by the Lacedæmonians, and compelled to evacuate Ithomé. During the course of the same expedition the islands of Zacynthus and Cephallenia were gained over to the Athenian alliance, and probably also some towns on the coast of Achaia.

§ 18. After the battle of Tanagra the Lacedæmonians made for a while no further attempts to oppose its progress, and quietly beheld the occupation of Bœotia and Phocis. Even after the surrender of Ithomé they still remained inactive; and three years after that event (B.C. 452), concluded a five years' truce with the Athenians. This truce was effected through the mediation of Cimon, who was anxious that no dread of hostilities at home should divert him from resuming operations against the Persians; nor perhaps was Pericles unwilling that so formidable a rival should be absent on foreign service. Cimon sailed to Cyprus with a fleet of 200 triremes belonging to the confederacy; whence he despatched 60 vessels to Egypt, to assist the rebel prince Amyrtæus, who still held out against the Persians among the marshes of the Delta. But this expedition proved fatal to the great Athenian commander. With the remainder of the fleet, Cimon undertook the siege of Citium in Cyprus ; but died during the progress of it, either from disease or from the effects of a wound. The command now devolved on Anaxicrates; who, being straitened by a want of provisions, raised the siege of Citium, and sailed for Salamis, a town in the same island, in order to engage the Phoenician and Cilician fleet. Here he gained a complete victory both on sea and land, but was deterred, either by pestilence or famine, from the further prosecution of the war; and having been rejoined by the sixty ships from Egypt, sailed home to Athens.

§ 19. After these events a pacification was concluded with Persia, which has sometimes, but erroneously, been called "the peace of Cimon." It is stated that by this compact the Persian monarch agreed not to tax or molest the Greek colonies on the coast of Asia Minor, nor to send any vessels of war westwards of Phaselis in Lycia, or within the Cyanean rocks at the junction of the Euxine with the Thracian Bosporus; the Athenians on their side undertaking to leave the Persians in undisturbed possession of Cyprus and Egypt. Even if no treaty was actually concluded, the existence of such a state of relations between Greece and Persia at this time must be recognized as an historical fact, and the war between them considered as now brought to a conclusion.

§ 20. During the progress of these events the states which formed the Confederacy of Delos, with the exception of Chios, Lesbos, and Samos, had gradually become, instead of the active allies of

Athens, her disarmed and passive tributaries. Even the custody of the fund had been transferred from Delos to Athens, but we are unable to specify the precise time at which this change took place. This transfer marked the subjection of the confederates as complete yet it is said to have been made with the concurrence of the Samians; and it is probable that Delos would have been an unsafe place for the deposit of so large a treasure. The purpose for which the confederacy had been originally organized disappeared with the Persian peace; yet what may now be called Imperial Athens continued, for her own ends, to exercise her prerogatives as head of the league. Her alliances, as we have seen, had likewise been extended in continental Greece, where they embraced Megara, Boeotia, Phocis, Locris; together with Trozen and Achaia in Peloponnesus. Of these allies some were merely bound to military service and a conformity of foreign policy, whilst others were dependent tributaries. Of the former kind were the states just mentioned, together with Chios, Lesbos, and Samos; whilst in the latter were comprehended all the remaining members of the Confederacy of Delos, as well as the recently conquered Ægina. Such was the position of Athens in the year 448 B.C., the period of her greatest power and prosperity. From this time her empire began to decline; whilst Sparta, and other watchful and jealous enemies, stood ever ready to strike a blow.

§ 21. In the following year (B.c. 447) a revolution in Bœotia deprived Athens of her ascendency in that country. This, as we have seen, was altogether political, being founded in the democracies which she had established in the Baotian towns after the battle of Enophyta. These measures had not been effected without producing a numerous and powerful class of discontented exiles, who, being joined by other malcontents from Phocis, Locris, and other places, succeeded in seizing Orchomenus, Chæronea, and a few more unimportant towns of Boeotia. With an overweening contempt of their enemies, a small band of 1000 Athenian hoplites, chiefly composed of youthful volunteers belonging to the best Athenian families, together with a few auxiliaries, marched under the command of Tolmides to put down the revolt, in direct opposition to the advice of Pericles, who adjured them to wait and collect a more numerous force. The enterprise proved disastrous in the extreme. Tolmides succeeded, indeed, in retaking Chæronea and garrisoning it with an Athenian force; but whilst his small army was retiring from the place, it was surprised by the enemy and totally defeated. Tolmides himself fell in the engagement, together with many of the hoplites, whilst a still larger number were taken prisoners. This

last circumstance proved fatal to the interests of Athens in Boeotia. In order to recover these prisoners, she agreed to evacuate Boeotia, to restore the exiles, and to permit the re-establishment of the aristocracies which she had formerly overthrown. Thus all Bootia, with the exception of Platæa, once more stood opposed, and indeed doubly hostile, to Athens.

But the Athenian reverses did not end here. The expulsion of the partizans of Athens from the government of Phocis and Locris, and the revolt of Euboea and Megara, were announced in quick succession; whilst to crown all, the Spartans, who were now set free to act by the termination of the five years' truce, were preparing to invade Attica itself. The youthful Pleistoanax, king of Sparta, actually penetrated, with an army of Lacedæmonians and Peloponnesian allies, as far as the neighbourhood of Eleusis; and the capital itself, it is said, was saved only by Pericles having bribed the Spartan monarch, as well as Cleandrides, his adjutant and counsellor, to evacuate the country. The story was at least believed at Sparta; for both Pleistoanax and Cleandrides were found guilty of corruption and sent into banishment.

§ 22. Pericles had been recalled by the Spartan invasion from an expedition which he had undertaken for the reconquest of Euboa, and which he resumed as soon as the Spartans had departed from Attica. With an overwhelming force of 50 triremes and 5000 hoplites he soon succeeded in reducing the island to obedience, in some parts of which the landowners were expelled and their properties given to Athenian cleruchs or colonists. But this was the only possession which Athens succeeded in recovering. Her empire on land had vanished more speedily than it had been acquired; whilst in the distance loomed the danger of an extensive and formidable confederacy against her, realized some years afterwards by the Peloponnesian war, and not undeservedly provoked by her aggressive schemes of conquest and empire. Thus both her present position and her future prospects were well calculated to fill the Athenians, and their leader Pericles, with apprehension and alarm; and under these feelings of despondency they were induced to conclude, at the beginning of the year B.C. 445, a thirty years' truce with Sparta and her allies, by which they consented to abandon all the acquisitions which they had made in Peloponnesus, and to leave Megara to be included among the Peloponnesian allies of Sparta.

FROM THE THIRTY YEARS' TRUCE TO THE WAR BETWEEN CORINTH AND CORCYRA.

§ 1. State of parties at Athens. Thucydides. § 2. Opposite political views. § 3. Ostracism of Thucydides. Administration of Pericles. He adorns Athens. His foreign policy. § 4. Athenian colonization. Cleruchiæ, Thurii and Amphipolis. § 5. Nature of the Athenian maritime empire, Amount of tribute. Oppressions. § 6. Revolt of Samos. Reduction of the island by Pericles.

§ 1. THE aristocratical party at Athens had been nearly annihilated by the measures of Pericles recorded in the preceding chapter. In order to make a final effort against the policy of that statesman, the remnant of this party had united themselves under Thucydides, the son of Melesias. Thucydideswho must not be confounded with his namesake, the great historian-was a relative of Cimon's, to whose political principles he succeeded. In ability and character he differed considerably from Cimon. He was not much distinguished as a military man; but as a statesman and orator he might even bear some comparison with his great opponent Pericles. Thucydides, however, had not the advantage of being on the popular side; and his manner of leading the opposition soon proved the ruin both of himself and of his party. The high character and great services of Aristides and Cimon, the conciliatory manners of both, and especially the affable and generous

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temper of Cimon, had, in spite of their unpopular views, secured them considerable influence. Thucydides, on the contrary, does not appear to have been distinguished by any of these qualities; and though the steps which he took to give his party a stronger organization in the assembly at first enabled him to make head against Pericles, yet they ultimately proved the cause of his overthrow. Not only were his adherents urged to a more regular attendance in the assembly, but they were also instructed to take up a separate and distinct position on the benches; and thus, instead of being mixed as before with the general mass of citizens, they became a regularly organized party. This arrangement seemed at first to lend them strength. Their applause or dissent, being more concentrated, produced a greater effect. At any sudden turn in a debate they were in a better position to concert their measures, and could more readily put forwards their best speakers according to emergencies. But these advantages were counterbalanced by still greater drawbacks. A little knot of men, who from a particular corner of the ecclesia were constantly opposing the most popular measures, naturally incurred a great share of odium and suspicion; but what was still worse, the paucity of their numbers-and from their position they could easily be counted—was soon remarked; and they then began to fall into contempt, and were designated as The Few.

§ 2. The points of dispute between the two parties were much the same as they had been in the time of Cimon. Thucydides and his followers were for maintaining amicable relations with the rest of Greece, and were opposed to the more popular notion of extending the Athenian dominion even at the risk of incurring the hostility of the other Grecian states. They were of opinion that all their efforts should be directed against the common enemy, the Persians; and that the advantages which Athens derived from the Confederacy of Delos should be strictly and honestly applied to the purposes for which that confederacy had been formed. With regard to this subject the administration of Pericles had produced a fresh point of contention. The vast amount of treasure accumulated at Athens from the tribute paid by the allies was more than sufficient for any apprehended necessities of defence, and Pericles applied the surplus to strengthening and beautifying the city. Thucydides complained that, by this misapplication of the common fund, Athens was disgraced in the eyes of Greece. Pericles, on the other hand, contended that so long as he reserved sufficient to guarantee security against the Persians, he was perfectly at liberty to apply the surplus to Athenian purposes. This argument is the argument