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But his policy perished when the visible need for it subsided; it gave way to the Themistoclean, which passed into the Periclean policy; and that, says Mahaffy, "was so dangerous and difficult that no cautious and provident thinker could have called it secure." Which also was Plato's view of it; who went so far as to say that Pericles had made the Athenians lazy, sensual, and frivolous.
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.
Sea-power was the Themistoclean instrument with which they made a small state into a great one. A fertile source of dispute between states is the acquisition of territory beyond sea. As others have done before and since, the maritime republics of Italy quarrelled over this. Sea-power seemed, like Saturn, to devour its own children.
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