Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/349

GEECIAlf CONFEDERACY UNDER ATHENS. 325 to the sanguine temper of Athenians, — as it certainly would have seemed a few years earlier to Themistokles himself. Com- ing as an immediate sequel of great recent victories, and while ^gina, the great Dorian naval powei", was prostrate and under blockade, it excited the utmost alarm among the Peloponnesians, — being regarded as the second great stride,' at once conspicuous and of lasting effect, in Athenian ambition, next to the fortifica- tion of Peirteus. But besides this feeling in the bosom of enemies, the measure was also interwoven with the formidable contention of political parties then going on at Athens. Kimon had been recently ostracized ; and the democratical movement pressed by Perikles and Ephialtes — of which more presently — was in its full tide of success, yet not without a violent and un- principled opposition on the part of those who supported the existing constitution. Now, the long walls formed a part of the foreign policy of Perikles, continuing on a gigantic scale the plans of Themistokles when he first schemed the Peiraius. They were framed to render Athens capable of carrying on war against any superiority of landed attack, and of bidding defiance to the united force of Peloponnesus. But though thus calculated for contingencies which a long-sighted man might see gathering in the distance, the new walls were, almost on the same grounds, obnoxious to a considerable number of Athenians : to. the party recently headed by Kimon, who were attached to the Lacedaemo- nian connection, and desired above all things to maintain peace at home, reserving the energies of the state for anti-Persian enterprise : to many landed proprietors in Attica, whom they seemed to threaten with approaching invasion and destruction of their territorial possessions : to the rich men and aristocrats of Athens, averse to a still closer contact and amalgamation with the maritime multitude in Peirgeus : lastly, perhaps, to a certain vein of old Attic feehng, which might look upon the junction of Athens with the separate demes of Peirreus and Phalerum as eflfacing the special associations connected with the holy rock of ' Kal Tuvde vfiel^ airiot, to te npcJTOi' laaavreg avToi)^ Tf]v -ixoKiv ueTii Td, M^diKct Kparvvai, Kal varspov tH fiaKpil cTr/aai reixv, — is the lano-uago addressed by the Corinthians to the Spartan?, in reference to Athens, a little before the Pcloponnesian war (Tliucyd. i, 69).