sympathy with intellectual
excellence can not be questioned. But she was charged with pandering to
the vices of Pericles, and corrupting society by her example and
influence.

(M488) The latter years of Pericles were marked by the outbreak of that
great war with Sparta, which crippled the power of Athens and tarnished
her glories. He also was afflicted by the death of his children by the
plague which devastated Athens in the early part of the Peloponnesian war,
to which attention is now directed. The probity of Pericles is attested by
the fact that during his long administration he added nothing to his
patrimonial estate. His policy was ambitious, and if it could have been
carried out, it would have been wise. He sought first to develop the
resources of his country--the true aim of all enlightened statesmen--and
then to make Athens the centre of Grecian civilization and political
power, to which all other Stales would be secondary and subservient. But
the rivalries of the Grecian States and inextinguishable jealousies would
not allow this. He made Athens, indeed, the centre of cultivated life; he
could not make it the centre of national unity. In attempting this he
failed, and a disastrous war was the consequence.

Pericles lived long enough to see the commencement of the contest which
ultimately resulted in the political ruin of Athens, and which we now
present.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR.

(M489) The great and disastrous war between the two leading States of
Greece broke out about two years and a half before the death of Pericles,
but the causes of the war can be traced to a period shortly after the
Persians were driven out of the Ionian cities. It arose primarily from the
rapid growth and power of Athens, when, as the leader of the maritime
States, it excited the envy of Sparta and other republics. A thirty years'
truce was made between Athens and Sparta, B.C. 445, after the revolution
in Boeotia, when the ascendency of Pericles was undisputed, which forced
his rival, Thucydides, a kinsman of Cimon, to go into temporary exile. The
continuance of the truce is identical with the palmy days of Athens, and
the glory of Pericles, during which the vast improvements to the city were
made, and art and literature flourished to a degree unprecedented in the
history of the ancient world.

(M490) After the conquest of Samos the jealousy of Sparta reached a point
which ma