Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/182

154 and his generation. Herodotus visited Athens more than once, and spent the last years of his life in Thurii, which was in great part an Athenian colony, while his successor in the art of history was a pure Athenian, Thucydides, son of Olorus. The three great masters of tragedy were also Athenians, and in their different ways profoundly influenced the Greeks of this age and turned men's eyes still more decisively upon Athens. Aeschylus, the poet of lofty religion and heroic passion, died in B.C. 456; Sophocles, the clear-eyed pourtrayer of the whole range of human emotion, lived from B.C. 495 to B.C. 405; and Euripides, the master of pathos and the bold questioner of received beliefs, though fifteen years his junior, survived him only by a year.

These artistic and literary triumphs helped to make Athens and the Athenians what they were. Constant association with noble words and beautiful sights had the same effect on their minds, says Plato, as living in a healthy spot has on their bodies. “From beautiful works of art there smites upon eyes and ears as it were a breeze from a healthful region, leading them insensibly from childhood to a con- formity and harmony with the good and a love of it.” This gave a peculiar distinction to that supremacy of Athens in the Hellas of that age, which the activity and enterprise of her sons, the wealth obtained from her subject allies, and her pre-eminent naval power had secured and consolidated.

Yet there were not wanting signs of opposition to Pericles, both at home and among the members of the confederacy. His great opponent, Cimon, died in