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stubborn resistance were totally defeated, and compelled to enroll themselves among the subjects of Athens. A still harder fate was reserved for the hapless Dorian islanders in the next generation.
In the following nine years [Footnote: B.C. 456-447.] the power of Athens reached its greatest height, and for a moment it seemed as if she were destined to extend her empire over the whole mainland of Greece. By the victory of Oenophyta, gained over the Boeotians just before the reduction of Aegina, Athens became mistress of all the central provinces of the Greek peninsula, from the pass of Thermopylae to the gulf of Corinth. The alliance of Megara, lately united by long walls to its harbour of Nisaea, secured her from invasion on the side of Peloponnesus. The great island of Euboea, with its rich pastures and fruitful corn lands, had, since the Persian War, become an Athenian estate, and was jealously guarded as one of her most valuable possessions; and on the sea, from the eastern corner of the Euxine to the strait of Gibraltar, there was none to dispute her sway.
But this rapid ascent was followed by no less speedy a fall, and one act of indiscretion stripped the Athenians of all the advantages which they had acquired on the mainland of Greece. In every city of Greece there were always two parties, the wealthy and noble, called oligarchs, and the demos, or commons; and according as Spartan or Athenian influence was in the ascendant the balance of power in each city wavered between the nobles and the people, the Athenians favouring the Many, the Spartans the Few. Accordingly there was always a party living in exile, and waiting for a turn of affairs which might enable them to return to their city, and wrest the power from that faction which had been the last to triumph. In the cities of Boeotia the leaders of the oligarchs had been driven into banishment after the battle of Oenophyta, and democracies were established under the control of Athens. After nine years of banishment these exiles returned, and the result was an oligarchical reaction in the chief cities of Boeotia. A hastily equipped and ill-organised force was sent out from Athens to put down the authors of the revolution, and in the battle which followed, at Coronea, [Footnote: B.C. 447.] the Athenians sustained a severe defeat, and a large number of their citizens were taken prisoners by the Boeotians. To recover these prisoners the Athenians consented to evacuate Boeotia, and by this surrender they lost their hold on central Greece, as far as Thermopylae.
This heavy blow was followed two years later by the revolt of Megara and Euboea; and in the midst of the alarm thus occasioned, the Athenians heard that a powerful Spartan army was threatening their borders. It was a terrible moment for Athens; but she was saved by the prudence and energy of Pericles, whose influence in her councils was now supreme. By some means or other--as the Spartans asserted, by a heavy bribe--he induced the Spartan king Pleistoanax to draw off his forces; and then crossing over into Euboea, he quickly reduced the whole island to submission, and took severe measures to prevent any outbreak in the future.