Athens rose to her full height in this duel. She bore the brunt of Marathon alone. Her generals decided the sea-fight of Salamis. For the Spartans it remained to defeat Mardonius at Platæa. Consequently the olive-wreath of this more than Olympian victory crowned Athens. Athens was recognized as Saviour and Queen of Hellas. And Athens, who had fought the battle of the spirit--by spirit we mean the greatness of the soul, liberty, intelligence, civilization, culture--everything which raises men above brutes and slaves, and makes them free beneath the arch of heaven--Athens, who had fought and won this battle of the spirit, became immediately the recognized impersonation of the spirit itself. Whatever was superb in human nature found its natural home and sphere in Athens. We hear no more of the colonies. All great works of art and literature now are produced in Athens. It is to Athens that the sages come to teach and to be taught. Anaxagoras, Socrates, Plato, the three masters of philosophy in this third period, are Athenians. It is, however, noticeable and significant that Anaxagoras, who forms a link between the philosophy of the second and third period, is a native of Clazomenæ, though the thirty years of his active life are spent at Athens. These thinkers introduce into speculation a new element. Instead of inquiries into the factors of the physical world or of ontological theorizing, they approach all problems which involve the activities of the human soul--the presence in the universe of a controlling spirit. Anaxagoras issues the famous apophthegm: #nous pantôn kratei#, "intelligence disposes all things in the world." Socrates founds his ethical investigation upon the Delphian precept: #gnôthi seauton#; or, "the proper study of mankind is man." Plato, who belongs chronologically to the fourth period, but who may here be mentioned in connection with the great men of the third, as synthesizing all the previous speculations of the Greeks, ascends to the conception of an ideal existence which unites truth, beauty, and goodness in one scheme of universal order. At the same time Greek art rises to its height of full maturity. Ictinus designs the Parthenon, and Mnesicles the Propylæa; Pheidias completes the development of sculpture in his statue of Athene, his pediment and friezes of the Parthenon, his chryselephantine image of Zeus at Olympia, his marble Nemesis upon the plain of Marathon. These were the ultimate, consummate achievements of the sculptor's skill; the absolute standards of what the statuary in Greece could do. Nothing remained to be added. Subsequent progression--for a progression there was in the work of Praxiteles--was a deflection from the pure and perfect type.