of each citizen, then, unless the historian has wholly misrepresented the orator, Athens in the days of Perikles approached nearer to this ideal than we approach it now; and we can well understand the high-strung enthusiasm which the speaker unquestionably felt, and which most of his hearers probably shared with him, as he dwelt on the real freedom and splendid privileges of Athenian citizens. If it was worth while to die for such a state, the sacrifice was altogether more costly than that of the Spartan who gave up nothing more than the dull monotony of a monastic barrack, and who knew nothing of the larger sympathies and wider aims developed by the extended empire and trade of a power like Athens. Perikles therefore might well rise to a strain of enthusiasm when, after his sketch of their political and social life, he addressed himself to those who were mourning for brothers and kinsfolk fallen in battle. These had shown themselves worthy of the men by whose efforts the fabric of Athenian empire had been reared, and had left to their survivors the task of following their example, or, if age had ended their active life, a memory full of quiet and lasting consolation.

The plague

at Athens.

430 B.C.

With this picture of Athens assailed by vehement enemies, and confronting them with the sober resolution arising from the consciousness of a substantially righteous cause, the history of the first year in this momentous struggle comes to an end. The narrative of the second year opens with the story of disasters utterly unlooked for, and of miseries after which Athens was never to be again quite what she had been before. Immediately after the vernal equinox the Spartan army again appeared in Attica, and after ravaging the Eleusinian plain passed on to the Paralian or southeastern portion of the land as far as the silver mines of Laureion. But they had not been many days in the land when they learnt that their enemies were being smitten by a power more terrible than their own. For some time, we are not told how long, a strange disease had been stalking westwards from its starting-post in Nubia or Ethiopia. It had worked its way through Egypt and Libya; it had ranged over a great part of the Persian empire, and now just as the summer heats were coming on, it broke out with sudden and awful fury in the Peiraieus. In the general state of the city there was little to check, and everything to feed it. The houses in Athens itself were filled with country folk to whom their owners had given hospitality;1 and in the empty spaces within the walls a vast population was crowded with no shelter beyond tents and stifling huts. Happily the cattle and horses belonging to the country estates had been removed not to Athens but to Euboia. Had they been brought into the city, the

1 Thục. ii. 17, 1.

triumph of the Peloponnesians might have been assured in six months. Thus far their efforts had been rewarded by no substantial results; but the Athenians had now to cope with a foe against which skill and courage furnished no protection. The physicians hastened to the aid of the sufferers: and they were the first to fall victims to the plague. Friends and kinsfolk who tended the suffering caught and carried about the contagion, until all learnt to accept as their death-warrant the first sensations of sickness. Then followed scenes such as no Hellenic city had ever witnessed before. In the crowded space between the walls lay men, women, and children, some in a state of passive stupor, others racked with the fearful pains which attended the early stages of the disease, others whom an intolerable thirst had fevered into madness. Entangled with the dying and the dead, these wretched sufferers fought their way with frantic vehemence to the rain-water tanks, into which they flung themselves. The dead were indeed to be envied by comparison with the wretched men who survived with memory so effectually destroyed that henceforth they retained no longer the sense of personal identity. In the midst of all this suffering there were not wanting, as there never are wanting, some who carried out with a literal zeal the precept which bade them eat and drink, because on the morrow they should die. It is right, however, to remember that of some of the worst horrors which have attended plagues of modern times we hear nothing during this terrible summer at Athens. At Milan or in London human nature was disgraced by the cruelty which hunted men to death on the groundless suspicion that they had anointed doors and walls or smeared benches in order to spread the pestilence. At Tyre or at Carthage human victims would have been roasted by hundreds in order to appease the angry gods. At Athens some, it is said, thought, when the sickness began, that the Spartans had poisoned the tanks; but it is not added that the charge was urged against anyone within the city walls. In the midst of all these horrors there was but one alleviation. Those who had recovered from the plague were safe from a second attack; but we could not be over-severe in our condemnation, if after thus passing through fire and water they had abandoned themselves to an inert selfishness. Far from doing this, they exhibited a noble rivalry in kindly offices; and unwearied in their tender care for those who were less happy than themselves, they showed that consciousness of good already attained may be a more powerful stimulus to well-doing than the desire of conquering a crushing evil.

For forty days Archidamos with his troops ravaged the soil of Attica; and although some would have it that he hastened home sooner than he would have done if Athens had been free from

Depression of the Athe

nian people.

plague, still during the remainder of the war no Spartan army remained in the country so long. But even before he could reach the Paralian land, Perikles had a fleet of one hundred ships made ready for another expedition against the Peloponnesos. Returning to Athens, the men who had thus far served under Perikles and who during their voyage round the Peloponnesos had lost many of their number from the plague were dispatched under Hagnon and Kleopompos to aid in the reduction of Potidaia. The result was disastrous. In spite of all the appliances which even Athenian skill could bring against it, the city still held out, while the infection brought by the troops of Hagnon spread with terrific speed amongst the Athenians who had preceded them in besieging the place. In less than six weeks 1,500 died out of 4,000 hoplites, and Hagnon returned with his crippled force to Athens. Here the old energy which had been ready to encounter the severest hardships and to make the most costly sacrifices seemed to be gone utterly. While envoys were sent to Sparta on a vain errand to sue for peace, the people with vehement outcries laid all their sufferings at the door of Perikles. Whether the disease had already begun to desolate his own home, we cannot say; but if he was at this time bearing the burden of personal grief, his firmness under this outcry becomes more wonderful. Summoning the assembly by the authority which he possessed as general, he met the people with a more direct rebuke of their faint-heartedness and a more distinct assertion of his own services than any to which he had in more prosperous times resorted. In a few pointed sentences he showed them that they were committing themselves to a false issue. It had been beyond their power to avert the war; and as soon as the struggle became inevitable, the safety of the state became by the conditions of ancient warfare the one object to be aimed at, whatever suffering the task might involve for individual citizens. For these defeat or submission meant the loss of freedom, of property, or of life, while victory would give them the means of more than repairing all their losses. To a certain extent he had foreseen this outburst of anger. He knew that the dwellers in the country would be sorely chafed by being compelled to exchange their pleasant homes for a cramped and wretched hut within the city walls but he had not foreseen the terrible disease whose ravages were worse than those of hostile armies, and he could take no blame for this disaster unless they were ready to give him credit for every piece of unexpected good luck which might befall them during the war.

1 Thuc. ii. 60. Macaulay, Essays, i. 47.

Close of the career of Perikles.

The Athenians had listened probably to many embittered harangues against Perikles before he opened his mouth; but neither the arguments of the speakers nor their own feelings of anger could withstand the reasoning of the great statesman. They resolved at once to make no more proposals to the Spartans, and to carry on the war with vigour; but Thucydides adds that his enemies were still powerful enough to induce the people to fine him. Their irritation against him was not long continued. The plague had now laid its hand heavily on his house. His sister and his two sons Xanthippos and Paralos were dead; and his grief when he had to place the funeral wreath on the head of his younger son showed that at length the iron had entered into his soul. There remained still the son of Aspasia who bore his own name; and the people, impressed more than ever by his firmness and his wisdom, not only chose him again as one of their Strategoi, but allowed him, in contravention, it is said, of a law passed by himself,1 to inroll this surviving child amongst the number of Athenian citizens. Thucydides merely mentions his re-election as Strategos, and adds that he lived for two years and a half after the attack of the Thebans on Plataiai. But his work was now done, and from this time we hear no more of the statesman who more than any other man saw what the capabilities of his countrymen were, and seized the best means for bringing out their best qualities. Thus ended amid dark shadows the life of a man, the key-note of whose policy was the indispensable need of sweeping away all private interests, if these should clash with the interests of Athens in this great struggle. The resources of the state were not to be wasted or risked in enterprises which at best could tend only to the benefit of individuals, and enterprises to which the state was committed were not to be starved or mismanaged in order to further the purposes of factious politicians. Nothing can be more severely simple and emphatic than the few sentences in which Thucydides insists that on these two rocks the Athenians made shipwreck. Perikles had worked for the welfare of Athens and for that alone. Those who came after him were bent on securing each the first place for himself; and the inevitable consequences followed. Their powers and the resources of the city were not concentrated on great tasks which without such concentration could never be

1 This law restricted Athenian citizenship to the children born of parents who both were Athenians. The law was bad; but it shows the strength of that ancient exclusiveness which thus survived the blows inflicted on it by the reforms of

Solon, Kleisthenes, Ephialtes, and Perikles himself. In short, there could be no remedy for this deepseated and deadly disease until the notion of Poleis or cities with their interpolitical law, see p. 12, should be displaced for our idea of a nation.

accomplished. The expedition to Sicily ought, according to the policy of Perikles, never to have been undertaken. When once undertaken, it ought to have been carried out manfully. Instead of this the interests of the fleet and army were put out of sight by factious generals at home; and the great catastrophe of Nikias and Demosthenes availed nothing to check these miserable rivalries. But in spite of all this wretchedness Athens held out for nine years longer against the whole confederacy of Sparta, against the determined rebellion of her own allies, against lavish subsidies from Persia to her enemies; and even in these dire straits it is the conviction of the historian that Athens would not have fallen, if her very heart had not been riven by the desperate feuds of her own children. If then the true greatness of Athens began with Themistokles, with Perikles it closed. Henceforth her course was downward.

CHAPTER III.

THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR FROM THE CLOSE OF THE PUBLIC

LIFE OF PERIKLES TO THE DESTRUCTION OF PLATAIAI.

Execution of

Spartan en

voys at

THE usages of Greek warfare were at all times cruel. In this internecine struggle between the two great Ionian and Dorian states of Hellas exasperation of feeling on both sides had its fruit in a horrible inhumanity. That privateers issuing from Megara2 and from the Pelopon- Athens. nesian ports generally should strive to cripple Athenian commerce to the utmost, is no more than we should look for. But to lawful captures of property the Megarians and Peloponnesians added the crime of wholesale murder. Not merely were all merchants whether belonging to Athens or to her allies, who might be seized in ships sailing round Peloponnesos, slaughtered without distinction; but the Spartans acted on the sweeping rule of killing all whom they might seize, even if these were citizens of states taking no part in the war, and hurling their bodies into clefts or gullies near the shore. It was not long before Spartan shortsightedness furnished Athens with the means of making terrible reprisal. Dead to all care for Hellenic freedom, the Spartans were now bent on securing the aid of the barbarian who fifty

1 Thục. ii. 65, 13.

? Thuc. iii. 51.

3 Ib. ii. 67.