Page:Demosthenes (Brodribb).djvu/22

8 was a life and sprightliness about her citizens which made them quickly forget calamities and rise to new hopes and aspirations. So it was with them after Leuctra. Athens at once was fired with the ambition of winning back her old empire; and she actually succeeded in again becoming the head of a powerful confederacy. The disgust which Sparta had provoked throughout the Greek world was no doubt a great help to Athens. Once more her fleet sailed supreme over the Ægean. As a matter of course, the chief islands joined her alliance. A synod of deputies from her allies and dependents obeyed her summons, and contributions were voted for the common cause. She had able men—such as Timotheus, Iphicrates, and Chabrias—to command her forces. At the time of Philip's accession to the throne of Macedon in 359 B.C., Athens was the first state in Greece. She was not specially well fitted for war on land, and was in this respect inferior to Thebes, which could send out an army in the highest efficiency. But by sea she was, beyond comparison, the first power. Rhodes, Chios, Cos, and the important cities of Perinthus and Byzantium, were her allies. Samos, off the coast of Lydia, and Thasos, Lemnos, Imbros in the north of the Ægean, had been recently conquered by her; she was in possession of the Thracian Chersonese, of Pydna and Methone on the coast of Macedon, and of Potidæa and other towns in the peninsula of Chalcidice. The waters of the Ægean were thus an Athenian lake. But she could not hold together this confederation. She had no proper control over her generals. They were not in fact the servants