Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/154

 132 HISTORY OF GREECE. ipaled was on the point of happening, and nothing prevented it, except the personal ascendency of Perikles, strained to its very utmost. So long as the invading army was engaged in the Thriasian plain, the Athenians had some faint hope that it might like Pleistoanax, fourteen years before advance no farther into the interior: but when it came to Acharnce, within sight of the city walls, when the ravagers were actually seen destroying buildings, fruit-trees, and crops, in the plain of Athens, a sight strange to every Athenian eye except to those very old men who recollected the Persian invasion, the exasperavion of the general body of citizens rose to a pitch never before known. The Acharnians first of all, next the youthful citizens generally, became madly clamorous for arming and going forth to fight. Knowing well their own great strength, but less correctly informed of the superior strength of the enemy, they felt confident that victory was within their reach. Groups of citizens were every- where gathered together, 1 angrily debating the critical question of the moment ; while the usual concomitants of excited feeling, oracles and prophecies of diverse tenor, many of them, doubtless, promising success against the enemy at Achamae, were eagerly caught up and circulated. In this inflamed temper of the Athenian mind, Perikles was naturally the great object of complaint and wrath. He was denounced as the cause of all the existing suffering : he was reviled as a coward for not leading out the citizens to fight, in his capacity of general : the rational convictions as to the necessity of the war and the only practicable means of carrying it on, which his repeated speeches had implanted, seemed to be altogether forgotten.2 This burst of spontaneous discontent was, of course, fomented by the numerous political enemies of Peri- kles, and particularly by Kleon, 3 now rising into importance as an opposition-speaker; whose talent for invective was thus first exercised under the auspices of the high aristocratical party, as 1 Thucyd. ii, 21. xaru l-varaoetf tie yiyvofievoi kv noMy Ipidi rjaav : com- pare Euripides. Herakleidae, 416 ; and AndromachS, 1077. EIXOV, KOI uv irapgveae nporepov i/iepvrivTO ovdev, dAA' IKUKL^OV tr, rtjybc uv OVK ine^u-yo'., alriov re atyiaiv Ivo^ov iravruy uv 3 Plutarch, Periktes, c. 33.
 * Thucyd. ii, 21. navrl re rpo-u avripediaro i) irohif KOI rbv TlepiKtev h