tagus, had been

Athenians for aid to effect his restoration. Succours were granted to him, and the forces of Boeotia and Phocis, now at the disposal of Athens, were called out to support her ally. But the superiority of the Thessalians in cavalry checked all their operations in the field; they failed in an attempt upon Pharsalus, and were at length forced to retire without having accomplished any of their ends.* It was, perhaps, to soothe the public disappointment that Pericles shortly afterward embarked at Pega with a thousand men, and, coasting the south side of the Corinthian Gulf, made a descent on the territory of Sicyon, and routed the Sicyonian force sent to oppose his landing. He then took

to the coast of Acarnania, laid siege to the town of Eniadæ, which had long incurred the enmity of the Athenians, chiefly, it would seem, because, being situate in a tract of uncommonly rich land formed by the depositions of the Achelous, it had early excited their cupidity. † This attempt, however, proved unsuccessful; and the general result of the campaign seems not to have been, on the whole, advantageous or encouraging.

But these successes were counterbalanced by a reverse which befell the arms of Athens this same year in another quarter. After the defeat of Achæmenes, Artaxerxes, disappointed in his hopes of assistance from Sparta, had resolved on a still more vigorous effort, and raised a greater army, which he placed under the command of an abler general, Megabyzus, son of Zopyrus. Megabyzus defeated the insurgents and their allies, and forced the Greeks to evac-on board some Achæan troops, and, sailing over uate Memphis, and to take refuge in an island of the Nile, named Prosopitis, which contained a town called Byblus, where he besieged them for eighteen months. At length he resorted to the contrivance of turning the stream which separated the island from his own side of the river into new channels, and conducted the work so vigorously that the Greek galleys were all left aground, and were fired by the Athenians themselves, that they might not fall into the enemy's hands. The Persians then marched into the island over the dry bed of the river: the Egyptians, in dismay, abandoned their allies, who were overpowered by numbers, and almost all destroyed. A few reached the opposite bank, and made their way to Cyrene. Inarus himself was betrayed into the hands of the Persians and put to death; according to Ctesias, he surrendered himself to Megabyzus on condition that his life should be spared, but, having been carried a prisoner to Persia, was sacrificed by Artaxerxes to the vengeance of his mother for the death of Achæmenes, and the indignation of Megabyzus at this breach of faith involved the empire in a civil war. Egypt, however, was again reduced under the Persian yoke, except a part of the Delta, where another pretender, named Amyrtæus, who assumed the title of king, protected by the marshes and by the spirit of the people, the most warlike, Thucydires observes, of the Egyptians, maintained himself for several years against the power of the Persian monarchy. But the misfortune of the Athenians did not end with the destruction of the great fleet and army which had been first employed in the war. They had sent a squa

According to Diodorus, he also made himself master of all the towns in Cephallonia. Diodorus seems to suppose that ous of these was named Zacynthus.

In this state of things, Cimon's friends might not find it difficult to awaken a feeling of regret in the people for their old favourite by contrasting his glorious and profitable victories with the recent failures and losses, and, as a natural consequence, to turn their thoughts and wishes towards peace with Sparta. It seems to have been not long after the events which have been just related that Cimon was recalled from his exile; and the decree for that purpose was moved by Pericles himself: a fact which seems to intimate that some change had taken place in the relations or the temper of parties at Athens. We have already assigned a reason for rejecting Plutarch's statement as to the motive and the time of Cimon's recall; and, indeed, he himself, with all the other writers who mention the fact, describes that event as having been immediately followed by a suspension of hostilities, which, according to Thucydides, were interrupted for three years before a formal truce was concluded between the belligerents. Hence it seems clear that Cimon's return. which, as is known from a fragment of Theo

*There seems to be no ground for supposing that this expedition was conducted by Myronides, who is evidently mentioned by Diodorus only because, with his usual carelessness, he makes the invasion of Thessaly immediately follow the battle of Enophyta. Paus., iv.. 25, 1.

perished in the flames, which consumed his be felt irksome, and that Athens would only be friends, family, and treasures. This victory able to preserve the advantages which she dewas, on many accounts, peculiarly agreeable to rived from her station in the confederacy by the Athenians, who by it were relieved of a taking a new ground, and exacting by force troublesome enemy, and gained a very impor- what was no longer cheerfully given. Naxos tant position, which not only provided immedi- was conquered after a hard siege, and, instead ately for the wants of many, but was the first of an ally, became a subject of Athens; the first step to the establishment of one of their most member of the confederacy which experienced valuable colonies. They conferred the freedom from its protectors the worst evil which it had of their city on Meno the Pharsalian, who on to fear from the Persians; but its example did this occasion gave them twelve talents, and not induce those who were exposed to the same himself came to their aid with 300 of his Pe- danger either to unite in the defence of their nests, mounted at his own charge. The reward liberty or to abstain from provoking a like atthey bestowed on the conqueror was consider- tack. One after another they unseasonably reed, at the time, as an extraordinary mark of fa- fused compliance with the requisitions of the vour, and was celebrated in after ages, when leading state, and were punished with the loss much slighter services were far more richly of their independence. Many were imprudent recompensed, as a proof of the cheapness of the enough to seek ease from their burdens by sacancient heroism. It consisted in three stone rificing their strength. They offered to combusts of Hermes, each inscribed with two or mute their personal services in the endless exthree distichs in honour of the exploit, but con- peditions to which they were summoned for taining neither the name of the general, nor any stated payments of money. Cimon perceived allusion to his particular merit. In the course the advantage which Athens would reap from of the same year Cimon effected another con- this arrangement, and accepted it whenever it quest, which had a value in the eyes of the peo- was proposed. Its effect was, that the states ple independent of the substantial advantages which adopted it, exempt from the necessity of it afforded them. The inhabitants of the Isle keeping up a naval force of their own, were ever of Scyros, a mixed race of Pelasgians and Dolo- after exposed, without any means of defence, pians, had become infamous for piracy, and had to the growing demands of Athenian rapacity, incurred the ban of the Amphictyons by a breach and when the wants of their sovereign were of hospitality in plundering some Thessalian multiplied, found themselves in addition submerchants. Cimon seized this specious pre-jected to the very services from which they had text for exterminating the people, and dividing so dearly purchased a temporary relief. their land among Attic colonists. He was af- In the year of the conquest of Naxos (B.C. terward fortunate or skilful enough to discover 466), the same in which Themistocles took refthe relics of Theseus, who, according to an an-uge in Asia, Cimon obtained his most memoracient tradition, had been buried in Scyros.† An oracle was procured, which directed the Athenians to recover the hero's remains, and to treat them with due honour, Perhaps Cimon and his party may have thought it seasonable, on political grounds, to reanimate the popular veneration for the founder of the ancient order of things. The bones were dug up, and carried with great pomp to Athens, where a temple, which became a perpetual asylum for the oppressed, was erected in honour of the hero who had so often exerted his prowess in protecting innocence and redressing wrong.

ble triumph over the Persians. A great sea and land force had been collected at the mouth of the Eurymedon in Pamphylia; the fleet, according to Ephorus, who is most moderate in his numbers, amounted to 350, and the Persian commanders expected to be joined by 80 Phonician galleys from Cyprus. Cimon having strengthened his fleet by successive re-enforcements, as he slowly moved along the south coast of Asia Minor, till it amounted to 250 galleys, provoked the enemy to an engagement before the arrival of the Phoenicians, and having defeated them, and sunk or taken 200 ships, The next enterprises to which the Athenian sailed up the river to their camp, and landing arms were directed were important as the first his men, flushed with victory, completely routed step towards the establishment of a new sys- the Persian army, and carried away the rich tem in the relation between Athens and her al- booty which they left in their tents. Accordlies. The town of Carystus in Euboea, from what ing to the author whom Plutarch follows, he causes we are not informed, provoked the hos- still found time for another victory the same tility of the Athenians, and, though not support-day, and having sailed to meet the Phoenician ed by any other states in the island, made a long resistance before it was reduced to submission. Its revolt was, perhaps, considered as of too little importance to deserve more strenuous efforts for its suppression. But that of the rich and powerful island of Naxos, which followed, was of greater moment. It was an indication that the Athenian alliance began to

* Demosth., Aristocr., p. 687.

squadron, which had not heard of the defeat of their allies, fell in with it, and destroyed the whole.

Cunon's next enterprise was one in which he had a personal and hereditary interest. The Persians still kept possession of the Thracian Chersonesus, and were supported by some of the Thracian tribes of the mainland. Cimon sailed with a small force, and dislodged them, not only from the territory of the republic, but + According to Paus, i., 17, 6, the professed object of the from perhaps the most valuable part of his own first expedition was to avenge the murder of Theseus, though Lycomedes had been instigated by jealousy of the patrimony. It appears to have been soon after honours which his subjects paid to the hero. But the the power of the Athenians had been thus bones were not brought to Athens till six or seven years af- strengthened in this quarter-in the year folter the conquest of the island, in the archonship of Aphep-lowing the battles of the Eurymedon—that they sion, or Apsephion, B.C. 468. See Mr. Clinton, F. H., ii., were again engaged in a contest with one of

p. 34.

their allies, who was able and disposed to make a vigorous resistance. The Thasians were compelled to defend their gold mines on the continent from the cupidity of Athens, which, perhaps, claimed them as a conquest won from the Persians. The islanders were first defeated at sea by Cimon, and then closely besieged. While the siege was in progress, the Athenians suffered a disastrous defeat in one of their most important possessions. They had sent a colony of ten thousand settlers, partly citizens and partly allies, to establish themselves in a site on the Strymon, then called, from the various lines of communication which branched from it, the Nine Ways, and occupied by the Edonian Thracians. These the colonists dislodged; but in an expedition which they made into the interior against the Edonian town of Drabescus they were attacked by the united forces of the Thracians, who viewed their settlement as a hostile invasion, and were cut off to a man.

lots, but by the free inhabitants of some of the Laconian towns. The Spartans, though reduced to extreme weakness, were still masters of the open country, and laid siege to Ithomé, but made very slow advances towards the reduction of the place. In the mean while, the Thasians, left to themselves, were compelled to capitulate in the third year of the war, and after dismantling their fortifications, surrendering their ships, ceding their continental territory and mines, paying a sum of money immediately, and stipulating to pay a certain tribute in future, were permitted to remain subjects of Athens.

As the siege of Ithomé lingered, the Spartans called upon their allies for aid; and, among the rest, they did not blush to implore it from the Athenians. This application gave rise to a very warm debate in the Athenian assembly, and was treated by the leaders of the opposite parties as an occasion of trying their strength. The feelings with which it was received can scarcely be clearly understood without taking a view of these parties and of their relative position; and a short digression on this subject will be necessary to place many events of the following history in their proper light.

Cimon was, beyond dispute, the ablest and most successful general of his day; and his victories had shed a lustre on the arms of Athens which almost dimmed the glories of Marathon and Salamis. But while he was gaining renown abroad, he had rivals at home who were endeavouring to supplant him in the affections of the people, and to establish a system of domestic and foreign policy directly counter to his views, and were preparing contests for him in which his military talents would be of little avail. While Themistocles and Aristides were occupying the political stage, an extraordinary genius had been ripening in obscurity, and was only waiting for a favourable juncture to issue from the shade into the broad day of public life. Xanthippus, the conqueror of Mycale, had married Agariste, a descendant of the famous Cleisthenes, and had left two sons, Ariphron and Pericles. Of Ariphron little is known besides his name; but Pericles, to an observing eye, gave early indications of a mind formed for great things, and a will earnestly bent on them. In his youth he had not rested satisfied with the ordinary Greek education, but had applied himself, with an ardour which was not even abated by the lapse of years, nor stifled by his public avocations, to intellectual pursuits, which were then new at Athens, and confined to a very narrow circle of inquisitive spirits. His birth and fortune afforded him the means of familiar in

The Thasians, alarmed at the turn which the war had taken, began to look out for foreign assistance. The jealousy of Sparta towards Athens had been betrayed, as we have seen, immediately after their joint victory over the common enemy; and the events of the subsequent period were not fitted to allay it. The Thasians, therefore, sent an embassy to engage the Spartans to make a diversion in their favour by invading Attica. Their envoys were favourably received, and dismissed with a secret promise that their wishes should be fulfilled; and the Spartans were preparing to keep their word, but had not yet taken any step which could disclose their intention to the Athenians, when a calamity befell them by which they were forced to renounce this design, and to struggle hard for their own preservation. The whole of Laconia was shaken by an earthquake, which opened great chasms in the ground, and rolled down huge masses from the highest peaks of Taygetus: Sparta itself became a heap of ruins, in which not more than five houses are said to have been left standing. More than twenty thousand persons were believed to have been destroyed by the shock, and the flower of the Spartan youth was overwhelmed by the fall of the building in which they were exercising themselves at the time. It was chiefly the presence of mind displayed on this occasion by King Archidamus that preserved the state from a still more terrible disaster. Many of the Helots assembled, and hastened to the city to take advantage of the defenceless condition in which they hoped to surprise their masters. But Archidamus, foreseeing the danger, as soon as the first consternation had subsided, while the sur-tercourse with all the men most eminent in evvivers were busied among the ruins, ordered an alarm to be sounded, as of an enemy's approach, and gathered all his people round him in arms. The Helots, finding an armed band ready to receive them, retreated and dispersed. But though this danger was thus averted, the safe-lessons of Damon, who was believed to have ty of Sparta was not yet secured. The Messenians seized the opportunity of rising against their hated lords, and fortified themselves in the ancient stronghold of their liberty, Ithomé. Their insurrection was the more formidable, as they were joined, not only by many of the He

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ery kind of knowledge and art, who were already beginning to resort to Athens as a common seat of learning. Thus, though Pythoclides taught him to touch the cithara, he sought the elements of a higher kind of music in the

contributed mainly to train him for his political career: himself no ordinary person; for he was held up by the comic poets to public jealousy as a secret favourer of tyranny, and was driven from Athens by the process of ostracism. But Pericles also entered with avidity into the abstrusest philosophical speculations, and even took pleasure in the arid subtleties of the Ele

subject of inexhaustible pleasantry for the comic poets of his day;* but the old men who remembered Pisistratus were struck by the resemblance which they discovered between the tyrant and the young heir of the Alemæonids, and not only in their features, but in the sweetness of voice and the volubility of utterance with which both expressed themselves. Still, after the ostracism of Themistocles and the death of Aristides, while Cimon was engaged in continual expeditions, Pericles began to present himself more and more to the public eye, and was soon the acknowledged chief of a powerful party, which openly aimed at counteracting Cimon's influence, and introducing opposite maxims into the public counsels.

atic school, or, at least, in the ingenuity and the dialectic art with which they were unfolded to him by Zeno. But his principal guide in such researches, and the man who appears to have exercised the most powerful and durable influence on his mind and character, was the philosopher Anaxagoras, with whom he was long united in intimate friendship. Not only his public and private deportment, and his habits of thought, but the tone and style of his eloquence, were believed to have been formed by his intercourse with Anaxagoras. It was commonly supposed that this effect was produced by the philosopher's physical speculations, which, elevating his disciple above the ignorant superstition of the vulgar, had imparted to him the serene condescension and dignified language of a superior being. But we should be loath to believe that it was the possession of such physical secrets as Anaxagoras was able to communicate that inspired Pericles with his lofty conceptions, or that he was intoxicated with the little taste of science which had weaned him from a few popular prejudices. We should rath-represented by Aristides, he therefore placed er ascribe so deep an impression to the distinguishing tenet of the Anaxagorean system, by which the philosopher himself was supposed to have acquired the title of Mind from his contemporaries. The doctrine of an ordering intelligence, distinct from the material universe, and ruling it with absolute sway, was striking, from its novelty, and peculiarly congenial to the character of Pericles. Such was the supremacy which Athens exercised over the multitude of her dependant states, and such the ascendency which he felt himself destined to obtain over the multitude at Athens.

To some of the ancients, indeed, it appeared that the course of policy adopted by Pericles was entirely determined by the spirit of emulation, which induced him to take a different ground from that which he found already occupied by Cimon; and that, as Cimon was at the head of the aristocratical party which had been

himself in the front of that which had been led by Themistocles. The difference between these parties, after the revolution by which the ancestor of Pericles had undermined the power of the old aristocracy, was, for some time, very faintly marked, and we have seen that Aristides himself was the author of a very democratical measure, which threw the first offices of the state open to all classes of the citizens. The aristocracy had no hope of recovering what it had lost; but, as the commonalty grew more enterprising, it became also more intent on keeping all that it had retained, and on stopping all farther innovation at home. Abroad, too, though it was no longer a question whether Athens should continue to be a great maritime power, or should reduce her navy to the footing of the old naucraries, and though Cimon himself had actively pursued the policy of Themistocles, there was room for great difference of opinion as to the course which was to be fol

cal party wished, for their own sake at least, as much as for that of peace and justice, to preserve the balance of power as steady as possible in Greece, and directed the Athenian arms against the Persian empire with the greater energy, in the hope of diverting them from intestine warfare. The democratical party had other interests, and concurred only with that part of these views which tended towards enriching and aggrandizing the state.

It was, undoubtedly, not from the mere amusement of his leisure that Pericles had enriched his mind with so many rare acquirements. All of them were probably considered by him as instruments for the use of the statesman; and even those which seemed most remote from all practical purposes may have contributed to the cultivation of that natural eloquence to which he owed so much of his influ-lowed in her foreign relations. The aristocrati ence. He left no specimens of his oratory behind him, and we can only estimate it, like many other fruits of Greek genius, by the effect it produced. The few minute fragments preserved by Plutarch, which were recorded by earlier authors because they had sunk deep in the mind of his hearers, seem to indicate that he loved to concentrate his thoughts in a bold and vivid image, as when he called Egina the eyesore of Piræus, and said that he descried war lowering from Peloponnesus. But though signally gifted and accomplished for political action, it was not without much hesitation and apprehension that he entered on a field where he saw ample room, indeed, for the display of his powers, but also many enemies and great dangers. The very superiority, of which he could not but be conscious, suggested a motive for alarm, as it might easily excite suspicion in the people of views adverse to their freedom; †The contemporaries of Pisistratus seem to have discov and these fears were heightened by some cir-ered a striking likeness between his head and that of a stat cumstances, trifling in themselves, but capable ue of the god Dionysus, which was therefore supposed by some to have been sacrilegiously designed by the artist as of awakening or confirming a popular prejudice. a portrait of the mortal, and was looked upon as a specimen His personal appearance was graceful and ma- of the tyrant's arrogance. (Athen., x., p. 533.) Hence, jestic, notwithstanding a remarkable dispropor- about Aspasia, Hermippus, in one of his comedies, entitled probably not without a malicious allusion to the scandal tion in the length of his head, which became a Pericles King of the Satyrs. Plut., Per., 33.

It is as difficult wholly to clear Pericles from the charge of having been swayed by personal motives in the choice of his political system, as it would be to establish it. But even if it were certain that his decision was not the result of conviction, it might as fairly be attributed to a hereditary prepossession in favour of the principles for which his ancestors had contended, and

Plut., Per., 3, 14.

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