Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/23

HISTORY OF GREECE. PART II CONTINUATION OF HISTORICAL GREECE. CHAPTER LXI1. TWENTY-FIRST YEAR OF THE WAR. -OLIGARCHY OF FOUR HUNDRED AT ATHENS. ABOUT a year elapsed between the catastrophe of the Athe nians near Syracuse and the victory which they gained over the Milesians, on landing near Miletus (from September 413 B.C., to September 412 B.C.). After the first of those two events, the complete ruin of Athens had appeared both to her enemies and to herself, impending and irreparable. But so astonishing, so rapid, and so energetic had been her rally, that, at the time of the second, she was found again carrying on a tolerable struggle, though with impaired resources and on a purely defensive system, against enemies both bolder and more numerous than ever. Nor is there any reason to doubt that her foreign affairs might have gone on thus improving, had they not been endangered at this critical moment by the treason of a fraction of her own citizens, bringing her again to the brink of ruin, from which she was only rescued by the incompetence of her enemies. That treason took its first rise from the exile Alkibiades. I have already recounted how this man, alike unprincipled and energetic, had thrown himself with his characteristic ardor into ilie service of Sparta, and had indicated to her the best moans VOL. vin. 1 loc.