valour in the recent war. But the anger they forbore to show only
rankled the more bitterly within. [123]

The ambassadors of either state returned home; and thus the mingled
firmness and craft of Themistocles, so well suited to the people with
whom he had to deal, preserved his country from the present jealousies
of a yet more deadly and implacable foe than the Persian king, and
laid the foundation of that claim of equality with the most eminent
state of Greece, which he hastened to strengthen and enlarge.

The ardour of the Athenians in their work of fortification had spared
no material which had the recommendation of strength. The walls
everywhere presented, and long continued to exhibit, an evidence of
the haste in which they were built. Motley and rough hewn, and
uncouthly piled, they recalled, age after age, to the traveller the
name of the ablest statesman and the most heroic days of Athens.
There, at frequent intervals, would he survey stones wrought in the
rude fashion of former times--ornaments borrowed from the antique
edifices demolished by the Mede--and frieze and column plucked from
dismantled sepulchres; so that even the dead contributed from their
tombs to the defence of Athens.

VIII. Encouraged by the new popularity and honours which followed the
success of his mission, Themistocles now began to consummate the vast
schemes he had formed, not only for the aggrandizement of his country,
but for the change in the manners of the citizens. All that is left
to us of this wonderful man proves that, if excelled by others in
austere virtue or in dazzling accomplishment, he stands unrivalled for
the profound and far-sighted nature of his policy. He seems, unlike
most of his brilliant countrymen, to have been little influenced by