Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/263

GRECIAN AFFAIRS AFTER THE PERSIAN INVASION. 239 his knowledge.' Of the Tarentines slain, a great proportion were opulent and substantial citizens, the loss of whom sensibly affected the city ; strengthening the Demos, and rend • zing the constitution more democratical. In what pai'ticulars ' ,e change consisted we do not know : the expression of Aristotle gives reason to suppose that even before this event the constitution had been popular .3 CHAPTER XLIV. FROM THE BATTLES OF PLATJEA AND MYKALE DOWN TO THE DEATHS OF THEMSTOKLES AND ARISTEIDES. After having in the last chapter followed the repulse of the Carthaginians by the Sicilian Greeks, we now return to the cen- tral Greeks and the Persians, — a case in which the triumph was yet more interesting to the cause of human improvement gen- erally. The disproportion between the immense host assembled by Xerxes, and the little which he accomplished, naturally pro- vokes both contempt for Persian force and an admiration for the ' Herodot. vii, 170; Diodor. xi, 52. The latter asserts that the lapygian victors divided their forces, part of them pursuing the Rhegian fugitives, the rest pursuing the Tarentines. Those who followed the former were so rapid in thieir movements, that they entered, he says, along with the fugi- tives into the town of Ehcgiura, and even became masters of it. To say nothing of the fact, that Rhegium continues aftenvai-ds, as before, under the rule of Mikythus, — we may remark that Diodorus must have foraied to himself a strange idea of the geography of southern Italy, to talk of pursuit and flight /row lapygia to Rhegium. '^ Aristotel. Polit. v, 2, 8. Aristotle has another passage (vi. 3, 5) in ■which he comments on the government of Tarentum : and O. Miiller applies this second passage to illustrate the particular constitutional changes which were made after the lapygian disaster. I think this juxtaposition of the two passages unauthorized ; there is nothing at all to connect them together. See History of the Dorians, iii, 9, 14.