and had been roughly handled by the Greeks in an engagement off the promontory of Artemisium.

The Persian army marched on to Attica, took and burned Athens. The Grecian fleet lay in the strait between Salamis and the continent; the Persian imprudently attacked them there: a total defeat was the consequence. Xerxes, who had from the land beheld the destruction of his fleet, hasted back to Asia, leaving an army of 300,000 under Mardonius. The following year the Greeks, to the number of 110,000, fought and defeated the Persians at Platæa, and but 40,000 of the latter returned to Asia. On the same day (Sept. 22.) the Grecian fleet totally defeated that of the Persians at the promontory of Mycale, in Ionia.

Athens got a large share of the Persian spoils; the city was rebuilt, and the port of Piræus fortified. The insolence of Pausanias, the Spartan chief, having disgusted the allies, the command was transferred to Athens. It was resolved to prosecute the war against Persia; each of the allies was bound to supply a certain number of men and ships; they compounded with the Athenians for the payment of an annual sum of money, instead of furnishing their contingent; the Athenian treasurers received each year the contributions of the cities on the isles and coasts of the Ægean; and Athens, at the expense of the allies, maintained a powerful army and navy. The jealousy of the Spartans was excited; they were on the point of declaring war, when an earthquake levelled Sparta; the Helots and Messenians rose in rebellion, and the haughty Spartans were forced to call on Athens for aid. But they distrusted their allies, and the Athenians joined the Argives, the hereditary foes of Sparta. The rebellion of the Helots lasted ten years, and was ended by a composition with the rebels. Athens was now in the height of her power; she sent 200 ships to Egypt to assist the natives against the Persians, took a part in the affairs of Cyprus, beat the Æginetes, and established a democracy at Megara. The great men of Athens at this period were, Aristides, Themistocles, and Cimon; all of

whom, like Miltiades, experienced popular ingratitude, and were driven from their country.

The Peloponnesian War.

Pericles was now the leading man at Athens. An Alcmeonide by the mother's side, and son of Xanthippus, who won the victory at Mycale, he sought power by bringing in the wildest democracy. All barriers of the constitution were thrown down, and power given to the lowest rabble, by whom and over whom he hoped to rule. Of commanding eloquence, he swayed the people; handsome, rich, generous, and brave, he was master of their affections. Magnificent in his taste, he adorned the city with stately buildings at the cost of the allies, and all the arts flourished beneath his patronage.

Pericles reduced Euboea and Samos; he covered the coasts and islands with Athenian colonies; he made the Athenians masters of the sea, and already those dreams of distant conquest, which caused their overthrow, began to float before the imagination of the vain-glorious people. He sought to enfeeble the Doric confederacy, and an opportunity soon offered. Corinth and her colony Corcyra were, after Athens, the most considerable naval powers. United, they were able to cope with her; but commercial jealousy prevented their co-operating, and, at last, they went to war with each other. Corcyra addressed herself to Athens for aid; the Corinthians complained to Sparta of the breach of the truce by the latter power other events occurred to increase the odium against Athens, and, at length, war was declared against her by the Doric confederation, and an army, under Archidamus, one of the Spartan kings, invaded Attica. The 431. plan laid down by Pericles for carrying on the war was, to abandon the country to the Lacedæmonian army, and then retaliate by descents on Peloponnesus, by which they would soon weary the confederates of the war. Unfortunately, destiny fought also against Athens in the second year of the war the plague broke out, and swept

B. C.

away numbers of citizens; amongst them, Pericles himself. The war was still carried on with various success. The most remarkable event of it in Greece, was the gallant defence of Platea against the Peloponnesians. The greatest man that appeared among the Spartans was Brasidas, who, to the severe virtues of a Spartan, united mildness and gentleness of manners. Among the Athenians, Nicias and Demosthenes were the most distinguished of the nobles; Cleon, the leading demagogue; but Alcibiades, of noble birth, immense wealth, extreme beauty, and eminent talents, far eclipsed all the men of his time. He was the ward of Pericles and the pupil of Socrates; but, hurried away by his ambition, he waited not till years had matured his judgment, engaging in politics he took the popular side, and plunged his country into the fatal expedition to Sicily.

Numerous Grecian colonies had settled in Sicily, and had risen to great wealth and power: they were almost all democracies; but tyrants occasionally ruled them. Syracuse was the most distinguished of these cities. Gelon had possessed himself of the tyranny, and governed with justice and mildness: after his death, the people fell into divisions: the smaller cities, which were oppressed, applied to Athens for help. Alcibiades, who was then in the pienitude of his influence, warmly exhorted the people to attend to the call, and drew a brilliant picture of the glorious prospect of universal empire that now seemed destined for Athens. In an evil hour the people, though warned by Nicias and other men of age and experience, yielded their assent, and an expedition against Syracuse was decreed. The finest fleet that ever left Athens sailed under the command of Alcibiades, Nicias, and Lamachus, and success at first attended its operations; but the enemies of Alcibiades accused him of profaning the mysteries; he was recalled, and fled to Sparta: a Spartan general, Gylippus, was despatched to Syracuse, and though the Athenians augmented their army in Sicily to 40,000 men, and sent

out Demosthenes, their ablest general, it was defeated, . c. and men and generals lost life or liberty.

412.

The news of this misfortune was at first not credited at Athens: when its truth was confirmed, the people looked around and saw themselves without horse, or heavy infantry, or ships, with an empty treasury, their subjects in rebellion, their allies fallen off, the enemy in their country, and before their port; yet they lost not courage, but vigorously prepared for defence. The Lacedæmonians, by the advice of Alcibiades, instead of making annual incursions into Attica, had taken and fortified Decelia, a post half way between Athens and Boeotia, and from thence wasted the country: still the Athenians held out for seven years and, but for the party-spirit that prevailed, which drove again into exile Aleibiades, and unjustly put to death most of their other good generals, they might have come off victorious in the struggle. The vanity and inexperience of the Athenian commanders (warned in vain by Alcibiades) gave a decisive victory 405. to the Lacedæmonian Lysander, at the river Ægos, and Athens' last hope, her renewed fleet, was lost. Lysander soon appeared in the Piræus; the people made a gallant resistance, but hunger compelled them to sue for peace. The Thebans and Corinthians insisted that the city should be burnt, and the inhabitants reduced to slavery. The Lacedæmonians declared they would never submit to the destruction of a city which had merited so well of Greece. But to cramp her power effectually, she was allowed to possess but twelve ships; the Long Legs, the walls between the city and the Piræus, were broken down; and the government placed in the hands of an oligarchy of thirty persons.

Thus ended the Peloponnesian war, after a continuance of twenty-seven years, and with it the dominion of Athens, in the seventy-fifth year after the battle of Salamis. During that period Athens had acquired another and more lasting empire, of which Lysander could not deprive her: she had become the mistress of Greece in all the arts and sciences that embellish and ennoble life.

Poetry, philosophy, architecture, sculpture, attained during the time of Athenian sway an eminence never surpassed. The philosophy of Socrates and his disciples, the dramas of Sophocles and Euripides, the stately Parthenon, and other works of the immortal Phidias, drew thither all Greece; and nowhere were religious festivals celebrated with equal taste and splendour. Commerce flourished; good taste was diffused among all ranks of society.

Lacedæmonian Dominion.

When Athens fell, Sparta remained without a rival : she commanded at sea as at land: her Harmosts, somewhat like the English residents at the courts of Indian princes, directed the policy of the independent towns of Greece and Asia. The pride and arrogance of Sparta lost her this empire. The oligarchy established and protected at Athens by her became odious; AtheB. c. nian exiles, headed by Thrasybulus, returned to their 103. country in arms, and overthrew the thirty tyrants: the Long Legs were rebuilt. Conon, the Athenian, was admiral of the Persian fleet; Persian gold was employed to raise the city to independence, and Athenian fleets again appeared at sea. Sparta still sought to establish an oligarchy in every town; and wherever, as at Olynthus, popular liberty established itself, the Spartan commanders had orders to extinguish it.

During this period, Persia exercised considerable influence in the affairs of Greece. The memorable retreat of the Ten Thousand, who, opposed by all the arts of oriental treachery, by all the forces of the empire, and the difficulties of an unknown, mountainous country, had forced their way to the Euxine, revealed the secret of the internal weakness of that vast empire. Agesilaus, king of Sparta, had meditated conquests in Asia, and had for 396. two years carried on war with success in that country. The Persian court saw its danger, and adopted the policy of subsidising the different states of Greece, and keeping up such a balance of power among them, as would pre