Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/369

 GRECIAN CONFEDERACY UNDER ATHENS. 345 tery at sea, completely unassailable in Attica. Ever since the repulse of Xerxes, Athens had been advancing in an uninter- rupted course of power and prosperity at home, as well as of victory and ascendency abroad, — to which there was no excep- tion, except the ruinous enterprise in Egypt. Looking at the position of Greece, therefore, about 448 B.C., — after the con- clusion of the five years' truce between the Peloponnesians and Athens, and of the so-called Kimonian peace between Persia and Athens, — a discerning Greek might well calculate upon farther aggrandizement of this imperial state as the tendency of the age ; and accustomed as every Greek was to the conception of separate town-autonomy as essential to a fx'eeman and a citi- zen, such prospect could not but inspire terror and aversion. The sympathy of the Peloponnesians for the islanders and ultra- maritime states, who constituted the original confederacy of Athens, was not considerable ; but when the Dorian island of JEgina was subjugated also, and passed into the condition of a defenceless tributary, they felt the blow sorely on every ground. The ancient celebrity and eminent service rendered at the battle of Salamis, of this memorable island, had not been able to pro- tect it ; while those great -3j^ginetan families, whose victories at the sacred festival-games Pindar celebrates in a large proportion of his odes, would spread the language of complaint and indigna- tion throughout their numerous " guests " in every Hellenic city. Of course, the same anti-Athenian feeling would pervade those Peloponnesian states who had been engaged in actual hostility with Athens, — Corinth, Sikyon, Epidaurus, etc., as well as Sparta, the once-recognized head of Hellas, but now tacitly degraded from her preeminence, baffled in her projects respect- ing Boeotia, and exposed to the burning of her port at Gythium, without being able even to retaliate upon Attica. Putting all those circumstances together, we may comprehend the powerful feeling of dislike and apprehension now diffused so widely over Greece against the upstart despot city ; whose ascendency, newly acquired, maintained by superior force, and not recognized as legitimate, — threatened, nevertheless, still farther incx'ease. Sixteen years hence, this same sentiment will be found exploding into the Peloponnesian war ; but it became rooted in the Greek mind during the period which we have now reached, when 15*