t preternatural insight,
at once the characters of men and the sequences of events.
Incomparably the greatest of his own times, and certainly not
surpassed by those who came after him. Pisistratus, Cimon, Pericles,
Aristides himself, were of noble and privileged birth. Themistocles
was the first, and, except Demosthenes, the greatest of those who rose
from the ranks of the people, and he drew the people upward in his
rise. His fame was the creation of his genius only. "What other man"
(to paraphrase the unusual eloquence of Diodorus) "could in the same
time have placed Greece at the head of nations, Athens at the head of
Greece, himself at the head of Athens?--in the most illustrious age
the most illustrious man. Conducting to war the citizens of a state
in ruins, he defeated all the arms of Asia. He alone had the power to
unite the most discordant materials, and to render danger itself
salutary to his designs. Not more remarkable in war than peace--in
the one he saved the liberties of Greece, in the other he created the
eminence of Athens."

After him, the light of the heroic age seems to glimmer and to fade,
and even Pericles himself appears dwarfed and artificial beside that
masculine and colossal intellect which broke into fragments the might
of Persia, and baffled with a vigorous ease the gloomy sagacity of
Sparta. The statue of Themistocles, existent six hundred years after
his decease, exhibited to his countrymen an aspect as heroical as his
deeds. [171]

We return to Cimon

CHAPTER III.

Reduction of Naxos.--Actions off Cyprus.--Manners of Cimon.--
Improvements in Athens.--Colony at the Nine Ways.--Siege of Thasos.--
Earthquake in Sparta.--Revolt of Helots, Occupation of Ithome, and
Third Messenian War.--Rise and Character of Pericles.--Prosecution and
Acquittal of Cimon.--The Athenians assist the Spartans at Ithome.--
Thasos Surrenders.--Breach between the Athenians and Spartans.--
Constitutional Innovations at Athens.--Ostracism of Cimon.

I. At the time in which Naxos refused the stipulated subsidies, and
was, in consequence, besieged by Cimon, that island was one of the
most wealthy and populous of the confederate states. For some time
the Naxians gallantly resisted the besiegers; but, at length reduced,
they were subjected to heavier conditions than those previously
imposed upon them. No conqueror contents himself with acquiring the
objects, sometimes frivolous and often just, with