Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/98

 76 HISTORY OF GREECE. confederacy for aid, which they appear to have been prevented from obtaining chiefly by the pacific interests then animating the Corinthians, but also the Lesbians had endeavored to open negotiations with Sparta for a similar purpose, though the author- ities to whom alone the proposition could have been commu- nicated, since it remained secret and was never executed had given them no encouragement. 1 The affairs of Athens had been administered under the ascendency of Perikles, without any view to extension of empire or encroachment upon others, though with constant view to the probabilities of war, and with anxiety to keep the city in a condition to meet it : but even the splendid internal ornaments, which Athens at that time acquired, were probably not without their effect in provoking jealousy on the part of other Greeks as to her ultimate views. The only known incident, wherein Athens had been brought into collision with a member of the Spartan confederacy prior to the Korky- raean dispute, was the decree passed in regard to Megara, pro- hibiting the Megarians, on pain of death, from all trade or inter- course as well with Athens as with all ports within the Athenian empire. This prohibition was grounded on the alleged fact, that the Megarians had harbored runaway slaves from Athens, and had appropriated and cultivated portions of land upon the bor- der ; partly land, the property of the goddesses of Eleusis, partly a strip of territory disputed between the two states, and therefore left by mutual understanding in common pasture with- out any permanent inclosure. 2 In reference to this latter point, 1 Thucyd. iii, 2-13. This proposition of the Lesbians at Sparta must have been made before the collision between Athens and Corinth at Korkyra. 2 Thucyd. i, 139. lirucatovvref tiTEpyaaiav MeyapeCfft r?/f y^f TTJS lepuc KOI 1% uopioTov, etc. Plutarch, Perikles, c. 30 ; Schol. ad Aristophan. Pac 609. I agree with Goller that two distinct violations of right are here imputed to the Megarians : the one, that they had cultivated land, the property of the goddesses at Eleusis, the other, that they had appropriated and culti- vated the unsettled pasture land on the border. J)r. Arnold's note takes a different view, less correct, in my opinion : " The land on the frontier was consecrated to prevent it from being inclosed : in which case the boundaries might have been a subject of perpetual dispute between the two countries," etc Co-nparc Thucyd. v, 42, about the border territory round Panaktum,