At the time the Greeks were thus becoming a great nation, there was in Asia an old and powerful empire called Persia. Some of the Greek colonies in Asia Minor were accused by the great King Darius of inciting his own people in Asia Minor to revolt. And he sent an army, which punished and subdued the offending Greeks. King Darius then decided that he would invade Greece itself. He thought he could easily master that little scrap of territory, and capture its straggling colonies along the Mediterranean coast, and thus extend his own dominion into Europe.

Athens and Sparta were, as usual, engaged in a small war; but at the news of a threatened Persian invasion, the Greek States sprang solidly together.

The armies met on the field of Marathon (490 b.c.), and the Asiatic host, after a desperate conflict, turned and fled. So confident had the Persians been of victory, that they had brought a mass of white marble with which to erect a monument on the plain of Marathon. This Phidias, the great Greek sculptor, carved into a gigantic figure of Nemesis, to represent Divine vengeance.

The proud and arrogant Persians were not used to defeat. For ten years they brooded over it and prepared to wipe it out by an overwhelming victory. Darius was dead; but his son Xerxes, in the year 480 b.c.., appeared on the coast of Greece with a vast army, which he himself led.

The first incident in the war was the most renowned in the history of the world. If you do not know of it already, you will often hear how Leonidas, with his little Spartan band of three hundred, defended the narrow rocky pass at Thermopylæ against the whole Persian army, and how they stood their ground until every man was killed.

The Persians pressed on into the heart of Greece. Athens was abandoned, and then burnt by the conquerors. What made the cause of Greece still more desperate was the dissensions between the Athenians and the Spartans, who insisted upon concentrating their forces to guard their own Peloponnesus. But finally all united in a great battle at Salamis.

The fate of Greece was now to be decided. Xerxes, seated on a jewelled throne that he might witness the victory of his arms, to his bitter dismay saw the terrible and overwhelming rout of his entire army, and returned to Persia with only a ragged remnant of his great host.

Now shall I tell you something more about this great King, and who it was who became his wife after he went back to Persia?

You all know the story. It is one of the most thrilling and dramatic that was ever written. You know about the lovely Jewish maiden who was chosen by the great King to be his wife in the place of Vashti, and how a wicked minister or adviser to the King plotted the downfall of Mordecai, and was then after all compelled to lead him in triumph through the streets, crying, "Thus shall it be done to the man whom the King delighteth to honor!" And how the brave Queen, at the risk of her own life, saved her people from extermination. Well, this great King was Xerxes, and his wife was Queen Esther. And after the war with the Greeks was over, her uncle, Mordecai, was chief officer to the King, and wisely managed the affairs of his great kingdom.

And shall I tell you what sort of place Europe was at the time of this Persian invasion of Greece, and while Queen Esther was pleading for the life of her people?

On the peninsula of Italy there had arisen a Roman Republic, where a great civilization was growing. All west of that was called Gaul. It was filled with Barbarians (excepting the few Greek colonies on the coast). To the north were the British Isles, filled with another race of Barbarians, calling themselves Britons; and in Central Europe still more Barbarians, of the great Teutonic or German race; and still beyond that, where dwelt the Slavonic or Russian people, all was silence and impenetrable darkness.

It made little difference to these Barbarians then whether Persians or Greeks occupied the shores of the Mediterranean. But the history of future Europe would have been strangely changed if the Greeks had not driven back this deluge of Asiatic people.

So Greece was now at the head of the world, and Athens was at the head of Greece. And there was a man in Athens who was going to make that city not alone the greatest of that time, but in a way the greatest of all time!

Her great citizen Pericles changed the government of Athens to a pure democracy. And then, by the magic of his influence, it sprang from its ashes in a form so beautiful, it was known as the "City of the Gods." The matchless temples and colonnades which arose on the Acropolis, adorned by the sculptures of Phidias, are still the wonder of the world.

But that was not all. No men have ever thought so profoundly, nor spoken so wisely, nor with such eloquence, as did the men in those temples and under those Greek arcades. Never have such tragedies been written as were recited there, and never has there been an entire people so fitted to comprehend and to enjoy thought so elevated, and art of such a supreme type.

The outpouring of genius in the "Age of Pericles" is one of the great mysteries in history. It sent a path of light down through centuries of darkness, and that light shines just as brightly to-day, uneclipsed and even undimmed by anything the world has done since.

Pericles drew all this radiant genius into Athens, and made it beautiful and great. But he did still more than that. Athens, which had first been a monarchy, then under the rule of a few wise men in the Areopagus, had then lost all her liberties under the "Tyrants." Pericles created a Democracy. He believed the true ideal was a government by the people. That if Athens governed Greece, then the Athenians should govern Athens. And that the power of a state should rest, not with one, nor a few, but with the many!

During a period of fifty years free Athens was the acknowledged head of the Greek states, and in those years Greece had reached the meridian of her glory. But Sparta was jealous of the dazzling splendor of her rival; and she hated this new democracy which was spreading through all the states. She believed in the good old idea of one despotic king, and a people cowed into submission by his authority.

Two parties were thus created in the Greek states, and in a dispute which occurred about 420 b.c.., the friends of the Spartans or Aristocratic ideal ranged themselves on the one side, and those of the Athenian or Democratic on the other.

From this arose the long conflict known as the Peloponnesian War, which lasted for twenty-seven years, its real cause being that Sparta was determined to lead Greece.

It was in vain that the Athenians fought with the energy of despair. Their beautiful city—the City of the Gods—was at last surrendered, and the scoffing Spartans (404 b.c.) took possession of the treasures they scorned.

Athens had fallen, but her real kingdom was indestructible. She was to be forever Queen in the empire of ideas, of literature, and of art!

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The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 25, April 29, 1897

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