to war; which is further accelerated by the attack of the Thebans upon Plataeae, the confederate of Athens, 431. 16. The history of the twenty-seven years' war, known by the name of the Peloponnesian, or great Grecian war, which swept away the fairest flowers of Greece, is the more deserving attention from its being not merely a struggle between nations, but likewise against certain forms of government. The policy of Athens, which to establish or preserve her influence in foreign states, excited the multitude against the higher orders, had on all sides given rise to two factions, the democrat or Athenian, and the aristocrat or Spartan; and the mutual bitterness of party spirit produced the most violent disorders. 17. The respective relations of the two head states of Greece to their confederates, were at this time of a very opposite nature. Athens, as a naval power, was mistress of most of the islands and maritime cities, which, as tributary confederates, rendered for the most part a forced obedience. Sparta, as a land power, was allied with most of the states on the continent, which had joined her side of their own accord, and were not subject to tribute. Sparta therefore presented herself as the deliverer of Greece from the Athenian yoke. Confederates of the Athenians: the islands Chios, Samos, Lesbos, all those of the Archipelago, (Thera and Melos excepted, which stood neutral,) Corcyra, Zacynthus; the Grecian colonies in Asia Minor, and on the coast of Thrace and Macedonia; in Greece itself, the cities of Naupactus, Plataeae, and those of Acarnania.--Confederates of the Spartans: all the Peloponnesians, (Argos and Achaia excepted, which stood neutral,) Megara, Locris, Phocis, Boeotia, the cities of Ambracia and Anactorium, and the island of Leucas. 18. Sketch of the internal state of Athens and Sparta at this period. The power of Athens depended mainly on the state of her finances; without which she could not support a fleet, and without a fleet her ascendancy over the confederates would of course fall to ground. And although Pericles, notwithstanding his lavish public expenditure, was able to enter upon the war with 6,000 talents in the treasury, experience could not fail to show that, in such a democratic state as Athens was now become under Pericles, the squandering of the public money was an unavoidable evil. This evil was produced, however, at Athens much less by the peculations of individual state officers than by the demands of the multitude, who for the most part lived at the expense of the state treasury. On the other hand, Sparta as yet had no finance; and only began to feel the want of it as she began to acquire a naval power, and entered upon undertakings more vast than mere incursions.