So Greece was now at the head of the world, and Athens was at the head of Greece. And there was a man in Athens who was going to make that city not alone the greatest of that time, but in a way the greatest of all time!
Her great citizen Pericles changed the government of Athens to a pure democracy. And then, by the magic of his influence, it sprang from its ashes in a form so beautiful, it was known as the "City of the Gods." The matchless temples and colonnades which arose on the Acropolis, adorned by the sculptures of Phidias, are still the wonder of the world.
But that was not all. No men have ever thought so profoundly, nor spoken so wisely, nor with such eloquence, as did the men in those temples and under those Greek arcades. Never have such tragedies been written as were recited there, and never has there been an entire people so fitted to comprehend and to enjoy thought so elevated, and art of such a supreme type.
The outpouring of genius in the "Age of Pericles" is one of the great mysteries in history. It sent a path of light down through centuries of darkness, and that light shines just as brightly to-day, uneclipsed and even undimmed by anything the world has done since.
Pericles drew all this radiant genius into Athens, and made it beautiful and great. But he did still more than that. Athens, which had first been a monarchy, then under the rule of a few wise men in the Areopagus, had then lost all her liberties under the "Tyrants." Pericles created a Democracy. He believed the true ideal was a government by the people. That
if Athens governed Greece, then the Athenians should govern Athens. And that the power of a state should rest, not with one, nor a few, but with the many!
During a period of fifty years free Athens was the acknowledged head of the Greek states, and in those years Greece had reached the meridian of her glory. But Sparta was jealous of the dazzling splendor of her rival; and she hated this new democracy which was spreading through all the states. She believed in the good old idea of one despotic king, and a people cowed into submission by his authority.
Two parties were thus created in the Greek states, and in a dispute which occurred about 420 b.c.., the friends of the Spartans or Aristocratic ideal ranged themselves on the one side, and those of the Athenian or Democratic on the other.
From this arose the long conflict known as the Peloponnesian War, which lasted for twenty-seven years, its real cause being that Sparta was determined to lead Greece.
It was in vain that the Athenians fought with the energy of despair. Their beautiful city—the City of the Gods—was at last surrendered, and the scoffing Spartans (404 b.c.) took possession of the treasures they scorned.