Whose glorious like earth ne’er shall see again!
—Nicholas Michell.
Our information respecting the affairs of Greece immediately after the repulse of the Persians from Marathon, is very scanty.
Cleomenes and Leotychides, the two kings of Sparta (the former belonging to the elder or Eurysthenid, the latter to the younger or the Proclid, race), had conspired for the purpose of dethroning the former Proclid king Demaratus: and Cleomenes had even gone so far as to tamper with the Delphian priestess for this purpose. His manœuvre being betrayed shortly afterwards, he was so alarmed at the displeasure of the Spartans, that he retired into Thessaly, and from thence into Arcadia, where he employed the powerful influence of his regal character and heroic lineage to arm the Arcadian people against his country. The Spartans, alarmed in their turn, voluntarily invited him back with a promise of amnesty. But his renewed lease did not last long: his habitual violence of character became aggravated into decided insanity, insomuch that he struck with his stick whomsoever he met; and his relatives were forced to confine him in chains under a helot sentinel. By severe menaces, he one day constrained this man to give him his sword, with which he mangled himself dreadfully and perished.
But what surprises us most is, to hear that the Spartans, usually more disposed than other Greeks to refer every striking phenomenon to divine agency, recognised on this occasion nothing but a vulgar physical cause: Cleomenes had gone mad (they affirmed) through habits of intoxication, learnt from some Scythian envoys who had come to Sparta.
The general course of the war with Ægina, and especially the failure of the enterprise concerted with Nicodromus in consequence of delay in borrowing ships from Corinth, were well calculated to impress upon the Athenians the necessity of enlarging their naval force. And it is from the present time that we trace among them the first growth of that decided tendency towards maritime activity which coincided so happily with the expansion of their democracy, and opened a new phase in Grecian history as well as a new career for themselves.
The exciting effect produced upon them by the repulse of the Persians at Marathon has been dwelt upon. Miltiades, the victor in that field, having been removed from the scene under circumstances already described, Aristides and Themistocles became the chief men at Athens: and the former was chosen archon during the succeeding year. His exemplary uprightness in magisterial functions ensured to him lofty esteem from the general public, not without a certain proportion of active enemies, some of them sufferers by his justice. These enemies naturally became partisans of his rival Themistocles, who had all the talents necessary for bringing them into co-operation: and the rivalry between the two chiefs became so bitter and menacing, that even Aristides himself is reported to have said, “If the Athenians were wise, they would cast both of us into the barathrum.”
THEMISTOCLES AND ARISTIDES
Themistocles