The Athenians then attempted to justify their imperial policy and to point out that, had the situation been reversed, and had it been the Lacedaemonians who had acquired an empire, they would have found it just as necessary as had Athens to rule with a strong hand, and that they would have been even worse hated than was Athens. They concluded with a passionate appeal for peace:
Do not then be hasty in deciding a question which is serious; and do not, by listening to the misrepresentations and complaints of others, bring trouble upon yourselves. Realize, while yet there is time, the inscrutable nature of war; and how when protracted it generally ends in becoming a mere matter of chance, over which neither of us can have any control, the event being equally unknown and equally hazardous to both. The misfortune is that in their hurry to go to war, men begin with blows, and when a reverse comes upon them, then have recourse to words. But neither you, nor we, have as yet committed this mistake; and therefore while both of us can still choose the prudent part, we tell you not to break the peace or violate your oaths. Let our differences be determined by arbitration according to the treaty. If you refuse, we call to witness the Gods, by whom you have sworn, that you are the authors of the war; and we will do our best to strike in return.[[4]]
The Spartans did not heed the plea for peace, and in 431 B.C. the long dreary war, known in history as the Peloponnesian War, began and dragged itself out for nearly thirty years. Compared to modern warfare the actual fighting was not on a very large scale, and we seem to be reading of battles between what were, after all, only rather small states. But though the states were small, the statesmen who guided their policies and the men who fought for them were men of human passions like ours; and though the method of warfare has changed, the effect of war on the minds and lives of men and women living at the time has changed very little. The future is hidden from the eyes of each generation of men, but the past lies open before them; and to those who read the past with understanding comes enlightenment when similar difficulties surround them, for the past shows not only the beginning and the middle, but also the end of the story.
When the Peloponnesian War broke out, almost fifty years had gone by since the Persian had been driven out of Greece, and the heroes of Marathon, of Thermopylae and of Salamis had already passed into history. That war had been between the Greek and the Barbarian, this war was between Greek and Greek, and it rapidly spread over almost the whole Greek world. The real cause was the rivalry between Athens and Sparta, and it was fought to determine which should be supreme in Greece. Athens was a great sea-power, Sparta a great land-power; Athens was a freedom-loving democracy, Sparta was still governed by an oligarchy; Athens was dependent for her life on the corn that came from afar, Sparta was practically self-sufficing. When the war began, each side was confident and sure of victory. How was it to end?
II. ATHENS DURING THE WAR
During the first part of the war Athens was supreme at sea; and she strengthened her hold on all the trade routes. But she did not dare meet Sparta in a great open pitched battle on land, for the military power of the latter was no legend, but a most formidable fact.
Everything, however, did not go well with Athens during those first few years. Every year the Spartans had invaded Attica and burnt and plundered the land surrounding Athens. This had driven all the country people into the city, where conditions became very congested and intolerable. And then it was that a scourge fell upon Athens from which she never recovered. For two long summers and two long winters the Angel of Death stood over the city and darkened it with his wings and smote the inhabitants, so that one out of every four died. It was the Plague. The whole dreadful story can be read in the pages of Thucydides: how it began in the Peiraeus and then spread to Athens; of the sufferings of those who were seized with it, the rapidity with which it spread and the impossibility of caring for the sick or burying the dead; of the lawlessness in the disorganized terror-stricken city; and of all the misery which came from seeing the inhabitants of the city dying in such numbers and from knowing that without the walls the country was being ravaged.
When the horror had passed and Athens once more lifted up her head, she was no longer the Athens of old. Her spirit was not only broken but changed. The war and the plague together lay heavy upon the Athenians, and they blamed Pericles because he had persuaded them to go to war, declaring that he was the author of all their troubles. Once again he made a great speech to them, reminding them that Athens had never yet yielded to misfortune, and that the greatest states and the greatest men are those who, when misfortunes come, are the least depressed in spirit and the most resolute in action. But Pericles did not live to guide Athens through the troubled waters which lay ahead of her. He had experienced the same misfortunes as his fellow-citizens. His sister, his sons, and the friends who were nearest to him had died of the plague, and he himself was ill. As he lay dying, some of his friends who were still alive were sitting near him, and they spoke together of his greatness, his power and the number of his victories. They did not think he was conscious, but he heard all that they said, and when they had finished, asked them why they did not speak or make mention of that which was the most excellent and greatest thing of all. "For," said he, "no Athenian, through my means, ever wore mourning."[[5]]
Pericles had been a good general; he had added to the power of Athens both at home and abroad; and he had made her defences more secure by completing the Long Walls which had been begun by Themistocles. As a statesman, Pericles was an imperialist, and he believed that the Athenian Empire, which had grown naturally out of the position of Athens as Liberator of the Ionian Greeks, embodied the right relationship between Athens and her allies. Like Themistocles, he had a deep distrust of Sparta, and believing that sooner or later war with her was inevitable, he did all that lay in his power to make Athens ready when that day should come.
Though of noble birth, Pericles had always been on the side of the people in Athens, and during his rule the powers of the people were very much extended. Every office in the state was filled by popular election each year, so that there was constant change amongst those in authority and Athens could never be sure of any settled policy in her affairs either at home or abroad. The supreme and final authority lay in the Assembly, but like all popular assemblies, it could be swayed and, at several critical moments in the history of Athens, was swayed, by sudden bursts of passion, or by the fiery eloquence of an unwise or an ambitious and self-seeking speaker. But as long as Pericles lived, the dangers of the democracy he had developed were not very apparent, for he was trusted absolutely, and he kept a wise, firm and restraining hand on the passions of the people.