THE PLAGUE AT ATHENS. 195

Persian war, had made Greece powerful and glorious.
The second great conflict, the Peloponnesian war,
brought Greece to the verge of ruin, and destroyed
that Athenian supremacy in which lay the true path
of progress for that fair land.

In 431 B.c. the war broke out. Sparta and her
allies declared war against Athens on the ground
that that city was growing too great and grasp-
ing, and an army marched from the Peloponnesus
northward to invade the Attic state. Meanwhile
the Athenians, under the shrewd advice of Pericles,
adopted a wise policy. It was with her fleet that
Athens had defeated Persia, and her wise statesman
advised that she should devote herself to the do-
minion of the sea, and leave to Sparta that of the
land. Their walls would protect her people, their
ships would bring them food from afar, they were
not a fair match for Sparta on land, and could safely
leave to that city of warriors the temporary dominion
of Attic soil.

This advice was taken. When the Spartan army
came near Attica all its people left their fields and
homes and sought refuge, as once before, within the
walls of their capacious capital city. Over the
Attic plain marched the invaders, destroying the
summer crops, burning the farmers’ homesteads, yet
recoiling in helpless rage before those strong walls
behind which lay the whole population of the state.
From the city, as we know, long and high walls
stretched away tothe sea and invested the seaport
town of Pirsus, within whose harbor lay the power-
ful Athenian fleet. And in the treasury of the city