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He taught Athens this maxim; but he also
taught her to know and to use her own strength; and when Pericles had
departed, the bold spirit which he had fostered overleaped the salutary
limits which he had prescribed.
When her bitter enemies, the Corinthians, succeeded, B.C. 431, in
inducing Sparta to attack her, and a confederacy was formed of
five-sixths of the continental Greeks, all animated by anxious jealousy
and bitter hatred of Athens; when armies far superior in numbers and
equipment to those which had marched against the Persians were poured
into the Athenian territory, and laid it waste to the city walls, the
general opinion was that Athens would be reduced, in two or three years
at the furthest, to submit to the requisitions of her invaders. But her
strong fortifications, by which she was girt and linked to her principal
haven, gave her, in those ages, almost all the advantages of an insular
position. Pericles had made her trust to her empire of the seas. Every
Athenian in those days was a practised seaman.


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