The poet of the crowning victory over Persia was filled with awe, as well as exultation, at the possibilities for good or evil which his triumphant generation held in their hands. Were they true metal or base? The times would test them, but he had no doubt about the inexorable law. Ου γαρ εστιν επαλξις πλουτου προς κορον ανδρι λακτισαντι μεγαν δικης βωμον εις αφανειαν. {Ou gar estin epalxis ploutou pros koron andri laktisanti megan dikês bômon eis aphaneian.} Never shall state nor gold Shelter his heart from aching Whoso the Altar of Justice old Spurneth to night unwaking. (_Agamemnon_, vv. 381-4, Murray's transl.) The _Agamemnon_ was written when Athens stood at the height of her glory and her power, and before her sons, following the devices of their hearts, 'like a boy chasing a wingèd bird', had set a fatal stumbling-block in the way of their city, or smirched her with an intolerable stain. The generation of Marathon foreboded the catastrophe of the Peloponnesian War, yet the shock, when it came, was beyond their powers of imagination, and the effect of it on the mind of Greece was first expressed by the generation which was smitten by the war in early manhood. This is how it was felt by Thucydides (iii. 82): 'So the class-war at Korkyra grew more and more savage, and it made a particular impression because it was the first outbreak of an upheaval that spread in time through almost the whole of Greek society. In every state there were conflicts of class, and the leaders of the respective parties now procured the intervention of the Athenians or the Lakedaimonians on their side. In peace-time they would have had neither the opportunity nor the inclination to call in the foreigner, but now there was the war, and it was easy for any party of violence to get their opponents crushed and themselves into power by an alliance with one of the belligerents. This recrudescence of class-war brought one calamity after another upon the states of Greece--calamities that occur and will continue to occur as long as human nature remains what it is, however they may be modified or occasionally mitigated by changes of circumstance. Under the favourable conditions of peace-time, communities and individuals do not have their hands forced by the logic of events, and can therefore act up to a higher standard. But war strips away all the margins of ordinary life and breaks in character to circumstance by its brutal training. So the states were torn by the class-war, and the sensation made by each outbreak had a sinister effect on the next--in fact, there was something like a competition in perfecting the fine art of conspiracies and atrocities....