Part 15 (1/2)

But there were elements of weakness in the splendid imperial structure.

The subject cities of the empire were the slaves of Athens. To her they paid tribute. To her courts they were dragged for trial. Naturally they regarded Athens as the destroyer of h.e.l.lenic liberties, and watched impatiently for the first favorable moment to revolt, and throw off the hateful yoke that she had imposed upon them. Hence the Athenian empire rested upon a foundation of sand.

Had Athens, instead of enslaving her confederates of the Delian league, only been able to find out some way of retaining them as allies in an equal union,--a great and perhaps impossible task in that age of the world,--as head of the federated Greek race, she might have secured for h.e.l.las the sovereignty of the Mediterranean, and the history of Rome might have ended with the first century of the Republic.

Furthermore, in his system of payment for the most common public services, and of wholesale public gratuities, Pericles had introduced or encouraged practices that had the same demoralizing effects upon the Athenians that the free distribution of grain at Rome had upon the Roman populace. These pernicious customs cast discredit upon labor, destroyed frugality, and fostered idleness, thus sapping the virtues and strength of the Athenian democracy.

Ill.u.s.trations of these weaknesses, as well as of the strength of the Athenian empire, will be afforded by the great struggle between Athens and Sparta known as the Peloponnesian War, the causes and chief incidents of which we shall next rehea.r.s.e.

CHAPTER XV.

THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR: THE SPARTAN AND THE THEBAN SUPREMACY.

1. THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR (431-404 B.C.).

CAUSES OF THE WAR.--During the closing years of the life of Pericles, the growing jealousy between Athens and Sparta broke out in the long struggle known as the Peloponnesian War. Pericles had foreseen the coming storm: ”I descry war,” said he, ”lowering from the Peloponnesus.” His whole later policy looked toward the preparation of Athens for the ”irrepressible conflict.”

The immediate causes of the war were, first, the interference of Athens, on the side of the Corcyraeans, in a quarrel between them and their mother city Corinth; and secondly, the blockade by the Athenians of Potidaea, on the Macedonian coast. This was a Corinthian colony, but it was a member of the Delian league, and was now being chastised by Athens for attempted secession. Corinth, as the ever-jealous naval rival of Athens, had endeavored to lend aid to her daughter, but had been worsted in an engagement with the Athenians.

With affairs in this shape, Corinth, seconded by other states that had causes of complaint against Athens, appealed to Sparta, as the head of the Dorian alliance, for aid and justice. The Spartans, after listening to the deputies of both sides, decided that the Athenians had been guilty of injustice, and declared for war. The resolution of the Spartans was endorsed by the Peloponnesian confederation, and apparently approved by the Delphian oracle, which, in response to an inquiry of the Spartans as to what would be the issue of the proposed undertaking, a.s.sured them that ”they would gain the victory, if they fought with all their might.”

COMPARISON OF THE RESOURCES OF SPARTA AND OF ATHENS.--The resources of h.e.l.las were, at the outbreak of the war, very evenly divided between the two parties. With Sparta were all the states of the Peloponnesus, save Argos and Achaia, while beyond the Isthmus the Boeotian League, headed by Thebes, and other states were her allies. Together, these states could raise a land force of sixty thousand men, besides a considerable naval armament, Corinth being especially strong in s.h.i.+ps.

Athens commanded all the resources of the subject cities--about three hundred in number, with twice as many smaller towns--of her great maritime empire. Her independent allies were Chios, Lesbos, Corcyra, and other states. Of course the chief strength of Athens lay in her splendid navy.

THE BEGINNING: ATTACK UPON PLATaeA BY THE THEBANS.--The first act in the long and terrible drama was enacted at night, within the walls of Plataea.

This city, though in Boeotia, was under the protection of Athens, and would have nothing to do with the Boeotian League.

Anxious to get possession of this place before the actual outbreak of the war which they saw to be inevitable, the Thebans planned its surprise and capture. Three hundred Thebans gained access to the unguarded city in the dead of night, and marching to the public square, summoned the Plataeans to exchange the Athenian for a Boeotian alliance.

The Plataeans were upon the point of acceding to all the demands made upon them, when, discovering the small number of the enemy, they attacked and overpowered them in the darkness, and took a hundred and eighty of them prisoners. These captives they afterwards murdered, in violation, as the Thebans always maintained, of a sacred promise that their lives should be spared. This wretched affair at Plataea precipitated the war (431 B.C.).

INVASION OF ATTICA: PESTILENCE AT ATHENS.--A Spartan army was soon overrunning Attica, while an Athenian fleet was ravaging the coasts of the Peloponnesus. Pericles persuaded the country people of Attica to abandon their villas and hamlets and gather within the defences of the city. He did not deem it prudent to risk a battle in the open fields. From the walls of Athens the people could see the flames of their burning villages and farmhouses, as the enemy ravaged the plains of Attica up to the very gates of the city. It required all the persuasion of Pericles to restrain them from issuing in a body from behind the ramparts and rus.h.i.+ng to the defence of their homes.

The second year the Lacedaemonians again ravaged the fields about Athens, and drove the Athenians almost to frenzy with the sight of the flame and smoke of such property as had escaped the destruction of the previous year. To increase their misery, a pestilence broke out within the crowded city, and added its horrors to the already unbearable calamities of war.

No pen could picture the despair and gloom that settled over the city.

Athens lost, probably, one-fourth of her fighting men. Pericles, who had been the very soul and life of Athens through these dark days, fell a victim to the plague (429 B.C.). In dying, he said he considered his greatest praise to be that ”he had never caused an Athenian to put on mourning.”

After the death of Pericles the leaders.h.i.+p of affairs at Athens fell into the hands of unprincipled demagogues, of whom Cleon was chief. The mob element got control of the popular a.s.sembly, so that hereafter we shall find many of its actions characterized neither by virtue nor wisdom.

DESPERATE AND CRUEL CHARACTER OF THE WAR.--On both sides the war was waged with the utmost vindictiveness and cruelty. As a rule, all the men captured by either side were killed.

In the year 428 B.C. the city of Mytilene, on the island of Lesbos, revolted from the Athenians. With the rebellion suppressed, the fate of the Mytileneans was in the hands of the Athenian a.s.sembly. Cleon proposed that all the men of the place, six thousand in number, should be slain, and the women and children sold as slaves. This infamous decree was pa.s.sed, and a galley despatched bearing the sentence for execution to the Athenian general at Mytilene.

By the next morning, however, the Athenians had repented of their hasty and cruel resolution. A second meeting of the a.s.sembly was hurriedly called; the barbarous vote was repealed; and a swift trireme, bearing the reprieve, set out in anxious haste to overtake the former galley, which had twenty-four hours the start. The trireme reached the island just in time to prevent the execution of the barbarous edict.

The second resolution of the Athenians, though more discriminating than the first decree, was quite severe enough. Over one thousand of the n.o.bles of Mytilene were killed, the city was destroyed, and the larger part of the lands of the island given to citizens of Athens.

Still more unrelenting and cruel were the Spartans. In the summer of the same year that the Athenians wreaked such vengeance upon the Mytileneans, the Spartans and their allies captured the city of Plataea, put to death all the men, sold the women as slaves, and turned the site of the city into pasture-land.