After the battle of Platææ, the citizens of Athens returned to their
country, and built a superb city upon the ruins of the ancient one.
By recovering its splendour, it attracted the jealousy of its rival
Sparta, the capital of Lacedæmonia. This was the commencement of
the famous Peloponnesian war. In the twenty-ninth year of this war,
Lysander, having conquered the Athenians at Ægospotamos, marched
directly against Athens. Though without vessels, without provisions,
without hope, the Athenians defended themselves for eight months, and
then surrendered, conquered alone by famine. The Spartans disgraced
themselves by destroying the walls of the first city of Greece to
the sound of musical instruments; and they established a government
of thirty tyrants, in order to subdue the spirit of the unfortunate
inhabitants.
This servitude did not last long; Athens was delivered from the yoke
of the Thirty, by means of five hundred soldiers, raised by a simple
Syracusan orator, named Lysias, out of veneration for the common
country of eloquence. The expulsion of the thirty tyrants took place
the same year that the kings were expelled from Rome.
After being opposed strongly to Philip, and submissive to Alexander,
Athens was taken successively by his successors, Antipater, Demetrius,
and Antigonus; its wealth being a rich bait for these captains, whose
vanity was continually wounded by the haughtiness of the city, which
gave rise to aggressions often but little merited.