At the close of one year after the attempted surprise of Platæa by the Thebans, the belligerent parties in Greece remained in an unaltered position as to relative strength. Nothing decisive had been accomplished on either side, either by the invasion of Attica, or by the flying descents round the coast of Peloponnesus: in spite of mutual damage inflicted,—doubtless, in the greatest measure upon Attica,—no progress was yet made towards the fulfilment of those objects which had induced the Peloponnesians to go to war. Especially, the most pressing among all their wishes—the relief of Potidæa—was noway advanced; for the Athenians had not found it necessary to relax the blockade of that city. The result of the first year’s operations had thus been to disappoint the hopes of the Corinthians and the other ardent instigators of war, while it justified the anticipations both of Periklês and of Archidamus.

A second devastation of Attica was resolved upon for the commencement of spring; and measures were taken for carrying it all over that territory, since the settled policy of Athens not to hazard a battle with the invaders was now ascertained. About the end of March, or beginning of April, the entire Peloponnesian force—two-thirds from each confederate city, as before—was assembled under the command of Archidamus, and marched into Attica. This time they carried the work of systematic destruction, not merely over the Thriasian plain and the plain immediately near to Athens, as before; but also to the more southerly portions of Attica, down even as far as the mines of Laurium. They traversed and ravaged both the eastern and the western coast, remaining not less than forty days in the country. They found the territory deserted as before, all the population having retired within the walls.[271]

In regard to this second invasion, Periklês recommended the same defensive policy as he had applied to the first; and, apparently, the citizens had now come to acquiesce in it, if not willingly, at least with a full conviction of its necessity. But a new visitation had now occurred, diverting their attention from the invader, though enormously aggravating their sufferings. A few days after Archidamus entered Attica, a pestilence, or epidemic sickness, broke out unexpectedly at Athens.

It appears that this terrific disorder had been raging for some time throughout the regions round the Mediterranean; having begun, as was believed, in Æthiopia,—thence passing into Egypt and Libya, and overrunning a considerable portion of Asia under the Persian government: about sixteen years before, too, there had been a similar calamity in Rome and in various parts of Italy. Recently, it had been felt in Lemnos and some other islands of the Ægean, yet seemingly not with such intensity as to excite much notice generally in the Grecian world: at length it passed to Athens, and first showed itself in the Peiræus. The progress of the disease was as rapid and destructive as its appearance had been sudden; whilst the extraordinary accumulation of people within the city and long walls, in consequence of the presence of the invaders in the country, was but too favorable to every form of contagion. Families crowded together in close cabins and places of temporary shelter,[272]—throughout a city constructed, like most of those in Greece, with little regard to the conditions of salubrity,—and in a state of mental chagrin from the forced abandonment and sacrifice of their properties in the country, transmitted the disorder with fatal facility from one to the other. Beginning as it did about the middle of April, the increasing heat of summer farther aided the disorder, the symptoms of which, alike violent and sudden, made themselves the more remarked because the year was particularly exempt from maladies of every other description.[273]

Of this plague,—or, more properly, eruptive typhoid fever,[274] distinct from, yet analogous to, the smallpox,—a description no less clear than impressive has been left by the historian Thucydidês, himself not only a spectator but a sufferer. It is not one of the least of his merits, that his notice of the symptoms, given at so early a stage of medical science and observation, is such as to instruct the medical reader of the present age, and to enable the malady to be understood and identified. The observations, with which that notice is ushered in, deserve particular attention. “In respect to this distemper (he says), let every man, physician or not, say what he thinks respecting the source from whence it may probably have arisen, and respecting the causes which he deems sufficiently powerful to have produced so great a revolution. But I, having myself had the distemper, and having seen others suffering under it, will state what it actually was, and will indicate, in addition, such other matters, as will furnish any man, who lays them to heart, with knowledge and the means of calculation beforehand, in case the same misfortune should ever again occur.”[275] To record past facts, as a basis for rational prevision in regard to the future,—the same sentiment which Thucydidês mentions in his preface,[276] as having animated him to the composition of his history,—was at that time a duty so little understood, that we have reason to admire not less the manner in which he performs it in practice, than the distinctness with which he conceives it in theory. We may infer from his language that speculation in his day was active respecting the causes of this plague, according to the vague and fanciful physics and scanty stock of ascertained facts, which was all that could then be consulted. By resisting the itch of theorising from one of those loose hypotheses which then appeared plausibly to explain everything, he probably renounced the point of view from which most credit and interest would be derivable at the time: but his simple and precise summary of observed facts carries with it an imperishable value, and even affords grounds for imagining, that he was no stranger to the habits and training of his contemporary, Hippokratês, and the other Asklepiads of Cos.[277]

It is hardly within the province of an historian of Greece to repeat after Thucydidês the painful enumeration of symptoms, violent in the extreme, and pervading every portion of the bodily system, which marked this fearful disorder. Beginning in Peiræus, it quickly passed into the city, and both the one and the other was speedily filled with sickness and suffering, the like of which had never before been known. The seizures were perfectly sudden, and a large proportion of the sufferers perished, after deplorable agonies, on the seventh or on the ninth day: others, whose strength of constitution carried them over this period, found themselves the victims of exhausting and incurable diarrhœa afterwards: with others again, after traversing both these stages, the distemper fixed itself in some particular member, the eyes, the genitals, the hands, or the feet, which were rendered permanently useless, or in some cases amputated, even where the patient himself recovered. There were also some whose recovery was attended with a total loss of memory, so that they no more knew themselves or recognized their friends. No treatment or remedy appearing, except in accidental cases, to produce any beneficial effect, the physicians or surgeons whose aid was invoked became completely at fault; while trying their accustomed means without avail, they soon ended by catching the malady themselves and perishing: nor were the charms and incantations[278] to which the unhappy patient resorted, likely to be more efficacious. While some asserted that the Peloponnesians had poisoned the cisterns of water, others referred the visitation to the wrath of the gods, and especially to Apollo, known by hearers of the Iliad as author of pestilence in the Greek host before Troy. It was remembered that this Delphian god had promised the Lacedæmonians, in reply to their application immediately before the war, that he would assist them whether invoked or uninvoked,—and the disorder now raging was ascribed to the intervention of their irresistible ally: while the elderly men farther called to mind an oracular verse sung in the time of their youth: “The Dorian war will come, and pestilence along with it.”[279] Under the distress which suggested, and was reciprocally aggravated by, these gloomy ideas, prophets were consulted, and supplications with solemn procession were held at the temples, to appease the divine wrath.

When it was found that neither the priest nor the physician could retard the spread, or mitigate the intensity, of the disorder, the Athenians abandoned themselves to utter despair, and the space within the walls became a scene of desolating misery. Every man attacked with the malady at once lost his courage,—a state of depression, itself among the worst features of the case, which made him lie down and die, without the least attempt to seek for any preservatives. And though, at first, friends and relatives lent their aid to tend the sick with the usual family sympathies, yet so terrible was the number of these attendants who perished, “like sheep,” from such contact, that at length no man would thus expose himself; while the most generous spirits, who persisted longest in the discharge of their duty, were carried off in the greatest numbers.[280] The patient was thus left to die alone and unheeded: sometimes all the inmates of a house were swept away one after the other, no man being willing to go near it: desertion on one hand, attendance on the other, both tended to aggravate the calamity. There remained only those who, having had the disorder and recovered, were willing to tend the sufferers. These men formed the single exception to the all-pervading misery of the time,—for the disorder seldom attacked any one twice, and when it did, the second attack was never fatal. Elate with their own escape, they deemed themselves out of the reach of all disease, and were full of compassionate kindness for others whose sufferings were just beginning. It was from them, too, that the principal attention to the bodies of deceased victims proceeded: for such was the state of dismay and sorrow, that even the nearest relatives neglected the sepulchral duties, sacred beyond all others in the eyes of a Greek. Nor is there any circumstance which conveys to us so vivid an idea of the prevalent agony and despair, as when we read, in the words of an eye-witness, that the deaths took place among this close-packed crowd without the smallest decencies of attention,[281]—that the dead and the dying lay piled one upon another, not merely in the public roads, but even in the temples, in spite of the understood defilement of the sacred building,—that half-dead sufferers were seen lying round all the springs, from insupportable thirst,—that the numerous corpses thus unburied and exposed, were in such a condition, that the dogs which meddled with them died in consequence, while no vultures or other birds of the like habits ever came near. Those bodies which escaped entire neglect, were burnt or buried[282] without the customary mourning, and with unseemly carelessness. In some cases, the bearers of a body, passing by a funeral pile on which another body was burning, would put their own there to be burnt also;[283] or perhaps, if the pile was prepared ready for a body not yet arrived, would deposit their own upon it, set fire to the pile, and then depart. Such indecent confusion would have been intolerable to the feelings of the Athenians, in any ordinary times.

To all these scenes of physical suffering, death, and reckless despair, was superadded another evil, which affected those who were fortunate enough to escape the rest. The bonds both of law and morality became relaxed, amidst such total uncertainty of every man both for his own life, and that of others. Men cared not to abstain from wrong, under circumstances in which punishment was not likely to overtake them,—nor to put a check upon their passions, and endure privations in obedience even to their strongest conviction, when the chance was so small of their living to reap reward or enjoy any future esteem. An interval short and sweet, before their doom was realized—before they became plunged in the wide-spread misery which they witnessed around, and which affected indiscriminately the virtuous and the profligate—was all they looked to enjoy; embracing with avidity the immediate pleasures of sense, as well as such positive gains, however ill-gotten, as could be made the means of procuring them, and throwing aside all thought both of honor or of long-sighted advantage. Life and property were alike ephemeral, nor was there any hope left but to snatch a moment of enjoyment, before the outstretched hand of destiny should fall upon its victims.

The melancholy picture of society under the pressure of a murderous epidemic, with its train of physical torments, wretchedness, and demoralization, has been drawn by more than one eminent author, but by none with more impressive fidelity and conciseness than by Thucydidês,[284] who had no predecessor, and nothing but the reality to copy from. We may remark that, amidst all the melancholy accompaniments of the time, there are no human sacrifices, such as those offered up at Carthage during pestilence to appease the anger of the gods,—there are no cruel persecutions against imaginary authors of the disease, such as those against the Untori (anointers of doors) in the plague of Milan in 1630.[285] Three years altogether did this calamity desolate Athens: continuously, during the entire second and third years of the war,—after which, followed a period of marked abatement for a year and a half: but it then revived again, and lasted for another year, with the same fury as at first. The public loss, over and above the private misery, which this unexpected enemy inflicted upon Athens, was incalculable. Out of twelve hundred horsemen, all among the rich men of the state, three hundred died of the epidemic; besides four thousand and four hundred hoplites out of the roll formerly kept, and a number of the poorer population so great as to defy computation.[286] No efforts of the Peloponnesians could have done so much to ruin Athens, or to bring the war to a termination such as they desired: and the distemper told the more in their favor, as it never spread at all into Peloponnesus, though it passed from Athens to some of the more populous islands.[287] The Lacedæmonian army was withdrawn from Attica somewhat earlier than it would otherwise have been, for fear of taking the contagion.[288]

But it was while the Lacedæmonians were yet in Attica, and during the first freshness of the terrible malady, that Periklês equipped and conducted from Peiræus an armament of one hundred triremes, and four thousand hoplites to attack the coasts of Peloponnesus: three hundred horsemen were also carried in some horse-transports, prepared for the occasion out of old triremes. To diminish the crowd accumulated in the city, was doubtless of beneficial tendency, and perhaps those who went aboard, might consider it as a chance of escape to quit an infected home. But unhappily they carried the infection along with them, which desolated the fleet not less than the city, and crippled all its efforts. Reinforced by fifty ships of war from Chios and Lesbos, the Athenians first landed near Epidaurus in Peloponnesus, ravaging the territory, and making an unavailing attempt upon the city: next, they made like incursions on the more southerly portions of the Argolic peninsula,—Trœzen, Halieis, and Hermionê; and lastly attacked and captured Prasiæ, on the eastern coast of Laconia. On returning to Athens, the same armament was immediately conducted, under Agnon and Kleopompus, to press the siege of Potidæa, the blockade of which still continued without any visible progress. On arriving there, an attack was made on the walls by battering engines, and by the other aggressive methods then practised; but nothing whatever was achieved. In fact, the armament became incompetent for all serious effort, from the aggravated character which the distemper here assumed, communicated by the soldiers fresh from Athens, even to those who had before been free from it at Potidæa. So frightful was the mortality, that out of the four thousand hoplites under Agnon, no less than ten hundred and fifty died in the short space of forty days. The armament was brought back in this melancholy condition to Athens, while the reduction of Potidæa was left, as before, to the slow course of blockade.[289]

On returning from the expedition against Peloponnesus, Periklês found his countrymen almost distracted[290] with their manifold sufferings. Over and above the raging epidemic, they had just gone over Attica and ascertained the devastations committed by the invaders throughout all the territory—except the Marathonian[291] Tetrapolis and Dekeleia; districts spared, as we are told, through indulgence founded on an ancient legendary sympathy—during their long stay of forty days. The rich had found their comfortable mansions and farms, the poor their modest cottages, in the various demes, torn down and ruined. Death,[292] sickness, loss of property, and despair of the future, now rendered the Athenians angry and intractable to the last degree; and they vented their feelings against Periklês, as the cause, not merely of the war, but also of all that they were now enduring. Either with or without his consent, they sent envoys to Sparta to open negotiations for peace, but the Spartans turned a deaf ear to the proposition. This new disappointment rendered them still more furious against Periklês, whose long-standing political enemies now doubtless found strong sympathy in their denunciations of his character and policy. That unshaken and majestic firmness, which ranked first among his many eminent qualities, was never more imperiously required, and never more effectively manifested. In his capacity of stratêgus, or general, he convoked a formal assembly of the people, for the purpose of vindicating himself publicly against the prevailing sentiment, and recommending perseverance in his line of policy. The speeches made by his opponents, assuredly very bitter, are not given by Thucydidês; but that of Periklês himself is set down at considerable length, and a memorable discourse it is. It strikingly brings into relief both the character of the man and the impress of actual circumstances,—an impregnable mind, conscious not only of right purposes, but of just and reasonable anticipations, and bearing up with manliness, or even defiance, against the natural difficulty of the case, heightened by an extreme of incalculable misfortune. He had foreseen,[293] while advising the war originally, the probable impatience of his countrymen under its first hardships, but he could not foresee the epidemic by which that impatience had been exasperated into madness: and he now addressed them, not merely with unabated adherence to his own deliberate convictions, but also in a tone of reproachful remonstrance against their unmerited change of sentiment towards him,—seeking at the same time to combat that uncontrolled despair which, for the moment, overlaid both their pride and their patriotism. Far from humbling himself before the present sentiment, it is at this time that he sets forth his titles to their esteem in the most direct and unqualified manner, and claims the continuance of that which they had so long accorded, as something belonging to him by acquired right.

His main object, throughout this discourse, is to fill the minds of his audience with patriotic sympathy for the weal of the entire city, so as to counterbalance the absorbing sense of private woe. If the collective city flourishes, he argues, private misfortunes may at least be borne: but no amount of private prosperity will avail, if the collective city falls; a proposition literally true in ancient times, and under the circumstances of ancient warfare, though less true at present. “Distracted by domestic calamity, ye are now angry both with me, who advised you to go to war, and with yourselves, who followed the advice. Ye listened to me, considering me superior to others in judgment, in speech, in patriotism, and in incorruptible probity,[294]—nor ought I now to be treated as culpable for giving such advice, when in point of fact the war was unavoidable, and there would have been still greater danger in shrinking from it. I am the same man, still unchanged,—but ye, in your misfortunes, cannot stand to the convictions which ye adopted when yet unhurt. Extreme and unforeseen, indeed, are the sorrows which have fallen upon you: yet, inhabiting as ye do a great city, and brought up in dispositions suitable to it, ye must also resolve to bear up against the utmost pressure of adversity, and never to surrender your dignity. I have often explained to you that ye have no reason to doubt of eventual success in the war, but I will now remind you, more emphatically than before, and even with a degree of ostentation suitable as a stimulus to your present unnatural depression,—that your naval force makes you masters, not only of your allies, but of the entire sea,[295]—one half of the visible field for action and employment. Compared with so vast a power as this, the temporary use of your houses and territory is a mere trifle,—an ornamental accessory not worth considering; and this, too, if ye preserve your freedom, ye will quickly recover. It was your fathers who first gained this empire, without any of the advantages which ye now enjoy; ye must not disgrace yourselves by losing what they acquired. Delighting as ye all do in the honor and empire enjoyed by the city, ye must not shrink from the toils whereby alone that honor is sustained: moreover, ye now fight, not merely for freedom instead of slavery, but for empire against loss of empire, with all the perils arising out of imperial unpopularity. It is not safe for you now to abdicate, even if ye chose to do so; for ye hold your empire like a despotism,—unjust perhaps in the original acquisition, but ruinous to part with when once acquired. Be not angry with me, whose advice ye followed in going to war, because the enemy have done such damage as might be expected from them; still less on account of this unforeseen distemper: I know that this makes me an object of your special present hatred, though very unjustly, unless ye will consent to give me credit also for any unexpected good luck which may occur. Our city derives its particular glory from unshaken bearing up against misfortune: her power, her name, her empire of Greeks over Greeks, are such as have never before been seen: and if we choose to be great, we must take the consequence of that temporary envy and hatred which is the necessary price of permanent renown. Behave ye now in a manner worthy of that glory: display that courage which is essential to protect you against disgrace at present, as well as to guarantee your honor for the future. Send no farther embassy to Sparta, and bear your misfortunes without showing symptoms of distress.”[296]

The irresistible reason, as well as the proud and resolute bearing of this discourse, set forth with an eloquence which it was not possible for Thucydidês to reproduce,—together with the age and character of Periklês,—carried the assent of the assembled people; who, when in the Pnyx, and engaged according to habit on public matters, would for a moment forget their private sufferings in considerations of the safety and grandeur of Athens: possibly, indeed, those sufferings, though still continuing, might become somewhat alleviated when the invaders quitted Attica, and when it was no longer indispensable for all the population to confine itself within the walls. Accordingly, the assembly resolved that no farther propositions should be made for peace, and that the war should be prosecuted with vigor. But though the public resolution thus adopted showed the ancient habit of deference to the authority of Periklês, the sentiments of individuals taken separately were still those of anger against him, as the author of that system which had brought them into so much distress. His political opponents—Kleon, Simmias, or Lakratidas, perhaps all three in conjunction—took care to provide an opportunity for this prevalent irritation to manifest itself in act, by bringing an accusation against him before the dikastery. The accusation is said to have been preferred on the ground of pecuniary malversation, and ended by his being sentenced to pay a considerable fine, the amount of which is differently reported,—fifteen, fifty, or eighty talents, by different authors.[297] The accusing party thus appeared to have carried their point, and to have disgraced, as well as excluded from reëlection, the veteran statesman. But the event disappointed their expectations: the imposition of the fine not only satiated all the irritation of the people against him, but even occasioned a serious reaction in his favor, and brought back as strongly as ever the ancient sentiment of esteem and admiration. It was quickly found that those who had succeeded Periklês as generals, neither possessed nor deserved in an equal degree, the public confidence, and he was accordingly soon reëlected, with as much power and influence as he had ever in his life enjoyed.[298]

But that life—long, honorable, and useful—had already been prolonged considerably beyond the sixtieth year, and there were but too many circumstances, besides the recent fine, which tended to hasten as well as to embitter its close. At the very moment when Periklês was preaching to his countrymen, in a tone almost reproachful, the necessity of manful and unabated devotion to the common country, in the midst of private suffering,—he was himself among the greatest of sufferers, and most hardly pressed to set the example of observing his own precepts. The epidemic carried off not merely his two sons, the only two legitimate, Xanthippus and Paralus, but also his sister, several other relatives, and his best and most useful political friends. Amidst this train of domestic calamities, and in the funeral obsequies of so many of his dearest friends, he remained master of his grief, and maintained his habitual self-command, until the last misfortune,—the death of his favorite son Paralus, which left his house without any legitimate representative to maintain the family and the hereditary sacred rites. On this final blow, though he strove to command himself as before, yet, at the obsequies of the young man, when it became his duty to place a garland on the dead body, his grief became uncontrollable, and he burst out, for the first time of his life, into profuse tears and sobbing.[299]

In the midst of these several personal trials he received the intimation, through Alkibiadês and some other friends, of the restored confidence of the people towards him, and of his re-election to the office of stratêgus: nor was it without difficulty that he was persuaded to present himself again at the public assembly, and resume the direction of affairs. The regret of the people was formally expressed to him for the recent sentence,—perhaps, indeed, the fine may have been repaid to him, or some evasion of it permitted, saving the forms of law,[300]—in the present temper of the city; which was farther displayed towards him by the grant of a remarkable exemption from a law of his own original proposition. He had himself, some years before, been the author of that law, whereby the citizenship of Athens was restricted to persons born both of Athenian fathers and Athenian mothers, under which restriction several thousand persons, illegitimate on the mother’s side, are said to have been deprived of the citizenship, on occasion of a public distribution of corn. Invidious as it appeared to grant, to Periklês singly, an exemption from a law which had been strictly enforced against so many others, the people were now moved not less by compassion than by anxiety to redress their own previous severity. Without a legitimate heir, the house of Periklês, one branch of the great Alkmæônid gens by his mother’s side, would be left deserted, and the continuity of the family sacred rites would be broken,—a misfortune painfully felt by every Athenian family, as calculated to wrong all the deceased members, and provoke their posthumous displeasure towards the city. Accordingly, permission was granted to Periklês to legitimize, and to inscribe in his own gens and phratry his natural son by Aspasia, who bore his own name.[301]

It was thus that Periklês was reinstated in his post of stratêgus, as well as in his ascendency over the public counsels,—seemingly about August or September, 430 B.C. He lived about one year longer, and seems to have maintained his influence as long as his health permitted. Yet we hear nothing of him after this moment, and he fell a victim, not to the violent symptoms of the epidemic, but to a slow and wearing fever,[302] which underminded his strength as well as his capacity. To a friend who came to ask after him when in this disease, Periklês replied by showing a charm or amulet which his female relations had hung about his neck,—a proof how low he was reduced, and how completely he had become a passive subject in the hands of others. And according to another anecdote which we read, yet more interesting and equally illustrative of his character,—it was during his last moments, when he was lying apparently unconscious and insensible, that the friends around his bed were passing in review the acts of his life, and the nine trophies which he had erected at different times for so many victories. He heard what they said, though they fancied that he was past hearing, and interrupted them by remarking: “What you praise in my life, belongs partly to good fortune,—and is, at best, common to me with many other generals. But the peculiarity of which I am most proud, you have not noticed,—no Athenian has ever put on mourning on my account.”[303]

Such a cause of self-gratulation, doubtless more satisfactory to recall at such a moment than any other, illustrates that long-sighted calculation, aversion to distant or hazardous enterprise, and economy of the public force, which marked his entire political career; a career long, beyond all parallel, in the history of Athens,—since he maintained a great influence, gradually swelling into a decisive personal ascendency, for between thirty and forty years. His character has been presented in very different lights, by different authors, both ancient and modern, and our materials for striking the balance are not so good as we could wish. But his immense and long-continued ascendency, as well as his unparalleled eloquence, are facts attested not less by his enemies than by his friends,—nay, even more forcibly by the former than by the latter. The comic writers, who hated him, and whose trade it was to deride and hunt down every leading political character, exhaust their powers of illustration in setting forth both the one and the other:[304] Telekleidês, Kratinus, Eupolis, Aristophanês, all hearers and all enemies, speak of him like Olympian Zeus, hurling thunder and lightning,—like Hêraklês and Achilles,—as the only speaker on whose lips persuasion sat, and who left his sting in the minds of his audience: while Plato the philosopher,[305] who disapproved of his political working, and of the moral effects which he produced upon Athens, nevertheless extols his intellectual and oratorical ascendency: “his majestic intelligence,”—in language not less decisive than Thucydidês. There is another point of eulogy, not less valuable, on which the testimony appears uncontradicted: throughout his long career, amidst the hottest political animosities, the conduct of Periklês towards opponents was always mild and liberal.[306] The conscious self-esteem and arrogance of manner with which the contemporary poet Ion reproached him,[307] contrasting it with the unpretending simplicity of his own patron Kimon,—though probably invidiously exaggerated, is doubtless in substance well founded, and those who read the last speech given above out of Thucydidês, will at once recognize in it this attribute. His natural taste, his love of philosophical research, and his unwearied application to public affairs, all contributed to alienate him from ordinary familiarity, and to make him careless, perhaps improperly careless, of the lesser means of conciliating public favor.

But admitting this latter reproach to be well founded, as it seems to be, it helps to negative that greater and graver political crime which has been imputed to him, of sacrificing the permanent well-being and morality of the state to the maintenance of his own political power,—of corrupting the people by distributions of the public money. “He gave the reins to the people (in Plutarch’s words[308]), and shaped his administration for their immediate favor, by always providing at home some public spectacle, or festival, or procession, thus nursing up the city in elegant pleasures,—and by sending out every year sixty triremes, manned by citizen-seamen on full pay, who were thus kept in practice and acquired nautical skill.” Now the charge here made against Periklês, and supported by allegations in themselves honorable rather than otherwise,—of a vicious appetite for immediate popularity, and of improper concessions to the immediate feelings of the people against their permanent interests,—is precisely that which Thucydidês, in the most pointed manner denies; and not merely denies, but contrasts Periklês with his successors in the express circumstances that they did so, while he did not. The language of the contemporary historian[309] well deserves to be cited: “Periklês, powerful from dignity of character as well as from wisdom, and conspicuously above the least tinge of corruption, held back the people with a free hand, and was their real leader instead of being led by them. For not being a seeker of power from unworthy sources, he did not speak with any view to present favor, but had sufficient sense of dignity to contradict them on occasion, even braving their displeasure. Thus, whenever he perceived them insolently and unseasonably confident, he shaped his speeches in such manner as to alarm and beat them down: when again he saw them unduly frightened, he tried to counteract it, and restore them confidence: so that the government was in name a democracy, but in reality an empire exercised by the first citizen in the state. But those who succeeded after his death, being more equal one with another, and each of them desiring preëminence over the rest, adopted the different course of courting the favor of the people, and sacrificing to that object even important state-interests. From whence arose many other bad measures, as might be expected in a great and imperial city, and especially the Sicilian expedition,” etc.

It will be seen that the judgment here quoted from Thucydidês contradicts, in the most unqualified manner, the reproaches commonly made against Periklês, of having corrupted the Athenian people by distributions of the public money, and by giving way to their unwise caprices, for the purpose of acquiring and maintaining his own political power. Nay, the historian particularly notes the opposite qualities,—self-judgment, conscious dignity, indifference to immediate popular applause or wrath, when set against what was permanently right and useful,—as the special characteristic of that great statesman. A distinction might indeed be possible, and Plutarch professes to note such distinction, between the earlier and the later part of his long political career: he began, so that biographer says, by corrupting the people in order to acquire power, but having acquired it, he employed it in an independent and patriotic manner, so that the judgment of Thucydidês, true respecting the later part of his life, would not be applicable to the earlier. This distinction may be to a certain degree well founded, inasmuch as the power of opposing a bold and successful resistance to temporary aberrations of the public mind, necessarily implies an established influence, and can hardly ever be exercised even by the firmest politician during his years of commencement: he is at that time necessarily the adjunct of some party or tendency which he finds already in operation, and has to stand forward actively and assiduously before he can create for himself a separate personal influence. But while we admit the distinction to this extent, there is nothing to warrant us in restricting the encomium of Thucydidês exclusively to the later life of Periklês, or in representing the earlier life as something in pointed contrast with that encomium. Construing fairly what the historian says, he evidently did not so conceive the earlier life of Periklês. Either those political changes which are held by Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, and others, to demonstrate the corrupting effect of Periklês and his political ascendency,—such as the limitation of the functions of the Areopagus, as well as of the power of the magistrates, the establishment of the numerous and frequent popular dikasteries with regular pay, and perhaps also the assignment of pay to those who attended the ekklesia, the expenditure for public works, religious edifices and ornaments, the diobely (or distribution of two oboli per head to the poorer citizens at various festivals, in order that they might be able to pay for their places in the theatre), taking it as it then stood, etc.,—did not appear to Thucydidês mischievous and corrupting, as these other writers thought them; or else he did not particularly refer them to Periklês.

Both are true, probably, to some extent. The internal political changes at Athens, respecting the Areopagus and the dikasteries, took place when Periklês was a young man, and when he cannot be supposed to have yet acquired the immense personal ascendency which afterwards belonged to him. Ephialtês in fact seems in those early days to have been a greater man than Periklês, if we may judge by the fact that he was selected by his political adversaries for assassination,—so that they might with greater propriety be ascribed to the party with which Periklês was connected, rather than to that statesman himself. But next, we have no reason to presume that Thucydidês considered these changes as injurious, or as having deteriorated the Athenian character. All that he does say as to the working of Periklês on the sentiment and actions of his countrymen, is eminently favorable. He represents the presidency of that statesman as moderate, cautious, conservative, and successful; he describes him as uniformly keeping back the people from rash enterprises, and from attempts to extend their empire,—as looking forward to the necessity of a war, and maintaining the naval, military, and financial forces of the state in constant condition to stand it,—as calculating, with long-sighted wisdom, the conditions on which ultimate success depended. If we follow the elaborate funeral harangue of Periklês, which Thucydidês, since he produces it at length, probably considered as faithfully illustrating the political point of view of that statesman, we shall discover a conception of democratical equality no less rational than generous; an anxious care for the recreation and comfort of the citizens, but no disposition to emancipate them from active obligation, either public or private,—and least of all, any idea of dispensing with such activity by abusive largesses out of the general revenue. The whole picture, drawn by Periklês, of Athens, “as the schoolmistress of Greece,” implies a prominent development of private industry and commerce, not less than of public citizenship and soldiership,—of letters, arts, and recreative varieties of taste.

Though Thucydidês does not directly canvass the constitutional changes effected in Athens under Periklês, yet everything which he does say leads us to believe that he accounted the working of that statesman, upon the whole, on Athenian power as well as on Athenian character, eminently valuable, and his death as an irreparable loss. And we may thus appeal to the judgment of an historian who is our best witness in every conceivable respect, as a valid reply to the charge against Periklês, of having corrupted the Athenian habits, character, and government. If he spent a large amount of the public treasure upon religious edifices and ornaments, and upon stately works for the city,—yet the sum which he left untouched, ready for use at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, was such as to appear more than sufficient for all purposes of defence, or public safety, or military honor. It cannot be shown of Periklês that he ever sacrificed the greater object to the less,—the permanent and substantially valuable, to the transitory and showy,—assured present possessions, to the lust of new, distant, or uncertain conquests. If his advice had been listened to, the rashness which brought on the defeat of the Athenian Tolmidês, at Korôneia in Bœotia, would have been avoided, and Athens might probably have maintained her ascendency over Megara and Bœotia, which would have protected her territory from invasion, and given a new turn to the subsequent history. Periklês is not to be treated as the author of the Athenian character: he found it with its very marked positive characteristics and susceptibilities, among which, those which he chiefly brought out and improved were the best. The lust of expeditions against the Persians, which Kimon would have pushed into Egypt and Cyprus, he repressed, after it had accomplished all which could be usefully aimed at: the ambition of Athens he moderated rather than encouraged: the democratical movement of Athens he regularized, and worked out into judicial institutions, which became one of the prominent features of Athenian life, and worked, in my judgment, with a very large balance of benefit to the national mind as well as to individual security, in spite of the many defects in their direct character as tribunals. But that point in which there was the greatest difference between Athens, as Periklês found if, and as he left it, is, unquestionably, the pacific and intellectual development,—rhetoric, poetry, arts, philosophical research, and recreative variety. To which if we add, great improvement in the cultivation of the Attic soil,—extension of Athenian trade,—attainment and laborious maintenance of the maximum of maritime skill, attested by the battles of Phormio,—enlargement of the area of complete security by construction of the Long Walls,—lastly, the clothing of Athens in her imperial mantle, by ornaments, architectural and sculptural,—we shall make out a case of genuine progress realized during the political life of Periklês, such as the evils imputed to him, far more imaginary than real, will go but a little way to alloy. How little, comparatively speaking, of the picture drawn by Periklês in his funeral harangue of 431 B.C. would have been correct, if the harangue had been delivered over those warriors who fell at Tanagra, twenty-seven years before!

It has been remarked by M. Boeckh,[310] that Periklês sacrificed the landed proprietors of Attica to the maritime interests and empire of Athens. This is of course founded on the destructive invasions of the country during the Peloponnesian war; for down to the commencement of that war the position of Attic cultivators and proprietors was particularly enviable: and the censure of M. Boeckh, therefore, depends upon the question, how far Periklês contributed to produce, or had it in his power to avert, this melancholy war, in its results so fatal, not merely to Athens, but to the entire Grecian race. Now here again, if we follow attentively the narrative of Thucydidês, we shall see that in the judgment of that historian, not only Periklês did not bring on the war, but he could not have averted it without such concession as Athenian prudence, as well as Athenian patriotism peremptorily forbade: moreover, we shall see, that the calculations on which Periklês grounded his hopes of success if driven to war, were, in the opinion of the historian, perfectly sound and safe. We may even go farther, and affirm, that the administration of Periklês during the fourteen years preceding the war, exhibits a “moderation,” to use the words of Thucydidês,[311] dictated especially by anxiety to avoid raising causes of war; though in the months immediately preceding the breaking out of the war, after the conduct of the Corinthians at Potidæa, and the resolutions of the congress at Sparta, he resisted strenuously all compliance with special demands from Sparta,—demands essentially insincere, and in which partial compliance would have lowered the dignity of Athens without insuring peace. The stories about Pheidias, Aspasia, and the Megarians, even if we should grant that there is some truth at the bottom of them, must, if we follow Thucydidês, be looked upon at worst as concomitants and pretexts, rather than as real causes, of the war: though modern authors, in speaking of Periklês, are but too apt to use expressions which tacitly assume these stories to be well founded.

Seeing then that Periklês did not bring on and could not have averted the Peloponnesian war,—that he steered his course in reference to that event with the long-sighted prudence of one who knew that the safety and the dignity of imperial Athens were essentially interwoven,—we have no right to throw upon him the blame of sacrificing the landed proprietors of Attica. These might, indeed, be excused for complaining, where they suffered so ruinously; but the impartial historian, looking at the whole of the case, cannot admit their complaints as a ground for censuring the Athenian statesman.

The relation of Athens to her allies, the weak point of her position, it was beyond the power of Periklês seriously to amend, probably also beyond his will, since the idea of political incorporation, as well as that of providing a common and equal confederate bond, sustained by effective federal authority between different cities, was rarely entertained even by the best Greek minds.[312] We hear that he tried to summon at Athens a congress of deputies from all cities of Greece, the allies of Athens included;[313] but the scheme could not be brought to bear, in consequence of the reluctance, noway surprising, of the Peloponnesians. Practically, the allies were not badly treated during his administration: and if, among the other bad consequences of the prolonged war, they, as well as Athens, and all other Greeks come to suffer more and more, this depends upon causes with which he is not chargeable, and upon proceedings which departed altogether from his wise and sober calculations. Taking him altogether, with his powers of thought, speech, and action,—his competence, civil and military, in the council as well as in the field,—his vigorous and cultivated intellect, and his comprehensive ideas of a community in pacific and many-sided development,—his incorruptible public morality, caution, and firmness, in a country where all those qualities were rare, and the union of them in the same individual of course much rarer,—we shall find him without a parallel throughout the whole course of Grecian history.

Under the great mortality and pressure of sickness at Athens, their operations of war naturally languished; while the enemies also, though more active, had but little success. A fleet of one hundred triremes, with one thousand hoplites on board, was sent by the Lacedæmonians under Knêmus to attack Zakynthus, but accomplished nothing beyond devastation of the open parts of the island, and then returned home. And it was shortly after this, towards the month of September, that the Ambrakiots made an attack upon the Amphilochian town called Argos, situated on the southern coast of the gulf of Ambrakia: which town, as has been recounted in the preceding chapter, had been wrested from them two years before by the Athenians, under Phormio, and restored to the Amphilochians and Akarnanians. The Ambrakiots, as colonists and allies of Corinth, were at the same time animated by active enmity to the Athenian influence in Akarnania, and by desire to regain the lost town of Argos. Procuring aid from the Chaonians, and some other Epirotic tribes, they marched against Argos, and after laying waste the territory, endeavored to take the town by assault, but were repulsed, and obliged to retire.[314] This expedition appears to have impressed the Athenians with the necessity of a standing force to protect their interest in those parts; so that in the autumn Phormio was sent with a squadron of twenty triremes to occupy Naupaktus, now inhabited by the Messenians, as a permanent naval station, and to watch the entrance of the Corinthian gulf.[315] We shall find in the events of the succeeding year ample confirmation of this necessity.

Though the Peloponnesians were too inferior in maritime force to undertake formal war at sea against Athens, their single privateers, especially the Megarian privateers from the harbor of Nisæa, were active in injuring her commerce,[316]—and not merely the commerce of Athens, but also that of other neutral Greeks, without scruple or discrimination. Several merchantmen and fishing-vessels, with a considerable number of prisoners, were thus captured.[317] Such prisoners as fell into the hands of the Lacedæmonians,—even neutral Greeks as well as Athenians,—were all put to death, and their bodies cast into clefts of the mountains. In regard to the neutrals, this capture was piratical, and the slaughter unwarrantably cruel, judged even by the received practice of the Greeks, deficient as that was on the score of humanity: but to dismiss these neutral prisoners, or to sell them as slaves, would have given publicity to a piratical capture and provoked the neutral towns, so that the prisoners were probably slain as the best way of getting rid of them and thus suppressing evidence.[318]

Some of these Peloponnesian privateers ranged as far as the southwestern coast of Asia Minor, where they found temporary shelter, and interrupted the trading-vessels from Phasêlis and Phenicia to Athens; to protect which, the Athenians despatched, in the course of the autumn, a squadron of six triremes under Melêsander. He was farther directed to insure the collection of the ordinary tribute from Athenian subject-allies, and probably to raise such contributions as he could elsewhere. In the prosecution of this latter duty, he undertook an expedition from the sea-coast against one of the Lykian towns in the interior, but his attack was repelled with loss, and he himself slain.[319]

An opportunity soon offered itself to the Athenians, of retaliating on Sparta for this cruel treatment of the maritime prisoners. In execution of the idea projected at the commencement of the war, the Lacedæmonians sent Anêristus and two others as envoys to Persia, for the purpose of soliciting from the Great King aids of money and troops against Athens; the dissensions among the Greeks thus gradually paving the way for him to regain his ascendency in the Ægean. Timagoras of Tegea, together with an Argeian named Pollis, without any formal mission from his city, and the Corinthian Aristeus, accompanied them. As the sea was in the power of Athens, they travelled overland through Thrace to the Hellespont; and Aristeus, eager to leave nothing untried for the relief of Potidæa, prevailed upon them to make application to Sitalkês, king of the Odrysian Thracians. That prince was then in alliance with Athens, and his son Sadokus had even received the grant of Athenian citizenship: yet the envoys thought it possible not only to detach him from the Athenian alliance, but even to obtain from him an army to act against the Athenians and raise the blockade of Potidæa,—this being refused, they lastly applied to him for a safe escort to the banks of the Hellespont, in their way towards Persia. But Learchus and Ameiniadês, then Athenian residents near the person of Sitalkês, had influence enough not only to cause rejection of these requests, but also to induce Sadokus, as a testimony of zeal in his new character of Athenian citizen, to assist them in seizing the persons of Aristeus and his companions in their journey through Thrace. Accordingly, the whole party were seized and conducted as prisoners to Athens, where they were forthwith put to death, without trial or permission to speak,—and their bodies cast into rocky chasms, as a reprisal for the captured seamen slain by the Lacedæmonians.[320]

Such revenge against Aristeus, the instigator of the revolt of Potidæa, relieved the Athenians from a dangerous enemy; and that blockaded city was now left to its fate. About midwinter it capitulated, after a blockade of two years, and after going through the extreme of suffering from famine, to such a degree that some of those who died were even eaten by the survivors. In spite of such intolerable distress, the Athenian generals, Xenophon son of Euripidês and his two colleagues, admitted them to favorable terms of capitulation,—permitting the whole population and the Corinthian allies to retire freely, with a specified sum of money per head, as well as with one garment for each man and two for each woman,—so that they found shelter among the Chalkidic townships in the neighborhood. These terms were singularly favorable, considering the desperate state of the city, which must very soon have surrendered at discretion: but the hardships, even of the army without, in the cold of winter, were very severe, and they had become thoroughly tired both of the duration and the expense of the siege. The cost to Athens had been not less than two thousand talents; since the assailant force had never been lower than three thousand hoplites, during the entire two years of the siege, and for a portion of the time considerably greater,—each hoplite receiving two drachmas per diem. The Athenians at home, when they learned the terms of the capitulation, were displeased with the generals for the indulgence shown,—since a little additional patience would have constrained the city to surrender at discretion: in which case the expense would have been partly made good by selling the prisoners as slaves,—and Athenian vengeance probably gratified by putting the warriors to death.[321] A body of one thousand colonists were sent from Athens to occupy Potidæa and its vacant territory.[322]

Two full years had now elapsed since the actual commencement of war, by the attack of the Thebans on Platæa; yet the Peloponnesians had accomplished nothing of what they expected. They had not rescued Potidæa, nor had their twice-repeated invasion, although assisted by the unexpected disasters arising from the epidemic, as yet brought Athens to any sufficient humiliation,—though perhaps the envoys which she had sent during the foregoing summer with propositions for peace, contrary to the advice of Periklês, may have produced an impression that she could not hold out long. At the same time, the Peloponnesian allies had on their side suffered little damage, since the ravages inflicted by the Athenian fleet on their coast may have been nearly compensated by the booty which their invading troops gained in Attica. Probably by this time the public opinion in Greece had contracted an unhappy familiarity with the state of war, so that nothing but some decisive loss and humiliation on one side at least, if not on both, would suffice to terminate it. In this third spring, the Peloponnesians did not repeat their annual march into Attica,—deterred, partly, we may suppose, by fear of the epidemic yet raging there,—but still more by the strong desire of the Thebans to take their revenge on Platæa.

To this ill-fated city, Archidamus marched forthwith, at the head of the confederate army. But no sooner had he entered and begun to lay waste the territory, than the Platæan heralds came forth to arrest his hand, and accosted him in the following terms: “Archidamus, and ye men of Lacedæmon, ye act wrong, and in a manner neither worthy of yourselves nor of your fathers, in thus invading the territory of Platæa. For the Lacedæmonian Pausanias, son of Kleombrotus, after he had liberated Greece from the Persians, in conjunction with those Greeks who stood forward to bear their share of the danger, offered sacrifice to Zeus Eleutherius, in the market-place of Platæa; and there, in presence of all the allies, assigned to the Platæans their own city and territory to hold in full autonomy, so that none should invade them wrongfully, or with a view to enslave them: should such invasion occur, the allies present pledged themselves to stand forward with all their force as protectors. While your fathers made to us this grant, in consideration of our valor and forwardness in that perilous emergency, ye are now doing the precise contrary: ye are come along with our worst enemies, the Thebans, to enslave us. And we on our side now adjure you, calling to witness the gods who sanctioned that oath, as well as your paternal and our local gods, not to violate the oath by doing wrong to the Platæan territory, but to let us live on in that autonomy which Pausanias guaranteed.”[323]

Whereunto Archidamus replied: “Ye speak fairly, men of Platæa, if your conduct shall be in harmony with your words. Remain autonomous yourselves, as Pausanias granted, and help us to liberate those other Greeks, who, after having shared in the same dangers and sworn the same oath along with you, have now been enslaved by the Athenians. It is for their liberation and that of the other Greeks that this formidable outfit of war has been brought forth. Pursuant to your oaths, ye ought by rights, and we now invite you, to take active part in this object. But if ye cannot act thus, at least remain quiet, conformably to the summons which we have already sent to you; enjoy your own territory, and remain neutral,—receiving both parties as friends, but neither party for warlike purposes. With this we shall be satisfied.”

The reply of Archidamus discloses by allusion a circumstance which the historian had not before directly mentioned; that the Lacedæmonians had sent a formal summons to the Platæans to renounce their alliance with Athens and remain neutral: at what time this took place,[324] we do not know, but it marks the peculiar sentiment attaching to the town. But the Platæans did not comply with the invitation thus twice repeated. The heralds, having returned for instructions into the city, brought back for answer, that compliance was impossible, without the consent of the Athenians, since their wives and families were now harbored at Athens: besides, if they should profess neutrality, and admit both parties as friends, the Thebans might again make an attempt to surprise their city. In reply to their scruples, Archidamus again addressed them: “Well, then, hand over your city and houses to us Lacedæmonians: mark out the boundaries of your territory: specify the number of your fruit-trees, and all your other property which admits of being numbered; and then retire whithersoever ye choose, as long as the war continues. As soon as it is over, we will restore to you all that we have received,—in the interim, we will hold it in trust, and keep it in cultivation, and pay you such an allowance as shall suffice for your wants.”[325]

The proposition now made was so fair and tempting, that the general body of the Platæans were at first inclined to accept it, provided the Athenians would acquiesce; and they obtained from Archidamus a truce long enough to enable them to send envoys to Athens. After communication with the Athenian assembly, the envoys returned to Platæa, bearing the following answer: “Men of Platæa, the Athenians say they have never yet permitted you to be wronged since the alliance first began,—nor will they now betray you, but will help you to the best of their power. And they adjure you, by the oaths which your fathers swore to them, not to depart in any way from the alliance.”

This message awakened in the bosoms of the Platæans the full force of ancient and tenacious sentiment. They resolved to maintain, at all cost, and even to the extreme of ruin, if necessity should require it, their union with Athens. It was indeed impossible that they could do otherwise, considering the position of their wives and families, without the consent of the Athenians; and though we cannot wonder that the latter refused consent, we may yet remark, that, in their situation, a perfectly generous ally might well have granted it. For the forces of Platæa counted for little as a portion of the aggregate strength of Athens; nor could the Athenians possibly protect it against the superior land-force of their enemies,—in fact, so hopeless was the attempt that they never even tried, throughout the whole course of the long subsequent blockade.

The final refusal of the Platæans was proclaimed to Archidamus, by word of mouth from the walls, since it was not thought safe to send out any messenger. As soon as the Spartan prince heard the answer, he prepared for hostile operations,—apparently with very sincere reluctance, attested in the following invocation, emphatically pronounced:—

“Ye gods and heroes, who hold the Platæan territory, be ye my witnesses, that we have not in the first instance wrongfully—not until these Platæans have first renounced the oaths binding on all of us—invaded this territory, in which our fathers defeated the Persians after prayers to you, and which ye granted as propitious for Greeks to fight in,—nor shall we commit wrong in what we may do farther, for we have taken pains to tender reasonable terms, but without success. Be ye now consenting parties: may those who are beginning the wrong receive punishment for it,—may those who are aiming to inflict penalty righteously, obtain their object.”

It was thus that Archidamus, in language delivered probably under the walls, and within hearing of the citizens who manned them, endeavored to conciliate the gods and heroes of that town which he was about to ruin and depopulate. The whole of this preliminary debate,[326] so strikingly and dramatically set forth by Thucydidês, illustrates forcibly the respectful reluctance with which the Lacedæmonians first brought themselves to assail this scene of the glories of their fathers. What deserves remark is, that their direct sentiment attaches itself, not at all to the Platæan people, but only to the Platæan territory; it is purely local, though it becomes partially transferred to the people, as tenants of this spot, by secondary association. It was, however, nothing but the long-standing antipathy[327] of the Thebans which induced Archidamus to undertake the enterprise; for the conquest of Platæa was of no avail towards the main objects of the war, though its exposed situation caused it to be crushed between the two great contending forces in Greece.

Archidamus now commenced the siege forthwith, in full hopes that his numerous army, the entire strength of the Peloponnesian confederacy, would soon capture a place of no great size, and probably not very well fortified; yet defended by a resolute garrison of four hundred native citizens, with eighty Athenians: there was no one else in the town except one hundred and ten female slaves for cooking. The fruit-trees, cut down in laying waste the cultivated land, sufficed to form a strong palisade all round the town, so as completely to block up the inhabitants. Next, Archidamus, having abundance of timber near at hand in the forests of Kithæron, began to erect a mound up against a portion of the town wall, so as to be able to march up by an inclined plane, and thus take the place by assault. Wood, stones, and earth, were piled up in a vast heap,—cross palings of wood being carried on each side of it, in parallel lines at right angles to the town wall, for the purpose of keeping the loose mass of materials between them together. For seventy days and as many nights did the army labor at this work, without any intermission, taking turns for food and repose: and through such unremitting assiduity, the mound approached near to the height of the town wall. But as it gradually mounted up, the Platæans were not idle on their side: they constructed an additional wall of wood, which they planted on the top of their own town wall, so as to heighten the part over against the enemy’s mound: sustaining it by brickwork behind, for which the neighboring houses furnished materials: hides, raw as well as dressed, were suspended in front of it, in order to protect their workmen against missiles, and the woodwork against fire-carrying arrows.[328] And as the besiegers still continued heaping up materials, to carry their mound up to the height even of this recent addition, the Platæans met them by breaking a hole in the lower part of their town wall, and pulling in the earth from the lower portion of the mound; which thus gave way at the top and left a vacant space near the wall, until the besiegers filled it up by letting down quantities of stiff clay rolled up in wattled reeds, which could not be pulled away in the same manner. Again, the Platæans dug a subterranean passage from the interior of their town to the ground immediately under the mound, and thus carried away unseen the lower earth belonging to the latter; so that the besiegers saw their mound continually sinking down, in spite of fresh additions at the top,—yet without knowing the reason. Nevertheless, it was plain that these stratagems would be in the end ineffectual, and the Platæans accordingly built a new portion of town wall in the interior, in the shape of a crescent, taking its start from the old town wall on each side of the mound: the besiegers were thus deprived of all benefit from the mound, assuming it to be successfully completed; since when they had marched over it, there stood in front of them a new town wall to be carried in like manner.

Nor was this the only method of attack employed. Archidamus farther brought up battering engines, one of which greatly shook and endangered the additional height of wall built by the Platæans over against the mound; while others were brought to bear on different portions of the circuit of the town wall. Against these new assailants, various means of defence were used: the defenders on the walls threw down ropes, got hold of the head of the approaching engine, and pulled it by main force out of the right line, either upwards or sideways: or they prepared heavy wooden beams on the wall, each attached to both ends by long iron chains to two poles projecting at right angles from the wall, by means of which poles it was raised up and held aloft: so that at the proper moment, when the battering machine approached the wall, the chain was suddenly let go, and the beam fell down with great violence directly upon the engine and broke off its projecting beak.[329] However rude these defensive processes may seem, they were found effective against the besiegers, who saw themselves, at the close of three months’ unavailing efforts, obliged to renounce the idea of taking the town in any other way than by the process of blockade and famine,—a process alike tedious and costly.[330]

Before they would incur so much inconvenience, however, they had recourse to one farther stratagem,—that of trying to set the town on fire. From the height of their mound, they threw down large quantities of fagots, partly into the space between the mound and the newly-built crescent piece of wall,—partly, as far as they could reach, into other parts of the city: pitch and other combustibles were next added, and the whole mass set on fire. The conflagration was tremendous, such as had never been before seen: a large portion of the town became unapproachable, and the whole of it narrowly escaped destruction. Nothing could have preserved it, had the wind been rather more favorable: there was indeed a farther story, of a most opportune thunder-storm coming to extinguish the flames, which Thucydidês does not seem to credit.[331] In spite of much partial damage, the town remained still defensible, and the spirit of the inhabitants unsubdued.