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side. Thessaly, Acarnania, and the Amphilochian Argos, were in alliance with her enemy; but for this reason, and more especially from their hostility to the Messenians of Naupactus, the Etolians were friendly to her; and she could also reckon on the Corinthian colonies, Anactorium, Ambracia, and Leucas.

and when the time came, assembled in the Isthmus, where King Archidamus put himself at their head. An army more formidable, both in numbers and spirit, had never issued from the peninsula ;* and Archidamus thought it advisable, before they set out, to call the principal officers together, and to urge the necessity of proceeding with caution, and maintaining exact The power which Sparta exerted over her discipline as soon as they should have entered allies was much more narrowly limited than the enemy's territory; admonishing them not that which Athens had assumed over her subto be so far elated by their superior numbers as jects. The Spartan influence rested partly on to believe that the Athenians would certainly the national affinity by which the head was remain passive spectators of their inroads. united to the Dorian members of the confedAnd though all besides himself were impatient eracy, but still more on the conformity which to move, he would not yet take the decisive she established or maintained among all of step without making one attempt more to avert them, to her own oligarchical institutions. This its necessity. He still cherished a faint hope was the only point in which she encroached on that the resolution of the Athenians might be the independence of any. Every state had a shaken by the prospect of the evils of war, which voice in the deliberations by which its interests were now so imminent, and he sent Melesippus might be affected; and if Sparta determined to sound their disposition. But the envoy was the amount of the contributions required by exnot able to obtain an audience from the people, traordinary occasions, she was obliged carefully nor so much as to enter the walls. A decree to adjust it to the ability of each community. had been made, at the instigation of Pericles, So far was she from enriching herself at the to receive no embassy from the Spartans while expense of the confederacy, that at the beginthey should be under arms. Melesippus was ning of the war there was, as we have seen, informed that, if his government wished to treat no common treasure belonging to it, and no with Athens, it must first recall its forces. He regular tribute for common purposes. But, to himself was ordered to quit Attica that very compensate for these defects, her power stood day, and persons were appointed to conduct him on a more durable basis of good-will than that to the frontier, to prevent him from holding com- of Athens; and though in every state there munication with any one by the way. On part- was a party attached to the Athenian interest ing with his conductors he exclaimed, "This on political grounds, yet, on the whole, the day will be the beginning of great evils to Spartan cause was popular throughout Greece; Greece." and while Athens was forced to keep a jealous Such a prediction might well occur to any eye on all her subjects, and was in continual one who reflected on the nature of the two pow-fear of losing them, Sparta, secure of the loyalers which were now coming into conflict, and on ty of her own allies, could calmly watch for opthe great resources of both, which, though to-portunities of profiting by the disaffection of tally different in kind, were so evenly balanced, that no human eye could perceive in which scale victory hung; and the termination of the struggle could seem near only to one darkened by passion. The strength of Sparta, as was implied in the observation of Sthenelaidas, lay in the armies which she could collect from the states of her confederacy. The force which she could thus bring into the field is admitted by Pericles, in one of the speeches ascribed to him by Thucydides, to be capable of making head against any that could be raised by the united efforts of the rest of Greece. Within the Isthmus her allies included all the states of Peloponnesus, except Achaia and Argos; and the latter was bound to neutrality by a truce which still wanted several years of its term. Hence the great contest now beginning was not improperly called the Peloponnesian war. Beyond the Isthmus she was supported by Megara and Thebes, which drew the rest of Beotia along with it; and Attica would thus have been completely surrounded on the land side by hostile territories if Platæa and Oropus had not been politically attached to it. The Locrians of Opus, the Dorians of the mother-country, and the Phocians (though these last were secretly more inclined to the Athenians, who had always taken their part in their quarrels with Delphi, the stanch friend of Sparta), were also on her

*Thucydides does not mention the numbers of the army. Androtion (Schol. Soph., Ed. C.. 697) states them to have amounted to 100,000; Plutarch (Per., 33) to 60,000.

those of her rival. At home, indeed, her state was far from sound, and the Athenians were well aware of her vulnerable side; but abroad, and as chief of the Peloponnesian confederacy, she presented the majestic and winning aspect of the champion of liberty against Athenian tyranny and ambition; and hence she had important advantages to hope from states which were but remotely connected with her, and were quite beyond the reach of her arms. Many powerful cities in Italy and Sicily were thus induced to promise her their aid, and it was on this she founded her chief expectations of forming a navy which might face that of Athens. Her allies in this quarter engaged to furnish her with money and ships, which, it was calculated, would amount to no less than five hundred, though for the present it was agreed that they should wear the mask of neutrality, and admit single Athenian vessels into their ports. But as she was conscious that she should be still deficient in the sinews of war, she already began to turn her eyes to the common enemy of Greece, who was able abundantly to supply this want, and would probably be willing to lavish his gold for the sake of ruining Athens, the object of his especial enmity and dread.

The extent of the Athenian Empire cannot be so exactly computed. In the language of the comic stage, it is said to comprehend a thousand cities;* and it is difficult to estimate

* Aristoph., Vesp., 707.

what abatement ought to be made from this playful exaggeration. The subjects of Athens were in general more opulent than the allies of Sparta, and their sovereign disposed of their revenues at her pleasure. The only states to which she granted more than a nominal independence were some islands in the Western Seas, Corcyra, Zacynthus, and Cephallenia; points of peculiar importance to her operations and prospects in that quarter, though even there she was more feared than loved. At the moment of the revolt of Potidea her empire had reached its widest range, and her finances were in the most flourishing condition; and at the outbreak of the war her naval and military strength was at its greatest height. Pericles, as one of the ten regular generals, or ministers of war, before the Peloponnesian army had reached the frontier, held an assembly, in which he gave an exact account of the resources which the republic had at her disposal. Her finances, besides the revenue which she drew from a variety of sources, foreign and domestic, were nourished by the annual tribute of her allies, which now amounted to 600 talents. Six thousand, in money, still remained in the treasury after the great expenditure incurred on account of the public buildings and the siege of Potidæa, before which the sum had amounted to nearly ten thousand. But to this, Pericles observed, must be added the gold and silver, which, in various forms of offerings, ornaments, and sacred utensils, enriched the temples or public places, which he calculated at 500 talents, without reckoning the precious materials employed in the statues of the gods and heroes. 'The statue of Athené in the Parthenon alone contained forty talents weight of pure gold, in the ægis, shield, and other appendages. If they should ever be reduced to the want of such a supply, there could be no doubt that their tutelary goddess would willingly part with her ornaments for their service, on condition that they were replaced at the earliest opportunity. They could muster a force of 13,000 heavy-armed, besides those who were employed in their various garrisons, and in the defence of the city itself, with the long walls and the fortifications of its harbours, who amounted to 16,000 more; made up, indeed, partly of the resident aliens, and partly of citizens on either verge of the military age. The military force also included 1200 cavalry and 1600 bowmen, besides some who were mounted; and they had 300 galleys in sailing condition.

property of the state. To many of his hearers that which he required was a very painful sacrifice. Many had been born, and had passed all their lives in the country; they were attached to it, not merely by the profit or the pleasure of rural pursuits, but by domestic and religious associations. For though the incorporation of the Attic townships had for ages extinguished their political independence, it had not interrupted their religious traditions, or effaced the peculiar features of their local worship; and hence the Attic countryman clung to his deme with a fondness which he could not feel for the great city. In the period of increasing prosperity which had followed the Persian invasion, the country had been cultivated and adorned more assiduously than ever. All was now to be left or carried away. Reluctantly they adopted the decree which Pericles proposed; and, with heavy hearts, as if going into exile, they quitted their native and hereditary seats. If the rich man sighed to part from his elegant villa, the husbandman still more deeply felt the pang of being torn from his home, and of abandoning his beloved fields, the scenes of his infancy, the holy places where his forefathers had worshipped, to the ravages of a merciless invader. All, however, was removed: the flocks and cattle to Euboea and other adjacent islands; all besides that was portable, and even the timber of the houses, into Athens, to which they themselves migrated with their families.

The city itself was not prepared for the sudden influx of so many new inhabitants. A few found shelter under the roofs of relatives or friends, but the greater part, on their arrival, found themselves houseless as well as homeless. Some took refuge in such temples as were usually open; others occupied the towers of the walls; others raised temporary hovels on any vacant ground which they could find in the city, and even resorted for this purpose to a site which had hitherto been guarded from all such uses by policy, aided by a religious sanction. It was the place under the western wall of the citadel, called, from the ancient builders of the wall, the Pelasgicon: a curse had been pronounced on any one who should tenant it, and men remembered some words of an oracle which declared it better untrodden. The real motive for the prohibition was probably the security of the citadel; but all police seems to have been suspended by the urgency of the occasion. It was some time before the new comers bethought themselves of spreading over After rousing the confidence of the Athe- the vacant space between the long walls, or of nians by this enumeration, Pericles urged them, descending to Piræus. But this foretaste of without delay, to transport their families and the evils of war did not damp the general arall their movable property out of the enemy's dour, especially that of the youthful spirits, reach, and, as long as the war should last, to which began at Athens, as elsewhere, to be imlook upon the capital as their home. To en- patient of repose. Numberless oracles and precourage a patriotic spirit by his example, and at dictions were circulated, in which every one the same time to secure himself from imputa- found something that accorded with the tone tions to which he might be exposed, either by of his feelings. Even those who had no definite the Spartan cunning, or by an indiscreet dis- hopes, fears, or wishes, shared the excitement play of private friendship, he publicly declared, of men on the eve of a great crisis. The holy that if Archidamus, who was personally attach- island of Delos had been recently shaken by an ed to him by the ties of hospitality, should, ei- earthquake. It was forgotten, or was never ther from this motive, or in compliance with or-, known out of Delos itself, that this had happenders which might be given in an opposite in- ed already, just before the first Persian invatention, exempt his lands from the ravages of war, they should, from that time, become the

* Isocr., Areop., c. 20.

sion.* It was deemed a portent, which signi- perhaps, to finish the war at a blow.
fied new and extraordinary events, and it was
soon combined with other prodigies, which
tended to encourage similar forebodings. Such
was the state in which the Athenians awaited
the advance of the Peloponnesian army.

CHAPTER XX.

FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE PELOPONNESIAN

WAR TO THE END OF THE THIRD YEAR.

For

Acharna was the most populous and wealthy of the Attic townships; it numbered three thousand citizens who served in the heavyarmed infantry: their voices, it might fairly be expected, would be loudly raised to induce the rest to go out with them, to rescue their property from the enemy; or, if this should not be done, they might be so offended or disheartened as to take but little interest in the common cause. Thus, if the rashness of the Athenians did not expose them to a fatal defeat, their prudence might give rise to civil discord.

AFTER the return of Melesippus, Archidamus Thucydides intimates that the tardiness with had no farther pretext for lingering at the Isth- which Archidamus advanced, at first induced mus, and he forthwith set forward on his march. the Athenians to believe that Pericles was seBut instead of striking at once into the heart cretly tampering with him, and to hope that of Attica, or advancing along the seacoast into they should soon see themselves rid of the enethe plain of Eleusis, he turned aside to the my as cheaply as they had been fourteen years north, and, crossing the territory of Megara, before of Pleistoanax. But when they beheld sat down before a little place called Enoe, one of the richest districts of Attica, at so short which had been fortified and garrisoned to sea distance from the city, laid waste, there was cure one of the passes of Citharon between a general disposition to march out and defend Attica and Boeotia. The Spartans, and the it; and the Acharnians were as urgent as the Peloponnesians in general, had no skill in sieges, Spartan king expected. Few could bring themand did not value it. The fortress defied their selves to admit the necessity of remaining attacks, though they exhausted all the resources passive; and Pericles was angrily reproached of their military art. The army grew impatient for adhering to the advice which all had adopted of the delay, which frustrated its hopes of a while the enemy was at a distance. He, howrich booty, by giving the Attic husbandmen ever, continued immovable, and paid no heed to abundant leisure for placing all their movable the clamour which was raised against him, nor property in safety. Archidamus seems to have to the taunts of the comic stage, nor to the thought that his presence was more likely to prophecies which were circulated to second the work upon the fears of the Athenians before it wish of the multitude. He is said to have obwas felt, and while they might still hope to served, that trees cut down might shoot up keep their territory undamaged. But finding, again, but that men were not easily replaced. at length, that he was only losing his time, He would neither lead an army into the field, while he wearied and provoked his troops, he nor call an assembly to deliberate on the subabandoned his attempt upon noe, and, march-ject. He only provided for the defence of the ing southward, entered the Thriasian plain, or walls, and, from time to time, sent out squa the district of Eleusis, where the corn was just drons of horse to protect the neighbourhood of ripe, and now began in earnest to give the Athe- the city. A body of cavalry had come from nians a sample of what they had to expect from Thessaly, according to the terms of the old a continuance of the war. He advanced slow- alliance subsisting between that country and ly, to leave the deeper traces; and, after de- Athens, each of the principal towns furnishing feating a body of Athenian cavalry in the neigh- its contingent, commanded by its own officers; bourhood of Eleusis, seeing no other enemy be- and with this aid the Athenians were able to fore him, proceeded across the ridge of Čory- face the Boeotians, who were the strength of the dallus, leaving Mount Ægaleos on the right, to enemy's cavalry, and on one occasion would, perAcharnæ, seven or eight miles north of Athens, haps, have put them to flight, if they had not been where he encamped, and made a long and de-supported by the advance of the infantry. This structive stay. His hope now was to provoke the Athenians to meet him in the field, and so,

Voss (Mythologische Forschungen, p. 128) observes, "Henceforward (that is, after the legend about the fluctuation of the island, previous to the birth of Apollo and Artemis, had become current) it was believed that Delos could never be shaken even by an earthquake; and the common people thought it a prodigy, when this happened in Ol. 87, just before the Peloponnesian war, and even, as the Delians gave out (Herod., v., 98), already in Ol. 72, before the first Persian invasion. The god, it was pretended, had shaken Delos, to signify the evils which impended over Greece in the reigns of Darius, Xerxes, and Artaxerxes, according to an oracle which ram, Κινήσω καὶ Δῆλον, ἀκίνητόν περιοῦσαν, Delos itself will I move, my holy immovable island. So that it was not before the reign of Artaxerxes that the Delians invented the story of their ominous earthquake. 'It was the first and the last before my time,' wrote the credulous Herodotus, before the Peloponnesian war broke out; and he forgot to correct this assertion in the additions which he afterward made to his history. Whereas Thucydides did not consider the legend of the priests worth his notice." So far Voss, whom we have quoted only that the reader might at least see one way of reconciling the two historians, or of explaining their contradiction of each other.

slight affair gave the Peloponnesians a pretext. for a trophy. But Archidamus, finding that he could not draw the Athenians into a general engagement, and that his provisions were nearly spent, broke up from Acharnæ, and marching through the country, with desolation in his train, on to Oropus, returned home by the way of Boeotia, and disbanded his forces.

fleet of a hundred galleys, with a thousand men He had not quitted Attica before an Athenian of arms and four hundred bowmen on board, set sail to retaliate upon Peloponnesus. They were joined by fity Corcyræan ships, and by others from the same quarter, among which some were manned by Messenians from Naupactus. As they coasted the Argolic acté, they ravaged it with fire and sword. The Laconian territory was next similarly visited; but the only memorable occurrence in this part of the expedition arose out of an attempt to take the town of Methone on the western coast of Mes

senia* It was defeated through the courage | position which might threaten either Attica or and activity of a Spartan named Brasidas, who, Peloponnesus, and which it was therefore exon this occasion, gave a specimen of the ener- pedient to intrust only to Athenian citizens; gy and ability which afterward rendered him but the satisfaction of a long hatred, and the one of the most conspicuous persons in this pe- desire of new possessions, were no less powerriod of Greek history. The place was slightly ful motives. The greater part of the unhappy fortified, and without any regular garrison; the outcasts found a home in Laconia, where the Athenians, informed, perhaps, of its weakness, government, grateful for their services in the made their approaches with careless confidence, last Messenian war, and hoping that they would and only with a part of their forces, while the be no less useful in guarding a debatable fronrest were scattered over the country. Brasidas, tier, assigned the town and territory of Thyrea, who was stationed with a small body of troops the ancient scene and prize of contest between in the neighbourhood, hearing of the danger, Sparta and Argos, for their habitation. came to the relief of Methone, with no more than a hundred heavy-armed; and taking the assailants in the rear by surprise, he cut his way through them with the loss of a few men, and threw himself into the town. The unex-ed, in part through her hostility. While the inpected succour infused such spirit into the besieged, that they were able to repel all the attacks of the enemy, who betook themselves again to their ships. This exploit-the first of any note in the war-made Brasidas known to his countrymen, and opened the way for his subsequent achievements.

Towards autumn Pericles himself took the field with the whole disposable force of Athens, to wreak the popular resentment upon Megara, by ravages like those which Attica had suffervading army was in Megaris, it was joined by the troops just returned from the expedition round Peloponnesus. During the war the Athenians never again mustered so large a force as was thus assembled. The number of the heavyarmed citizens amounted to 10,000, though 3000 were employed at Potidæa. To these were On the coast of Elis, to which the Athenians added 3000 aliens, heavy-armed, and light innext proceeded, they were more successful.fantry in proportion. But the strength thus They landed near the isthmus which connects displayed was only exerted in unresisted devthe rocky peninsula called Icthys with the main-astation; and when this was completed, the land, close to the town of Pheia, ravaged the country for two days, and defeated the first body of troops which was sent to protect it; and when the fleet was forced to take shelter from a sudden gale in the port of Pheia, on the other side of the isthmus, the Messenians, who had been left on shore with a few comrades, in the hurry of the embarcation, made themselves masters of Pheia itself, while the fleet was doubling the cape. But as the Eleans were now coming up with their whole force, they hastily re-embarked; and the armament, as soon as the weather permitted, pursued its course northward. The capture of Sollium, an Acarnanian town belonging to the Corinthians, which was transferred to the dominion of its neighbour Palærus; the reduction of the Acarnanian city of Astacus, and the expulsion of its tyrant Evarchus; and the submission of the island of Cephallenia, which now acceded without resistance to the Athenian alliance, were the last fruits of this expedition.

While this great fleet was still at sea, a squadron of thirty galleys was despatched into the Euboean channel to protect the coasts of the island, which were infested by privateers issuing from the opposite ports of Locris, and to take vengeance for the evils which they had already inflicted. The latter object was accomplished by a series of descents on the Locrian coast, in the course of which the invaders routed a body of Locrians, took Thronium, and carried away some hostages. The defence of Euboa was permanently provided for by the erection of a fort on the desert isle of Atalante, which commands a view of the Opuntian shores. Early in the summer, the Athenians, consulting policy no less than revenge, had expelled the whole free population of Ægina, who, though by themselves no longer formidable, occupied a

Or, as Thucydides would say (iv., 8), év ry Meconia more oven 17; and therefore he here (11., 25) calls it simρία Μεθώνην τῆς Λακωνικῆς,

invaders returned home. A clause in the decree cited by Plutarch, to which we have already referred, made it a part of the oath taken by the generals on entering into office, that they would invade the Megarian territory twice a year; and we learn from Thucydides that it was strictly observed.*

The mind of Pericles appears-though his name is not mentioned--in a provident measure which was adopted immediately after the departure of the Peloponnesian army from Attica. Regulations were made, which were observed to the end of the war, for the defence of the coast and of the frontier; and at the same time a decree was passed to set apart a thousand talents from the sum then in the treasury, and to reserve a hundred of the best galleys in the navy every year; both money and ships to be employed in case the city itself should ever be attacked by a naval armament-the last of all conceivable emergencies-but on no other occasion or pretext whatsoever. The appropriation was guarded by the severest penalties against the dangers of popular levity or evil counsel. If in any other case but the one described a proposition should ever be made to divert the fund and the vessels to any other purpose, both the mover and the magistrate who should put it to the vote were to be punished with death.

In the course of the winter, while hostilities were suspended by the season, the ancient usage of paying funeral honours to the citizens who had fallen for their country, afforded Pericles-who was again called upon to display the eloquence which had captivated the people on the like occasion at the close of the Samian war-an opportunity of animating the courage and the hopes of his countrymen, and indirectly of vindicating the policy of his own administration. The custom was, that on the third day after the remains of the deceased had been exIV., 66.

*