Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/321

 INDOLENCE IN THE IONIC FLEET. 303 tolerable hardship which these nautical manoeuvres and lubora imposed upon the lonians, though men not unaccustomed to ordi- nary ship-work, and when we witness their perfect incapacity to submit themselves to such a discipline, even with extreme danger staring them in the face, we shall be able to appreciate the severe and unremitting toil whereby the Athenian seaman afterwards purchased that perfection of nautical discipline which characterized him at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war. It will appear, as we proceed with this history, that the full devel- opment of the Athenian democracy worked a revolution in Grecian military marine, chiefly by enforcing upon the citizen seaman a strict continuous training, such as was only surpassed by the Lacedaemonian drill on land, and by thus rendering practicable a species of nautical manoeuvring which was un- known even at the time of the battle of Salamis. I shall show this more fully hereafter : at present, I contrast it briefly with the incapacity of the lonians at Lade, in order that it may be understood how painful such training really was. The reader of Grecian history is usually taught to associate only ideas of tur- bulence and anarchy with the Athenian democracy ; but the Athenian navy, the child and champion of that democracy, will be found to display an indefatigable labor and obedience nowhere else witnessed in Greece, and of which even the first lessons, as in the case now before us, prove to others so irksome as to out- weigh the prospect of extreme and imminent peril. The same impatience of steady toil and discipline, which the lonians dis- played to their own ruin before the battle of Lade, will be found to characterize them fifty years afterwards as allies of Athens, as I shall have occasion to show when I come to describe the Athe- nian empire. Ending in this abrupt and mutinous manner, the judicious sug- gestions of the Phoksean leader did more harm than good. Per- haps his manner of dealing may have been unadvisedly rude, but we are surprised to see that no one among the leaders of the larger contingents had the good sense to avail himself of the first readiness of the lonians, and to employ his superior influence in securing the continuance of a good practice once begun. Not one such superior man did this Ionic revolt throw up. From the <Jay on which the lonians discarded Dionysius, their camp bft-