of man over matter which habit and discipline can effect, and which
was ever so visible among the Spartans, constituted their safety at
that hour. Forsaking the care of their property, the Spartans seized
their arms, flocked around their king, and drew up in disciplined
array. In her most imminent crisis, Sparta was thus saved. The
helots approached, wild, disorderly, and tumultuous; they came intent
only to plunder and to slay; they expected to find scattered and
affrighted foes--they found a formidable army; their tyrants were
still their lords. They saw, paused, and fled, scattering themselves
over the country--exciting all they met to rebellion, and soon, joined
with the Messenians, kindred to them by blood and ancient
reminiscences of heroic struggles, they seized that same Ithome which
their hereditary Aristodemus had before occupied with unforgotten
valour. This they fortified; and, occupying also the neighbouring
lands, declared open war upon their lords. As the Messenians were the
more worthy enemy, so the general insurrection is known by the name of
the Third Messenian War.

X. While these events occurred in Sparta, Cimon, intrusting to others
the continued siege of Thasos, had returned to Athens [179]. He found
his popularity already shaken, and his power endangered. The
democratic party had of late regained the influence it had lost on the
exile of Themistocles. Pericles, son of Xanthippus (the accuser of
Miltiades), had, during the last six years, insensibly risen into
reputation: the house of Miltiades was fated to bow before the race of
Xanthippus, and hereditary opposition ended in the old hereditary
results. Born of one of the loftiest families of Athens,
distinguished by the fame as the fortunes of his father, who had been
linked with Aristides in command of the Athenian fleet, and in whose
name had been achieved the victory of Mycale, the young Pericles found
betimes an easy opening to his brilliant genius and his high ambition.
He had nothing to contend against but his own advantages. The beauty
of his countenance, the sweetness of his voice, and the blandness of
his address, reminded the oldest citizens of Pisistratus; and this
resemblance is said to have excited against him a popular jealousy
which he found it difficult to surmount. His youth was passed
alternately in the camp and in the schools. He is the first of the
great statesmen of his country who appears to have prepared hims