Rivalry of Themistokles and 483 B.C. very beginning of his career been conscious, and this want he persistently strained every nerve to supply. With him the maritime greatness of Athens was the one end on which all his efforts were concentrated; and the change of policy, on which he was thus led to insist, undoubtedly embittered the antagonism which had already placed a great gulf between himself and Aristeides. The growing wealth of Themi- Aristeides. stokles, the increasing poverty of his rival; the rigid integrity of the latter, the winning versatility of the former; the attachment of Aristeides to the old forms of Athenian life, the determination of Themistokles to make Athens pre-eminently a maritime power -all presented a contrast involving so much danger to the state that Aristeides himself (if we believe a tradition already noticed) said that if the Athenians were wise they would put an end to their rivalry by throwing them both into the Barathron; and the Demos so far took the same view that by a vote of ostracism Aristeides was sent into exile. In him Athens lost a citizen incomparably superior to his rival in every private virtue and in general morality; in Themistokles she retained the only man who could guide her, through seemingly hopeless difficulties, to victory and imperial power. The ostracism of Aristeides affirmed the adoption of the new policy in preference to the old conservative theory which regarded the navy as the seed-bed of novelty and change: and it cannot be doubted that Themistokles would strengthen this resolution by dwelling on the certainty of a fresh effort on the part of the Persian king to carry out the design on which, as they knew, his father Dareios had set his heart. From the petty strife with Aigina he would lead them to the momentous contest which awaited them with the whole power of Asia. He would not fail to impress on them the fact that this mighty force was to be directed especially against themselves, and that it was as necessary to be prepared against the formidable Phenician fleet which had crushed their eastern kinsfolk as against any armies which might assail them by land. Nor would there be any difficulty in persuading them that the foundations of their naval supremacy should be laid in the fortification of Peiraieus with its three natural harbours 1 rather than in the open bay of Phaleron to the east of the promontory of Mounychia. It was a happy thing both for the statesman and for the city whose true interests he had so thoroughly at heart, that the proposed expedition of Dareios was delayed first by the revolt of Egypt, then by his death, and lastly by the long time spent by Xerxes before he set out from Sousa, while 1 Thuc i. 93. the internal resources of Athens were enormously increased by the proceeds of the silver mines of Laureion, a district lying between the triangle of which a line drawn from Thorikos on the east to Anaphlystos on the west forms the base with cape Sounion for its apex. Pan-hellenic congress at the isthmus of Corinth. 481 B.C. This quickening of the Athenian mind under the guidance of Themistokles was not the only good effect produced by the shadow of the storm-cloud approaching from the East. Some at least among the other Greeks began to see that they were not fulfilling their true mission by wasting their years in perpetual warfare and feud; and in an assembly which deserved to be considered in some degree as a Pan-hellenic congress, they acknowledged the paramount need of making up all existing quarrels in presence of a danger which threatened all alike. In face of this common peril the men of Aigina laid aside their feud with the Athenians; but the joint action of the day was in their case followed unhappily by the renewed enmity of the morrow. In fact, whatever might be the outward look of things, the Hellenic character was not changed; and although invitations were sent to the Greeks of Sporadic 1 Hellas from Krete to Sicily, the summons was by some disregarded, while even among the states which were prepared to sacrifice most in the common cause no further approach was made towards a true national union. It was a time of high excitement. Of all the Hellenic cities the greater number were Medizing, or taking sides with the Persian, while they who refused to submit to Xerxes were cast down at the thought of the utter inadequacy of their navy to cope with his Phenician fleet. In this season of supreme depression the great impulse to hope and vigorous action came from Athens. The historian asserts that his words, which he knows will give great offence in many quarters, are forced from him by strong conviction of their truth; and his emphatic judgement is that if the Athenians had feared the coming danger and left their country, or, even without leaving it, had yielded themselves to Xerxes, none else would have dared to withstand the king by sea, while on land, even if many walls had been raised across the isthmus, the Spartans would have been forsaken by their allies, as these submitted one by one to the Persian fleet. Hence the Athenians are with him pre-eminently the saviours of Hellas. With them the scale of things was to turn; and they chose that Hellas should continue free, and raised up and cheered all those who would not yield to the Persian. Thus next after the gods, he adds, they drove away the king, because they feared not the 1 See p. 1. oracles of Delphoi neither were scared by the great perils which were coming upon their country.1 But for the present the plan of his narrative rendered it necessary to bring out in the most striking contrast the seemingly irresistible might of the Persian king and the disunion and vacillation of his adversaries. This contrast be The an swers received at Delphoi by the Athe nians. comes most forcible when the Athenians, who are regarded as the special objects of his wrath, betake themselves for counsel in the hour of need to the god at Delphoi. How little worth are the answers ascribed to the Pythian priestess, we shall see at once when we remember that the numerical majority of the Greek states was decidedly in favour of submission to Xerxes, that the policy of resisting chiefly by sea was thoroughly distasteful to the strictly conservative citizens headed by Aristeides, and that even those Greeks who were determined not to submit to the Persian were greatly depressed by the memory of the Ionic revolt and its disastrous issue. Here, as elsewhere, the epical feeling of the historian and his informants has exhibited itself in a narrative of singular beauty. We have first the very blackness of darkness in the pitiless response of the god to the Athenian messengers when first they approached the Delphian shrine. O wretched people, why sit ye still? Leave your homes and the strongholds of your city, and flee away. Head and body, feet and hands, nothing is sound, but all is wretched; And other strong places also shall they destroy and not yours only, But go ye from my holy place and brace up your hearts for the evil. The messengers were dismayed; but they received the first glimmering of comfort from the Delphian Timon who bade them take olive-branches and try the god once more. To their entreaty for a more merciful answer they added that, if they failed to receive it, they would stay there till they died. Their supplication was rewarded with these mysterious utterances, Pallas cannot prevail with Zeus who lives on Olympos, though she has besought him with many prayers; And his word which I now tell you is firmly fixed as a rock. For thus saith Zeus that, when all else within the land of Kekrops is wasted, the wooden wall alone shall not be taken; and this shall help you and your children. 1 Herod. vii. 139. But wait not until the horsemen come and the footmen; turn your backs upon them now, and one day ye shall meet them. And thou, divine Salamis, shalt destroy those that are born of women, when the seed-time comes or the harvest. These words, as being more hopeful, the messengers, we are told, wrote down, and having returned to Athens read them before the people. This fact is distinctly asserted by Herodotos, and we have no reason for questioning it: but the very ease with which this response was made to coincide with the policy of Themistokles, seems to throw a clear light on the influence which produced it. The mind of the great statesman had long been made up that Athens should become a maritime power. He had resolved not less firmly that the main work of beating off the Persians should be wrought at sea, as he saw little chance of its being done effectually by land only; and his whole career supplies evidence that he would with slight scruple or none adopt whatever measures might be needed to carry out his resolutions. We have then no reason for doubting that when the answer was read out before the assembled citizens, Themistokles could at once come forward and say, as he is reported to have said, 'Athenians, the soothsayers who bid you leave your country and to seek another elsewhere, are wrong; and so are the old men who tell you to stay at home and guard the Akropolis, as though the god pointed to our Akropolis when he speaks of the wooden wall, because long ago there was a thorn hedge around it. This will not help you; and they are all leading you astray when they say that you must be beaten in a sea-fight at Salamis, and that this is meant by the words which tell of Salamis as destroying the children of women. The words do not mean this. If they had been spoken of us, the priestess would certainly have said "Salamis the wretched," not "Salamis the divine," if the people of the land were doomed to die there. They are spoken not of us, but of our enemies. Arm then for the fight at sea, for the fleet is your wooden wall.' But if we may not question the fact that the response was susceptible of the interpretation put upon it by Themistokles, and indeed that it could not well bear any other, we have to remember the means by which the responses were produced which bade Kleomenes drive the Peisistratidai from Athens, or enjoined the deposition of Demaratos.3 It is notorious that Themistokles was at least as unscrupulous as Kleisthenes; and it is to the last degree unlikely that he should fail to avail himself of an instrument so well fitted to further his designs. 1 If we take these words in their strict sense, they would imply that the previous answer was not written down, a conclusion which seems to involve the fact that that response was of later fabrication. P. 86. 2 See Fait lessness of the Argives, Kretans, and ans. But although by adopting the policy of Themistokles Athens virtually insured her own supremacy in Hellas, the time was not yet come when it could be generally recognised. The position of Athens and the large number of ships which she was able to contribute seemed to justify her claim to the conduct of the war by sea: but the Korkyraiallies assembled in the congress at the isthmus declared bluntly that they would rather dissolve the confederacy than submit to any other than the Spartan rule; and the genuine patriotism of the Athenians led them at once to waive a claim on which they might fairly have insisted. From Argos, from Boiotia generally, and from Thebes in particular they had nothing to hope. The Argives were content, as they said, to be neutral in a strife in which their kinsfolk on either side were antagonists. With the exception of Thespiai and Plataiai the Boiotian cities, it is clear, were passive instruments in the hands of their chief men; and these men were actuated by a vehement Medism which with them became the expression of an anti-Hellenic feeling beyond the power of defeat and disaster to repress or even to check. The Kretans urged as an excuse for not meddling in these matters a Delphian response which bade them remember how little they had gained by their efforts to avenge the death of Daidalos and the wrongs and woes of Helen. The men of Korkyra, carrying thus early into practice the policy of isolation for which they afterwards became notorious,3 met the messengers from the Congress with eager assurances of ready help. They even carried ther words into action: but the sixty ships which they manned wore under officers who were charged to linger on their way along the southern coasts of Peloponnesos. Their conviction was that the Hellenic fleet and armies must alike be defeated; and thus, when Xerxes had become lord of Hellas, they might fall down before him and take credit for the goodwill which had withheld them from exerting against him a force not altogether to be despised. The event disappointed their expectations: but it was easy to satisfy the victors of Salamis that they were making what haste they could to the scene of action when the Etesian winds baffled all their efforts to double cape Malea.1 From Gelon, the tyrant of the great Corinthian colony of Syracuse, the continental Hellenes expected greater things. In this hope they were disappointed; but the inconsistent stories told to account for his refusal to help them sufficiently show the stuff out of which popular traditions are made and the processes by which they take shape. The city of Syracuse had risen to a posi 1 Herod. viii. 2, 3. 5 Thục. i. 32–7. N |