Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/194

176 HISTORY OF GREECE. departure back to Sigeium: the Spartans not venturing to espouse his cause against the determined sentiment of the all s. 1 That determined sentiment deserves notice, because it markj the present period of the Hellenic mind : fifty years later it will be found materially altered. Aversion to single-headed rule, End bitter recollection of men like Kypselus and Periander, are now the chords which thrill in an assembly of Grecian deputies : the idea of a revolution, implying thereby a great and compre- hensive change, of which the party using the word disapproves, consists in substituting a permanent One in place of those peri- odical magistrates and assemblies which were the common attribute of oligarchy and democracy : the antithesis betwec'n these last two is as yet in the background, nor does there prevail either fear of Athens or hatred of the Athenian democracy. But when we turn to the period immediately before the Pelo- ponnesian war, we find the order of precedence between these two sentiments reversed. The anti-monarchical feeling has not perished, but has been overlaid by other and more recent political antipathies, the antithesis between democracy and oligarchy having become, not indeed the only sentiment, but the uppermost sentiment, in the minds of Grecian politicians generally, and the soul of active party-movement. Moreover, a hatred of the most deadly character has grown up against Athens and her democracy especially in the grandsons of those very Corinthians who now stand forward as her sympathizing friends. The remarkable change of feeling here mentioned is nowhere so strikingly exhib- ited as when we contrast the address of the Corinthian Sosikles, just narrated, with the speech of the Corinthian envoys at Sparta, immediately antecedent to the Peloponnesian war, as given to us in Thucydides.- It will hereafter be fully explained by the intermediate events, by the growth of Athenian power, and by the still more miraculous development of Athenian energy. Such development, the fruit of the fresh-planted democracy as well as the seed for its sustentation and aggrandizement, con- tinued progressive during the whole period just adverted to. But the first unexpected burst of it, under the Kleisthenean constitution, and after the expulsion of Hippias, is described by 1 Herodot. v, 93-94. * Thncydid. i, 68-71, 120-12*