478—Themistocles died in banishment about this time, and Aristides of old age. Both were leading statesmen and generals of Athens during the Persian war.
470—Socrates, the most eminent philosopher of all ancient times, was born this year.
” —The death of Xerxes by assassination occurred this year.
466—Cimon, son of Miltiades, was now the great man of Athens. He was soon superseded by Pericles. From 480 B. C. to 430 was the golden period of Athens. She was pre-eminent politically, conducting the war of the Grecian allies against Persian supremacy on the western shores of Asia and in the Mediterranean sea. Republican liberty was everywhere predominant. The greatest writers, painters and sculptors lived in this period or immediately after it. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, philosophers; Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, tragic poets; Zeuxis and Apelles, painters; and Phidias in sculpture, were a few among the many great names which are found in or immediately following this period.
457—Cincinnatus was made dictator at Rome. During this period the Romans laid the foundation of their dominion over all Italy by waging successful war with the Etruscans and Samnites, the most vigorous and powerful of their opponents.
450—The Decemvirate was appointed at Rome. They were ten magistrates empowered to produce a more perfect code. It was called the “Laws of the Twelve Tables.” The plebeians about this time succeeded in wresting important privileges from the patricians, which more equally balanced the different powers of the state.
2. Athens was the centre of civilization, and Greek culture and ideas were penetrating all the nations in her vicinity. Rome was rapidly developing and Carthage was at the summit of her glory. She had control of much of the Spanish or Iberian peninsula. Persia, after absorbing all the old monarchies of the east, was declining. The “march of empire” was distinctly defining its “westward course.”
It was about the middle of this century that Herodotus, the “Father of History,” was rising to fame, and a few years later Xenophon, the Greek general and historian, was born. Thucydides, another historian, dates from this period. The great career of history now fairly commenced.
443—Herodotus emigrated from Halicarnassus, in Asia, to Greece.