Page images
PDF
EPUB

command, and now friendly to themselves. This beginning of Athenian ascendency took place in the year B. c. 477. (Clinton's Fast. Hellen.)

Pausanias, on his return being acquitted of the charge, but not reinstated in his command, went out again without public authority, pretending a wish to be present on the scene of action, but really purposing to carry on his practices with Persia. But fresh information arriving against him, the ephori again recalled him, and he obeyed, trusting for security to money and friends. There were strong grounds of suspicion, but not proof enough to procure the condemnation of a man of high rank and pure Spartan blood, says the historian; implying, apparently, that against a meaner man slighter proofs might have sufficed. Complete evidence was at length supplied. A slave entrusted by Pausanias with a letter to Persia, was alarmed by observing that no former messenger had ever returned. He opened the letter, and found that it directed his death; and he immediately carried it to the ephori, who not yet being fully satisfied with the proof, contrived with him a plan through which they overheard an avowal of the treason from the mouth of Pausanias himself. They now proceeded to arrest Pausanias; but he being forewarned, took refuge in a building belonging to the temple of Minerva, called the Brazen House. The sanctity of the place forbade them to force him out or kill him there, but they walled him in and let him perish by hunger. They were not, however, thought to have preserved themselves by the evasion, from the guilt of sacrilege.

FLIGHT OF THEMISTOCLES-HIS DEATH.

ETERMINED in their hostility, the Lacedæmonians sent ambassadors to Athens, to declare that they had found evidence implicating Themistocles in the treason of Pausanias. It seems very unlikely that he should really have con

curred in it, but not improbable, considering his intriguing

[ocr errors]
[graphic]
[graphic][subsumed][merged small]

character, that he may, to serve some purpose of his own, have tampered with Pausanias in a manner that might countenance the suspicion. He was now banished by ostracism, and living at Argos; and hither Athenian and Lacedæmonian commissioners went together to arrest him. He fled at their approach, and went to Corcyra; and thence he was conveyed to the opposite continent by the Corcyræans, who owed him kindness, but feared to protect him. Whithersoever he went, he was followed by those who were sent to apprehend him, till he was obliged to commit himself to the generosity of a personal enemy, Adinetus, the king of the Molossians. Admetus being absent, Themistocles addressed

himself to his wife, and was instructed by her to take her child in his arms and seat himself on the hearth, as the most prevailing manner of supplication. On the return of Admetus, he declared who he was, and prayed, that if in the assembly of the Athenians he had spoken any thing against the interest of Admetus, it might not be visited upon him in his banishment: "For he was now an easy prey to any one much weaker than Admetus; but a generous spirit would only avenge itself on its equals, and in equal contest." The Molossian prince was moved, and received him to hospitality; and when he was demanded by the messengers of Athens and Lacedæmon, he would not give him up, though he did not venture to retain him. Themistocles wished to go to Asia, and he was sent by Admetus to the Macedonian port of Pydna, where he embarked in a trading vessel bound to Ionia. He was driven by cross winds to the island of Naxos, where an Athenian armament was besieging the city. In this emergency he made himself known to the master of the ship, and threatened that, if taken, he would declare to the Athenians that the master had knowingly carried him for the sake of gain. The only means of safety, he said, was, that none should quit the vessel; and if in this the master would comply with him, he should be largely rewarded. Accordingly, the vessel was kept in the offing for a day and a night, and then, as soon as the weather allowed, it proceeded to Ephesus. On arriving in Asia, Themistocles, wrote to the king Artaxerxes, the son and successor of Xerxes, beginning his letter thus:-"I, Themistocles, come to thee, who have done thy house most ill of all the Greeks, while I was of necessity repelling the invasion of thy father; but yet more good, when I was in safety, and his return was endangered." He mentioned the warning he gave before the battle of Salamis, of the intended flight of the Greeks, and the breaking of the bridge, which at the time he professed to have prevented, declared that he was able to do great service to the king, and was now expelled for friendship to him; and said, that at the year's end he would in person explain the purpose of his

coming. The king bade him do so; and after a year spent in learning the Persian language and manners, he went to Susa, and was there received into the highest favour, as well on account of his reputation and the ability which appeared in his discourse, as for the promises he made of reducing Greece under the Persian yoke. The revenues of three cities were assigned for his support, and he lived in great splendour till he fell sick and died, according to some; according to others, he poisoned himself when Artaxerxes was preparing an invasion of Greece, whether from conscious inability to fulfil his promises, or from unwillingness to assist in enslaving the country he had preserved. It is said that he directed his bones to be carried to Attica, and secretly buried, since the laws forbade the interment there of one banished for treason. He left an unequalled reputation for readiness, decision, and rectitude of judgment, fertility of resource, and acuteness in conjecture; for foresight of the good and evil results of every measure, and for eloquence in enforcing his conclusions. Had he joined to these high powers of mind a clear integrity and singleness of purpose, his fame would have been purer, and his latter days perhaps more happy. It is true, his double policy served him well in securing so splendid an asylum in Asia; but a more straight-forward line of conduct might have prevented his exile. In all his exertions for the good of his country, he endeavoured at the same time to promote his private profit, and to keep up an interest with the public nemy, by which he might be able, if it should be convenient, to separate his fortunes from those of Athens. Such a man, whatever be his services, can never be trusted; and however innocent he may have been of the treason of Pausanias, it was the natural consequence of his habitual double dealing that the charge should readily be believed.

TRANSACTIONS IN SICILY.-VICTORIES OVER THE CARTHAGI

NIANS.

[graphic]

URING part of the war just described, a struggle no less critical had taken place among the Grecian settlements in Sicily. The Phoenician colony of Carthage, in Africa, remarkable no less than its mother country for maritime and commercial enterprise, was

beginning to attain a degree of military power to which Phoenicia had never aspired. It possessed a part of the northern coast of Sicily, and the opportunity was inviting to subdue the whole, while all assistance from Greece was precluded by the Persian invasion. A pretext was furnished by a quarrel with Theron, tyrant of Acragas, or Agrigentum, a colony from Gela, and, after Syracuse, the most powerful state in Sicily: and an enormous armament was sent out, strengthened, according to the usual practice of Carthage, with mercenaries from many barbarous nations, the fleet being by treaty joined with that of the Tuscans. Gelon, however, marched with the force of Syracuse to the assistance of Theron, leaving the command of his fleet to his brother Hieron; and Hieron defeated the Carthaginian and Tuscan fleet, while, about the same time, the Carthaginian land force was completely broken at Himera by the united armies of Syracuse and Acragas. It is said, by some authors, that Gelon's victory took place on the same day with the battle of Salamis. No further conquest was attempted in Sicily by Carthage for many years after; but we are not sufficiently acquainted with the history of that city to determine the cause of its inaction. Shortly after his victory Gelon died.

« PreviousContinue »