But, as already remarked, the new spirit showed itself most clearly and hurtfully in the higher education. The young men, instead of spending their time in vigorous physical exercise in the gymnasia and open country, began now to hang about the streets and public places, listening to sophistic discussions, and to attend the schools of the sophists, exercising their tongues more than any other part of their bodies. The effect of this soon showed itself in a decline of physical power, of endurance, courage, and manliness, and in a strong tendency to luxury and other physical sins. They now began to imagine for themselves a private life, very far from coincident with that demanded of a citizen, and to look upon the old citizen-life, and its ideals, sanctions, and duties, with contempt or pity, as something which they had learnt to rise above. The glory and well-being of their country were no longer their chief object of ambition. The dry rot of individualism, which always seems to those affected by it an evidence of health and manly vigor, was corrupting their moral nature, and preparing the way for the destruction of the State. For it was but too natural that these young men, when they came to be members of the State, should neglect its lessons and claims, and, following the new teachings, live to themselves. Thus, just as the character of the "Old Education" of Athens showed itself in the behavior of her sons in the Persian Wars, so that of her "New Education" showed itself fifty years later in the Peloponnesian War, that long and disastrous struggle which wrecked Athens and Greece. Yet Athens and her education were not allowed to go to ruin without a struggle. The aristocratic party long stuck to the old principles and tried to give them effect; but, failing to understand the new circumstances and to take account of them, it erred in the application of them, by seeking simply to restore the old conditions. Individuals also exerted their best efforts for the same end. Æschylus, who had fought at Marathon, and who, more than any other Greek, was endowed with the spirit of religion, interpreted the old mythology in an ethical sense, and in this form worked it into a series of dramas, whereby the history and institutions of the Greek people were shown to be due to a guiding Providence of inexorable justice, rewarding each man according to his works, abhorring proud homes "gilded with impurity of hands," and dwelling with the pure and righteous, though housed in the meanest cot. Æschylus thus became, not only the father of Greek tragedy, but also the sublimest moral teacher Greece ever possessed. For moral grandeur there is but one work in all literature that can stand by the side of Æschylus' _Oresteia_, and that is the _Divine Comedy_. Yet Æschylus was driven from Athens on a charge of impiety, and died in exile.