sion.* It was deemed a portent, which signi- | perhaps, to finish the war at a blow. For fied new and extraordinary events, and it was Acharnæ was the most populous and wealthy soon combined with other prodigies, which of the Attic townships; it numbered three tended to encourage similar forebodings. Such thousand citizens who served in the heavywas the state in which the Athenians awaited armed infantry: their voices, it might fairly be the advance of the Peloponnesian army. 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.

CHAPTER XX.

FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE PELOPONNESIAN

WAR TO THE END OF THE THIRD YEAR.

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 Enoe, and, march-ject. He only provided for the defence of the ing southward, entered the Thriasian plain, or the district of Eleusis, where the corn was just ripe, and now began in earnest to give the Athenians a sample of what they had to expect from a continuance of the war. He advanced slowly, to leave the deeper traces; and, after defeating a body of Athenian cavalry in the neighbourhood of Eleusis, seeing no other enemy before him, proceeded across the ridge of Corydallus, leaving Mount Egaleos on the right, to Acharnæ, seven or eight miles north of Athens, where he encamped, and made a long and destructive 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., vi., 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 ran, Kivnow kai Añλov, ȧkivпTóv Tep covoar, 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.

walls, and, from time to time, sent out squadrons of horse to protect the neighbourhood of the city. A body of cavalry had come from Thessaly, according to the terms of the old alliance subsisting between that country and Athens, each of the principal towns furnishing its contingent, commanded by its own officers; and with this aid the Athenians were able to face the Boeotians, who were the strength of the enemy's cavalry, and on one occasion would, perhaps, have put them to flight, if they had not been supported by the advance of the infantry. This 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.

He had not quitted Attica before an Athenian fleet of a hundred galleys, with a thousand men of arms and four hundred bowmen on board, set sail to retaliate upon Peloponnesus. They were joined by fifty Corcyrean 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 Towards autumn Pericles himself took the than a hundred heavy-armed; and taking the field with the whole disposable force of Athens, assailants in the rear by surprise, he cut his to wreak the popular resentment upon Megara, way through them with the loss of a few men, by ravages like those which Attica had sufferand 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.

vading 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 added 3000 aliens, heavy-armed, and light infantry in proportion. But the strength thus displayed was only exerted in unresisted dev

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.*

On the coast of Elis, to which the Athenians next proceeded, they were more successful. They landed near the isthmus which connects the 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 Eubea 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), iv ry Meconvia ROTE Ovon yn; and therefore he here (ii., 25) calls it simply Μεθώνην τῆς Λακωνικῆς.

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 ex

* iv., 66.

tan laws or edicts, from seeing and learning all that might excite their curiosity, nor viewed with suspicion as spies of state secrets; which need not be so anxiously guarded where there is a consciousness of strength, and where men rely more upon their courage than upon mancu

posed in a pavilion erected for the purpose, to ing before the laws, abolished all privileges of receive the separate tributes of domestic affec-birth and wealth, and admitted no distinctions tion, they were deposited in ten coffins of cy-but those of capacity and merit in the service press wood -one for each of the tribes-and of the state. Freedom, in private life, from all with a bier spread in honour of those whose unnecessary restraints on the tastes and purcorpses had not been found, were carried in suits of individuals, which were not jealously procession, on as many cars, to the public sep-watched-as at Sparta-but tempered by a genulchre in the Ceramicus, the fairest suburb of erous respect for the magistrates and the laws. the city, where, since the Persian war, all who A succession of public spectacles, which, while had so fallen, except the heroes of Marathon, they honoured the gods, enlivened the aspect had been interred. The procession was attend-of the city, and diffused a general cheerfulness; ed by a long train of citizens and strangers, and a decent enjoyment of the luxuries which among whom the foremost place was occupied commerce drew from all parts of the world into by the mourning relatives, especially the wom- the port of Athens. A liberal intercourse with en, who took the chief part in the funeral wail-foreigners, who were not debarred, as by Sparings, and the sons of the slain, who were brought up at the public expense till they reached the military age, when they received each a full suit of armour, in which they were exhibited at the most frequented of the Dionysiac festivals in the theatre, were honoured by solemn proclamation with the front seat during the specta-vres and stratagems. A mode of education cle, and were dismissed to the business of life with their country's benediction.* Such was the assembly to which it was the duty of the appointed orator to address the language of consolation and encouragement. But as the public service was the occasion of the ceremony, so its chief end was the honour of the state. We may gather from the specimens which have been preserved of this kind of composition,t that the merits of individuals were never noti-suits; the use of wealth without ostentation; ced, and that the general panegyric bestowed on the deceased was so turned as to exalt the glory of the country which had given birth to such brave men, and had stimulated their valour by numberless examples of ancient heroism. The praises of Athens were the main topic of every funeral harangue.

which, though it cherished the martial spirit of the young-so that Athens, divided as her forces were, could defy the united efforts of the Peloponnesian confederates, and could successfully attack them on their own ground-did not subject them to a course of incessant toil and hardship, which was not required either for discipline or valour. Elegant and simple tastes; intellectual studies coupled with active pur

patience under poverty, which was held disgraceful only where it was the consequence of sloth; an intelligent interest in the manage ment of public affairs, widely diffused among all classes, and deemed essential to the character of a good citizen; habits of reflection and discussion, which prepared the mind for meeting every danger with discerning fortitude; a disposition to conciliate friendship by disinterested liberality. These were some of the advantages which entitled Athens to be called the school of Greece; which commonly enabled an Athenian to adapt himself more readily than other men to new circumstances, and to execute whatever he undertook with peculiar ease and grace; which had opened the most distant seas and lands to the Athenian arms; had erected a mighty empire, and ensured an immortal re

On this occasion the historian Thucydides, then in the prime of life, and already intent on collecting materials for his great work, was most probably among the by-standers. The speech was among the most celebrated compositions of Pericles, though Plato sarcastically ascribed it to Aspasia. That which Thucydides puts into his mouth may be pretty safely considered as representing the substance of the one really pronounced with more than the historian's usual fidelity; and, among the topics it embraces, there are some which belong to his-nown; and which made the country worthy of tory as much as any part of his narrative.

The mythical glories of the land-a copious theme with the later rhetoricians-seem to have been very slightly touched upon. What Athens then was, and had become through the exertions of the existing generation, and the counsels of the orator himself, furnished an equally ample, and far more interesting subject. He will not even dwell on the martial achievements by which she had been raised to such a pitch of greatness. He thinks it more important to observe the institutions, the manners, the national character, which were the true foundation of her power. A constitution which, while it placed all the citizens on an equal foot

Eschines, Ctes., p. 523, Bekk.

all the sacrifices that her sons could offer her Such, in the judgment of Pericles, or of Thu cydides, was the fair side which Athens now presented. There was, however, a reverse, with some very different features, which the orator did not wish to exhibit, but which the historian displays in the events of his history.

Early in the following summer (B.C. 430), Archidamus again entered Attica, with an army composed in the same proportions as that of the last campaign. It seems to have been his intention, in this inroad, to make up for the time which had been lost in the preceding one, through the vain hope of intimidating the Athenians, and to make them feel what they did not sufficiently dread. After he had remained in the plain, on the west and the north side of the city, long enough to destroy the hopes of the next harvest, the fruit-trees, the pride of the

Among which the noble oration of Lysias-a worthy rival to that of Thucydides, and strangely undervalued by Dahlmann, Forsch., p. 22-almost as far surpasses Plato's in the Menexenus, as this does the poor declamation attributed to Demosthenes as delivered over the slain of Cha-Attic soil and the growth of many years, and all the works of human industry which were

ronea.

had been followed by a singularly hot summer, which was not tempered by the usual refreshment of the periodical winds. We do not know whether this statement is consistent with the remark of Thucydides, that the season in which the pestilence broke out was more free from ordinary diseases than any in the memory of men. But whatever may have been the state of the atmosphere, that of the men who breathed it was peculiarly adapted to widen the ravages of an epidemic. The multitude which had migrated into the city the year before was now swelled by a fresh throng driven in by the invading army which was sweeping the country Dwellings were not easily to be found for this new population. The largest houses in Athens were probably too small to lodge many guests. Some, perhaps, of the last comers, but ill screened from the heat during the day, were exposed without shelter to the unwholesome night air. But the stifling closeness of the temporary cab

left in his way, he advanced along the maritime | to aggravate its malignity, and to aid its deregion south of Athens, as far as the mining dis-structive power. According to the authors foltrict of Laurium, where, however, he could not lowed by Diodorus, an uncommonly wet winter have found time to do any serious damage; the miners might take refuge with their property in Anaphlystus. He then crossed over to the eastern coast, and continued his ravages as far as the plain of Marathon. This he is said to have spared, not on account of the more recent recollections which might have endeared and hallowed it in the eyes of every patriotic Greek, but through respect for the old tradition, which represented it as the place where his ancestors, the Heracleids, had found hospitable shelter, and had vanquished the enemy of their race. The ancients themselves were not agreed whether it was from a similar motive that he exempted the groves of the Academy from the general | devastation- - as consecrated to a herot who had aided the sons of Tyndareus in recovering their sister or whether he and his troops respected the sanctity of the olive-trees, which, according to the Attic legend, had been planted here with slips taken from that which first sprang up in the citadel at the bidding of Athe-ins, and the apartments in the towers, in which ne. The invaders remained forty days in At- the greater number of the strangers were pent tica a term nearly sufficient to enable them to up, was more generally pernicious. The change carry their ravages into every corner; yet it of habits and of diet, which with many was was believed that their stay would have been probably both scanty and bad-even if there longer if the land had not, during the same time, was no ground for the opinion which attributed been visited by another scourge, still more hor- a preternatural ill quality to the fruits of the rible than war, and scarcely less appalling to yeart-tended to dispose their frames to rethe enemy which witnessed it than to the suf-ceive the contagion and to sink under the disferers themselves.

ease; and the gloom and despondency by which their spirits must have been depressed from past losses and the unpromising condition of their private affairs may have contributed to the same effect.

The character of the sickness, as described by Thucydides, who himself experienced it, does not coincide in all points with that of the modern plague. Some symptoms of the latter, which in modern descriptions are most prominent, he mentions very slightly, and in ambiguous terms, while he dwells much upon others, which seem to have been peculiar to the Attic pestilence. His account of it is the history of its progress, from the head, where it first show

It was only a few days after they had entered Attica that a pestilential disease began to make its appearance in Piræus. The novelty of its symptoms-for such epidemics seem to have been then as rare as they have been familiar in modern times to the same countries-raised a suspicion in the multitude that emissaries of the enemy had poisoned the water in the cisterns;¶ for wells had not yet been sunk in Piræus. But, as it spread and reached the city, and its victims rapidly multiplied, it soon became evident that the art of man neither had produced nor was able to overcome it. That it took its rise in Nubia, and was propagated through Egypt and Western Asia to the Ege-ed itself, to the lower extremities of the body. an, was a report which Thucydides appears to adopt; and the place of its first outbreaking in Attica indicates that the contagion came from abroad. It may, nevertheless, have been connected, as Niebuhr believed,** in some mysterious way with the volcanic convulsions which were unusually frequent and violent about the same time, though Attica was but slightly affected by them-for the earthquakes felt at Athens are not said to have damaged any part of the city-and other regions of Greece, which suffered much more from them, do not appear to have been visited by the pestilence. But at Athens many causes conspired

* See Xenophon, De Vectig., iv., 43, 45. + Diodor., xii., 45.

Academus, or Echedemus. Plut., Thes., 32. Schol. Aristoph., Nub., 992.

Called popiat, from the fate (μópos) of Halirrhothius, son of Poseidon, who attempted to cut down the original tree, but mortally wounded himself with his own hatchet.

See p. 265. This is the account given by Philochorus and Androtion in the Scholiast on Sophocles, (Ed. C., 697. The same suspicion fell upon the Jews in the plague of 1348. **Vol. ii., p. 273

The pain and inflammation of the head, redness of the eyes, foulness of the breath, and bloody tinge of the tongue and throat, which accom panied it in its first stage, were followed, as it descended to the chest, by sneezing and hoarseness, and soon after by a hard cough. In the region of the heart its presence was marked by distressing qualms, discharges of tile, and a convulsive hiccough. As it sank still lower, it in like manner disordered the intestines; and, where it did not prove fatal, it frequently took such a hold of the extremities as to deprive the patient of the use of them, while others lost their sight from the violence of the first attack. The cutaneous eruptions are very slightly mentioned, and only with reference to the appearance of the body, not to any painful sensation.‡

That which he describes most feelingly is the burning inward heat, which rendered even the slightest covering insupportable, the unquenchable thirst, the continual restlessness, which banished sleep. Delirium is not said to have accompanied any stage of the disorder; but those who recovered sometimes lost their memory and consciousness. They were, however, seldom attacked a second time, and never in so malignant a form. Most of those who died were carried off on the seventh or the ninth day. All other maladies terminated in this, which appeared to prey equally upon the robust and the infirm. No remedies showed more than fallacious signs of partial success; and the despondency which seized the patient with the first symptoms, as it made him hopeless of relief, made him careless about the means of counteracting the evil.

as the dispensers of temporal good and evil, was universally relaxed by the calamity which fell indiscriminately upon the best and the worst.* There seems to have been as little of the spirit of benevolence among individuals, as of parental solicitude on the part of the state. The only exceptions to the general all-engrossing selfishness which are mentioned by Thucydides were some persons of extraordinary generosity, who -as he says, from a sense of honour-ventured their lives to attend upon their sick friends. A striking contrast to the sublime charity which has made the plagues of Milan and of Marseilles bright spots in the history of religion and hu manity.

Under these circumstances, Pericles had, perhaps, less difficulty than he would otherwise have found in maintaining the cautious policy of the last year. But he again soothed the public mind by an expedition against Peloponnesus, which he commanded in person. A fleet of 100 galleys, with 4000 heavy-armed Athenians on board, was joined by 50 from Chios and Lesbos; and 300 horse were embarked in transports, now for the first time formed out of old ships. With this force, while the enemy was still rav aging Attica, he sailed to the coast of Epidaurus, wasted the greater part of its territory, and made an unsuccessful attack upon the town. He then slowly coasted the Acté, ravaging the fields of Trozen, Haliæ, and Hermione. Then crossing over to the coast of Laconia, he stormed the town of Prasiæ, and gratified his troops with the plunder, and with the spoil of its territory. But here his operations seem to have been stopped by the pestilence, which raged in the fleet as in the city, and he returned soon after the Peloponnesian army had quitted Atti ca. Yet, in the hope of overpowering the tedious and expensive resistance of Potidea by a strong re-enforcement of the besieging army, two of his colleagues, Hagnon and Cleopompus, were ordered to sail thither with the troops which he had brought back. Phormio, with the forces under his command, had already left Chalcidicé. The two generals, on their arrival. prosecuted the siege with great vigour; but all their attacks were repulsed; and the disease which they had brought from home in the fleet spread over the camp, which had hitherto been Hence the wells and cisterns were al- free from it. After it had carried off 1050 men ways surrounded by a crowd of wretches, strug-out of the 4000 in forty days, they sailed away gling, or dying, or dead.

The general aspect of the city was, perhaps, more hideous and frightful than that of modern cities afflicted by a like calamity. Thucydides does not mention any precautions taken by public authority to prevent the spreading of the infection. And though such precautions are always partially eluded, their entire absence must have cost many lives, as well as have filled the city with horrible spectacles. Not only the streets and public places, but the sanctuaries, which had been occupied for shelter, were strewed with corpses, which, when, as frequently happened, no friendly hand could be found to burn them, seem to have been suffered to lie. And it was observed that neither dogs nor carrion birds would touch them, and that the latter were not to be seen in the city so long as the pestilence lasted. Another consequence of this neglect was, that acts of violence were frequently committed by the relatives of the deceased, who had not the means of paying them the last offices of piety. The funeral pile which had been raised for one was pre-occupied by the friends of another; or a strange corpse would be thrown upon a pile already burning. But still more dreadful was the sight of the living sufferers, who, goaded by their inward fever and quenchless thirst, rushed naked out of their dwellings in search of water, less that they might drink, than that they might plunge into it, and thus relieve themselves from both their torments at

once.

The moral consequences of the plague of Athens were in many respects similar to those which have been always witnessed on such occasions, and which have been so vividly described by Boccacio, Manzoni, and De Foe. The passions of men were freed from the usual restraints of law, custom, and conscience, and their characters unfolded without reserve or disguise. The urgency of the common danger, as it seemed to interrupt all prospects of honourable industry and ambition, and to reduce the whole value of life to the enjoyment of the passing hour, operated as an assurance of impunity to encourage the perpetration of every crime. But at Athens, when the sanctions of human laws had lost their terrors, there were no restraints, for the multitude at least, sufficient to supply their place. The moral influence of a religion, which regarded the gods only

with the remainder, leaving the same force which they had found there, but now enfeebled by sickness, to continue the blockade of the town.

These sufferings and losses began to make the people impatient of the war, and angry with its author, and the enemies of Pericles were not backward in taking advantage of this turn in the public mind. They prevailed so far that an embassy was sent to Sparta with proposals of peace, which were rejected, as prompted by weakness and fear. This repulse only increas ed the general irritation, and Pericles thought it necessary to convene an assembly, and to try the power of his eloquence in cheering and soothing the people. He exhorted his hearers

* Cantacuzenus (u. s) exhibits only the reverse-a gen eral increase of piety and virtue. Yet it seems from the last words of his description (il un ravu àviárws sixe, kai pETS Tux) that, if he had thought proper, he could have told of some exceptions.