guided the counsels of Athens--the voice of the Olympian Pericles. He
had chosen his line of policy a year before, in the fatal affair of
Corcyra, and it was now too late to draw back: peace with honour was
no longer possible for Athens. The furious zeal of Corinth had united
her enemies against her, and they were bent on her ruin. The demands
put forward by Sparta were a mere pretext, and if the Athenians had
yielded the smallest point, new concessions would have been required
of them, until they were stripped of all that had been won by the
strenuous toil and devotion of two generations. "We must listen," said
Pericles, in the course of a long speech, "to no proposal from Sparta
which is not made as from an equal to an equal. Dictation is not
arbitration. If we are to fight at all, the occasion matters little,
be it small or great. What right has Sparta to require of us that we
should rescind the decree against Megara, when her own laws jealously
exclude all strangers from entering her streets? Or why should we
relax our hold upon our allies, or break off the relations with them
which were sanctioned by the Thirty Years' Truce? No, all this is a
mere pretence, and if we are deceived by it, we shall be led on step
by step to deeper and still deeper humiliation. It may seem a hard
thing to give up the fair land of Attica to pillage and devastation.
But think how far greater was the sacrifice made by our grandsires,
who refused the fairest offers from Persia, and gave up all they had,
rather than betray the common cause. Athens and Attica were then all
the country they had, and these lost they had nothing left but their
ships, their strong arms, and their stout hearts. In our case, on the
other hand, all the essential elements of our power--our city, our
fleet, our colonial empire--remain untouched. Shall we, then, sell our
honour to save a few vineyards and olive-grounds from temporary
damage? That would be a short-sighted policy indeed, and in the end
would involve not only dishonour, but the loss of our whole empire.