Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/135

Rh capable of carrying out such a policy; while a development of the silver mines at Laurium supplied the requisite funds. The renewal of the quarrel with Aegina after B.C. 490 made an increase in the war fleet necessary, and Herodotus remarks that the ships built for this purpose proved the salvation of Greece. But the fleet had been gradually increased before. In the Aegenitan war of B.C. 492-1 the Athenians had been obliged to borrow or hire triremes from Corinth, but in the year after the battle they were able to furnish Miltiades with seventy when he asked for a commission to exact money from the islanders who had favoured the Persians, and before B.C. 484 the state was able to maintain at least two hundred. The possession of triremes, indeed, was becoming general in the maritime states, and Corinth, which had been the earliest to use them, still had a respectable number, while in the west Corcyra and Syracuse each possessed formidable fleets. But no state seems to have made such a rapid advance in this period as Athens. The credit is chiefly due to Themistocles who continually urged the policy upon his fellow-citizens, persuading them to devote the royalties from the mines to shipbuilding instead of distributing the money among them- selves.

It was fortunate that he had his way in this, for the Persian danger was not over, as some thought, with the victory of Marathon. It had—as Themistocles always maintained—only begun. Darius had no mind to accept his defeat. For three years Asia was in all the hurry and bustle of preparation for a