Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/192

164 also much improved. Nicias and the conservative part of the citizens were for peace and moderate counsels; but Alcibiades instigated the people to return to an old dream of an empire in the West. The Greek cities in Sicily and Italy were to be made subject, and perhaps even the kingdom of Carthage. With that they would be able to revenge themselves on the Peloponnese, and once more be supreme in Greece. A quarrel between two Sicilian cities gave a pretext for the fatal expedition to Syracuse. The Spartans again took sides against Athens. Attica was not only again invaded, but permanently occupied. And though in the years which followed the destruction of their armament at Syracuse, B.C. 413 to B.C. 404, they made a gallant struggle against the revolt which Sparta stirred up amongst their subject allies, one by one they were all wrested from her—even Oropus and Euboea; and when in B.C. 405 her last fleet was destroyed by Lysander at Aegospotami, there only remained a few months before Athens herself was compelled to surrender and allow her fortifications to be dismantled.

It is to be remembered that this period of constant war and fierce controversy is also the great period of Athenian literature. Sophocles and Euripides were exhibiting their plays while Athenian fleets were conquering or being conquered. Aristophanes found the themes for his most brilliant comedies in the politicians of the day or the burning question of peace or war. Socrates was wandering through the streets, not uninterested in the events of the time, and being called upon more than once to take his share