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The Golden Age, when Athens was so wonderful, lasted for only fifty years.
Why, do you suppose, did it stop at all?
It stopped chiefly because of a fight.
This time, however, the fight was not between Greece and someone outside, as in the Persian Wars. The fight was between two cities that had before this been more or less friendly—mostly less—between Sparta and Athens. It was a family quarrel between Greeks. The fight was all because one of these cities—Sparta—was jealous of the other—Athens.
The Spartans, as you know, were fine soldiers. The Athenians were fine soldiers, too. But ever since Themistocles had beaten the Persians at Salamis with the ships he had built, Athens had had a fine fleet as well, and Sparta had no fleet. Furthermore, Athens had become the most beautiful and most cultured city in the whole world.
Sparta did not care much about Athens’s beautiful buildings and her education and culture and that sort of thing; that did not interest Sparta. What did make Sparta jealous was Athen’s fleet. Sparta was inland, not on nor near the seashore as Athens was; so Sparta could not have a fleet at all. That city did not intend, however, to let Athens get ahead; therefore, on one excuse or another, Sparta with all of its neighbors started a war against Athens with all of its neighbors.
Sparta was in a part of Greece that was called by the hard name, the Peloponnesus. In those days, people did not think this a hard name, for they were as familiar with it as you are with such a name as Massachusetts, for instance, which would seem just as hard to a Greek as Peloponnesus does to you. This war between Athens and Sparta was, therefore, called the Peloponnesian War from the fact that it was not only Sparta but all of the Peloponnesus that fought against Athens.
We think a war lasts entirely too long if it lasts four or five years, but the Peloponnesian War lasted twenty-seven years! There is a saying, “When Greek meets Greek then comes a tug of war!” which means to say, “When two equal fighters such as Athens and Sparta, both Greek, meet each other in battle, who knows how it will end?”
I am not going to tell you about all the battles that took place during these twenty-seven years, but at the end of this long and bloody war, both cities were tired and worn out, and the glory of Athens was gone. Although Sparta was ahead, neither city ever amounted to much afterward. The Peloponnesian War ruined them both. That’s the way war does!
All during the Peloponnesian War there was a man in Athens by the name of Socrates who, many think, was one of the wisest and best men who ever lived. He was called a philosopher and went about the city teaching the people what was right and what they ought to do. But instead of actually telling the people what he thought was right, he asked them questions which made them see what was right. In this way, chiefly by asking questions, he led people to find out for themselves what he wanted them to know. This kind of teaching, simply by asking questions, has ever since been called Socratic.
Socrates had a snub nose and was bald and quite ugly, and yet he was very popular with the Athenians, which may seem strange, for the Athenians loved beautiful faces and beautiful figures and beautiful things, and Socrates was anything but beautiful. It must have been the beauty of Socrates’s character that made them forget his ugliness, as I know some boys and girls who think their teacher is perfectly beautiful and just because she is so good and kind they love her, although she is really not pretty at all.
Socrates had a wife named Xantippe. She had a bad temper and was the worst kind of a grouch. She thought Socrates was wasting his time, that he was a loafer, as he did no work that brought in any money. One day she scolded him so loudly that he left the house, whereupon she threw a bucket of water on him. Socrates, who never answered back, merely remarked to himself:
“After thunder, rain may be expected.”
Socrates didn’t believe in all the Greek gods, Zeus, Aphrodite, and the rest, but he was careful not to say so himself, for the Greeks were very particular that no one should say or do anything against their gods. Phidias, you remember, was thrown into prison for merely putting his picture on the shield of the goddess Athena, and one would have been put to death for teaching young men not to believe in the gods.
At last, however, Socrates, as he had feared he would be, was charged with not believing in the Greek gods and with teaching others not to believe in them. For this he was condemned to death. He was ordered to drink a cup of hemlock, which was a deadly poison. Socrates’s pupils, or disciples, as they were then called, tried to have him refuse to drink the cup, but he would not disobey the order; and so, when he was nearly seventy years old, with all his disciples around him, he drank the cup of hemlock and died.
Although Socrates lived many hundreds of years ago, he believed and taught some things that people today also believe.
One of these things he believed was that each of us has inside a conscience , which tells us what is right and what is wrong; we don’t have to read from a book or be told by another what is right or what is wrong.
Another thing he taught was that there is a life after death and that when we die our souls live on.
No wonder he was not afraid himself to die!