Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/222

 1/8 Outlines of Europe a)i History Section 29. The Rise of the Athenian Empire Emancipated Greece Progressive Athens Conservative Sparta Rivalry of Athens and Sparta Themisto- cles and the fortification of Athens As the Athenians returned to look out over the ashes of what was once Athens, amid which rose the smoke-blackened heights of the naked Acropolis, they began to realize the greatness of their deliverance and the magnitude of their achievement. With the not too ready help of Sparta, they had met and crushed the ancient power of Asia. They felt themselves masters of the world. The past seemed narrow and limited. ' A new and greater Athens dawned upon their vision. On the other hand, the stolid Spartans, wearing the fetters of a rigid military organization, gifted with no imagination, looked with misgivings upon the larger world which was opening to Greek life, and although they desired to lead Greece in mili- tary power, they shrank from assuming the responsibilities of expansion. They represented the past and the privileges of the few. Athens represented the future and the rights of the many. Thus Greece fell into two camps as it were: Sparta (Fig. 87), the bulwark of tradition and limited privileges ; Athens (Plate III, p. 180), the champion of progress and the sovereign people. And thus the sentiment of union born in the common struggle for liberty, which might have united the Hellenes into one Greek nation, was followed by an unquenchable rivalry between the two leading states of Hellas, which finally cost the Greeks the supremacy of the ancient world. Themistocles was now the soul of Athens and her policy of progress and expansion. He determined that Athens should no longer follow Sparta. He cleverly hoodwinked the Spartans, and in spite of their objections completed the erection of strong walls around a new and larger Athens. At the same time he fortified the Piraeus, the Athenian port (see map, p. 173, and Fig. 86). When the Spartans, after the repulse of Persia, relin- quished the command of the combined Greek fleets, the power- ful Athenian fleet, the creation of Themistocles, was master of the .T^gean.