the coasts of Italy. Athens "was now not merely the first maritime State of Greece, but perhaps equal to Sparta even in land power, possessing in her alliance Megara, Boeotia, Phocis, Lokris, together with Achæa and Træzen, in Peloponnesus. Large as this aggregate already was, both at sea and on land, yet the magnitude of the annual tribute, and still more the character of the Athenians themselves, superior to all Greeks in that combination of energy and discipline which is the grand cause of progress, threatened still farther increase."*

Such was the position of Athens in A. C. 450, when the five years' truce was ratified by the influence of Cimon. This is the culminating era of Athenian glory and power. Athens had grown great, during the last forty years, in military and naval power, in breadth and efficacy of dominion, and still more in the institutions which sustain and ennoble, in the resources which enrich, and in the arts which embellish a State. In these and the succeeding years, the liberal constitution of Clisthenes was developed and systematized, not without opposition and the presumption of treachery on the part of the oligarchical and laconizing faction. By gradual modifications the laws were harmonized with the increased requirements and liberalized government of the country. The revenues of the State were augmented by the regular tribute imposed upon the allies, and by the financial arrangements at home. The silver mines of Laurium were worked with profit; the gold mines of Thasos and Thrace became a fruitful source of public wealth; and the special burthens (the liturgies) of the rich were discharged splendidly and with ease, in consequence of the abundant returns of commerce, agriculture, and industry under the stimulus of the general prosperity. The navy was enlarged and its efficiency increased, by improvements in naval architecture, by the superior discipline and continual exercise of the crews, and by the scientific dexterity acquired in marine tactics. The fortifications of Athens and the Piræus were completed, the city connected with its port, and the communication sheltered from hostile attack by the construction of the long walls. "The painted porch" was erected, and the still surviving Theseum. The gardens of the academy were laid out and opened to the public by the liberality of Cimon; and, from the ashes left by the Persian invasion, those splendid edifices were beginning to arise, which inspired the poets and the orators,† gratified and instructed the people, and furnished models for all future imitation. Intellectual cultivation was not neglected. The stage was rendered

*Grote's Hist. Greece, pt. II, ch. xlv, vol. v, p. 344; cf. Mitford, Hist. Greece, ch. xii, § v. vol. ii, pp. 278-9. London, 1838.

Demosth., c. Androt., c. v, cf. c, xxii, c. Aristocrat., c. liii, c. Timocrat., c. xlii. Frag. Com. Anonym., xlix, ap. Meincke. Fr. Com. Gr. iv, p. 616.

illustrious by the magnificent compositions of the tragic triumvirate, Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Crates, Magnes, Cratinus, Teleclides, and the other precursors of Aristophanes and Eupolis, inaugurated the triumphs of the comic muse. The philosophers of Ionia, Sicily, Italy, and Greece, introduced the pursuit of abstract speculation into the shady walks surrounding the city of Minerva. Sculpture, painting, and music participated in the general progress, and attained a high degree of refinement. Athens was already becoming, as she afterwards claimed to be, the school of Greece.* Higher eminence might afterwards be won in particular branches of culture, but never did all that could add strength, and energy, and grace, and dignity, and splendour, and wealth, and refinement, to a nation, flourish in happier union than at the period of the five years' truce. There was ample excuse for the vanity, sometimes so amiably, often so ridiculously displayed by the Athenians, who boasted that Attica surpassed all other regions in her institutions, her men, her horses, her air, her water, her figs, her bread, and everything else.t

The most ingenious devices would be unable to compress into this rapid survey even the most hurried indications of the stages of this dazzling progress, or the modes of its accomplishment. Neither would they avail to trace the contemporary consolidation of Spartan power in Peloponnesus, or to follow the contemporary changes in other parts of Greece. An accurate acquaintance with these incidents, their causes and their successions, must be obtained from Mr. Grote, whose philosophy, and erudition, and unabated diligence are never more felicitously employed than in furnishing complete data for the comprehension of the condition, impulses, aims, resources, and policy of the hostile parties who contended for Pan-Hellenic dominion, and sacrificed all Greece with themselves in the Peloponnesian war.

The story of this long warfare, which divided Greece into hostile camps, arrayed the arms, the policy, and the allies of Athens against the arms, the policy, and the confederates of Sparta, and extended its ravages and its fatal bequest of calamities from the plains of Sicily to the Hellespont and Mæander, and even to the Euphrates, is recorded by Mr. Grote with extreme fulness and perspicuity. Thucydides had treated the previous history of Greece as an introduction to the grand conflict between the Ionian and Dorian races, and had prepared his readers for the ensuing scenes by a lucid exhibition of the opposing, tendencies and the antagonist resources of the two rival cities of Greece.

*Isocrat., Panegyr., c. xii-xiii.

Isocr., Paneg., c. iv, v; Plato, De Rep., iv, c. xii; Eurip., Incert. Fab. Fr., cxviii, ed. Didot; Menander, ap. Meineke, Fr. Com. Gr., vol. iv, p. 725; Frag. Com. Anonym., Iv; ibid, p. 604; Antiphanis, Homonym, ap. Meineke, &c., vol. iii, p. 98; Xenoph., Mem., iii, c. iii.

Mr. Grote has the advantage of a broader field of view, ampler limits, and the larger experience of the centuries since elapsed; but he approaches the subject with the same sense of its magnitude as that entertained by his Athenian precursor and guide, and with the same consciousness that its explanation is to be found in the whole series of preceding changes. He feels, and the perception is true, that this general Hellenic war is the central point and the crisis of the fortunes of Greece; it is the confluence of the separate streams of Hellenic action. He sees that it was predetermined by the natural development of preëxistent and ineradicable discrepancies in the elements of Greek society; that the necessary tendency to consolidation, arising from political and social advancement, and the consequent approach to the sentiment of Hellenic nationality, inevitably ensured a collision with the less developed communities, and the representatives of opposite currents of thought, and that the issue of the contest was certain to be ruinous to Greece, whichever party might be the victor. This Mr. Grote appears to recognize, and he enables us to recognize it. We admire the patient acumen with which he has unfolded the Peloponnesian war, placing it and all its details in a bright and just light. He is always scrupulously minute in his investigation; he is especially so in his discussion of this eventful and portentous period. He lingers over every incident; he debates every change. of policy and fluctuation of fortune; he scrutinizes every motive and every possible result; he analyzes the motives and estimates with care the character of every prominent actor. The liberties of Greece are at stake, and it is known that the game will be lost. He protracts his sojourn amid the scenes of its mightiest endeavours, and draws out to the utmost length the last hours of freedom and prosperity.

The war had been long anticipated by Pericles, and long postponed by his sagacious statesmanship. He had not been deluded by the thirty years' peace, but employed the brief period of repose in extending, concentrating, and husbanding the resources of Athens, and in preparing for the approaching struggle. Unfortunately, he survived only long enough to suggest the early operations of the war.

The commencement of hostilities found the resources of the combatants considerably changed from what they had been when the five years' truce was concluded. The defeat at Coronea had snatched Boeotia from the dominion of Athens. The Megarid had revolted, and had thereby placed in the hands and at the service of the enemy, the important pass which defended Attica from Peloponnesian invasion.* Sparta had been strengthened to the full

*The importance of such a defence in this quarter was manifested afterwards in the Corinthian war, when the alliance of Corinth enabled Conon to rebuild the long walls of Athens. Grote, pt. ii, ch. lxxiv, vol. ix, pp. 321-4,

extent of the losses of Athens. Her position rendered her always the citadel of Greece; but recent accessions had increased her offensive capabilities. The good will of the Corinthians had been alienated from the Athenians by the expedition against Potidæa, and by the acceptance of the Corcyræan alliance, which by no means compensated for the odium incurred. Corinth had repressed the hostile designs of Sparta, but the war was finally precipitated by the clamorous demands of the Corinthians for vengeance and redress.

The opposing parties appeared to be equally matched; or rather, the extent and dissimilarity of their respective resources announced an arduous struggle and an uncertain issue. Each rejoiced in the number and flourishing condition of its allies, and in the perfection of its warlike education. Sparta was preponderant by land, Athens omnipotent by sea. The Doric confederacy anticipated success from its disciplined and unbought soldiery, from the concentration of its forces, and the discontent of the subjects of the Athenian empire. The Ionic alliance boasted of its fleets and well-paid marine, of the abundance of its annual revenue, of the skill of its sailors, the perfection of its naval discipline and tactics, the diffusion, inaccessibility, and wealth of its members. The war was decided by the capture of the Athenian army at Syracuse, and of the Athenian navy, unresisting, at ÆgosPotami. The intervals between the commencement of the war and these events were full of changes. At the outbreak of hostilities it would have been difficult to anticipate the result; yet, if the measures of Pericles had been rigidly maintained, his hopes and the apprehensions of Archidamus might have been realized. For, though Athens was exposed to attack and annual siege by the loss of Megaris; and the plains stretching from the Acropolis to Citharon and the Isthmus were subject to annual devastation : while Sparta was protected by her inhospitable coasts, and the mountain ranges which encompassed her secluded valley; yet Athens could command supplies by the possession of the seas and the monopoly of commerce; her walls might not shield her from the insult of the enemy's presence, but they defended her from his arms; and there were many points in the Peloponnesus, where Sparta was vulnerable, and exposed to the assaults of Athenian triremes. The advantages of the two combatants were as nearly equal as ever occurs in warfare, though the difference seemed to be in favour of Athens.

They were as nearly, and as diversely matched in their guiding spirits, though here again the advantage was on the side of the

* Σχεδόν δέ τι και ἀκρόπολίς ἐστιν ἡ Πελοπόννησος συμπάσης τῆς Ἑλλάδος. Strabo, lib. viii, c. i. Laconia occupied a similar relation even to the Peloponnese.

Athenians. Archidamus was king of Sparta, and sole commander of the Peloponnesian forces, his colleague Pleistoanax being in exile. He was a Spartan soldier, of singular moderation, equanimity, and discernment. His feelings and anticipations were adverse to his cause; but, like a Spartan, he was ready to discharge his duty with equal steadiness and discretion, whether marching to victory or defeat. Pericles, mature in years, and more mature in experience, retained an envied, but uncontested supremacy in Athens. Brilliant in genius, eloquent in speech, distinguished in war, consummate in council, fertile in resources, sagacious in his estimation of the future, uncorrupted by prosperity, undismayed by disaster, patriotic in his impulses, enthusiastically attached to his native city, but with a liberal regard for the general interests of Greece, possessing the confidence of his countrymen, and full of reliance upon their energies and their capacities, Pericles was such a leader as the times required, and such a counsellor as alone to equal or to counterbalance nearly all other advantages.

Pericles was not spared to control the war. The gods were adverse to Athens. It might seem that the familiar superstition of the Greeks was justified, and that heaven envied the remarkable prosperity of men.* The plague appeared, and proved more fatal than the Peloponnesian army before the city. It thinned the population crowded within the walls: it crushed the spirits, and undermined the morals of the people, and inflicted the heaviest blow by numbering Pericles among its victims. The fear of the pestilence repelled the Peloponnesians, but the loss of Pericles was irreparable. In the battles of the Iliad, the heavenly powers descend upon the field to aid and encourage the combatants, but leave them to their fate when the decrees of destiny have consigned them to death or defeat. The presiding genius of Athens abandoned her when Pericles expired."

Mr. Grote scarcely appreciates the effect produced by the death of Pericles, and the exhaustion and demoralization occasioned by the plague. He mentions the numerical loss of knights and hoplites, but, overwhelming as this might seem to be, it was a severer injury that the superstitions of the Athenians were alarmed, and their virtues permanently impaired by this fearful and recurring visitation. In vain they endeavoured to propitiate the offended Apollo by the purification of Delos.§. The plague

*Thucyd., vii, lxvii, and the remarks on the passage. Grote, Hist. Greece, pt. ii, ch. lx, vol. vii, p. 335, note.

Grote doubts the fact of Pericles having died of the plague. Hist. Greece, pt. ii, ch. xlix, vol. vi, p. 170, note.

Grote, Hist. Greece, pt. ii, ch. xlix, vol. vi, p. 163.

Grote, Hist, Greece, pt. ii, ch. li, vol. vi, p. 312.