ever since the revolt of Megara, fourteen years before, which caused to Athens an irreparable mischief, the feeling prevalent between the two towns had been one of bitter enmity, manifesting itself in many ways, but so much exasperated by recent events as to provoke Athens to a signal revenge.[126] Exclusion from Athens and all the ports in her empire, comprising nearly every island and seaport in the Ægean, was so ruinous to the Megarians, that they loudly complained of it at Sparta, representing it as an infraction of the thirty years’ truce; though it was undoubtedly within the legitimate right of Athens to enforce,—and was even less harsh than the systematic expulsion of foreigners by Sparta, with which Periklês compared it. [123] Thucyd. iii, 2-13. This proposition of the Lesbians at Sparta must have been made before the collision between Athens and Corinth at Korkyra. [124] Thucyd. i, 139. ἐπικαλοῦντες ἐπεργασίαν Μεγαρεῦσι τῆς γῆς τῆς ἱερᾶς καὶ τῆς ἀορίστου, etc. Plutarch, Periklês, c. 30; Schol. ad Aristophan. Pac. 609. I agree with Göller that two distinct violations of right are here imputed to the Megarians: the one, that they had cultivated land, the property of the goddesses at Eleusis,—the other, that they had appropriated and cultivated the unsettled pasture land on the border. Dr. Arnold’s note takes a different view, less correct, in my opinion: “The land on the frontier was consecrated to prevent it from being inclosed: in which case the boundaries might have been a subject of perpetual dispute between the two countries,” etc. Compare Thucyd. v, 42, about the border territory round Panaktum. [125] Thucydidês (i, 139), in assigning the reasons of this sentence of exclusion passed by Athens against the Megarians, mentions only the two allegations here noticed,—wrongful cultivation of territory, and reception of runaway slaves. He does not allude to the herald, Anthemokritus: still less does he notice that gossip of the day, which Aristophanês and other comedians of this period turn to account in fastening the Peloponnesian war upon the personal sympathies of Periklês, namely, that first, some young men of Athens stole away the courtezan, Simætha, from Megara: next, the Megarian youth revenged themselves by stealing away from Athens “two engaging courtezans,” one of whom was the mistress of Periklês; upon which the latter was so enraged that he proposed the sentence of exclusion against the Megarians (Aristoph. Acharn. 501-516; Plutarch, Periklês, c. 30).