United States or Trinidad and Tobago ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


But Athens was not inclined either to revoke the decree, or to entertain their other proposals; she accused the Megarians of pushing their cultivation into the consecrated ground and the unenclosed land on the border, and of harbouring her runaway slaves. At last an embassy arrived with the Lacedaemonian ultimatum. The ambassadors were Ramphias, Melesippus, and Agesander.

Myron of Phlya prosecuted, and the archons were found guilty, and forced to leave the country. The bodies of such of them as had died were dug up, and cast out beyond the borders of Attica. During these disorders the Athenians were again attacked by the Megarians, and lost Nisaea, and were again driven out of Salamis.

Pericles did not promise successful engagements on the land, but a successful resistance, and the maintenance of the empire. His policy was purely defensive. But if Sparta was weak in money and ships, she was rich in allies. The entire strength of the Peloponnesus was brought out, assisted by Megarians, Bœotians, Phocians, Locrians, and other States.

The suggestion came from the Megarians, but in carrying it out the Peloponnesians were probably influenced by the bold and enterprising spirit of Brasidas. And in fact, the meditated descent on Peiraeus was neither so wild nor so rash as it may at first sight appear.

This decree of Perikles is worded in a candid and reasonable manner; but the herald, Anthemokritus, was thought to have met his death at the hands of the Megarians, and Charinus passed a decree to the effect that Athens should wage war against them to the death, without truce or armistice; that any Megarian found in Attica should be punished with death, and that the generals, when taking the usual oath for each year, should swear in addition that they would invade the Megarian territory twice every year; and that Anthemokritus should be buried near the city gate leading into the Thriasian plain, which is now called the Double Gate.

On the other hand, the Megarians, utterly denying and disowning the murder of Anthemocritus, throw the whole matter upon Aspasia and Pericles, availing themselves of the famous verses in the Acharnians, To Megara some of our madcaps ran, And stole Simaetha thence, their courtesan. Which exploit the Megarians to outdo, Came to Aspasia's house, and took off two.

The same summer the Megarians in the city, pressed by the hostilities of the Athenians, who invaded their country twice every year with all their forces, and harassed by the incursions of their own exiles at Pegae, who had been expelled in a revolution by the popular party, began to ask each other whether it would not be better to receive back their exiles, and free the town from one of its two scourges.

Seeing that the Megarians and Cynics were making knowledge impossible, he takes their 'catch-words' and analyzes them from every conceivable point of view.

For he beat the Megarians, and as many as were not killed in the battle he sent away upon conditions. The Megarians, however, still contending, and both sides having received considerable losses, they chose the Spartans for arbitrators.

The Athenians received another addition to their confederacy in the Megarians; who left the Lacedaemonian alliance, annoyed by a war about boundaries forced on them by Corinth. The Athenians occupied Megara and Pegae, and built the Megarians their long walls from the city to Nisaea, in which they placed an Athenian garrison.