While the Athenian empire lasted, the citizens of Athens were spread over the Ægean in every sort of capacity--as settlers, merchants, navigators, soldiers, etc., which must have tended materially to encourage intermarriages between them and the women of other Grecian insular states. Indeed we are even told that an express permission of _connubium_ with Athenians was granted to the inhabitants of Eubœa--a fact (noticed by Lysias) of some moment in illustrating the tendency of the Athenian empire to multiply family ties between Athens and the allied cities. Now, according to the law which prevailed before Euclides, the son of every such marriage was by birth an Athenian citizen; an arrangement at that time useful to Athens, as strengthening the bonds of her empire--and eminently useful in a larger point of view, among the causes of Panhellenic sympathy. But when Athens was deprived both of her empire and her fleet, and confined within the limits of Attica--there no longer remained any motive to continue such a regulation, so that the exclusive city-feeling, instinctive in the Grecian mind, again became predominant. Such is perhaps the explanation of the new restrictive law proposed by Aristophon. Thrasybulus and the gallant handful of exiles who had first seized Phyle received no larger reward than a thousand drachmæ [£40 or $200] for a common sacrifice and votive offering, together with wreaths of olive as a token of gratitude from their countrymen. The debt which Athens owed to Thrasybulus was indeed such as could not be liquidated by money. To his individual patriotism, in great degree, we may ascribe not only the restoration of the democracy, but its good behaviour when restored. How different would have been the consequences of the restoration and the conduct of the people, had the event been brought about by a man like Alcibiades, applying great abilities principally to the furtherance of his own cupidity and power! THE END OF ALCIBIADES [Sidenote: [405-403 B.C.]]