Pericles died in the year 429 B.C., and in the years following his death the results of a long war began to be felt. Food became scarce and prices were high; it was difficult to get servants, for in the general disorganization of life that had come with the plague, slaves had escaped in large numbers; the young men of Athens were no longer to be seen in the Agora and other public places, for all men capable of bearing arms were with the army. Four years after the death of Pericles, Sparta made {300} offers of peace, but feeling ran very high in Athens and it was believed that a peace then would not be lasting, so the offer was rejected and it was determined to carry on the war to the bitter end. There is nothing that so well describes conditions in Athens during these war years as the comedies of Aristophanes. They carry us back to those exciting days and it is amazing to see how much freedom of speech was allowed. The _Knights_, the _Clouds_, and the _Wasps_ were all written in these years, and they are full of the excitement of the time, and often of outspoken criticism of those responsible for the carrying on of the war. But the war brought a lowering of ideals, and even where there was victory, there was also sorrow and loss and the ruin of homes. Euripides, one of the great dramatists of the time, in the _Trojan Women_, a play written during the war, stripped war of all its glamour and showed the misery that comes to the conquered: And they whom Ares took, Had never seen their children: no wife came With gentle arms to shroud the limbs of them For burial, in a strange and angry earth Laid dead. And there, at home, the same long dearth Women that lonely died, and aged men Waiting for sons that ne'er should turn again, Nor know their graves, nor pour drink-offerings, To still the unslaked dust. These be the things The conquering Greek hath won! * * * * * * * {301} Would ye be wise, ye Cities, fly from war! Yet if war come, there is a crown in death For her that striveth well and perisheth Unstained: to die in evil were the stain![6] Pericles was dead, and Cleon who had succeeded him as leader of the people had no power to inspire the Athenians to be true to their highest ideals, and as conditions grew more and more difficult, Athens was forced at length to give herself up to a fight for her life. Anger, suspicion and hatred took the place of the old ideals, and it seemed as if her strength had turned to weakness and despair. And then Athens sealed her own doom, for to save her own citizens from heavy taxation in order to carry on the war, without asking their consent she doubled the amount of the tribute paid to her by her allies every year, and so she broke the Charter once made in good faith between them.