Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/115

 BEGINNING OF THE PEL3PONNESIAN WAR. r,,3 naval superiority of Athens depended chiefly upon hired seamen, and the confederacy, by borrowing from the treasuries of Delphi and Olympia, would soon be able to overbid her, take into pay her best mariners, and equal her equipment at sea : they would excite revolt among her allies, and establish a permanent fortified post for the ruin of Attica. To make up a common fund for this purpose, was indispensably necessary ; for Athens was far more than a match for each of them single-handed, and nothing less than hearty union could save them all from succes- sive enslavement, the very supposition of which was intolerable to Peloponnesian freemen, whose fathers had liberated Greece from the Persian. Let them not shrink from endurance and sacrifice in such a cause, it was their hereditary pride to pur- chase success by laborious effort. The Delphian god had prom- ised them his cooperation ; and the whole of Greece would sympathize in the cause, either from fear of the despotism of Athens, or from hopes of profit. They would not be the first to break the truce, for the Athenians had already broken it, as the declaration of the Delphian god distinctly implied. Let them lose no time in sending aid to the Potidasans, a Dorian population now besieged by lonians, as well as to those other Greeks whom Athens had enslaved. Every day the necessity for effort was becoming stronger, and the longer it was delayed, the more pain- ful it would be when it came. " Be ye persuaded then, (concluded the orator), that this city, which has constituted herself despot of Greece, has her position against all of us alike, some for present rule, others for future conquest ; let us assail and subdue her, that we may dwell securely ourselves hereafter, and may emancipate those Greeks who are now in slavery." 1 If there were any speeches delivered at this congress in oppo- sition to the war, they were not likely to be successful in a cause wherein even Archidamus had failed. After the Corinthian had federates equal and hearty in the cause : Perikles, on the contrary, looking at the same fact from the Athenian point of view, considers it as a disad- vantage, since it prevented unity of command and determination. Poppo's view of this passage seems to me erroneous. The same idea is reproduced, c. 124. elirsp ^e/3ai6rarov rb ravra tvpQepovTa nal Trofacri KOI Idiurai^ thru, etc. 1 Thncyd. i 123, 124.