nd intervention of Cimon obtained a truce of
five years between the Athenians and the Peloponnesians.

XIX. The truce with the Peloponnesians (B. C. 450) removed the main
obstacle to those more bright and extensive prospects of enterprise
and ambition which the defeat of the Persians had opened to the
Athenians. In that restless and unpausing energy, which is the
characteristic of an intellectual republic, there seems, as it were, a
kind of destiny: a power impossible to resist urges the state from
action to action, from progress to progress, with a rapidity dangerous
while it dazzles; resembling in this the career of individuals
impelled onward, first to obtain, and thence to preserve, power, and
who cannot struggle against the fate which necessitates them to soar,
until, by the moral gravitation of human things, the point which has
no beyond is attained; and the next effort to rise is but the prelude
of their fall. In such states Time indeed moves with gigantic
strides; years concentrate what would be the epochs of centuries in
the march of less popular institutions. The planet of their fortunes
rolls with an equal speed through the cycle of internal civilization
as of foreign glory. The condition of their brilliant life is the
absence of repose. The accelerated circulation of the blood
beautifies but consumes, and action itself, exhausting the stores of
youth by its very vigour, becomes a mortal but divine disease.

XX. When Athens rose to the ascendency of Greece, it was necessary to
the preservation of that sudden and splendid dignity that she should
sustain the naval renown by which it had been mainly acquired. There
is but one way to sustain reputation, viz., to increase it and the
memory of past glories becomes dim unless it be constantly refreshed
by new. It must also be borne in mind that the maritime habits of the
people had called a new class into existence in the councils of the
state. The seamen, the most democratic part of the population, were
now to be conciliated and consulted: it was requisite to keep them in
action, for they were turbulent--in employment, for they were poor:
and thus the domestic policy and the foreign interests of Athens alike
conspired to necessitate the prosecution of maritime enterprise.

XXI. No longer harassed and impeded by fears of an enemy in the
Peloponnesus, the lively imagination of the people readily turned to
more dazzling and profitable warfare. The Island