Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/302

 278 fflSTORY OF GREECE. Peloponnesian war downward, to which nearly all our positive and direct information relates. With this expansion both of democratical feeling and of mili- tary activity at Athens, Aristeides appears to have sympathized ; and the popularity thus insured to him, probably heightened by some regret for his previous ostracism, was calculated to acquire permanence from his straightforward and incorruptible character, now brought into strong relief from his function as assessor to the new Delian confederacy. On the other hand, the ascendency of Themistokles, though so often exalted by his unrivalled politi- cal genius and daring, as well as by the signal value of his public recommendations, was as often overthrown by his duplicity of means and unprincipled thirst for money. New political oppo- nents sprung up against him, men sympathizing with Aristeides, and far more violent in their antipathy than Aristeides himself. Of these, the chief were Kimon — son of Miltiades — and Alk- mseon ; moreover, it seems that the Lacedaemonians, though full of esteem for Themistokles immediately after the battle of Salamis, had now become extremely hostile to him, — a change which may be sufficiently explained from his stratagem respecting the fortifications of Athens, and his subsequent ambitious projects in reference to the Peirasus. The Lacedaemonian influence, then not inconsiderable in Athens, was employed to second the politi- cal combinations against him.^ He is said to have given oflence by manifestations of personal vanity, — by continual boasting of his great services to the state, and by the erection of a private chapel, close to his own house, in honor of Artemis Aristobule, or Arte- mis of admirable counsel ; just as Pausanias had irritated the Lacedaemonians by inscribing his own single name on the Del- phian tripod, and as the friends of Aristeides had displeased the Athenians by endless encomiums upon his justice.^ But the main cause of his discredit was, the prostitution of his great influence for arbitrary and corrupt purposes. Li the unsettled condition of so many different Grecian communities, recently emancipated from Persia, when there was past misrule to avenge, ' Plutarch (Themistokles, c. 22; Kimon, c. 5-8; Aristeides, c. 25); Di- odoruB, xi, 54.
 * Plutarch, Kimon, c. 16 ; Scholion 2, ad Aristophan. Equit. 84.