time he kept a watchful eye on Sparta and built high
walls which connected Athens with the sea and made her the strongest
fortress of that day.
An insignificant quarrel between two little Greek cities led to the
final conflict. For thirty years the war between Athens and Sparta
continued. It ended in a terrible disaster for Athens.
During the third year of the war the plague had entered the city. More
than half of the people and Pericles, the great leader, had been killed.
The plague was followed by a period of bad and untrustworthy leadership.
A brilliant young fellow by the name of Alcibiades had gained the favor
of the popular assembly. He suggested a raid upon the Spartan colony of
Syracuse in Sicily. An expedition was equipped and everything was ready.
But Alcibiades got mixed up in a street brawl and was forced to flee.
The general who succeeded him was a bungler. First he lost his ships and
then he lost his army, and the few surviving Athenians were thrown into
the stone-quarries of Syracuse, where they died from hunger and thirst.
The expedition had killed all the young men of Athens. The city was
doomed. After a long siege the town surrendered in April of the year
404. The high walls were demolished. The navy was taken away by the
Spartans. Athens ceased to exist as the center of the great colonial
empire which it had conquered during the days of its prosperity. But
that wonderful desire to learn and to know and to investigate which
had distinguished her free citizens during the days of greatness and
prosperity did not perish with the walls and the ships. It continued to
live. It became even more brilliant.
Athens no longer shaped the destinies of the land of Greece. But now, as
the home of the first great university the city began to influence the
minds of intelligent people far beyond the narrow frontiers of Hellas.
ALEXANDER THE GREAT
ALEXANDER THE MACEDONIAN ESTABLISHES A GREEK WORLD-EMPIRE, AND WHAT
BECAME OF THIS HIGH AMBITION
WHEN the Achaeans had left their homes along the banks of the Danube to
look for pastures new, they had spent some time among the mountains of
Macedonia. Ever since, the Greeks had maintained certain more or
less formal relations with the people of this northern country. The
Macedonians from their side had kept themselves well informed about
conditions in Greece.
Now it happened, just when Sparta and Athens had finished their
disastrous war for the leadershi
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