874 HISTORY OF GREECE. that the rapid transition, in the course of about one week, fron? Athenian terror before the battle to Athenian exultation after it, must have produced demonstrations towards Miltiades such aa were never paid towards any other man in the whole history of the commonwealth. Such unmeasured admiration unseated his rational judgment, so that his mind became abandoned to the reckless impulses of insolence, and antipathy, and rapacity ; that distempered state, for which (according to Grecian morality) the retributive Nemesis was ever on the watch, and which, in his case, she visited with a judgment startling in its rapidity, as well as terrible in its amount. Had Miltiadfis been the same man before the battle of Marathon as he became after it, the bat- tle might probably have turned out a defeat instead of a victory. Demosthenes, indeed, 1 in speaking of the wealth and luxury ot political leaders in his own time, and the profuse rewards be- stowed upon them by the people, pointed in contrast to the house of Miltiades as being noway more splendid than that of a private man. But though Miltiades might continue to live in a modest establishment, he received from his countrymen marks of admi- ration and deference such as were never paid to any citizen be- fore or after him ; and, after all, admiration and deference consti- tute the precious essence of popular reward. No man except Miltiades ever dared to raise his voice in the Athenian assembly, and say : " Give me a fleet of ships : do not ask what I am going to do with them, but only follow me, and I will enrich you." Herein we may read the unmeasured confidence which the Athe- nians placed in their victorious general, and the utter incapacity of a leading Greek to bear it without mental depravation ; while we learn from it to draw the melancholy inference, that one re- sult of success was to make the successful leader one of the most dangerous men in the community. We shall presently be called upon to observe the same tendency in the case of the Spartan Puusanias, and even in that of the Athenian Themistokles. It is, indeed, fortunate that the reckless aspirations of Miltiades did not take a turn more noxious to Athens than the comparatively unimportant enterprise against Paros. For had he sought to cquire dominion and gratify antipathies against enemies al 1 Demosthenes, Olynth. iii. c. 9, p. 35, R.
