ire of pleasure and the habits of ostentation, that
refine before they enervate; and that luxury which, as in Athenaeus it
is well and profoundly said, is often the concomitant of freedom, "as
soft couches took their name from Hercules"--made its rapid progress
with the result of the Persian war. The plunder of Plataea, the
luxuries of Byzantium, were not limited in their effect to the wild
Pausanias. The decay of old and the rise of new families tended to
give a stimulus to the emulation of wealth--since it is by wealth that
new families seek to eclipse the old. And even the destruction of
private houses, in the ravages of Mardonius, served to quicken the
career of art. In rebuilding their mansions, the nobles naturally
availed themselves of the treasures and the appliances of the gorgeous
enemy they had vanquished and despoiled. Few ever rebuild their
houses on as plain a scale as the old ones. In the city itself the
residences of the great remained plain and simple; they were mostly
built of plaster and unburnt brick, and we are told that the houses of
Cimon and Pericles were scarcely distinguishable from those of the
other citizens. But in their villas in Attica, in which the Athenians
took a passionate delight, they exhibited their taste and displayed
their wealth [213]. And the lucrative victories of Cimon, backed by
his own example of ostentation, gave to a vast number of families,
hitherto obscure, at once the power to gratify luxury and the desire
to parade refinement. Nor was the Eastern example more productive of
emulation than the Ionian. The Persian war, and the league which
followed it, brought Athens into the closest intercourse with her
graceful but voluptuous colonies. Miletus fell, but the manners of
Miletus survived her liberties. That city was renowned for the
peculiar grace and intellectual influence of its women; and it is
evident that there must have been a gradual change of domestic habits
and the formation of a new class of female society in Athens before
Aspasia could have summoned around her the power, and the wisdom, and
the wit of Athens--before an accomplished mistress could have been
even suspected of urging the politic Pericles into war--and, above
all, before an Athenian audience could have assented in delight to
that mighty innovation on their masculine drama--which is visible in
the passionate heroines and the sentimental pathos of Euripides.

But this change was probably n