The Historians' History of the World 03

Thus every kind of villainy arose in Greece from these seditions. Simplicity, which is a very large ingredient in a noble nature, was laughed down and disappeared; and mutual opposition of feeling, with a want of confidence, prevailed to a great extent. For there was neither promise that could be depended on, nor oath that struck them with fear, to put an end to their strife; but all being in their calculations more strongly inclined to despair of anything proving trustworthy, they looked forward to their own escape from suffering more easily than they could place confidence in arrangements with others. And the men of more homely wit, generally speaking, had the advantage; for through fearing their own deficiency and the cleverness of their opponents, lest they might be worsted in words, and be first plotted against by means of the versatility of their enemy’s genius, they proceeded boldly to deeds. Whereas their opponents, arrogantly thinking that they should be aware beforehand, and that there was no need for their securing by action what they could by stratagem, were unguarded and more often ruined.

It was in Corcyra then that most of these things were first ventured on; both the deeds which men who were governed with a spirit of insolence, rather than of moderation, by those who afterwards afforded them an opportunity of vengeance, would do as the retaliating party; or which those who wished to rid themselves of their accustomed poverty, and passionately desired the possession of their neighbours’ goods, might unjustly resolve on; or which those who had begun the struggle, not from covetousness, but on a more equal footing, might savagely and ruthlessly proceed to, chiefly through being carried away by the rudeness of their anger. Thus the course of life being at that time thrown into confusion in the city, human nature, which is wont to do wrong even in spite of the laws, having then got the mastery of the law, gladly showed itself to be unrestrained in passion, above regard for justice, and an enemy to all superiority. They would not else have preferred vengeance to religion, and gain to innocence; in which state envy would have had no power to hurt them. And so men presume in their acts of vengeance to be the first to violate those common laws on such questions, from which all have a hope secured to them of being themselves rescued from misfortune; and they will not allow them to remain, in case of any one’s ever being in danger and in need of some of them.c

DEMOSTHENES AND SPHACTERIA

[426-425 B.C.]

These massacres at Corcyra, Mytilene, Platæa, and Melos were doubly disastrous; iniquity always striking back at its perpetrators, thus making two victims. Through such reversions to the barbarity of former days the sense of right, of justice will everywhere become enfeebled until it finally disappears.

As though nature herself had wished to take part in the general disorder, earthquakes visited Attica, Eubœa, and all of Bœotia, particularly Orchomenos. Pestilence had never made its appearance in the Peloponnesus: now for a year it raged among the Athenians with terrible mortality. Since its outbreak it had carried off forty-three hundred hoplites, three hundred horsemen, and innumerable victims among the general population. This was the last blow fate dealt the Athenians. To appease the god to whom all pollution was an offence, they caused the island of Apollo to be thoroughly purified as had already been done by the Pisistratidæ. Birth and death being alike forbidden at Delos, the remains of the dead buried there were exhumed and sent elsewhere, and the sick were transported to Rhenea, a neighbouring island. Finally, there were instituted in honour of Apollo games and horse-races which were to be celebrated every four years, the Greeks as well as the Romans thinking to gain thus the protection of a god, whom they caused to be represented by images at these festivals.

The Ionians, excluded from the Peloponnesian solemnities, flocked to those of Delos, where Nicias, at the first celebration, made himself remarkable for the magnificence of his gifts. In one night he caused to be constructed between Delos and Rhenea a bridge seven hundred metres long, carpeted and decorated with wreaths, across which was to pass the procession of the dead exiled in the name of religion from the holy island (425 B.C.).