Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/334

 316 HISTORY" OF GREECE. occurred now in the dispute between JSgina and Athens, would have led to the certain enslavement of Greece, though when it did occur nearly a century afterwards, towards the close of the Peloponnesian war, and in consequence of the prolonged struggle between Lacedremon and Athens, Greece had become strong enough in her own force to endure it without the loss of substan- tial independence. The war between Thebes and -<gina on one side, and Athens on the other, begun several years before, and growing out of the connection between Athens and Platsea, had never yet been terminated. The -ZEginetans had taken part in that war from gratuitous feeling, either of friendship for Thebes, or of enmity to Athens, without any direct ground of quarrel, 1 and they had begun the war even without the formality of notice. Though a period apparently not less than fourteen years (from about 506-492 B.C.) had elapsed since it began, the state of hostility still continued ; and we may well conceive that Hippias, the great instigator of Persian attack upon Greece, would not fail to enforce upon all the enemies of Athens the pru- dence of seconding, or at least of not opposing, the efforts of the Persian to reinstate him in that city. It was partly under this feeling, combined with genuine alarm, that both Thebes and JEgina manifested submissive dispositions towards the heralds of Darius. Among these heralds, some had gone both to Athens and to Sparta, for the same purpose of demanding earth and water. The reception given to them at both places was angry in the ex- treme. The Athenians cast the herald into the pit called the barathrum, 2 into which they sometimes precipitated public crimi- 1 Herodot. v, 81-89. See above, chapter xxxi. The legendary story there given as the provocation of JEgina to the war is evidently not to be treated as a real and historical cause of war : a state of quarrel causes all Buch stories to be raked up, and some probably to be invented. It is like the old alleged quarrel between the Athenians and the Pelasgi of Lcmnos (vi, 137-140). Themistokles must allude, if that story indeed be true ; fcr the Persian king was not likely to send a second herald, after such treatment of the fiist. An interpreter accompanied the herald, speaking Greek as well &a hia own native language. Themktokles proposed and carried a vote thai
 * It is to this treatment of the herald that the story in Plutarch's Life of