to face orderly and disciplined ranks, while the Athenians were spurred to redoubled efforts by their eagerness to decide the day before the Spartans could come up and share the fight. After a desperate struggle the shield-wall was broken, and the Athenians burst in: but the Persians still fought on, until they were borne back to the wall of wood and stone which sheltered the ships of the fleet. Behind this last rampart the Persians again made a stand: but Athenian determination burst this barrier also, and the main body of the barbarians fled in dismay. Still the Persians maintained the conflict, and in small knots strove to stem the iron torrent which was bursting through the breached wall. But the Spartans had now joined in the fight. The disarmed Samians, probably seizing the weapons of the dead, fell on the Persians who, it is said, had intended in case of defeat to intrench themselves on the heights—a perilous post for men who could obtain no supplies while their enemies held the land beneath them: but to such straits they were never to be put. The Milesians, to whom they had trusted for guidance to these mountain strongholds, led them by paths which brought them down among their enemies, and at last, turning fiercely upon them, massacred them without mercy. So ended a battle fought, it is said, on the very day which saw the destruction of Mardonios and his people at Plataia. The glory of the fight belonged chiefly to the Athenians. The Persian ships were all burnt; and with the booty, which included some hoards of money, the allies sailed to Samos. Here a grave question demanded their care. The Asiatic Ionians were again in revolt against the Persians: how were the Western Greeks to defend them? Insisting that such a task was beyond their power, the Peloponnesian commanders strongly urged the adoption of an Eastern fashion and the transference of the Asiatic Greeks to the lands which the Medizing Greeks had righteously forfeited. With this plan the Athenians would have nothing to do. They could not bear that Ionia should be abandoned to barbarians; and they denied the right of their allies to arrange the affairs of Athenian colonists. Delighted to be thus armed with a valid excuse for withdrawing from all interference in the matter, the Spartans at once gave way; and the oath of alliance immediately given by the Samians, and other islanders, laid the foundation of the maritime empire of Athens.

From Samos the Greek fleet departed on the special errand which had brought it eastward; but on reaching the Hellespont they learnt that winds and storms had shattered the bridges before the Persian king presented himself on its western shore; and Leotychides felt that here he had nothing more to do. But the Athenians could not thus abandon the Chersonesos. Its former Athenian occupants would be anxious to recover the possessions of which Persian conquest had deprived them; nor would they need much argument to convince them that they would do well to make themselves masters of the highway of trade between Western Hellas and the corn-growing lands of the Danube and the Euxine.

CHAPTER VII.

THE CONFEDERACY OF DELOS.

THE destruction of the Persian power in Europe was followed by the rapid growth of Athenian empire. Themistokles had made up his mind that Athens should be great; and he knew that she could not be great unless she were also wealthy. For the sake of her trade and commerce it was indispensably necessary that Athens should be itself fortified and should also possess an impregnable harbour. Of the Spartan request, that the Athenians should not only abstain from rebuilding their own walls but should join them in dismantling the walls of all other cities to the north of the Corinthian isthmus, he took no notice and by his advice the Spartans were dismissed with the promise that the Athenians would send their own ambassadors to discuss the matter. Of these envoys Themistokles was one, and he set out at once on his errand, charging his countrymen to strain every nerve in rebuilding the walls. For the accomplishment of this task nothing was to be spared; and to raise these walls as if by the speed of magic, everything else, even the temples, might be thrown down. Meanwhile Themistokles at Sparta declined all official audiences until he could be supported by his colleagues, of whose early arrival, whatever might have been the cause of their delay, he professed to have no doubt. The feeling of friendship for the victor of Salamis

was still strong at Sparta. But it underwent a severe strain when tidings came that the walls of Athens had already been raised to a formidable height; and Themistokles felt that he must take one step further. To the charge brought against the Athenians he gave a positive denial; but he urged the Spartans, if they doubted his words, to send ambassadors to ascertain the facts. Before they could reach Athens the Athenians had received from Themistokles the charge to retain these Spartans until he should himself have returned home. No sooner was he assured that his countrymen held these men as hostages for his safety than he made to the Spartan ephors a full confession of his motives and his plans. The walls of Athens he told them had been raised to a height which would enable the Athenians to undergo a blockade without fear: and Athens, he insisted, had a full right to be girt about with walls, unless this right was to be denied to every city in the Peloponnesos. If the Spartans had dreamed of hoodwinking the Athenians, they were fairly caught in their own trap. But they felt keenly the vexation to which for the time they dared not give vent; and the ambassadors on each side returned to their several homes without a formal recall.

Athens had been saved by her wooden walls; and Themistokles now insisted that nothing must be left undone to make her navy irresistible. By his advice, accordingly, the harbours of Peiraieus and Mounychia were inclosed within a wall nearly seven miles in circuit. As regards its height, his design was only half carried out; but even thus his purpose was effectually achieved.

Sestos had fallen, but Byzantion and the Thrakian Doriskos, with Eion on the Strymon and many other places on the northern shores of the Egean, were still held by Persian garrisons, when, in the year after the battle of Plataia (478 B.C.), Pausanias, as commander of the confederate fleet, sailed to Kypros (Cyprus) and thence, having recovered the greater part of the island, to Byzantion. The resistance here was as obstinate perhaps as at Sestos; but the place was at length reduced, and Sparta stood for the moment at the head of a triumphant confederacy. But to do her justice, her present position had been rather thrust upon her by circumstances than deliberately sought. Nor had she any statesman capable, like Themistokles, of seizing on a golden opportunity, while in her own generals she found her

greatest enemies. Pausanias had already roused the indignation of his own people by having his name inscribed, as leader of all the Greek forces, on the tripod which was to commemorate the victory of Plataia: and now his arrogance and tyranny were to excite at Byzantion a discontent and impatience destined to be followed by more serious consequences to his country as well as to himself. On the fall of Byzantion he sent to the Persian king the prisoners taken in the city, and spread the report that they had escaped. He forwarded at the same time, it is said, by the hand of the Eretrian Gongylos, a letter in which he informed Xerxes that he wished to marry his daughter and make him lord of all Hellas, adding that with the king's aid he felt sure of success. The spuriousness of this letter may not necessarily discredit the fact that some message was sent to which Xerxes returned an answer telling Pausanias that his name was enrolled in the list of his benefactors for his good deed in freeing the Byzantine prisoners, and beseeching him to spare neither time, men, nor money for the immediate accomplishment of his schemes. The head of this miserable man was now fairly turned. The reports sent home about his conduct led to his recall. He was put on his trial; and though his accusers failed to establish the personal charges brought against him, he was nevertheless deprived of his command. But Pausanias, although not king, could not brook degradation from a power which Spartan kings had rarely enjoyed. We soon find him again at Byzantion, whence subsequently he crossed the strait, to carry on at Kolônai his traitorous dealings with the Persian satrap.

All these events were tending to alienate the Asiatic Greeks and the islanders of the Egean from a state which showed itself incapable of maintaining its authority over its own servants. When therefore a Spartan commission headed by Dorkis arrived with a small force to take the place of Pausanias, they were met by passive resistance where they had looked for submission; and the retirement of the Spartans from the field in which they were unable to compel obedience left the Delian confederacy an accomplished fact. (477 B.C.)

It now fell to the lot of Aristeides to regulate the terms of the new confederacy, and to determine the proportions in which the allies should contribute men, ships, and money for the common cause. The sum total of this assessment on the allies amounted

to 460 talents; but the items are not given. As the management of this fund was intrusted to Hellenotamiai, treasurers elected by the allies generally, and as they met on terms of perfect equality in the sacred island of Delos, we must suppose that the distribution of burdens was accepted by all as just and equitable. In truth the fairness of the arrangement is conclusively proved by the mere fact of its acceptance. Athens had not at this time means of compulsion more formidable than those of Sparta, while the help which she was able to afford told more immediately for the benefit of the exposed members of the confederacy than for herself.

Meanwhile Pausanias was busy at Kolônai, thwarting the plans of Aristeides. The constant complaints brought against him at length wearied out the patience of the Spartans, who charged him to follow their messenger on pain of being declared the enemy of the people. Relying on the effects of bribes, he returned to Sparta, where the ephors threw him into prison. But on these magistrates he so pressed their lack of evidence against him that he was set free: and his next step was an instant challenge to his accusers to prove their charge. No proof, it would seem, was forthcoming, for Spartan law could trust nothing less than the actual confession of the prisoner. Helots came forward who said that Pausanias had been tampering with their fellow-slaves: but he had not been heard to tempt them, and their testimony went for nothing. These were followed by an Argilian slave, to whom he had intrusted his latest letters for Artabazos. This slave, remembering, it is said, that no previous messenger (Gongylos, it would seem, excepted) had ever come back, opened the letter, intending to close it again with a forged seal and carry it to its destination if it involved no danger to himself. But the letter contained a strict charge to kill the bearer, and the Argilian carried it not to Artabazos but to the ephors, by whose advice the slave took refuge as a suppliant in the Temenos of Poseidon at cape Tainaron in a hut with double walls between which some of the ephors hid themselves. No long time had passed before Pausanias came to ask what had led the Argilian to a step so strange. The slave, in his turn, asked what he had done to deserve the treachery with which Pausanias had sought his death. Soothing him as well as he could, Pausanias admitted his offence, but assuring him solemnly that no mischief should happen to him begged him to lose not a