REUNION WH H ELEUSIS. 281 as to leave no opportunity for pause or reflection. A few words respecting the rise and fall of that empire are now required, sum- ming up as it were the political moral of the events recorded in my last two volumes, between 477 and 405 B.C. I related, in the forty-fifth chapter, the steps by which Athens first acquired her empire, raised it to its maximum, including both maritime and inland dominion, then lost the inland portion of it ; which loss was ratified by the Thirty Years Truce concluded with Sparta and the Peloponnesian confederacy in 445 B.C. Her maritime empire was based upon the confederacy of Delos, formed by the islands in the JEgean and the towns on the seaboard im mediately after the battles of Platoea and Mykale, for the purpose not merely of expelling the Persians from the JEgean, but of keeping them away permanently. To the accomplishment of this important object, Sparta was altogether inadequate ; nor would it ever have been accomplished, if Athens had not displayed a com- bination of military energy, naval discipline, power of organization, and honorable devotion to a great Pan-Hellenic purpose, such as had never been witnessed in Grecian history. The confederacy of Delos was formed by the free and spon taneous association of many different towns, all alike indepen- dent ; towns which met in synod and deliberated by equal vote, took by their majority resolutions binding upon all, and chose Athens as their chief to enforce these resolutions, as well as to superintend generally the war against the common enemy. But it was, from the beginning, a compact which permanently bound each individual state to the remainder. None had liberty either to recede, or to withhold the contingent imposed by authority of the common synod, or to take any separate step inconsistent with its obligations to the confederacy. No union less stringent than this could have prevented the renewal of Persian ascendency in the JEgean. Seceding or disobedient states were thus treated as guilty of treason or revolt, which it was the duty of Athens, as chief, to repress. Her first repressions, against Naxos and other states, were undertaken in prosecution of this duty, in which if she had been wanting, the confederacy would have fallen to pieces, and the common enemy would have reappeared. Now the only way by which the confederacy was saved from falling to pieces, was by being transformed into an Athenian
