Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/150

 128 HISTORY OF GREECE. would, indeed, make a favorable impression when he told *h 4 that Archidamus was his own family friend, yet only within such limits as consisted with duty to the city : in case, therefore, the invaders, while ravaging Attica, should receive instruction to spare his own lands, he would forthwith make them over to the state as public property : nor was such a case unlikely to arise, if not from the personal feeling of Archidamus, at least Irom the deliberate manoeuvre of the Spartans, who would seek, thus to set the Athenian public against Perikles, as they had tiled to do before by demanding the banishment of the sacrilegious Alkmae- onid race. 1 But though this declaration would doubtless provoke- a hearty cheer, the lesson which he had to inculcate, not simply for admission as prudent policy, but for actual practice, was one revolting alike to the immediate interest, the dignity, and the sympathies of his countrymen. To see their lands all ravaged, without raising an arm to defend them, to carry away their wives and families, and to desert and dismantle their country residences, as they had done during the Persian invasion, all in the confidence of compensation in other ways and of remote altimate success, were recommendations which, probably, no one but Perikles could have hoped to enforce. They were, moreover, the more painful to execute, inasmuch as the Athenian citizens had very generally retained the habits of residing per- manently, not in Athens, but in the various demes of Attica ; many of which still preserved their temples, their festivals, theii local customs, and their limited municipal autonomy, handed down from the day when they had once been independent of Athens. 2 It was but recently that the farming, the comforts, and the ornaments, thus distributed over Attica, had been restored from the ruin of the Persian invasion, and brought to a higher pitch of improvement than ever ; yet the fruits of this labor, and the scenes of these local affections, were now to be again delib- 1 Thncyd. ii, 13 : compare Tacitus, Histor. v, 23. " Cercalis, insulam Batavorum hostilitcr populatus, agros Civilis, notd arte ducum, intacto? sinebat." Also Livy, ii. 39. Justin affirms that the Lacedaemonian invaders actually did lea^etho lands of Perikles uninjured, and that he made them over to the people (iii, 7). Thncydides does not s?y whether the case really occurred : sec bo Polyaenus, i, 36 * Thucyd. ii, 15, 1&.