Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/70

58 THE GLORY OF GREECE AND RISE OF ROME a failure, and her ambitions had become larger. Unhappily, she found an excuse for sending a mighty naval expedition The Sicilian against Syracuse in Sicily. While this great Athen- Expedition, ian force was locked up before Syracuse, Sparta 415 B.C. again declared war. At the end of two years the Sicilian expedition terminated in complete disaster; the army and fleet engaged upon it were annihilated. Nevertheless, Athens was not yet beaten ; her subjects and so-called allies revolted one after another, and still her arms Downfall of were repeatedly victorious. The city itself was Athens, 404. torn with dissensions: the democracy was over- thrown and an oligarchy set up; the oligarchy in turn was overthrown and the democracy restored. At last, however, the Lacedaemonian commander Lysander, owing to extraordinary negligence on the part of the Athenian sailors and officers, succeeded in capturing a fleet of 170 Athenian vessels at Aegos Potami. This was decisive; almost all the allies of the Athenians declared for Sparta. All the Athenian supplies were cut off; Athens herself was blockaded, and was at last starved into submission ; her fleet was surrendered and her fortifications demolished. The government of the city was placed in the hands of a committee of thirty, known to history as the thirty tyrants. Their rule was brought to an end within the year, and the old democracy was restored. The power of Athens, how- ever, was completely ruined. Sparta was now the undisputed mistress, and her supremacy 6. Later was viewed for good reasons with greater alarm struggles. than that of Athens had been. From the moment of her triumph Sparta degenerated. During the latter years of the Peloponnesian War, the Persian Satraps of Asia Minor had entered into active relations with Greeks in various intriguers, on the side sometimes of one Asia Minor, of the belligerents, sometimes of the other. Practically, however, they had contented themselves with supplying money. Just when the war finished a Persian prince named Cyrus resolved to make a bid for the Persian throne ; his attempt failed ; but it is interesting, because the army which he led into the interior included a division of Greek volunteers