Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/190

162 for preparation. The final demand that Athens should acknowledge the independence of all her allies was practically a declaration of war. The most eager for this had been the Megarians, owing to their exclusion from the Athenian markets; the Corinthians, owing to affairs of Corcyra and Potidaea; and the Aeginetans, because they had been forced to join the confederacy of Delos and had been deprived of their autonomy. But the final cause which induced the Spartans to proclaim war was really dread of Athenian expansion. Athens had more power, than, according to Greek ideas, it was safe for any one state to possess.

The war which followed is called the Peloponnesian war, because Sparta dominated the Peloponnese, which, with the exception of Argolis and Achaia, was mainly on her side; but in fact nearly all continental Greece was hostile to Athens, who relied on her maritime and Asiatic allies. It was, therefore, a contest for the most part between a land and a sea power. It was also a contest between two political ideals—oligarchy and democracy—and to a certain extent racial, between Dorian and Ionian. It lasted with a brief interval till B.C. 404, and its result was the destruction of Athens as an imperial state, and almost as a political force at all in Greece. But the old ideal of perfectly autonomous states was not restored. Spartans took the place of Athenians with still greater odium and less success. The only one to profit was the king of Persia, whose satraps again interfered in Hellenic politics and reimposed his yoke upon the Asiatic Greeks. The