mistocles seated at his hearth, holding the young prince whom Phthia had placed in his hands. This, among the Molossians, was the most solemn form of supplication, more powerful than the olive branch among the Greeks. With this advantage, Themistocles addressed himself to the generosity of Admetus, disclosed the urgency of the danger that threatened his life, and argued the meanness of exacting an extreme revenge for a slight wrong from a fallen adversary. The king was touched or roused: he raised the suppliant with an assurance of protection, which he fulfilled, when the Athenian and Lacedæmonian commissioners dogged their prey to his house, by refusing to surrender his guest.

Plutarch, apparently following a writer of slight authority, says that Themistocles was here joined by his wife and children. The temper of the Athenians is indicated by the fact that the person to whom he was indebted for the assistance by which his family was restored to him was put to death for this friendly office at the prosecution of Cimon. If his family was already with him, he had the less inducement to quit the territories of Admetus. But it would seem that he never intended to fix his abode among the Molossians, and he had probably very early conceived the design of seeking his fortune at the court of Persia. He is said to have consulted the oracle of Dodona, perhaps less for a direction than for a pretext: the answer seemed to point to the Great King, and Admetus, practising the hospitality of the heroic ages, supplied his guest with the means of crossing over to the coast of the Ægean. At the Macedonian port of Pydna he found a merchant ship bound for Ionia, and embarked in it. A storm carried the vessel to the coast of Naxos, which happened at this juncture to be besieged by an Athenian fleet and army. To avoid the danger of an accidental discovery, Themistocles made himself known to the master of the ship, and worked upon his hopes by large promises, and upon his fears by threatening to denounce him as having knowingly sheltered an outlaw. The man consented to keep his secret, and as he desired, while detained by the weather on the coast of Naxos, prevented all the crew from going ashore. At length he arrived safely at Ephesus, where, not long afterward, he received that part of his property which his friends were able to withdraw from the grasp of the state at Athens, and that which he had left at Argos: perhaps it was here, also, that his family met

|

only till matters should oe ripe for removing the young king, and establishing a new dynasty. He was afterward betrayed by a Persian nobleman to whom he revealed his design, and perished in the attempt to murder Artaxerxes. It appears to have been in the interval between the death of Xerxes and this event, while the traitor was at the height of his power, that Themistocles arrived at the Persian court. We do not venture to relate the adventures of his journey from the coast to the capital, with which later writers filled up the simple narra tive of Thucydides. He found a Persian friend, who accompanied him, and whose presence was undoubtedly sufficient to protect him without the contrivance, by which he is said to have eluded the dangers of the road, of screening himself from view in a covered litter, and giving out that it contained a lady designed for the royal harem. This was probably a fiction of the same authors who related that a price of two hundred talents had been set upon his head by the Persian king, and that it was with difficulty he escaped the attempts aimed at his life for the reward. As little may we paint his first audience at court, which Plutarch has worked up into a romantic and theatrical scene, though the silence of Thucydides does not prove that Artaxerxes did not immediately gratify his curiosity or his pride with the sight of the extraordinary man who had sought ref uge from the people he had saved in the land of the enemy whom he had so deeply humbled. It was, however, by a letter, presented, perhaps, by Artabanus through the mediation of his Persian friend, that Themistocles first made himself known to Artaxerxes in it he ac knowledged the evils he had inflicted on the royal house in the defence of his country, but claimed the merit of having sent the timely warning by which Xerxes was enabled to effect his retreat from Salamis in safety, and of hav ing diverted the Greeks from the design of intercepting it. He ventured to add, that his persecution and exile were owing to his zeal for the interest of the king of Persia, and that he had the power of proving his attachment by still greater services; but he desired that a year might be allowed him to acquire the means of disclosing his plans in person. His request was granted, and he assiduously applied himself to study the language and manners of the country, with which he became sufficiently familiar to conciliate the favour of Artaxerxes by his conversation and address, no less than by the promises which he held out, and the pru dence of which he gave proofs. If we may be lieve Plutarch, he even excited the jealousy of the Persian courtiers by the superior success with which he cultivated their arts: he was continually by the king's side at the chase and in the palace, and was admitted to the pres ence of the king's mother, who honoured him with especial marks of condescension: it seems that he thought it prudent to soothe the religious prejudices of the people by listening to the doc trines of the priests. He was at length sent down to the maritime provinces, perhaps to wait for an opportunity of striking the blow by satrap of Bactria at the time when the conspiracy against the ruin of his country. In the mean while, which he was to raise the power of Persia upon Artaxerxes was defeated. Did the assassin Artabanus pro-pension was conferred on him in the Oriental

him.

When Themistocles arrived in Asia, Xerxes was still on the throne, but not many months after he was assassinated by two of the great officers of his court, Artabanus, and the eunuch Spamitres. The conspirators charged Darius, his eldest son, with the murder, and persuaded Artaxerxes, the younger, instantly to avenge the imputed parricide by the execution of his brother. After this, Artabanus, who was the father of seven sons in the prime of life, waited

Ctesias and Justin, iii., 1, know only of two sons of

Xerxes. Diodorus (xi., 69) mentions a third, Hystaspes, who was satrap of Bactria, and absent at the time of his fa

ther's murder. Ctesias speaks of an Artabanus who was

cure the murder of Hystaspes?

form; three flourishing towns were assigned | business, and drew on him the satire of the for his maintenance, of which Magnesia was to comic poets; and in his early youth he is said provide him with bread, Myus with viands, and to have neglected the ordinary accomplishments Lampsacus with the growth of her celebrated of an Athenian gentlemen. If, however, this vineyards. He fixed his residence at Magnesia, was the case, he would seem, from an anecdote in the vale of the Mæander, where the royal reported by Plutarch on the authority of a congrant invested him with a kind of princely rank. temporary, to have supplied this deficiency at a There death overtook him, hastened, as it was later period; but he was not gifted with the commonly supposed, by his consciousness of promptness and volubility which commonly disbeing unable to perform the promises he had tinguished his countrymen, and never shone as made to the king. Thucydides, however, evi- an orator. It was probably his consciousness of dently did not believe the story that he put an this defect that determined him to devote himend to his own life by poison. That fear of self to a career which kept him mostly away disappointing the Persian king should have from Athens, and to abandon the popular asurged him to such an act is, indeed, scarcely sembly to his rivals. At his father's death, he credible. Yet we can easily conceive that the seems to have succeeded to a very scanty forman who had been kept awake by the trophies tune; and he would, perhaps, have found it of Miltiades must have felt some bitter pangs difficult to raise the penalty of fifty talents due when he heard of the rising glory of Cimon. to the treasury if Callias, one of the wealthiest Though his character was not so strong as his men of Athens, struck by the charms of his sismind, it was great enough to be above the ter Elpinice, a woman more remarkable for her wretched satisfaction implied in one of Plu- beauty and talents than for the propriety of her tarch's anecdotes, that, amid the splendour of conduct, had not undertaken to discharge the his luxurious table, he one day exclaimed, penalty as the price of her hand. Cimon, how"How much we should have lost, my children, ever, had attracted notice, and gained reputaif we had not been ruined." It must have been tion by the spirit which he displayed on the ocwith a different feeling that he desired his bones casion of leaving the city on the approach of to be privately conveyed to Attica, though the the barbarians, when he was the foremost to uncertainty which hangs over so many actions hang up a bridle in the Acropolis, as a sign that of his life extends to the fate of his remains. he placed all his hopes in the fleet, and by the A splendid monument was raised to him in the valour with which he fought at Salamis; and public place at Magnesia; but a tomb was also many friendly voices encouraged him to tread pointed out by the seaside within the port of in his father's footsteps. Aristides, in particuPiræus, which was generally believed to con- lar, saw in him a capacity and disposition that tain his bones. His descendants continued to fitted him for a coadjutor to himself, and an anenjoy some peculiar privileges at Magnesia in tagonist to Themistocles, and exerted his influthe time of Plutarch; but neither they nor his ence in his favour; and the readiness with posterity at Athens ever revived the lustre of which the allied Greeks, when disgusted by his name the arrogance of Pausanias, united themselves with Athens was owed, in a great measure, to Cimon's mild temper, and to his frank and gentle manners. Yet we should be inclined to question the genuineness of his generosity and good-nature if we believed what was related

FROM

CHAPTER XVII.

THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE ATHENIAN

MARITIME ASCENDENCY TO THE THIRTY YEARS' by an author cited by Plutarch: that after the

TRUCE BETWEEN ATHENS AND SPARTA.

THOUGH the issue of the Persian invasion had not broken, nor even dangerously shaken the power of Persia, it had relieved the European Greeks and the islanders of the Ægean from all apprehension of another attack on their freedom from the same quarter. Most of the states now united with Athens would have been satisfied with this security, and had no wish to act on the offensive against the vanquished enemy. But Athens saw a vast field open to her ambition in the East; the situation of the Asiatic Greeks afforded a fair pretext for the continuance of hostilities, and many of her leading statesmen were desirous of giving this direction to the restless spirit of their countrymen. Foremost among these was Cimon, son of Miltiades. In his youth he gave little promise of the abilities or of the character which he afterward displayed, and seemed to have inherited the limited capacity of his grandfather, who had incurred a nickname expressive of extreme simplicity,* rather than his father's genius. His propensity to pleasure was thought to be so st ng as to divert his attention from

* Ο Κοάλεμος.

flight of Themistocles, Cimon procured a capital sentence against Epicrates for having aided the wife and children of the exile in escaping from Athens, and joining him in the dominions of Admetus.

The popularity of Themistocles was already declining, while Cimon, by a series of successful enterprises, was rapidly rising in public favour and esteem. The first of these triumphs, achieved in the third year after the battle of Platea (B.C. 476), was the conquest of Eion on the Strymon, which was held by a Persian garrison, among whom were some men of high rank, and even related to the king. They were on friendly terms with the neighbouring Thracians, and, probably with their aid, gave great annoyance to the adjacent Greek towns. mon, after defeating and shutting them up, pressed the place so closely, that Boges, the Persian governor, unable to hold out, and disdaining to surrender, set fire to the town, and

*Plut., Cim., 9.

Ci

tocles who was the author of Cimon's fortune, by recom† According to Diodorus (Mai, ii., p. 39), it was Themismending him as a son-in-law to a rich Athenian, who had consulted him on the choice of a husband for his daughter, and whom he advised to look, not for wealth which wanted a man, but for a man who wanted wealth.

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 memora cient tradition, had been buried in Scyros.† An ble triumph over the Persians. A great sea and oracle was procured, which directed the Athe-land force had been collected at the mouth of nians 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.

The next enterprises to which the Athenian arms were directed were important as the first step towards the establishment of a new system in the relation between Athens and her allies. The town of Carystus in Euboea, from what causes we are not informed, provoked the hostility of the Athenians, and, though not supported 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

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 Phoenician galleys from Cyprus. Cimon having strengthened his fleet by successive re-enforce ments, as he slowly moved along the south coast of Asia Minor, till it amounted to 250 galleys, provoked the enemy to an engagement be fore the arrival of the Phoenicians, and having defeated them, and sunk or taken 200 ships, sailed up the river to their camp, and landing his men, flushed with victory, completely routed the Persian army, and carried away the rich booty which they left in their tents. Accord ing to the author whom Plutarch follows, he still found time for another victory the same day, and having sailed to meet the Phoenician squadron, which had not heard of the defeat of their allies, fell in with it, and destroyed the whole.

Cimon'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 fol ter 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.,

p. 34.

Demosth., Aristocr., p. 687.

were again engaged in a contest with one of

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.

their allies, who was able and disposed to make | lots, but by the free inhabitants of some of the 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.

*

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 do

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 dis-mestic and foreign policy directly counter to his close 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 survivers 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 safety 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

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 intercourse with all the men most eminent in every kind of knowledge and art, who were already beginning to resort to Athens as a common seat of learning. Thus, though Pythocli des taught him to touch the cithara, he sought the elements of a higher kind of music in the lessons of Damon, who was believed to have 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. Pericles also entered with avidity into the abstrusest philosophical speculations, and even took pleasure in the arid subtleties of the Fle

But

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 rather 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.

subject of inexhaustible peasantry for the comic poets of his day ;* but the old men who remembered Pisistratus were struck by the resemblance which they discovered between the ty rant 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.

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 occu pied by Cimon; and that, as Cimon was at the head of the aristocratical party which had been represented by Aristides, he therefore placed himself in the front of that which had been led by Themistocles. The difference between these parties, after the revolution by which the ances tor 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 It was, undoubtedly, not from the mere all farther innovation at home. Abroad, too, amusement of his leisure that Pericles had en- though it was no longer a question whether riched his mind with so many rare acquire- Athens should continue to be a great maritime ments. All of them were probably considered power, or should reduce her navy to the footing by him as instruments for the use of the states- of the old naucraries, and though Cimon himman; and even those which seemed most re-self had actively pursued the policy of Themis mote from all practical purposes may have con- tocles, there was room for great difference of tributed to the cultivation of that natural elo-opinion as to the course which was to be fol quence 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 Ægina 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 discor and these fears were heightened by some cir-ered a striking likeness between his head and that of a stai 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., xii., p. 533.) Hence, jestic, notwithstanding a remarkable dispropor- about Aspasia, Hermippus, in one of his comedies, entit probably not without a malicious allusion to the scandal tion in the length of his head, which became a

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 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 princi ples for which his ancestors had contended, and

Plut., Per., 3, 14.

Pericles King of the Satyrs. Plut., Per., 33.