rations were not made without exciting the deep
indignation of the aristocratic faction.

In all state reforms a great and comprehensive mind does not so much
consider whether each reform is just, as what will be the ultimate
ascendency given to particular principles. Cimon preferred to all
constitutions a limited aristocracy, and his practical experience
regarded every measure in its general tendency towards or against the
system which he honestly advocated.

XVIII. The struggle between the contending parties and principles had
commenced before Cimon's expedition to Ithome; the mortification
connected with that event, in weakening Cimon, weakened the
aristocracy itself. Still his fall was not immediate [185], nor did
it take place as a single and isolated event, but as one of the
necessary consequences of the great political change effected by
Ephialtes. All circumstances, however, conspired to place the son of
Miltiades in a situation which justified the suspicion and jealousy of
the Athenians. Of all the enemies, how powerful soever, that Athens
could provoke, none were so dangerous as Lacedaemon.

Dark, wily, and implacable, the rugged queen of the Peloponnesus
reared her youth in no other accomplishments than those of stratagem
and slaughter. Her enmity against Athens was no longer smothered.
Athens had everything to fear, not less from her influence than her
armies. It was not, indeed, so much from the unsheathed sword as from
the secret councils of Sparta that danger was to be apprehended. It
cannot be too often remembered, that among a great portion of the
Athenian aristocracy, the Spartan government maintained a considerable
and sympathetic intelligence. That government ever sought to adapt
and mould all popular constitutions to her own oligarchic model; and
where she could not openly invade, she secretly sought to undermine,
the liberties of her neighbours. Thus, in addition to all fear from
an enemy in the field, the Athenian democracy were constantly excited
to suspicion against a spy within the city: always struggling with an
aristocratic party, which aimed at regaining the power it had lost,
there was just reason to apprehend that that party would seize any
occasion to encroach upon the popular institutions; every feud with
Sparta consequently seemed to the Athenian people, nor without cause,
to subject to intrigue and conspiracy their civil freedom; and (as
always happens with foreign interfe