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812 mSTORY OF GREECE. taken a step which deserves particular notice, as indicating the newly-gathering clouds in the Grecian political horizon. They had made secret application to the Lacedaemonians for aid, en- treating them to draw off the attention of Athens by invading Attica ; and the Lacedaemonians, without the knowledge of Athens, having actually engaged to comply with this request, were only prevented from performing their promise by a grave and terrible misfortune at home.' Though accidentally unper- formed, however, this hostile promise is a most significant event : it marks the growing fear and hatred on the part of Sparta and the Peloponnesians towai-ds Athens, merely on general grounds of the magnitude of her power, and without any special provoca- tion. Nay, not only had Athens given no provocation, but she was still actually included as a member of the Lacedaemonian alliance, and we shall find her presently both appealed to and acting as such. We shall hear so much of Athens, and that too with truth, as pushing and aggressive, — and of Sparta as home- keeping and defensive, — that the incident just mentioned be- comes important to remark. The first intent of unprovoked and even treacherous hostility — i,he germ of the future Peloponnesian war — is conceived and reduced to an engagement by Sparta. "We are told by Plutarch, that the Athenians, after the surren- der of Thasos and the liberation of the armament, had expected from Kimon some farther conquests in Macedonia, — and even that he had actually entered upon that project with such promise of success, that its farther consummation was certain as well as easy. Having under these circumstances relinquished it and returned to Athens, he was accused by Perikles and others of having been bought off by bribes from the Macedonian king Alexander ; but was acquitted after a public trial.2 During the period which had elapsed between the first forma- tion of the confederacy of Delos and the capture of Thasos (about thirteen or fourteen years, B.C. 477-463), the Athenians jcem to have been occupied almost entirely in their maritime eperations, chiefly against the Persians, — having been free from ' Thucyd. i- 101. oi6i vTrea^^ovro /I'ev Kpixpa tCjv 'A&i/valdiv koi e/ieXXov, iiEKuAv'&Tjaav 61 vtco tov yEvojitvov aeiauov. • Plutarch, Kimon, c. 14.