Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/403

 MISCHIEVOUS EFFECTS. 38] It was thus that Athens at length made good her possession of the Chersonese against the neighboring Thracian potentates. And it would seem that her transmarine power, with its dependencies and confederates, now stood at a greater height than it had ever reached since the terrible reverses of 405 B. c. Among them were numbered not only a great number of the -ZEgean islands (even the largest, Eubrea, Chios, Samos, and Rhodes), but also the conti- nental possessions of Byzantium the Chersonese Maroneia 1 with other places on the southern coast of Thrace and Pydna, Methone, and Potidaea, with most of the region surrounding the Thermaic Gulf. 2 This last portion of empire had been acquired at the cost of the Olynthian fraternal alliance of neighboring cities, against which Athens too, as well as Sparta, by an impulse most disastrous for the future independence of Greece, had made war with inauspicious success. The Macedonian king Perdikkas, with a just instinct towards the future aggrandizement of his dynasty, had assisted her in thus weakening Olynthus ; feeling that the towns on the Thermaic Gulf, if they formed parts of a strong Olyn- thian confederacy of brothers and neighbors, reciprocally attached and self-sustaining, would resist Macedonia more effectively, than if they were half-reluctant dependencies of Athens, even with the chances of Athenian aid by sea. The aggressive hand of Athens against Olynthus, indeed, between 368-363 B. c., was hardly less mischievous, to Greece generally, than that of Sparta had been between 382-380 B. c. Sparta had crushed the Olynthian con- federacy in its first brilliant promise Athens prevented it from rearing its head anew. Both conspired to break down the most effective barrier against Macedonian aggrandizement; neither were found competent to provide any adequate protection to Greece in its room. The maximum of her second empire, which I have remarked that Athens attained by the recovery of the Chersonese, 3 lasted as I think he ought to do, for a certain interval between Kephisodotus and the Ten Envoys, during which Athenodorus acted for Athens, 1 Demosthen. cont. Polyklem, p. 1212, s. 26. >7iv /cat Travra TUV TOTTOV rov- TOV OIKELOV KVK3.U, CtC. 3 I have not made any mention of the expedition against Eubrea (where-
 * Demosthen. Philippic. I, p. 41, s. 6. i%ouev TTOTE ^etf, w avdpei; 'Ai9-^-