The Destruction of the Athenian Empire 203 Then the Attic fleet of a hundred and eighty ships, lulled Battle of into false security in the Hellespont near the river called ^gos- g°^P° ^^^ potami, was surprised by the able Spartan commander Lysander and captured almost intact as it lay drawn up on the beach. Not a man slept on the night when the terrible news of final ruin reached Athens. It was soon confirmed by the appearance of Lysander's fleet blockading the Piraeus. The grain ships from the Black Sea could no longer reach the port of Athens ; the Spartan army wandered through Attica plundering at will. Athens saw starvation before her, and there was nothing to do but surrender. The Long Walls and the fortifications of the Piraeus were torn down, the remnant of the fleet handed over to Sparta, and Athens was forced to enter the Spartan League. Fall of These hard conditions saved the city from the complete destruc- destruction of tion demanded by Corinth. Thus the century which had begun gi^^jre^"'^" so gloriously for Athens with the repulse of Persia, the century which under the leadership of such men as Themistocles and Pericles had seen her rise to supremacy in all that was best and noblest in Greek life, closed with the annihilation of the Athenian Empire (404 B.C.). Section 32. The Higher Life of Athens after Pericles During this last quarter century which brought such ruin Conflict of upon her, the inner life of Athens was like a troubled stream modernism disturbed by many a whirlpool, in which the old currents of life, as it was in the days of the fathers, met the opposing. currents of more modern feeling and intelligence. All felt the supreme importance of the State and of the high mission of Athens, so long held up before their eyes by Pericles. At the very History of time when Pericles fell a victim to the plague Herodotus had published his history (p. 188). It was a history of the world so told that the glorious leadership of Athens would be clear to all Greeks and would show them that to her the Hellenes owed
