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The Historians' History of the World 03 [Greece to the Peloponnesian War]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1905
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: История
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If the Lacedæmonians had not been occupied at home by the blockade of Ithome, they would have been probably induced to invade Attica as a diversion to the Æginetans; especially as the Persian Megabazus came to Sparta at this time on the part of Artaxerxes to prevail upon them to do so, in order that the Athenians might be constrained to retire from Egypt. This Persian brought with him a large sum of money, but was nevertheless obliged to return without effecting his mission. The Corinthians and Epidaurians, however, while they carried to Ægina a reinforcement of three hundred hoplites, did their best to aid her further by an attack upon Megara; which place, it was supposed, the Athenians could not possibly relieve without withdrawing their forces from Ægina, inasmuch as so many of their men were at the same time serving in Egypt. But the Athenians showed themselves equal to all these three exigencies at one and the same time—to the great disappointment of their enemies. Myronides marched from Athens to Megara at the head of the citizens in the two extremes of military age, old and young; these being the only troops at home. He fought the Corinthians near the town, gaining a slight, but debatable advantage, which he commemorated by a trophy, as soon as the Corinthians had returned home. But the latter, when they arrived at home, were so much reproached by their own old citizens, for not having vanquished the refuse of the Athenian military force, that they returned back at the end of twelve days and erected a trophy on their side, laying claim to a victory in the past battle. The Athenians, marching out of Megara, attacked them a second time, and gained on this occasion a decisive victory. The defeated Corinthians were still more unfortunate in their retreat; for a body of them, missing their road, became entangled in a space of private ground enclosed on every side by a deep ditch and having only one narrow entrance. Myronides, detecting this fatal mistake, planted his hoplites at the entrance to prevent their escape, and then surrounded the enclosure with his light-armed troops, who with their missile weapons slew all the Corinthian hoplites, without possibility either of flight or resistance. The bulk of the Corinthian army effected their retreat, but the destruction of this detachment was a sad blow to the city.
THE LONG WALLS
[458 B.C.]
Splendid as the success of the Athenians had been during this year, both on land and at sea, it was easy for them to foresee that the power of their enemies would presently be augmented by the Lacedæmonians taking the field. Partly on this account—partly also from the more energetic phase of democracy, and the long-sighted views of Pericles, which were now becoming ascendant in the city—the Athenians began the stupendous undertaking of connecting Athens with the sea by means of long walls. The idea of this measure had doubtless been first suggested by the recent erection of long walls, though for so much smaller a distance, between Megara and Nisæa: for without such an intermediate stepping-stone, the project of a wall forty stadia (about 4½ English miles) to join Athens with Piræus, and another wall of thirty-five stadia (nearly 4 English miles) to join it with Phalerum, would have appeared extravagant even to the sanguine temper of Athenians—as it certainly would have seemed a few years earlier to Themistocles himself. Coming as an immediate sequel of great recent victories, and while Ægina, the great Dorian naval power, was prostrate and under blockade, it excited the utmost alarm among the Peloponnesians—being regarded as the second great stride, at once conspicuous and of lasting effect, in Athenian ambition, next to the fortification of Piræus. But besides this feeling in the bosom of enemies, the measure was also interwoven with the formidable contention of political parties then going on at Athens. Cimon had been recently ostracised; and the democratical movement pressed by Pericles and Ephialtes (of which more presently) was in its full tide of success; yet not without a violent and unprincipled opposition on the part of those who supported the existing constitution.
Now the Long Walls formed a part of the foreign policy of Pericles, continuing on a gigantic scale the plans of Themistocles when he first schemed the Piræus. They were framed to render Athens capable of carrying on war against any superiority of land attack, and of bidding defiance to the united force of Peloponnesus. But though thus calculated for contingencies which a long-sighted man might see gathering in the distance, the new walls were, almost on the same grounds, obnoxious to a considerable number of Athenians: to the party recently headed by Cimon, which was attached to the Lacedæmonian connection, and desired above all things to maintain peace at home, reserving the energies of the state for anti-Persian enterprise: to many landed proprietors in Attica, whom they seemed to threaten with approaching invasion and destruction of their territorial possessions: to the rich men and aristocrats of Athens, averse to a still closer contact and amalgamation with the maritime multitude in Piræus: lastly, perhaps, to a certain vein of old Attic feeling, which might look upon the junction of Athens with the separate demes of Piræus and Phalerum as effacing the special associations connected with the holy rock of Athene. When to all these grounds of opposition we add the expense and trouble of the undertaking itself, the interference with private property, the peculiar violence of party which happened then to be raging, and the absence of a large proportion of military citizens in Egypt, we shall hardly be surprised to find that the projected long walls brought on a risk of the most serious character both for Athens and her democracy. If any further proof were wanting of the vast importance of these long walls, in the eyes both of friends and of enemies, we might find it in the fact that their destruction was the prominent mark of Athenian humiliation after the battle of Ægospotami, and their restoration the immediate boon of Pharnabazus and Conon after the victory of Cnidus.
[457 B.C.]
Under the influence of the alarm now spread by the proceedings of Athens, the Lacedæmonians were prevailed upon to undertake an expedition out of Peloponnesus, although the helots in Ithome were not yet reduced to surrender. Their force consisted of fifteen hundred troops of their own, and ten thousand of their various allies, under the regent Nicomedes. The ostensible motive, or the pretence, for this march, was the protection of the little territory of Doris against the Phocians, who had recently invaded it and taken one of its three towns. The mere approach of so large a force immediately compelled the Phocians to relinquish their conquest, but it was soon seen that this was only a small part of the objects of Sparta, and that her main purpose, under instigation of the Corinthians, was, to arrest the aggrandisement of Athens. It could not escape the penetration of Corinth, that the Athenians might presently either enlist or constrain the towns of Bœotia into their alliance, as they had recently acquired Megara, in addition to their previous ally Platæa: for the Bœotian federation was at this time much disorganised, and Thebes, its chief, had never recovered her ascendency since the discredit of her support lent to the Persian invasion. To strengthen Thebes and to render her ascendency effective over the Bœotian cities, was the best way of providing a neighbour at once powerful and hostile to the Athenians, so as to prevent their further aggrandisement by land: it was the same policy as Epaminondas pursued eighty years afterwards, in organising Arcadia and Messene against Sparta. Accordingly the Peloponnesian force was now employed partly in enlarging and strengthening the fortifications of Thebes herself, partly in constraining the other Bœotian cities into effective obedience to her supremacy; probably by placing their governments in the hands of citizens of known oligarchical politics, and perhaps banishing suspected opponents. To this scheme the Thebans lent themselves with earnestness; promising to keep down for the future their border neighbours, so as to spare the necessity of armies coming from Sparta.