V
ATHENIAN SUPREMACY
B.C. 466—B.C. 431.
The success of Athens—The war between Sparta and the Messenian helots, B.C. 464-454—The policy of Pericles—The continental empire of Athens—The Five Years' Truce with Sparta, and the peace of Callias with Persia, B.C. 450-449—Fall of Athenian land supremacy—Boeotia separates from the Athenian alliance—Euboea and Megara revolt, B.C. 446—The Thirty Years' Peace, B.C. 445—Athens and the members of the Delian Confederacy—The adornment of Athens under Pericles—Athens becoming the home of literature and the drama—Opposition to Pericles and the new culture—Discontent in the confederacy—The affair of Corcyra and the beginning of the Peloponnesian war—Revolt of Potidaea—The Athenians denounced at Sparta—The Peloponnesian war—General outline—First period, B.C. 431-424—Second period, B.C. 421-415—Third and final period, B.C. 415-404.
Though the intellectual supremacy of Athens lasted far into the fourth century B.C., her political supremacy fell, never to be restored, with the ruinous disasters of the Peloponnesian war. But in this chapter we shall be concerned with the happier period of her material and artistic success.
We have seen that the development of the Confederacy of Delos led to the assumption by Athens
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