Athens and Sparta were now quite the greatest powers in Greece. No other
state had dared to make head against the Persians, and all the lesser
cities, and the isles and colonies, were anxious to obtain the help and
friendship of one or other as their allies. The two states were always
rivals, and never made common cause, except when the Persian enemy was
before them. In the year 464 there was a terrible earthquake in Laconia,
which left only five houses standing in Sparta, and buried great numbers
in the ruins. The youths, who were all together in one building
exercising themselves, were almost all killed by its fall; and the
disaster would have been worse if the king, Archidamas, had not caused
the trumpet to be blown, as if to call the people to arms, just outside
the city. This brought all the men in order together just in time, for
the Helots were rising against them, and, if they had found them groping
each in the ruins of his house, might have killed them one by one;
whereas, finding them up and armed, the slaves saw it was in vain, and
dispersed.
The Messenians, who had never forgotten Aristodemus, hoped to free
themselves again. A great many of the Helots joined them, and they made
their fortified hill of Ithome very strong. The Spartans called on the
Athenians to help them to put down the insurrection. The three greatest
men in Athens were Pericles, the son of that Xanthippus who had impeached
Miltiades; Kimon, the son of Miltiades himself; and Ephialtes, a great
orator, who was thought to be as upright as Aristides the Just. When the
request from Sparta came, Ephialtes was against helping the rival of
Athens; but Kimon, who had friends in Laconia, declared that it would be
unbecoming in Athens to let Greece be crippled in one of her two legs, or
to lose her own yoke-fellow. He prevailed, and was sent with an army to
help in the siege of Ithome; but it was such a tardy siege that the
Spartans fancied that the Athenians had an understanding with the
Messenians, and desired them to go home again, thus, of course,
affronting them exceedingly.
Two years after, Kimon was ostracised; but soon after the Spartans
affronted the Athenians, by placing a troop of men at Tanagra, on the
borders of Attica. The Athenians went out to attack them, and Kimon sent
to entreat permission to fight among his tribe, but he was not trusted,
and was forbidden. He sent his armour to his friends--a hundred in
number--and bade them maintain his honour. They were all killed,
fighting bravely, and the victory was with the Spartans. Soon after, the
virtuous Ephialtes was stabbed by some unknown person, and Pericles,
feeling that good men could not be spared, moved that Kimon should be
called home again. Kimon was much loved; he was tall and handsome, with
curly hair and beard; and he was open-handed, leaving his orchards and
gardens free to all, and keeping a table for every chance guest. Yet he
much admired the Spartans and their discipline, and he contrived to bring
about a five-years' truce between the two great powers. The greatest
benefit he gave his people was the building of the Long Walls, which
joined Athens and the Piraeus together, so that the city could never be
cut off from the harbour. Kimon began them at his own expense, and
Pericles persuaded the Athenians to go on with them, when their founder
had been sent on an expedition to the isle of Cyprus, which was rising
against the Persians. There Kimon fell sick and died, but his fleet,
immediately after, won a grand victory over the Phoenician and Cilician
fleets, in the Persian service.
[Picture: The Acropolis, Athens]
However, some hot-headed young Athenians were beaten at Coronea by the
Boeotians, who were Spartan allies, and a good many small losses befel
them by land, till they made another peace for thirty years in 445.
There was nobody then in Athens, or Greece either, equal to Pericles, who
was managing all affairs in his own city with great wisdom, and making it
most beautiful with public buildings. On the rock of the Acropolis stood
the Parthenon, the temple of the virgin goddess Pallas Athene, which was
adorned with a portico, the remains of which still stand up gloriously
against the blue Grecian sky. The bas-relief carvings on the pediments,
representing the fight between the Centaurs and Lapithae, are now in the
British Museum; and though the statue itself is gone, still seals and
gems remain, made to imitate it, and showing the perfect beauty of the
ivory and gold statue of Athene herself, which was carved by the great
sculptor Phidias, and placed within the temple. When there was a
question whether this figure should be made of marble or of ivory, and
Phidias recommended marble as the cheapest, the whole assembly of
Athenians voted for ivory.
[Picture: Propylaea, Athens]
A beautiful fortification called the Propylaea guarded the west side of
the Acropolis, where only there was no precipice; and there were other
splendid buildings--a new open theatre, for the acting of those
unrivalled tragedies of the three Athenian poets, and of others which
have been lost; a Museum, which did not then mean a collection of
curiosities, but a place where the youth might study all the arts sacred
to the Muses; a Lyceum for their exercises, and schools for the
philosophers. These schools were generally colonnades of pillars
supporting roofs to give shelter from the sun, and under one of these
taught the greatest, wisest, and best of all truth-seekers, namely,
Socrates.
Though the houses at Athens stood irregularly on their steep hill, there
was no place in the world equal to it for beauty in its buildings, its
sculptures, and its carvings, and, it is also said, in its paintings; but
none of these have come down to our times. Everything belonging to the
Athenians was at this time full of simple, manly grace and beauty, and in
both body and mind they were trying to work up to the greatest perfection
they could devise, without any aid outside themselves to help them.
But they had come to the very crown of their glory. When a war arose
between the Corinthians and the Corcyrans, who inhabited the isle now
called Corfu, the Corcyrans asked to be made allies of Athens, and a
fleet was sent to help them; and as the Corinthians held with Sparta,
this brought on a great war between Athens and Sparta, which was called
the Peloponnesian war, and lasted thirty years. It was really to decide
which of the two great cities should be chief, and both were equally
determined.
As Attica had borders open to the enemy, Pericles advised all the people
in the country to move into the town. They sent their flocks into the
isle of Euboea, brought their other goods with them, and left their
beautiful farms and gardens to be ravaged by the enemy; while the crowd
found dwellings in a place under the west side of the Acropolis rock,
which had hitherto been left empty, because an oracle declared it "better
untrodden." Such numbers coming within the walls could not be healthy,
and a deadly plague began to prevail, which did Athens as much harm as
the war. In the meantime, Pericles, who was always cautious, persuaded
the people to be patient, and not to risk battles by land, where the
Spartans fought as well as they did, whereas nobody was their equal by
sea; and as their fleet and all their many isles could save them from
hunger, they could wear out their enemies, and be fresh themselves; but
it was hard to have plague within and Spartans wasting their homes and
fields without. Brave little Plataea, too, was closely besieged. All
the useless persons had been sent to Athens, and there were only 400
Plataean and 80 Athenian men in it, and 110 women to wait on them; and
the Spartans blockaded these, and tried to starve them out, until, after
more than a year of famine, 220 of them scrambled over the walls on a
dark, wet night, cut their way through the Spartan camp, and safely
reached Athens. The other 200 had thought the attempt so desperate, that
they sent in the morning to beg leave to bury the corpses of their
comrades; but they then heard that only one man had fallen. They held
out a few months longer, and then were all put to death, while the women
were all made slaves. The children and the 220 were all made one with
the Athenians.
Athens was in a piteous state from the sickness, which had cut off hosts
of people of all ranks. It lasted seven or nine days in each, and seems
to have been a malignant fever. Pericles lost his eldest son, his
sister, and almost all his dearest friends in it; but still he went about
calm, grave, and resolute, keeping up the hopes and patience of the
Athenians. Then his youngest and last son died of the same sickness, and
when the time came for placing the funeral garland on his head, Pericles
broke down, and wept and sobbed aloud. Shortly after, he fell sick
himself, and lingered much longer than was usual with sufferers from the
plague. Once, when his friends came in, he showed them a charm which the
women had hung round his neck, and, smiling, asked them whether his
enduring such folly did not show that he must be very ill indeed. Soon
after, when he was sinking away, and they thought him insensible, they
began to talk of the noble deeds he had done, his speeches, his wisdom
and learning, and his buildings: "he had found Athens of brick," they
said, "and had left her of marble." Suddenly the sick man raised himself
in his bed, and said, "I wonder you praise these things in me. They were
as much owing to fortune as to anything else; and yet you leave out what
is my special honour, namely, that I never caused any fellow-citizen to
put on mourning." So died this great man, in 429, the third year of the
Peloponnesian war.
[Picture: Decorative chapter heading]