Within sight of the shores of Attica lies the island of Aegina, famous in legend as the home of Aeacus, grandfather of Achilles, and distinguished for its school of sculpture, and for its mighty breed of athletes, whose feats are celebrated in the laureate strains of Pindar. The Aeginetans had obtained the first prize for valour displayed in the battle of Salamis, and for many years they had pressed the Athenians hard in the race for maritime supremacy. They were now attacked by an overwhelming Athenian force, and after a stubborn resistance were totally defeated, and compelled to enroll themselves among the subjects of Athens. A still harder fate was reserved for the hapless Dorian islanders in the next generation.
In the following nine years [Footnote: B.C. 456-447.] the power of Athens reached its greatest height, and for a moment it seemed as if she were destined to extend her empire over the whole mainland of Greece. By the victory of Oenophyta, gained over the Boeotians just before the reduction of Aegina, Athens became mistress of all the central provinces of the Greek peninsula, from the pass of Thermopylae to the gulf of Corinth. The alliance of Megara, lately united by long walls to its harbour of Nisaea, secured her from invasion on the side of Peloponnesus. The great island of Euboea, with its rich pastures and fruitful corn lands, had, since the Persian War, become an Athenian estate, and was jealously guarded as one of her most valuable possessions; and on the sea, from the eastern corner of the Euxine to the strait of Gibraltar, there was none to dispute her sway.
But this rapid ascent was followed by no less speedy a fall, and one act of indiscretion stripped the Athenians of all the advantages which they had acquired on the mainland of Greece. In every city of Greece there were always two parties, the wealthy and noble, called oligarchs, and the demos, or commons; and according as Spartan or Athenian influence was in the ascendant the balance of power in each city wavered between the nobles and the people, the Athenians favouring the Many, the Spartans the Few. Accordingly there was always a party living in exile, and waiting for a turn of affairs which might enable them to return to their city, and wrest the power from that faction which had been the last to triumph. In the cities of Boeotia the leaders of the oligarchs had been driven into banishment after the battle of Oenophyta, and democracies were established under the control of Athens. After nine years of banishment these exiles returned, and the result was an oligarchical reaction in the chief cities of Boeotia. A hastily equipped and ill-organised force was sent out from Athens to put down the authors of the revolution, and in the battle which followed, at Coronea, [Footnote: B.C. 447.] the Athenians sustained a severe defeat, and a large number of their citizens were taken prisoners by the Boeotians. To recover these prisoners the Athenians consented to evacuate Boeotia, and by this surrender they lost their hold on central Greece, as far as Thermopylae.
This heavy blow was followed two years later by the revolt of Megara and Euboea; and in the midst of the alarm thus occasioned, the Athenians heard that a powerful Spartan army was threatening their borders. It was a terrible moment for Athens; but she was saved by the prudence and energy of Pericles, whose influence in her councils was now supreme. By some means or other—as the Spartans asserted, by a heavy bribe—he induced the Spartan king Pleistoanax to draw off his forces; and then crossing over into Euboea, he quickly reduced the whole island to submission, and took severe measures to prevent any outbreak in the future.
The exertions of the Athenians during the last thirty years had been prodigious, and their efforts to found an empire in continental Greece had ended in total failure. Discouraged by their reverses, they concluded a thirty years' truce with the Spartans and their allies, resigning the last remnant of their recent conquests, and leaving Megara in her old position as a member of the Peloponnesian league under Sparta. The loss of Megara was severely felt, and her conduct in the late troubles was neither forgotten nor forgiven. The Megarians had by their own free choice been admitted into the Athenian alliance, and in an hour of great peril to Athens, without shadow of pretext they had risen in arms against her. It was not long before they had to pay a heavy penalty for their treachery and inconstancy.
The last event which we have to record, before entering into the main current of our narrative, is the secession of Samos, the most important member of the maritime allies of Athens. This wealthy and powerful island had hitherto, with Chios and Lesbos, enjoyed the distinction of serving under Athens as an independent ally. The Athenians, with a view to their own interests, had recently set up a democracy in Samos, which had hitherto been governed by an oligarchy. Incensed by this interference, the Samian nobles, who had been driven into exile, hired a mercenary force, and making a sudden attack from the mainland, overthrew the democracy and raised the standard of revolt. The crisis called for prompt and vigorous action on the part of Athens; for if Samos had been successful in defying her authority, the other members of the league would speedily have followed the example, and the whole fabric of her empire might have been shattered to pieces. Pericles was again equal to the emergency, and by employing the whole naval power of Athens he was able, after a siege of nine months, to reduce the refractory islanders to submission. The Samians were compelled to surrender their fleet, to pull down their walls, to pay a heavy war indemnity, and to give hostages as a security for their good conduct in the future. And henceforward they became subjects and tributaries of Athens.
We have now completed our review of the chief events which occurred between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars. It was a period of rapid development for Athens, of ceaseless activity at home and abroad, of immense progress in all the arts of war and peace. The imperial city had now risen to her full stature, and stood forth, supreme in intellect and in action, the wonder and envy of mankind. Her mighty walls bade defiance to her enemies at home, and she held in her hand the islands and coast-districts of the Aegaean, where the last murmur of resistance had been quelled. Her recent reverses on the mainland of Greece had left the real sources of her power untouched; and taught her, if she would but take the lesson to heart, the proper limits of her empire. And she had risen to this height, not by the prevailing force of any single mind, but by the united efforts of all her citizens, working together for a whole generation, shunning no sacrifice, and shrinking from no exertion, in their devotion to the common mother of them all. Every Athenian, from the wealthiest noble to the poorest rower in the fleet, felt that he had a stake in the country, which to a Greek meant the city, where he was born. He gave his vote in the Parliament [Footnote: Called the Ecclesia.] of Athens, and served on the juries chosen by lot from the whole body of the citizens, before whose judgment-seat, unassailable by bribery or intimidation, the mightiest offenders trembled. He was a statesman, a judge, a lawgiver, and a warrior, and he might even hope to climb to the highest place in the State, and rule, like Pericles, as a prince of democracy. Around him rose the temples and statues of the gods, fresh from the chisel of the artist, the visible symbols of Athenian greatness, and of the grand ideals which he served. The masterpieces of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides opened to him the boundless realms of the imagination, taught him grave lessons of moral wisdom, and connected the strenuous present with the heroic past; and the Old Comedy, the most complete embodiment of the very genius of democracy, afforded a feast of wit and fancy for his lighter hours. If he had a taste for higher speculation, he might hear Anaxagoras discoursing on the mysteries of the spiritual world, or Zeno applying his sharp tests for the conviction of human error. And when the assembly was summoned to discuss matters of high imperial policy, he felt all the greatness and majesty of the Athenian state, as he hung entranced on the lips of Pericles.
Such was Athens in her prime, and such were the men who raised her to the lofty eminence which she held among the cities of Greece. But the years which had lifted her to that unparalleled height had raised up a host of enemies against her, and it behoved her to temper ambition with prudence if she would maintain the proud position which the held. The scattered units which composed the Athenian empire were held together by no tie of loyalty or affection to their common mistress, but solely by the dread of her overwhelming naval power. Even in the noblest spirits of ancient Greece, the feeling of patriotism, as we understand it, was feeble and uncertain; when we speak of our country, the Greek spoke of his city, and his love, his hopes, his highest aspirations, were bounded by the narrow circuit of the walls which contained the tombs of his ancestors and the temples of his gods. This feeling, the most deeply-rooted instinct of Greek political life, had been grievously offended by Athens, when she compelled the islanders of the Aegaean, and the Greek cities of Asia, to serve in her navies, and pay tribute to her exchequer.
Turning now to the mainland of Greece we find, in most of the leading states, a sentiment of mingled fear and hatred against Athens, which had been steadily increasing in volume in the course of the last thirty years. The haughty Thebans had not forgotten their defeat at Oenophyta, and their nine years of servitude to Athens. Aegina was groaning under her yoke, and threatened with total political extinction. Megara complained that her commerce was ruined by a decree which excluded her merchants from the ports in the Athenian Empire. In the heart of Peloponnesus the Spartans were hatching mischief against their hated rival, who had robbed them of half their dignity as the acknowledged leaders of the Greeks. Corinth, whose commerce was chiefly in the western sea, outside the sphere of Athenian influence, was disposed to be friendly, and had done the Athenians good service during the revolt of Samos.[Footnote: See below, p. 31.] But five years later [Footnote: B.C. 435.] an event occurred which changed this feeling into bitter hatred against Athens, and drove the Corinthians into the ranks of her most inveterate foes. And it is at this point that we take up the main thread of our story.