Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/54

32 specially chosen for the purpose, mounted an elevated stage, and addressed to the multitude an appropriate discourse. Such was the effect produced by that of Perikles after the Samian expedition, that, when he had concluded, the audience present testified their emotion in the liveliest manner, and the women especially crowned him with garlands, like a victorious athlete. Only Elpinike, sister of the deceased Kimon, reminded him that the victories of her brother had been more felicitous, as gained over Persians and Phenicians, and not over Greeks and kinsmen. And the contemporary poet Ion, the friend of Kimon, reported what he thought an unseemly boast of Perikles, — to the effect that Agamemnon had spent ten years in taking a foreign city, while he in nine months had reduced the first and most powerful of all the Ionic communities. But if we possessed the actual speech pronounced, we should probably find that he assigned all the honor of the exploit to Athens and her citizens generally, placing their achievement in favorable comparison with that of Agamemnon and his host, — not himself with Agamemnon.

Whatever may be thought of this boast, there can be no doubt that the result of the Samian war not only rescued the Athenian empire from great peril, but rendered it stronger than ever while the foundation of Amphipolis, which was effected two years afterwards, strengthened it still farther. Nor do we hear, during the ensuing few years, of any farther tendencies to disaffection among its members, until the period immediately before the Peloponnesian war. The feeling common among them towards Athens, seems to have been neither attachment nor hatred, but simple indifference and acquiescence in her supremacy Such amount of positive discontent as really existed among them, arose, not from actual hardships suffered, but from the general political instinct of the Greek mind, — desire of separate