business of the citizen was government and war. Trades and commerce were left largely to the free non-citizen class, and manual labor was performed mainly by slaves.

As a rule, it is true, this slavery was not harsh. In Athens, in particular, the slaves were ordinarily hardly to be distinguished from the poorer citizens, and indeed they were better treated than were poor citizens in many oligarchic states; but there was always the possibility of cruelty, and in the mines, even in Attica, the slaves were killed off brutally by merciless hardships.

b. Greek culture was for males only. It is not probable that the wife of Phidias or of Thucydides could read. Women had lost the freedom of the simple and rude society of Homer's time, without gaining much in return. Except at Sparta, where physical training was thought needful for them, they passed a secluded life even at home, in separate women's apartments. They had no public interests, and appeared rarely on the streets. At best, they were only higher domestic servants. The chivalry of the medieval knight toward woman and the love of the modern gentleman for his wife were equally unthinkable by the finest Greek society.

A rare exception proves the rule. No account of the Athens of Pericles should omit mention of Aspasia. She was a native of Miletus, and was loved by Pericles. Since she was not an Athenian citizen he could not marry her; but he lived with her in all respects as his wife — a union not grievously offensive to Greek ideas. The dazzling wit and beauty of Aspasia made the home of Pericles the focus of the intellectual life of Athens. Anaxagoras, Socrates, Phidias, delighted in her conversation, and she has sometimes been credited with inspiring the political policy of Pericles himself; but she is the only woman who need be named in Greek history after the time of Sappho and Corinna (§ 129).

FOR FURTHER READING.- See remarks on page 162. To the modern writers there named the student may add Grant, Greece in the Age of Pericles; Abbott, Pericles; and Cox, Greek Statesmen. Plutarch's "Pericles" (in the Lives) is of course exceedingly valuable as an early On the Athenian Constitution, Greenidge, Greek Constitutional History, ch. vi. For art and culture: Mahaffy, Survey of Greek

account.

1

Civilization and Social Life of the Greeks; Jebb, Primer of Greek Literature; Tarbell, History of Greek Art; Murray, Greek Archaeology; Marshall, Short History of Greek Philosophy.

IMAGINATIVE EXERCISES. This period affords excellent material for exercises based upon the training of the historic imagination. Let the student absorb all the information he can find upon some historical topic, until he is filled with its spirit, and then reproduce it from the inside, with the dramatic spirit—as though he lived in that time—not in the descriptive method of another age. The following topics are suggested (the list can be indefinitely extended, and such exercises may be arranged for any period):

:

1. A captive Persian's letter to a friend after Plataea.

2. A dialogue between Socrates and Xantippe.

3. An address by a revolted Messenian at Ithome to his fellows.

4. Extracts from a diary of Pericles.

5. A day at the Olympic games (choose some particular date).

IV. THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR, 431-404 B.C.

192. Causes. -There was a natural opposition of character between the two great powers of Greece. The cities of the Athenian empire were Ionian in blood, democratic in politics, commercial in interests. Most of the cities of the Peloponnesian league were Dorian in blood and aristocratic in politics, and their citizens were great landowners whose land was tilled by slaves. This difference between the Athenian and Spartan states gave rise to mutual distrust and jealousy. It was easy for any misunderstanding to ripen into war.

Still, if none of the cities of the Peloponnesian league had had any interests whatever on the sea, the two opposing powers might each have gone its own way without crossing the other's path: the jealousy would have smouldered, but perhaps no occasion would have come for it to flame forth. But Corinth and Megara (members of Sparta's league) had trade for their main interest, like Athens; and, after the growth of the Athenian empire, they felt the basis of their prosperity slipping from under them. They had lost the

trade of the Aegean, and Athens had gained it. And now Athens was reaching out also for the commerce of the western coasts of Greece.

Thus, to the antagonism of character and feeling between the two halves of Greece, there was added a real conflict of interests. Next to Sparta, Corinth was the most powerful city in the Peloponnesian league; and she finally persuaded Sparta to take up arms against Athens, before the Thirty Years' Truce (§ 167) had run quite half its length.

The immediate occasion for the struggle was found in some defensive aid which Athens gave Corcyra against an attack by Corinth in 432 B.C.; but in the negotiations that followed, this matter of Corcyra quickly fell out of sight, and the quarrel was joined on broader issues. Sparta posed as the champion of a free Hellas: "Athens had enslaved the cities of the Aegean; let her set them free." That was an arrogant demand for Athens to give up her empire. Athens replied that Sparta might first set free Messenia and the Perioeci towns of Laconia; and in 431 the war began.

193. Resources and Plans. The Peloponnesian league could muster a hundred thousand hoplites, against whom in that day no army in the world could stand; but it could not keep many men in the field longer than a few weeks. Sparta could not capture Athens, therefore, and must depend upon

1 Corcyra was the third naval power in Greece. Corinth was second only to Athens. Corinth and Corcyra had come to blows, and Corcyra asked to be taken into the Athenian league. Athens finally promised defensive aid, and sent ten ships with instructions to take no part in offensive operations. A great armament of 150 Corinthian vessels appeared off the southern coast of Corcyra. Corcyra could muster only 110 ships. In the battle that followed, the Corinthians were at first completely victorious. They sank or captured many ships, and seemed about to destroy the whole Corcyran fleet. Then the little Athenian squadron came to the rescue, and by their superior skill quickly restored the fortune of the day. Read the story in Grote and in Thucydides.

2 Special reports: the narrative of the deliberations at Sparta regarding war or peace (note especially Thucydides' account of the Corinthian speech regarding Sparta and Athens).