which Periklês, assuming him to be the proposer, named as the sole condition of touching this one thousand talents, might be considered as of all others the most improbable, in the year 431 B.C. So immense was then the superiority of the Athenian naval force, that to suppose it defeated, and a Peloponnesian fleet in full sail for Peiræus, was a possibility which it required a statesman of extraordinary caution to look forward to, and which it is truly wonderful that the people generally could have been induced to contemplate. Once tied up to this purpose, however, the fund lay ready for any other terrible emergency: and we shall find the actual employment of it incalculably beneficial to Athens, at a moment of the gravest peril, when she could hardly have protected herself without some such special resource. The people would scarcely have sanctioned so rigorous an economy, had it not been proposed to them at a period so early in the war that their available reserve was still much larger: but it will be forever to the credit of their foresight as well as constancy, that they should first have adopted such a precautionary measure, and afterwards adhered to it for nineteen years, under severe pressure for money, until at length a case arose which rendered farther abstinence really, and not constructively, impossible. [253] Mitford, Hist. of Greece, ch. xiv, sect. 1, vol. iii, p. 100. “Another measure followed, which, taking place at the time when Thucydidês wrote and Periklês spoke, and while Periklês held the principal influence in the administration, strongly marks both the inherent weakness and the indelible barbarism of democratical government. A decree of the people directed.... But so little confidence was placed in a decree so important, sanctioned only by the present will of that giddy tyrant, the multitude of Athens, against whose caprices, since the depression of the court of Areopagus, no balancing power remained,—that the denunciation of capital punishment was proposed against whosoever should propose, and whosoever should _concur in_ (?) any decree for the disposal of that money to any other purpose, or in any other circumstances.” [254] Thucyd. viii, 15. τὰ δὲ χίλια τάλαντα, ὧν διὰ παντὸς τοῦ πολέμου ἐγλίχοντο μὴ ἅψεσθαι, εὐθὺς ἔλυσαν τὰς ἐπικειμένας ζημίας τῷ εἰπόντι ἢ ἐπιψηφίσαντι, ὑπὸ τῆς παρούσης ἐκπλήξεως, καὶ ἐψηφίσαντο κινεῖν.