Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/160

 138 HISTORY OF GREECE. probably have been construed as an unfavorable omen, and caused the postponement of the scheme. Expecting a pro- longed struggle, the Athenians now made arrangements for plac- ing Attica in a permanent state of defence, both by sea and land ; what these arrangements were, we are not told in detail, but one of them was sufficiently remarkable to be named partic- ularly. They set apart one thousand talents out of the treasure in the acropolis as an inviolable reserve, not to be touched except n the single contingency of a hostile naval force about to ssail the city, with no other means at hand to defend it. They urther enacted, that if any citizen should propose, or any magis- trate put the question, in the public assembly, to make any dif- ferent application of this reserve, he should be punishable with death. Moreover, they resolved every year to keep back one hundred of their best triremes, and trierarchs to command and equip them, for the same special necessity. 1 It may be doubted whether this latter provision was placed under the same stringent sanction, or observed with the same rigor, as that concerning the money, Avhich latter was not departed from until the twentieth pear of the war, after all the disasters of the Sicilian expedition, jind on the terrible news of the revolt of Chios. It was on that occasion that the Athenians first repealed the sentence of capital punishment against the proposer of this forbidden change, and next appropriated the money to meet the then imminent peril of the commonwealth. 2 The resolution here taken about this sacred reserve, and the rigorous sentence interdicting contrary propositions, is pronounced by Mr. Mitford to be an evidence of the indelible barbarism of democratical government. 3 But we must recollect, first, that the 1 Thucyd. ii, 24. a Thucyd. viii, 15 3 Mitford, Hist, of Greece, ch. xiv, sect. 1, vol. iii, p. 100. " Another measure followed, which, taking place at the time when Thucydides wrote and Perikles spoke, and while Perikles held the principal influence in the administration, strongly marko both the inherent weakness and the indcli ble barbarism of democratic&l government. A decree of the pc >ple di- rected But so little confidence was placed in a decree so impor- tant, sanctioned only by the present will of that giddy tyrant, the multitude of Athens, against whose caprices, since the depression of the court of Areopagus, no balancing power remained. that the denunciation of capr-