vessels, and pay into the common treasury an annual subsidy, for the maintenance of the sailors with whom the Athenians undertook to man the fleet. The unforeseen but natural consequence of this was the establishment of the complete supremacy of Athens. The annual subsidies gradually assumed the character of a regular tribute, and were compulsorily levied as such; while the recusant communities, deprived of their fleets, which had been given up to the Athenians, were unable to offer effectual resistance to the oppressive exactions of the dominant state. The Athenians were thus raised to an unprecedented pitch of power and opulence, and enabled to adorn their city, to live in dignified idleness, and to enjoy a constant succession of the most costly public amusements, at the expense of the vanquished Persians, and of the scarcely more leniently-treated communities of the dependent confederacy.
Pericles. We have arrived at the most flourishing period of Athenian
history, during which Pericles rose to distinction, and greatly contributed
to the beautifying of the capital. The talents of Pericles were of the
very first order, and they had been carefully cultivated by the ablest tutorage
which Greece could afford. After serving for several years in the
Athenian army, he ventured to take a part in the business of the popular
assembly, and his powerful eloquence soon gained him an ascendancy in
the national councils; and his power, in fact, became as great as that of
an absolute monarch (445 B. C.). Some of the most interesting events of
Grecian history now occurred. After a number of years of general peace,
a dispute between the state of Corinth and its dependency the island of
Corcyra (now Corfu), gave rise to a war which again disturbed the repose
of all the Grecian states. Corcyra was a colony of Corinth, but having,
by its maritime skill and enterprise, raised itself to a higher pitch of opulence
than its parent city, it not only refused to acknowledge Corinthian
supremacy, but went to war with that state on a question respecting the
government of Epidammus, a colony which the Corcyreans had planted on
the coast of Illyria. Corinth applied for and obtained aid from several of
the Peloponnesian states to reduce the Corcyreans to subjection; while
Corcyra, on the other hand, concluded a defensive alliance with Athens,
which sent a fleet to assist the island in vindicating its independence. By
way of punishing the Athenians for intermeddling in the quarrel, the Corinthians
stirred up a revolt in Potidæa, a town of Chalcidice, near the
confines of Macedonia, which had originally been a colony of Corinth, but
was at this time a tributary of Athens. The Athenians immediately despatched
a fleet and army for the reduction of Potidæa, and the Peloponnesians
were equally prompt in sending succors to the city. The Corinthians,
meanwhile, were actively engaged in endeavoring to enlist in their cause
those states which had not yet taken a decided part in the dispute. To
Lacedæmon, in particular, they sent ambassadors to complain of the conduct
of the Athenians, which they characterized as a violation of a universally-recognised
law of Grecian policy—that no state should interfere
between another and its dependencies. The efforts of the Corinthians
were successful, and almost all the Peloponnesian states, headed by Sparta,
together with many of those beyond the isthmus, formed themselves into
a confederacy for the purpose of going to war with Athens. Argos and
Achaia at first remained neuter. Corcyra, Acarnania, some of the cities
