SPLENDOR OF THE ATHENIAN ARMAMENT. 165
- n number, the military population, reinforced by additional
numbers of youth, had forgotten both the hardships of the war and the pressure of epidemic disease. Hence the fleet now got together, while it surpassed in number all previous armaments of Athens, except a single one in the second year of the previous war under Perikles, was incomparably superior even to that, and still more superior to all the rest, in the other ingredients of force, material as well as moral ; in picked men, universal ardor, ships as well as arms in the best condition, and accessories of every kind in abundance. Such was the confidence of success, that many Athenians went prepared for trade as well as for combat ; so that the private stock thus added to the public outfit, and to the sums placed in the hands of the generals, constituted an unparalleled aggregate of wealth. Much of this was visible to the eye, contributing to heighten that general excitement of Athenian imagination which pervaded the whole city while the preparations were going forward : a mingled feeling of private sympathy and patriotism, a dash of uneasiness from reflection on the distant and unknown region wherein the fleet was to act, yet an elate confidence in Athenian force, such as had never before been entertained. 1 "We hear of Sokrates the philosopher, drcd triremes, were newly built. The numerous historical inaccuracies in those orations, concerning the facts prior to 400 B.C., are such as to deprive them of all authority, except where they are confirmed by other testimony ; even if we admitted the oration ascribed to Andokides as genuine, which in all probability it is not. But there exists an interesting Inscription which proves that the sum of three thousand talents at least must have been laid by, during the interval between the conclusion of the Peace of Nikias and the Sicilian Expedition, in the acropolis ; and that over and above this accumulated fund, the state was in condition to discharge, out of the current receipts, various sums which it had borrowed during the previous war from the treasury of various temples, and seems to have had besides a surplus for docks and fortifica- tions. The Inscription above named records the vote passed for discharg- ing these debts, and for securing the sums so paid in the opisthodomus, or back-chamber, of the Parthenon, for account of those gods to whom they respectively belonged. See Boeckh's Corp. Inscr. part ii, Inscr. Att. No. 76, r.117; also the Staats-haushaltnng der Athener of the same author, vol It, p. 198. This Inscription belongs unquestionably to one of f,he yearg Iwytween 421-415 n.c., to which year wo cannot say.
- Thucyd. vi, 31 ; Diodor. xiii, '2, 3.
