CHAPTER XXXVI. CLOSE OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
In the populous and extensive kingdoms of modern Europe, the revolutions of public affairs seldom disturb the humble obscurity of private life; but the national transactions of Greece involved the interest of every family, and deeply affected the fortune and happiness of every individual. Had the arms of the Athenians proved successful in Sicily, each citizen would have derived from that event an immediate accession of wealth, as well as of power, and have felt a proportional increase of honour and security. But their proud hopes perished forever in the harbour of Syracuse. The succeeding disasters shook to the foundation the fabric of their empire.
In one rash enterprise they lost their army, their fleet, the prudence of their experienced generals, and the flourishing vigour of their manly youth—irreparable disasters which totally disabled them to resist the confederacy of Peloponnesus, reinforced by the resentment of a new and powerful enemy. While a Lacedæmonian army invested their city, they had reason to dread that a Syracusan fleet should assault the Piræus; that Athens must finally yield to these combined attacks, and her once prosperous citizens destroyed by the sword, or dragged into captivity, atone by their death or disgrace for the cruelties which they had recently inflicted on the wretched republics of Melos and Scione.
ATHENS AFTER THE SICILIAN DÉBACLE
The dreadful alternative of victory and defeat, renders it little surprising that the Athenians should have rejected intelligence, which they must have received with horror. The first messengers of such sad news were treated with contempt; but it was impossible long to withhold belief from the miserable fugitives, whose squalid and dejected countenances too faithfully attested the public calamity. Such evidence could not be refused; the arrogance of incredulity was abashed, and the whole republic thrown into consternation, or seized with despair. The venerable members of the Areopagus expressed the majesty of silent sorrow; but the piercing cries of woe extended many a mile along the lofty walls which joined the Piræus to the city; and the licentious populace raged with unbridled fury against the diviners and orators, whose blind predictions, and ambitious harangues, had promoted an expedition eternally fatal to their country.
The Athenian allies, or rather subjects, scattered over so many coasts and islands, prepared to assert their independence; the confederates of Sparta, among whom the Syracusans justly assumed the first rank, were unsatisfied with victory, and longed for revenge: even those communities which had hitherto declined the danger of a doubtful contest, meanly solicited to become parties in a war, which they expected must finally terminate in the destruction of Athens. Should all the efforts of such a powerful confederacy still prove insufficient to the ruin of the devoted city, there was yet another enemy behind, from whose strength and animosity the Athenians had everything to fear.
[425-413 B.C.]
The long and peaceful reign of Artaxerxes expired four hundred and twenty-five years before the Christian era. There followed a rapid succession of kings, Xerxes, Sogdianus, Ochus; the last of whom assumed the name of Darius, to which historians have added the epithet of Nothus, the bastard, to distinguish this effeminate prince from his illustrious predecessor. But in the ninth year of his reign Darius was roused from his lethargy by the revolt of Egypt and Lydia. The defection of the latter threatened to tear from his dominion the valuable provinces of Asia Minor; a consequence which he determined to prevent by employing the bravery of Pharnabazus, and the policy of the crafty Tissaphernes, to govern respectively the northern and southern districts of that rich and fertile peninsula. The abilities of these generals not only quelled the rebellion in Lydia, but extended the arms of their master towards the shores of the Ægean, as well as of the Hellespont and Propontis; in direct opposition to the treaty which forty years before had been ratified between the Athenians, then in the height of their prosperity, and the unwarlike Artaxerxes. But the recent misfortunes of that ambitious people flattered the Persian commanders with the hope of restoring the whole Asiatic coast to the Great King, as well as of inflicting exemplary punishment on the proud city, which had resisted the power, dismembered the empire, and tarnished the glory of Persia.