inseparably interwoven with their
manners, their pursuits, their glory, their decay. The history of
Athens includes in itself the history of the human mind. Science and
art--erudition and genius--all conspired--no less than the trophies of
Miltiades, the ambition of Alcibiades--the jealousy of Sparta--to the
causes of the rise and fall of Athens. And even that satire on
themselves, to which, in the immortal lampoons of Aristophanes, the
Athenian populace listened, exhibits a people whom, whatever their
errors, the world never can see again--with whom philosophy was a
pastime--with whom the Agora itself was an academe--whose coarsest
exhibitions of buffoonery and caricature sparkle with a wit, or expand
into a poetry, which attest the cultivation of the audience no less
than the genius of the author; a people, in a word, whom the stagirite
unconsciously individualized when he laid down a general proposition,
which nowhere else can be received as a truism--that the common people
are the most exquisite judges of whatever in art is graceful,
harmonious, or sublime.

BOOK V.

FROM THE DEATH OF CIMON, B. C. 449, TO THE DEATH OF PERICLES, IN THE
THIRD YEAR OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR, B. C. 429.

CHAPTER I.

Thucydides chosen by the Aristocratic Party to oppose Pericles.--His
Policy.--Munificence of Pericles.--Sacred War.--Battle of Coronea.--
Revolt of Euboea and Megara.--Invasion and Retreat of the
Peloponnesians.--Reduction of Euboea.--Punishment of Histiaea--A
Thirty Years' Truce concluded with the Peloponnesians.--Ostracism of
Thucydides.

I. On the death of Cimon (B. C. 449) the aristocratic party in Athens
felt that the position of their antagonists and the temper of the
times required a leader of abilities widely distinct from those which
had characterized the son of Miltiades. Instead of a skilful and
enterprising general, often absent from the city on dazzling but
distant expeditions, it was necessary to raise up a chief who could
contend for their enfeebled and disputed privileges at home, and meet
the formidable Pericles, with no unequal advantages of civil
experience and oratorical talent, in the lists of the popular
assembly, or in the stratagems of political intrigue. Accordingly
their choice fell neither on Myronides nor Tolmides, but on one who,
though not highly celebrated for military exploits, was deemed
superior to Cimon, whether as a practical statesman or a popular
orator.