282 ([return])
[ Liturgies, with most of the Athenian laws that seemed to harass the rich personally, enhanced their station and authority politically. It is clear that wherever wealth is made most obviously available to the state, there it will be most universally respected. Thus is it ever in commercial countries. In Carthage of old, where, according to Aristotle, wealth was considered virtue, and in England at this day, where wealth, if not virtue, is certainly respectability,
283 ([return])
[ And so well aware of the uncertain and artificial tenure of the Athenian power were the Greek statesmen, that we find it among the arguments with which the Corinthian some time after supported the Peloponnesian war, “that the Athenians, if they lost one sea-fight, would be utterly subdued;”—nor, even without such a mischance, could the flames of a war be kindled, but what the obvious expedient [Footnote Thucyd., lib. i., c. 121. As the Corinthians indeed suggested, Thucyd., lib. i., c. 122: of the enemy would be to excite the Athenian allies to revolt, and the stoppage or diminution of the tribute would be the necessary consequence.
284 ([return])
[ If the courts of law among the allies were not removed to Athens till after the truce with Peloponnesus, and indeed till after the ostracism of Thucydides, the rival of Pericles, the value of the judicial fees did not, of course, make one of the considerations for peace; but there would then have been the mightier consideration of the design of that transfer which peace only could effect.
285 ([return])
[ Plut. in vit. Per.
286 ([return])
[ “As a vain woman decked out with jewels,” was the sarcastic reproach of the allies.—Plut. in vit. Per.