SECOND AND THIRD YEARS OF THE WAtv. 179 nho knew that the safety and the dignity of imperial Athens were essentially interwoven, we have no right to throw upon him the blame of sacrificing the landed proprietors of Attica. These might, indeed, be excused for complaining, where they suffered so ruinously ; but the impartial historian, looking at the whole of the case, cannot admit their complaints as a ground for censuring the Athenian statesman. The relation of Athens to her allies, the weak point of her position, it was beyond the power of Perikles seriously to amend , probably also beyond his will, since the idea of political incorpo- ration, as well as that of providing a common and equal confed- erate bond, sustained by effective federal authority between different cities, was rarely entertained even by the best Greek minds. 1 We hear that he tried to summon at Athens a congress of deputies from all cities of Greece, the allies of Athens in- cluded ; 2 but the scheme could not be brought to bear, in conse- quence of the reluctance, noway surprising, of the Peloponne- sians. Practically, the allies were not badly treated during his administration : and if, among the other bad consequences of the prolonged war, they, as well as Athens, and all other Greeks come to suffer more and more, this depends upon causes with which he is not chargeable, and upon proceedings which departed altogether from his wise and sober calculations. Taking him altogether, with his powers of thought, speech, and action, his competence, civil and military, in the council as well as in the field, his vigorous and cultivated intellect, and his comprehen- sive ideas of a community in pacific and many-sided develop- ment, his incorruptible public morality, caution, and firmness, in a country where all those qualities were rare, and the union of them in the same individual of course much rarer, we shall find him without a parallel throughout the whole course of Gre- cian history. 1 Herodotus (1, 170) mentions that previous to the conquest of the twelve Ionic cities in Asia by Croesus, Thales had advised them to consolidate themselves all into one single city government at Teos, and to reduce the ex- isting cities to mere demes or constituent, fractional municipalities, T&C 6t u7J.a<; Tro/Uaf MKeopevaf prjdev rjaaov vo/j.ieadai /carawep el dqpoi elev. It is remarkable to observe that Herodotus himself bestows his unqualified
tommendation on this idea. 2 Plutarch, Perikles, c. 17
