corn,
And ardent warriors wait the rising morn.

POPE.

[Notes:_Rest from battle_. This is part of Pope's translation of the
Iliad of Homer (Book 8, l. 605).

_Stamander_. One of the rivers in the neighbourhood of Troy.

_Dardan bands_. Trojan lands. Dardanus was the mythical ancestor of the
Trojans.

_Generous aids_ = allies.

_Tydides_--Diomede.

_From age inglorious and black death secure_ = safe from inglorious age
and from black death.

_Hecatombs_. Sacrifices of 100 oxen.

_Ungrateful offering_ = unpleasing offering.

_Xanthus_. The other river in the neighbourhood of Troy.

_Umbered_ = thrown into shadow, and glimmering in the darkness.]

* * * * *

ARISTIDES.

Aristides at first was loved and respected for his surname of _the
Just_, and afterwards envied as much; the latter, chiefly by the
management of Themistocles, who gave it out among the people that
Aristides had abolished the courts of judicature, by drawing the
arbitration of all causes to himself, and so was insensibly gaining
sovereign power, though without guards and the other ensigns of it. The
people, elevated with the late victory at Marathon, thought themselves
capable of everything, and the highest respect little enough for them.
Uneasy, therefore, at finding any one citizen rose to such extraordinary
honour and distinction, they assembled at Athens from all the towns in
Attica, and banished Aristides by the Ostracism; disguising their
envy of his character under the specious pretence of guarding against
tyranny.

For the _Ostracism_ was not a punishment for crimes and misdemeanours,
but was very decently called an humbling and lessening of some excessive
influence and power. In reality it was a mild gratification of envy; for
by this means, whoever was offended at the growing greatness of another,
discharged his spleen, not in anything cruel or inhuman, but only in
voting a ten years' banishment. But when it once began to fall upon
mean and profligate persons, it was for ever after entirely laid aside;
Hyperbolus being the last that was exiled by it.

The reason of its turning upon such a wretch was this. Alcibiades and
Nicias, who were persons of the greatest interest in Athens, had each
his party; but perceiving that the people were going to proceed to
the Ostracism, and that one of them was likely to suffer by