means: should make herself a sea-power with a view to dominating
the Greek world. Oh, to begin with, doubtless with a view to
holding back the Persians; and so far his policy was sane enough;
but his was not the kind of mind in which an ambitious idea fails
to develop in ambitious and greedy directions; and that of
mastery of the seas was an idea that could not help developing
fatally. He had been banished for his corruption in 471; but he
had set Athens on blue water, and bequeathed to her his policy.
Henceforward she was to make for supremacy, never counting the
moral cost. She attacked the islands at her pleasure, conquered
them, and often treated the conquered with vile cruelty. The
_Seven against Thebes_ was directed by Aeschylus against the
Themistoclean, and in support of the Aristidean, policy.
Imperialistic ambitions, fast ripening in that third decade of
the fifth century, were opposed by the Messenger of the Gods.

His valor in four battles had set him among the national heroes;
he had been, in _The Persians,_ the laureate of Salamis; by the
sheer grandeur of his poetry he had won the prize thirteen times
in succession.--And by the bye, it is to the eternal credit of
Athenian intelligence that Athens, at one hearing of those
obscure, lofty and tremendous poems, should have appreciated
them, and with enthusiasm. Try to imagine _Samson Agonistes_ put
on the stage today; with no academical enthusiasts or eclat of
classicism to back it; but just put on before thirty thousand
sight-seers, learned and vulgar, statesman and cobbler, tinker
and poet; the mob all there; the groundlings far out-numbering
the elite:--and all not merely sitting out the play, but roused
to a frenzy of enthusiasm; and Milton himself, present and
acting, the hero of the day. That, despite Mr. Whistler and the