and the like, as well as for admission to the theatre--then really a great school for manners and instruction. Pericles seems to have grasped very clearly, and to have held as firmly, the modern radical idea, that as the state is supported by the taxation of the body of the citizens, it must govern with a view to general interests rather than to those of a caste alone. About 463, Pericles, through the agency of his follower, Ephialtes, struck a great blow at the influence of the oligarchy, by causing the decree to be passed which deprived the Areopagus of its most important political powers. Shortly after the democracy obtained another triumph in the ostracism of Cimon (461). During the next few years the political course pursued by Pericles is less clearly intelligible to us, but it is safe to say that in general his attitude was hostile to the desire for foreign conquest or territorial aggrandizement, so prevalent among his ambitious fellow-citizens. Shortly after the battle of Tanagra (457), in which he showed conspicuous courage, Pericles magnanimously carried the measure for the recall of Cimon. His successful expeditions to the Thracian Chersonese, and to Sinope on the Black Sea, together with his colonies planted at Naxos, Andros, Oreus in Euboea, Brea in Macedonia, and AEgina, as well as Thurii in Italy, and Amphipolis on the Strymon, did much to extend and confirm the naval supremacy of Athens, and afford a means of subsistence for her poorer citizens. But his greatest project was to form, in concert with the other Hellenic states, a grand Hellenic confederation in order to put an end to the mutually destructive wars of kindred peoples, and to make Greece one mighty nation, fit to front the outlying world. The idea was not less sagacious than it was grand. Had it been accomplished, the semi-barbarous Macedonians would have menaced the civilized Greeks in vain, and even Rome at a later period, might perhaps have found the Adriatic, and not the Euphrates, the limit of her empire. But the Spartan aristocrats were utterly incapable of appreciating such exalted patriotism, or of understanding the political necessity for it, and by their secret intrigues the well-planned scheme was brought to nothing. Athens and Sparta were already in that mood toward each other which rendered the disaster of the Peloponnesian war inevitable. When the Spartans, in 448, restored to the Delphians the guardianship of the temple and treasures of Delphi, of which they had been deprived by the Phocians, the Athenians immediately after marched an army thither and reinstated the latter. Three years later an insurrection broke out in the tributary Megara and Euboea, and the Spartans again appeared in the field as the allies of the insurgents. The position of Athens was critical. Pericles wisely declined to fight against all his enemies at once. A bribe of ten talents sent the Spartans home, and the insurgents were then thoroughly subdued.