and progressive. The genius of her leaders gathered the lesser towns
into a great naval league, in which she grew ever more powerful. Her
allies sank to be dependent and unwilling vassals, forced to contribute
large sums to the treasury of their overlord.

This was the age of Pericles.[1] As Athens became wealthy, her citizens
became cultured. Statues, temples, theatres made the city beautiful.
Dramatists, orators, and poets made her intellectually renowned. A
marvellous outburst, this of Athens! Displaying for the first time in
history the full capacity of the human mind! Had there been similar
flowerings of genius amid forgotten Asiatic times? One doubts it; doubts
if such brilliancy could ever anywhere have passed, and left no clearer
record of its triumphs.

[Footnote 1: See _Pericles Rules in Athens_, page 12.]

Amid such splendor it seems captious to point out the flaw. Yet Athenian
and all Greek civilization did ultimately decline. It represented
intellectual, but not moral culture. The Greeks delighted intensely in
the purely physical life about them; they had small conception of
anything beyond. To enjoy, to be successful, that was all their goal;
the means scarce counted. The Athenians called Aristides the Just; but
so little did they honor his high rectitude that they banished him for a
decade. His title, or it may have been his insistence on the subject,
bored them.

His rival, Themistocles, was more suited to their taste, a clever scamp,
who must always be dealing with both sides in every quarrel, and
outwitting both. Athens was driven to banish him also at last, at his
too flagrant treachery. But he was not dismissed with the scathing scorn