Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/298

 274 mSTOEY OF GREECE. Delos. Moreover, we seem to detect a change in the character of the latter : he had ceased to be the champion of Athenian old-fashioned landed interest, against Themistokles as the origi- nator of the maritime innovations. Those innovations had now, cince the battle of Salamis, become an established fact ; a fact of overwhelming influence on the destinies and character, public as well as private, of the Athenians. During the exile at Sal- amis, every man, rich or poor, landed proprietor or artisan, had been for the time a seaman : and the anecdote of Kimon, who dedicated the bridle of his horse in the acropolis, as a token that he was about to pass from the cavalry to service on shipboard,i is a type of that change of feeling which must have been impressed more or less upon every rich man in Athens. From hencefor- ward the fleet is endeared to every man as the grand force, offen- sive and defensive, of the state, in which character all the political leaders agree in accepting it : we ought to add, at the same time, that this change was attended with no detriment either to the land-force or to the landed cultivation of Attica, both of which will be found to acquire extraordinary development during the interval between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars. Still, the triremes and the men who manned them, taken collectively, were now the determining element in the state : moreover, the men who manned them had just returned from Salamis, fresh from a scene of trial and danger, and from a harvest of victory, which had equalized for the moment all Athenians as sufferers, as com- batants, and as patriots. Such predominance of the maritime impulse, having become pronounced immediately after the return from Salamis, was farther greatly strengthened by the construc- tion and fortification of the Peiraeus, — a new maritime Athens, as large as the old inland city, — as well as by the unexpected formation of the confederacy at Delos, with all its untried pros- pects and stimulating duties. The political change arising from hence in Athens was not less important than the military. " The maritime multitude, authors of the victory of Salamis," 2 and instruments of the new ' Axistotel. Politic, v, 3, 5. Kal nd?icv 6 vavriKbc 0x^0 c, yevofievoc
 * Plutarch, Kimou, c. 8.