assembled Greece, and the result was an invasion of the island by Sparta. But, in the renewal of the Persian attack by Xerxes, the Æginetans repaired their former fault by conspicuous devotion to the Grecian cause. Their island became the asylum of the expelled Athenians, and their splendid valour in the sea-fight at Salamis was rewarded, by common consent, with the first-fruits of the spoils. To this battle Pindar alludes in the Fourth Isthmian:—
"Well may delivered Salamis attest,
That by the might of Æginetan hands
Old Ajax' city[1] stands."—(S.)
But the old enmity between Athens and Ægina broke out again after the close of the Persian wars. About B.C. 455 the Athenians besieged and took the capital of the island; and at last, in B.C. 429, they occupied the country, expelled the inhabitants, and terminated for ever the rivalry which had so long imperilled their own naval supremacy in Greece. This latter catastrophe, however, was after the death of Pindar. He lived long enough to see the downfall of many a noble house whose achievements he had sung; but he was spared the keener grief of witnessing the final ruin of his favourite Ægina.
Tradition derived the names of Thebes and Ægina from two sister-nymphs, Thebe and Ægina, daughters of Asopus. On the strength of this mythical connection, the Thebans had once actually invoked the Æginetans, as their next of kin, to join them in a war
- ↑ i.e. Salamis.
