Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/394

 372 HISTORY OF GREECE. generation comes to be present, with its appropriate stock of com- plaint and denunciation, then it is that men find pleasure in dressing up the virtues of the past, as a count in the indictment against their own contemporaries. Aristophanes, 1 writing during the Peloponnesian war, denounced the Demos of his day as de- generated from the virtue of that Denios which had surrounded Miltiades and Aristeides : while Isokrates, 2 writing as an old man, between 350-340 B.C., complains in like manner of his own time, boasting how much better the state of Athens had been in his youth : which period of his youth fell exactly during the life of Aristophanes, in the last half of the Peloponnesian war. Such illusions ought to impose on no one without a careful comparison of facts ; and most assuredly that comparison will not bear out the allegation of increased corruption and degeneracy, between the age of Miltiades and the end of the Peloponnesian war. Throughout the whole of Athenian history, there are no acts which attest so large a measure of virtue and judgment per- vading the whole people, as the proceedings after the Four Hun- dred and after the Thirty. Nor do I believe that the contempo- raries of Miltiades would have been capable of such heroism ; for that appellation is by no means too large for the case. I doubt whether they would have been competent to the steady self-denial of retaining a large sum in reserve during the time of peace, both prior to the Peloponnesian war and after the Peace of Nikias ; or of keeping back the reserve fund of one thousand talents, while they were forced to pay taxes for the support of the war; or of acting upon the prudent, yet painfully trying, policy recommended by Perikles, so as to sustain an annual inva- sion without either going out to fight or purchasing peace by ignominious concessions. If bad acts such as Athens committed during the later years of the war, for example, the massacre of the Melian population, were not done equally by the contempo- raries of Miltiades, this did not arise from any superior humanity or principle on their part, but from the fact that they were not exposed to the like temptation, brought upon them by the posses- ion of imperial power. The condemnation of the six generals 1 Aristophan. Equit. 1316-1321. 2 Isokrates, Or. xv, De Permutation, s. 170.