TYRANNY OF ATHENS. 8 t 



present day ; to rob a foreigner in the mountains, or to 

 filch the money from the public chest, are looked upon 

 in that country as "little affairs" which are not dis- 

 graceful so long as they are not found out. But the 

 modern Greeks are degenerate in every way. The 

 ancient Greeks surpassed them, not only in sculpture 

 and in metaphysics, but also in duplicity. With their 

 fine phrases and rhetorical expressions, they have even 

 swindled history, and obtained a vast amount of 

 admiration under false pretences. 



The narrowness of the Greeks was not less strongly 

 marked. When Athens obtained the supremacy, a 

 wise and just policy might have formed the Greeks 

 into a nation. But Pericles had no sympathies be- 

 yond the city walls : he was a good Athenian, but a 

 bad Greek. He removed the federal treasury from 

 Delphi to Athens, where it was speedily emptied on 

 the public works. Since Athens had now become the 

 university and capital of Greece, it appears not unjust 

 that it should have been beautified at the expense of 

 Greece. But it must be remembered that the Athe- 

 nians considered themselves the only pure Greeks, and 

 no Athenian was allowed to marry a Greek who was not 

 also an Athenian. Heavy taxes were laid on the allies, 

 and were not spent entirely on works of art. Besides 

 the money that was purloined by government officials, 

 large sums were distributed among the citizens of 

 Athens, as payment for attending the law courts, the 

 parliament, and the theatre. It was also ordered that 

 all cases of importance should be tried at Athens ; and 

 judicial decisions then as now were looked upon at 

 Athens as saleable articles belonging to the Court. 

 The Greeks soon discovered that the Athenians were 

 harder masters than the Persians. They began to 



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