THE PLAGUE AT ATHENS.

Durina the period after the Persian war two
great powers arose in Greece, which were destined
to ‘come into close and virulent conflict. These
were the league of Delos, which developed into the
empire of Athens, and the Peloponnesian confeder-
acy, under the leadership of Sparta. The first of
these was mainly an island empire, the second a
mainland league; the first a group of democratic,
the second one of aristocratic, states; the first a
power with dominion over the seas, the second a
power whose strength lay in its army. Such were
the two rival confederacies into which Greece grad-
ually divided, and between which hostile sentiment
grew stronger year after year.

It became apparent as the years went on that a
struggle was coming for supremacy in Greece. Out-
breaks of active hostility between the rival powers
from time to time took place. At length the situa-
tion grew so strained that a general conflict began,
that devastating Peloponnesian war which for nearly
thirty years desolated Greece, and which ended in
the ruin of Athens, the home of poetry and art, and
the supremacy of Sparta, the native school of war.
The first great conflict of the Hellenic people, the

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