Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/346

 322 fflSTORY OF GREECE. were conducted with unabated vigor : and the inscription which, remains, — a commemoration of their citizens of the Erechtheid tribe, who were slain in one and the same year, in Cyprus, Egypt, Phenicia, the Halieis, JEgina, and Megara, — brings forcibly before us that energy which astonished and even alarmed their jontemporaries. Their first proceedings at Megara were of a mature altogether novel, in the existing condition of Greece. It was necessary for the Athenians to protect their new ally against the superiority of Peloponnesian land-force, and to insure a constant communication with it by sea ; but the city, like most of the ancient Hellenic towns, was situated on a hill at some distance from the sea, separated from its port Nissea by a space of nearly one mile- One of the earliest proceedings of the Athenians was to build two lines of wall, near and parallel to each other, connecting the city with Nisaea, so that the two thus formed one continuous for- tress, wherein a standing Athenian garrison was maintained, with the constant means of succor from Athens in case of need. These " long walls," though afterwards copied in other places, and on a larger scale, were at that juncture an ingenious invention, for the purpose of extending the maritime arm of Athens to an inland city. The first operations of Corinth, however, were not directed against Megara. The Athenians having undertaken a landing in the territory of the Halieis, the population of the southern Argolic peninsula, bordering on Trcezen and Hermione, were defeated on land by the Corinthian and Epidaurian forces : pos- sibly it may have been in this expedition that they acquired possession of Trcezen, which we find afterwards in their depen- dence, without knowing when it became so. But in a sea-fight which took place off the island of Kekryphaleia, between ^gina and the Argolic peninsula, the Athenians gained the victory. After this victory and defeat, — neither of them apparently very decisive, — the -S^ginetans began to take a more energetic part in the war, and brought out their full naval force, together with that of their allies, — Corinthians, Epidaurians, and other Pel- oponnesians : while Athens equipped a fleet of corresponding magnitude, summoning her allies also ; though we do not know the actual numbers on either side. In the great naval battle which ensued oflf the island of ^gina, the superiority of the