PROCEEDINGS OF THE CONFEDERACY UNDER ATHENS AS HEAD. — FIRST
FORMATION AND RAPID EXPANSION OF THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE.
I have already recounted, in the preceding chapter, how the Asiatic
Greeks, breaking loose from the Spartan Pausanias, entreated
Athens to organize a new confederacy, and to act as presiding city
(Vorort),—and how this confederacy, framed not only for common
and pressing objects, but also on principles of equal rights and
constant control on the part of the members, attracted soon the
spontaneous adhesion of a large proportion of Greeks, insular or
maritime, near the Ægean sea. I also noticed this event as giving
commencement to a new era in Grecian politics. For whereas there had
been before a tendency, not very powerful, yet on the whole steady
and increasing, towards something like one Pan-Hellenic league under
Sparta as president,—from henceforward that tendency disappears and
a bifurcation begins: Athens and Sparta divide the Grecian world
between them, and bring a much larger number of its members into
coöperation, either with one or the other, than had ever been so
arranged before.
Thucydidês marks precisely, as far as general words can go, the
character of the new confederacy during the first years after its
commencement: but unhappily he gives us scarcely any particular
facts,—and in the absence of such controlling evidence, a habit
has grown up of describing loosely the entire period between 477
B. C., and 405 B. C. (the latter date is that of the battle of
Ægos Potamos), as constituting “the Athenian empire.” This word
denotes correctly enough the last part, perhaps the last forty
years, of the seventy-two years indicated; but it is misleading
when applied to the first part: nor, indeed, can any single word be
found which faithfully characterizes as well the one part as the
other. A great and serious change had taken place, and we disguise
the fact of that change, if we talk of the Athenian hegemony, or
headship, as a portion of the Athenian empire. Thucydidês carefully
distinguishes the two, speaking of the Spartans as having lost, and
of the Athenians as having acquired, not empire, but headship, or
hegemony.[575] The transition from the Athenian hegemony to the
Athenian empire was doubtless gradual, so that no one could determine
precisely where the former ends and the latter begins: but it had
been consummated before the thirty years’ truce, which was concluded
fourteen years before the Peloponnesian war,—and it was in fact
the substantial cause of that war. Empire then came to be held by
Athens,—partly as a fact established, resting on acquiescence rather
than attachment or consent on the minds of the subjects,—partly as a
corollary from necessity of union combined with her superior force:
while this latter point, superiority of force as a legitimate title,
stood more and more forward, both in the language of her speakers
and in the conceptions of her citizens. Nay, the Athenian orators
of the middle of the Peloponnesian war venture to affirm that their
empire had been of this same character ever since the repulse of the
Persians: an inaccuracy so manifest, that if we could suppose the
speech made by the Athenian Euphêmus at Kamarina in 415 B. C. to
have been heard by Themistoklês or Aristeidês fifty years before,
it would have been alike offensive to the prudence of the one and
to the justice of the other. The imperial state of Athens, that
which she held at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, when her
allies, except Chios and Lesbos, were tributary subjects, and when
the Ægean sea was an Athenian lake,—was of course the period of
her greatest splendor and greatest action upon the Grecian world.
It was also the period most impressive to historians, orators, and
philosophers,—suggesting the idea of some one state exercising
dominion over the Ægean, as the natural condition of Greece, so
that if Athens lost such dominion, it would be transferred to
Sparta,—holding out the dispersed maritime Greeks as a tempting prize
for the aggressive schemes of some new conqueror,—and even bringing
up by association into men’s fancies the mythical Minos of Krete,
and others, as having been rulers of the Ægean in times anterior to
Athens.
[575] Thucyd. i, 94. ἐξεπολιόρκησαν (Βυζἁντιον) ἐν ~τῇδε τῇ
ἡγεμονίᾳ~, i.e. under the Spartan hegemony, before the Athenians
were invited to assume the hegemony: compare ἡγησάμενοι, i, 77,
and Herodot. viii, 2, 3. Next, we have (i, 95) φοιτῶντές τε (the
Ionians, etc.) πρὸς τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἠξίουν αὐτοὺς ~ἡγεμόνας~ σφῶν
γενέσθαι κατὰ τὸ ξυγγενές. Again, When the Spartans send out
Dorkis in place of Pausanias, the allies οὐκέτι ἐφίεσαν ~τὴν
ἡγεμονίαν~. Then, as to the ensuing proceedings of the Athenians
(i, 96)—παραλαβόντες δὲ οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι ~τὴν ἡγεμονίαν~ τούτῳ τῷ
τρόπῳ ἑκόντων τῶν ξυμμάχων διὰ τὸ Παυσανίου μῖσος, etc.: compare
i. 75,—ἡμῖν δὲ προσελθόντων τῶν ξυμμάχων καὶ αὐτῶν δεηθέντων
~ἡγεμόνας~ καταστῆναι, and vi, 76.
Then the transition from the ἡγεμονία to the ἀρχή (i,
97)—ἡγούμενοι δὲ αὐτονόμων τὸ πρῶτον τῶν ξυμμάχων καὶ ἀπὸ κοινῶν
ξυνόδων βουλευόντων, ~τόσαδε ἐπῆλθον~ πολέμῳ τε καὶ διαχειρίσει
πραγμάτων μεταξὺ τοῦδε τοῦ πολέμου καὶ τοῦ Μηδικοῦ.
Thucydidês then goes on to say, that he shall notice these
“many strides in advance” which Athens made, starting from her
original hegemony, so as to show in what manner the Athenian
empire, or ἀρχὴ, was originally formed,—ἅμα δὲ καὶ ~τῆς ἀρχῆς~
ἀπόδειξιν ἔχει τῆς τῶν Ἀθηναίων, ἐν οἵῳ τρόπῳ ~κατέστη~. The
same transition from the ἡγεμονία to the ἀρχὴ is described in
the oration of the Athenian envoy at Sparta, shortly before the
Peloponnesian war (i, 75): but as it was rather the interest
of the Athenian orator to confound the difference between
ἡγεμονία and ἀρχὴ, so, after he has clearly stated what the
relation of Athens to her allies had been at first, and how it
afterwards became totally changed, Thucydidês makes him slur
over the distinction, and say,—οὕτως οὐδ’ ἡμεῖς θαυμαστὸν οὐδὲν
πεποιήκαμεν ... ~εἰ ἀρχήν τε διδομένην ἐδεξάμεθα~ καὶ ταύτην μὴ
ἀνεῖμεν, etc.; and he then proceeds to defend the title of Athens
to command on the ground of superior force and worth: which last
plea is advanced a few years afterwards, still more nakedly and
offensively, by the Athenian speakers. Read also the language
of the Athenian Euphêmus at Kamarina (vi, 82), where a similar
confusion appears, as being suitable to the argument.
It is to be recollected that the word _hegemony_, or headship, is
extremely general, denoting any case of following a leader, and
of obedience, however temporary, qualified, or indeed little more
than honorary. Thus it is used by the Thebans to express their
relation towards the Bœotian confederated towns (ἡγεμονεύεσθαι
ὑφ’ ἡμῶν, Thuc. iii, 61, where Dr. Arnold draws attention to the
distinction between that verb and ἄρχειν, and holds language
respecting the Athenian ἀρχὴ, more precise than his language in
the note ad Thucyd. i, 94), and by the Corinthians to express
their claims as metropolis of Korkyra, which were really little
more than honorary,—ἐπὶ τῷ ~ἡγεμόνες~ τε εἶναι καὶ τὰ εἰκότα
θαυμάζεσθαι (Thucyd. i, 38): compare vii, 55. Indeed, it
sometimes means simply a guide (iii, 98; vii, 50).
But the words ἀρχὴ, ἄρχειν, ἄρχεσθαι, voc. pass., are much
less extensive in meaning, and imply both superior dignity and
coercive authority to a greater or less extent: compare Thucyd.
v, 69; ii, 8, etc. The πόλις ἀχὴν ἔχουσα is analogous to ἀνὴρ
τύραννος (vi, 85).
Herodotus is less careful in distinguishing the meanings of these
words than Thucydidês: see the discussion of the Lacedæmonian
and Athenian envoys with Gelo (vii. 155-162). But it is to be
observed that he makes Gelo ask for the ἡγεμονία and not for the
ἀρχὴ,—putting the claim in the least offensive form: compare also
the claim of the Argeians for ἡγεμονία (vii, 148).
Even those who lived under the full-grown Athenian empire had before
them no good accounts of the incidents between 479-450 B. C.; for
we may gather from the intimation of Thucydidês, as well as from
his barrenness of facts, that while there were chroniclers both for
the Persian invasion and for the times before, no one cared for the
times immediately succeeding.[576] Hence, the little light which has
fallen upon this blank has all been borrowed—if we except the careful
Thucydidês—from a subsequent age; and the Athenian hegemony has been
treated as a mere commencement of the Athenian empire: credit has
been given to Athens for a long-sighted ambition, aiming from the
Persian war downwards at results which perhaps Themistoklês[577] may
have partially divined, but which only time and successive accidents
opened even to distant view. But such systematic anticipation of
subsequent results is fatal to any correct understanding, either
of the real agents or of the real period; both of which are to be
explained from the circumstances preceding and actually present, with
some help, though cautious and sparing, from our acquaintance with
that which was then an unknown future. When Aristeidês and Kimon
dismissed the Lacedæmonian admiral Dorkis, and drove Pausanias away
from Byzantium on his second coming out, they had to deal with the
problem immediately before them; they had to complete the defeat of
the Persian power, still formidable,—and to create and organize a
confederacy as yet only inchoate. This was quite enough to occupy
their attention, without ascribing to them distant views of Athenian
maritime empire.
[576] Thucyd. i, 97. τοῖς πρὸ ἐμοῦ ἅπασιν ἐκλιπὲς ἦν τοῦτο τὸ
χωρίον, καὶ ἢ τὰ πρὸ τῶν Μηδικῶν ξυνετίθεσαν ἢ αὐτὰ τὰ Μηδικά·
τούτων δὲ ὅσπερ ~καὶ ἥψατο~ ἐν τῇ Ἀττικῇ ξυγγραφῇ Ἑλλάνικος,
βραχέως τε καὶ τοῖς χρόνοις οὐκ ἀκριβῶς ἐπεμνήσθη.
Hellanikus, therefore, had done no more than _touch_ upon the
events of this period: and he found so little good information
within his reach as to fall into chronological blunders.
[577] Thucyd. i, 93. τῆς γὰρ δὴ θαλάσσης πρῶτος ἐτόλμησεν εἰπεῖν
ὡς ἀνθεκτέα ἐστὶ, καὶ τὴν ἀρχὴν εὐθὺς ξυγκατεσκεύαζεν.
Dr. Arnold says in his note, “εὐθὺς signifies probably
immediately after the retreat of the Persians.” I think it refers
to an earlier period,—that point of time when Themistoklês
first counselled the building of the fleet, or at least when
he counselled them to abandon their city and repose all their
hopes in their fleet. It is only by this supposition that we
get a reasonable meaning for the words ἐτόλμησε εἰπεῖν, “he
was the _first who dared to say_,”—which implies a counsel of
extraordinary boldness. “For he was the first who dared to advise
them to grasp at the sea, and from that moment forward he helped
to establish their empire.” The word ~ξυγκατεσκεύαζε~ seems to
denote a collateral consequence, not directly contemplated,
though perhaps divined, by Themistoklês.
In that brief sketch of incidents preceding the Peloponnesian
war, which Thucydidês introduces as “the throwing off of his
narrative,”[578] he neither gives, nor professes to give, a complete
enumeration of all which actually occurred. During the interval
between the first desertion of the Asiatic allies from Pausanias
to Athens, in 477 B. C.,—and the revolt of Naxos in 466 B. C.,—he
recites three incidents only: first, the siege and capture of Eion,
on the Strymon, with its Persian garrison,—next, the capture of
Skyros, and appropriation of the island to Athenian kleruchs, or
out-citizens,—thirdly, the war with Karystus in Eubœa, and reduction
of the place by capitulation. It has been too much the practice
to reason as if these three events were the full history of ten
or eleven years. Considering what Thucydidês states respecting
the darkness of this period, we might perhaps suspect that they
were all which he could learn about it on good authority: and they
are all, in truth, events having a near and special bearing on
the subsequent history of Athens herself,—for Eion was the first
stepping-stone to the important settlement of Amphipolis, and Skyros
in the time of Thucydidês was the property of outlying Athenian
citizens, or kleruchs. Still, we are left in almost entire ignorance
of the proceedings of Athens, as conducting the newly-established
confederate force: for it is certain that the first ten years of
the Athenian hegemony must have been years of most active warfare
against the Persians. One positive testimony to this effect has
been accidentally preserved to us by Herodotus, who mentions, that
“before the invasion of Xerxes, there were Persian commanders and
garrisons everywhere in Thrace and the Hellespont,[579] all of whom
were conquered by the Greeks after that invasion, with the single
exception of Maskamês, governor of Doriskus, who could never be
taken, though many different Grecian attempts were made upon the
fortress. Of those who were captured by the Greeks, not one made
any defence sufficient to attract the admiration of Xerxes, except
Bogês, governor of Eion.” Bogês, after bravely defending himself,
and refusing offers of capitulation, found his provisions exhausted,
and farther resistance impracticable. He then kindled a vast funeral
pile,—slew his wives, children, concubines, and family, and cast
them into it,—threw his precious effects over the wall into the
Strymon,—and lastly, precipitated himself into the flames.[580] His
brave despair was the theme of warm encomium among the Persians,
and his relatives in Persia were liberally rewarded by Xerxes. This
capture of Eion, effected by Kimon, has been mentioned, as already
stated, by Thucydidês; but Herodotus here gives us to understand
that it was only one of a string of enterprises, all unnoticed
by Thucydidês, against the Persians. Nay, it would seem from his
language, that Maskamês maintained himself in Doriskus during the
whole reign of Xerxes, and perhaps longer, repelling successive
Grecian assaults.
[578] Thucyd. i, 97 ἔγραψα δὲ αὐτὰ καὶ ~τὴν ἐκβολὴν τοῦ λόγου~
ἐποιησάμην διὰ τόδε, etc.
[579] Herodot. vii, 106, 107. Κατέστασαν γὰρ ἔτι πρότερον ταύτης
τῆς ἐλάσιος ὕπαρχοι ἐν τῇ Θρηΐκῃ καὶ τοῦ Ἑλλησπόντου πανταχῇ.
Οὗτοι ὦν πάντες, οἵ τε ἐκ Θρηΐκης καὶ τοῦ Ἑλλησπόντου, πλὴν
τοῦ ἐν Δορίσκῳ, ὑπὸ Ἑλλήνων ὕστερον ταύτης τῆς στρατηλασίης
ἐξῃρέθησαν· τὸν δὲ ἐν Δορίσκῳ Μασκάμην οὐδαμοί κω ἐδυνάσθησαν
ἐξελεῖν, ~πολλῶν πειρησαμένων~.
The loose chronology of Plutarch is little to be trusted; but
he, too, acknowledges the continuance of Persian occupations in
Thrace, by aid of the natives, until a period later than the
battle of the Eurymedon (Plutarch, Kimon, c. 14).
It is a mistake to suppose, with Dr. Arnold, in his note on
Thucyd. viii, 62, “that Sestus was almost the last place held by
the Persians in Europe.”
Weissenborn (Hellen oder Beiträge zur genaueren Erforschung der
altgriechischen Geschichte, Jena, 1844, p. 144, note 31) has
taken notice of this important passage of Herodotus, as well as
of that in Plutarch; but he does not see how much it embarrasses
all attempts to frame a certain chronology for those two or three
events which Thucydidês gives us between 476-466 B. C.
[580] Kutzen (De Atheniensium Imperio Cimonis atque Periclis
tempore constituto. Grimæ, 1837. Commentatio, i, p. 8) has good
reason to call in question the stratagem ascribed to Kimon by
Pausanias (viii, 8, 2) for the capture of Eion.
The valuable indication here cited from Herodotus would be of itself
a sufficient proof that the first years of the Athenian hegemony were
full of busy and successful hostility against the Persians. And in
truth this is what we should expect: the battles of Salamis, Platæa,
and Mykalê, drove the Persians out of Greece, and overpowered their
main armaments, but did not remove them at once from all the various
posts which they occupied throughout the Ægean and Thrace. Without
doubt, the Athenians had to clear the coasts and the islands of a
great number of different Persian detachments: an operation never
short nor easy, with the then imperfect means of siege, as we may see
by the cases of Sestus and Eion; nor, indeed, always practicable,
as the case of Doriskus teaches us. The fear of these Persians, yet
remaining in the neighborhood,[581] and even the chance of a renewed
Persian invading armament, formed one pressing motive for Grecian
cities to join the new confederacy: while the expulsion of the enemy
added to it those places which he had occupied. It was by these
years of active operations at sea against the common enemy, that
the Athenians first established[582] that constant, systematic, and
laborious training, among their own ships’ crews, which transmitted
itself with continual improvements down to the Peloponnesian war: it
was by these, combined with the present fear, that they were enabled
to organize the largest and most efficient confederacy ever known
among Greeks,—to bring together deliberative deputies,—to plant their
own ascendency as enforcers of the collective resolutions,—and to
raise a prodigious tax from universal contribution. Lastly, it was
by these same operations, prosecuted so successfully as to remove
present alarm, that they at length fatigued the more lukewarm and
passive members of the confederacy, and created in them a wish either
to commute personal service for pecuniary contribution, or to escape
from the obligation of service in any way. The Athenian nautical
training would never have been acquired,—the confederacy would never
have become a working reality,—the fatigue and discontents among its
members would never have arisen,—unless there had been a real fear
of the Persians, and a pressing necessity for vigorous and organized
operations against them, during the ten years between 477 and 466 B.
C.
[581] To these “remaining operations against the Persians” the
Athenian envoy at Lacedæmon alludes, in his speech prior to
the Peloponnesian war—ὑμῶν μὲν (you Spartans) οὐκ ἐθελησάντων
παραμεῖναι ~πρὸς τὰ ὑπόλοιπα τοῦ βαρβάρου~, ἡμῖν δὲ προσελθόντων
τῶν ξυμμάχων καὶ αὐτῶν δεηθέντων ἡγεμόνας καταστῆναι, etc.
(Thucyd. i, 75:) and again, iii, 11. τὰ ὑπόλοιπα τῶν ἔργων.
Compare also Plato, Menexen. c. 11. αὐτὸς δὲ ἠγγέλλετο βασιλεὺς
διανοεῖσθαι ὡς ἐπιχειρήσων πάλιν ἐπὶ τοὺς Ἕλληνας, etc.
[582] The Athenian nautical training begins directly after
the repulse of the Persians. Τὸ δὲ τῆς θαλάσσης ἐπιστήμονας
γενέσθαι (says Periklês respecting the Peloponnesians, just at
the commencement of the Peloponnesian war) οὐ ῥᾳδίως αὐτοῖς
προσγενήσεται· οὐδὲ γὰρ ὑμεῖς, μελετῶντες αὐτὸ ~εὐθὺς ἀπὸ τῶν
Μηδικῶν~, ἐξείργασθέ πω (Thucyd. i, 142).
As to the ten years from 477-466 B. C., there has been a tendency
almost unconscious to assume that the particular incidents mentioned
by Thucydidês about Eion, Skyros, Karystus, and Naxos, constitute
the sum total of events. To contradict this assumption, I have
suggested proof sufficient, though indirect, that they are only part
of the stock of a very busy period,—the remaining details of which,
indicated in outline by the large general language of Thucydidês, we
are condemned not to know. Nor are we admitted to be present at the
synod of Delos, which during all this time continued its periodical
meetings: though it would have been highly interesting to trace the
steps whereby an institution which at first promised to protect not
less the separate rights of the members than the security of the
whole, so lamentably failed in its object. We must recollect that
this confederacy, formed for objects common to all, limited to a
certain extent the autonomy of each member; both conferring definite
rights and imposing definite obligations. Solemnly sworn to by all,
and by Aristeidês on behalf of Athens, it was intended to bind the
members in perpetuity,—marked even in the form of the oath, which
was performed by casting heavy lumps of iron into the sea never
again to be seen.[583] As this confederacy was thus both perpetual
and peremptory, binding each member to the rest, and not allowing
either retirement or evasion, so it was essential that it should
be sustained by some determining authority and enforcing sanction.
The determining authority was provided by the synod at Delos: the
enforcing sanction was exercised by Athens as president. And there
is every reason to presume that Athens, for a long time, performed
this duty in a legitimate and honorable manner, acting in execution
of the resolves of the synod, or at least in full harmony with its
general purposes. She exacted from every member the regulated quota
of men or money, employing coercion against recusants, and visiting
neglect of military duty with penalties. In all these requirements
she only discharged her appropriate functions as chosen leader of the
confederacy, and there can be no reasonable doubt that the general
synod went cordially along with her[584] in strictness of dealing
towards those defaulters who obtained protection without bearing
their share of the burden.
[583] Plutarch. Aristeidês. c. 24.
[584] Such concurrence of the general synod is in fact implied
in the speech put by Thucydidês into the mouth of the Mitylenæan
envoys at Olympia, in the third year of the Peloponnesian war:
a speech pronounced by parties altogether hostile to Athens
(Thucyd. iii, 11)—ἅμα μὲν γὰρ μαρτυρίῳ ἐχρῶντο (the Athenians)
μὴ ἂν ~τούς γε ἰσοψήφους ἄκοντας~, εἰ μή τι ἠδίκουν οἷς ἐπῄεσαν,
~ξυστρατεύειν~.
But after a few years, several of the confederates becoming weary of
personal military service, prevailed upon the Athenians to provide
ships and men in their place, and imposed upon themselves in exchange
a money-payment of suitable amount. This commutation, at first
probably introduced to meet some special case of inconvenience, was
found so suitable to the taste of all parties that it gradually
spread through the larger portion of the confederacy. To unwarlike
allies, hating labor and privation, it was a welcome relief,—while
to the Athenians, full of ardor and patient of labor, as well as
discipline, for the aggrandizement of their country, it afforded
constant pay for a fleet more numerous than they could otherwise
have kept afloat. It is plain from the statement of Thucydidês
that this altered practice was introduced from the petition of
the confederates themselves, not from any pressure or stratagem,
on the part of Athens.[585] But though such was its real source,
it did not the less fatally degrade the allies in reference to
Athens, and extinguish the original feeling of equal rights and
partnership in the confederacy, with communion of danger as well as
of glory, which had once bound them together. The Athenians came to
consider themselves as military chiefs and soldiers, with a body of
tribute-paying subjects, whom they were entitled to hold in dominion,
and restrict, both as to foreign policy and internal government, to
such extent as they thought expedient,—but whom they were also bound
to protect against foreign enemies. The military force of these
subject-states was thus in a great degree transferred to Athens, by
their own act, just as that of so many of the native princes in India
has been made over to the English. But the military efficiency of the
confederacy against the Persians was much increased, in proportion
as the vigorous resolves of Athens[586] were less and less paralyzed
by the contentions and irregularity of a synod; so that the war
was prosecuted with greater success than ever, while those motives
of alarm, which had served as the first pressing stimulus to the
formation of the confederacy, became every year farther and farther
removed.
[585] Thucyd. i, 97-99. Αἰτίαι δὲ ἄλλαι ἦσαν τῶν ἀποστάσεων,
καὶ μέγισται, αἱ τῶν φόρων καὶ νεῶν ἐκδεῖαι καὶ λιποστράτιον,
εἴ τῳ ἐγένετο· οἱ γὰρ Ἀθηναῖοι ἀκριβῶς ἔπρασσον, καὶ λυπηροὶ
ἦσαν, οὐκ εἰωθόσιν οὐδὲ βουλομένοις ταλαιπωρεῖν προσάγοντες
τὰς ἀνάγκας. Ἦσαν δέ πως καὶ ἄλλως οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι οὐκέτι ὁμοίως
ἐν ἡδονῇ ἄρχοντες, καὶ οὔτε ξυνεστράτευον ἀπὸ τοῦ ἴσου, ῥᾴδιόν
τε προσάγεσθαι ἦν αὐτοῖς τοὺς ἀφισταμένους· ~ὧν αὐτοὶ αἴτιοι
ἐγένοντο οἱ ξύμμαχοι~· διὰ γὰρ τὴν ἀπόκνησιν ταύτην τῶν
στρατειῶν, οἱ πλείους αὐτῶν, ἵνα μὴ ἀπ’ οἴκου ὦσι, χρήματα
~ἐτάξαντο~ ἀντὶ τῶν νεῶν τὸ ἱκνούμενον ἀνάλωμα φέρειν, καὶ τοῖς
μὲν Ἀθηναίοις ηὔξετο τὸ ναυτικὸν ἀπὸ τῆς δαπάνης ἣν ἐκεῖνοι
ξυμφέροιεν, αὐτοὶ δὲ ὅποτε ἀποσταῖεν, ἀπαράσκευοι καὶ ἄπειροι ἐς
τὸν πόλεμον καθίσταντο.
[586] See the contemptuous remarks of Periklês upon the debates
of the Lacedæmonian allies at Sparta (Thucyd. i, 141).
Under such circumstances several of the confederate states grew tired
even of paying their tribute,—and averse to continuance as members.
They made successive attempts to secede, but Athens, acting seemingly
in conjunction with the synod, repressed their attempts one after the
other,—conquering, fining, and disarming the revolters; which was the
more easily done, since in most cases their naval force had been
in great part handed over to her. As these events took place, not
all at once, but successively in different years,—the number of mere
tribute-paying allies as well as of subdued revolters continually
increasing,—so there was never any one moment of conspicuous change
in the character of the confederacy: the allies slid unconsciously
into subjects, while Athens, without any predetermined plan, passed
from a chief into a despot. By strictly enforcing the obligations of
the pact upon unwilling members, and by employing coercion against
revolters, she had become unpopular in the same proportion as she
acquired new power,—and that, too, without any guilt of her own.
In this position, even if she had been inclined to relax her hold
upon the tributary subjects, considerations of her own safety would
have deterred her from doing so; for there was reason to apprehend
that they might place their strength at the disposal of her enemies.
It is very certain that she never was so inclined; it would have
required a more self-denying public morality than has ever been
practised by any state, either ancient or modern, even to conceive
the idea of relinquishing voluntarily an immense ascendency as well
as a lucrative revenue: least of all was such an idea likely to be
conceived by Athenian citizens, whose ambition increased with their
power, and among whom the love of Athenian ascendency was both
passion and patriotism. But though the Athenians were both disposed
and qualified to push all the advantages offered, and even to look
out for new, we must not forget that the foundations of their empire
were laid in the most honorable causes: voluntary invitation, efforts
both unwearied and successful against a common enemy, unpopularity
incurred in discharge of an imperative duty, and inability to break
up the confederacy without endangering themselves as well as laying
open the Ægean sea to the Persians.[587]
[587] The speech of the Athenian envoy at Sparta, a little before
the Peloponnesian war, sets forth the growth of the Athenian
empire, in the main, with perfect justice (Thucyd. i, 75, 76).
He admits and even exaggerates its unpopularity, but shows that
such unpopularity was, to a great extent, and certainly as to its
first origin, unavoidable as well as undeserved. He of course, as
might be supposed, omits those other proceedings by which Athens
had herself aggravated it.
Καὶ γὰρ αὐτὴν τήνδε (τὴν ἀρχὴν) ἐλάβομεν οὐ βιασάμενοι ... ἐξ
αὐτοῦ δὲ τοῦ ἔργου κατηναγκάσθημεν τὸ πρῶτον προαγαγεῖν αὐτὴν
ἐς τόδε, μάλιστα μὲν ὑπὸ δέους, ἔπειτα δὲ καὶ τιμῆς, ὕστερον
καὶ ὠφελείας. Καὶ οὐκ ἀσφαλὲς ἔτι ἐδόκει εἶναι τοῖς πολλοῖς
ἀπηχθημένους, καί τινων καὶ ἤδη ἀποστάντων κεχειρωμένων,
ὑμῶν τε ἡμῖν οὐκέτι ὁμοίως φίλων, ἀλλ’ ὑπόπτων καὶ διαφόρων
ὄντων, ἀνέντας κινδυνεύειν· καὶ γὰρ ἂν αἱ ἀποστάσεις πρὸς ὑμᾶς
ἐγίγνοντο· πᾶσι δὲ ἀνεπίφθονον τὰ ξυμφέροντα τῶν μεγίστων πέρι
κινδύνων εὖ τίθεσθαι.
The whole speech well merits attentive study: compare also
the speech of Periklês at Athens, in the second year of the
Peloponnesian war (Thucyd. ii, 63).
There were two other causes, besides that which has just been
adverted to, for the unpopularity of imperial Athens. First, the
existence of the confederacy, imposing permanent obligations, was
in conflict with the general instinct of the Greek mind, tending
towards separate political autonomy of each city, as well as with
the particular turn of the Ionic mind, incapable of that steady
personal effort which was requisite for maintaining the synod of
Delos, on its first large and equal basis. Next,—and this is the
great cause of all,—Athens, having defeated the Persians, and thrust
them to a distance, began to employ the force and the tribute of
her subject-allies in warfare against Greeks, wherein these allies
had nothing to gain from success,—everything to apprehend from
defeat,—and a banner to fight for, offensive to Hellenic sympathies.
On this head, the subject-allies had great reason to complain,
throughout the prolonged wars of Greek against Greek, for the purpose
of sustaining Athenian predominance: but on the point of practical
grievances or oppressions, they had little ground for discontent,
and little feeling of actual discontent, as I shall show more fully
hereafter. Among the general body of citizens in the subject-allied
cities, the feeling towards Athens was rather indifference than
hatred: the movement of revolt against her proceeded from small
parties of leading men, acting apart from the citizens, and generally
with collateral views of ambition for themselves: and the positive
hatred towards her was felt chiefly by those who were not her
subjects.
It is probable that the same indisposition to personal effort,
which prompted the confederates of Delos to tender money-payment as
a substitute for military service, also induced them to neglect
attendance at the synod. But we do not know the steps whereby this
assembly, at first an effective reality, gradually dwindled into
a mere form and vanished. Nothing, however, can more forcibly
illustrate the difference of character between the maritime allies of
Athens, and the Peloponnesian allies of Sparta, than the fact,—that
while the former shrank from personal service, and thought it an
advantage to tax themselves in place of it,—the latter were “ready
enough with their bodies,” but uncomplying and impracticable as
to contributions.[588] The contempt felt by these Dorian landsmen
for the military efficiency of the Ionians recurs frequently, and
appears even to have exceeded what the reality justified: but when
we turn to the conduct of the latter twenty years earlier, at
the battle of Ladê, in the very crisis of the Ionic revolt from
Persia,[589]—we detect the same want of energy, the same incapacity
of personal effort and labor, as that which broke up the confederacy
of Delos with all its beneficial promise. To appreciate fully
the indefatigable activity and daring, together with the patient
endurance of laborious maritime training, which characterized the
Athenians of that day,—we have only to contrast them with these
confederates, so remarkably destitute of both. Amidst such glaring
inequalities of merit, capacity, and power, to maintain a confederacy
of equal members was impossible: it was in the nature of things that
the confederacy should either break up, or be transmuted into an
Athenian empire.
[588] Thucyd. i, 141. σώμασι δὲ ἑτοιμότεροι οἱ αὐτουργοὶ τῶν
ἀνθρώπων ἢ χρήμασι πολεμεῖν, etc.
[589] See Herodot. vi, 12, and the preceding volume of this
history, chap. xxxv, vol. iv, p. 301.
It has already been mentioned that the first aggregate assessment of
tribute, proposed by Aristeidês, and adopted by the synod at Delos,
was four hundred and sixty talents in money. At that time many of
the confederates paid their quota, not in money but in ships; but
this practice gradually diminished, as the commutations above alluded
to, of money in place of ships, were multiplied, while the aggregate
tribute, of course, became larger. It was no more than six hundred
talents[590] at the commencement of the Peloponnesian war, forty-six
years after the first formation of the confederacy; from whence we
may infer that it was never at all increased upon individual members
during the interval. For the difference between four hundred and
sixty talents and six hundred admits of being fully explained by
the numerous commutations of service for money, as well as by the
acquisitions of new members, which doubtless Athens had more or
less the opportunity of making. It is not to be imagined that the
confederacy had attained its maximum number, at the date of the first
assessment of tribute: there must have been various cities, like
Sinopê and Ægina, subsequently added.[591]
[590] Thucyd. ii, 13.
[591] Thucyd. i, 108; Plutarch, Periklês, c. 20.
Without some such preliminary statements as those just given,
respecting the new state of Greece between the Persian and
Peloponnesian wars, beginning with the Athenian hegemony, or
headship, and ending with the Athenian empire, the reader would
hardly understand the bearing of those particular events which
our authorities enable us to recount; events unhappily few in
number, though the period must have been full of action, and not
well authenticated as to dates. The first known enterprise of the
Athenians in their new capacity—whether the first absolutely or not,
we cannot determine—between 476 B. C. and 466 B. C., was the conquest
of the important post of Eion, on the Strymon, where the Persian
governor, Bogês, starved out after a desperate resistance, destroyed
himself rather than capitulate, together with his family and precious
effects, as has already been stated. The next events named are their
enterprises against the Dolopes and Pelasgi in the island of Skyros,
seemingly about 470 B. C., and the Dryopes in the town and district
of Karystus, in Eubœa. To the latter, who were of a different kindred
from the inhabitants of Chalkis and Eretria, and received no aid from
them, they granted a capitulation: the former were more rigorously
dealt with, and expelled from their island. Skyros was barren, and
had little to recommend it, except a good maritime position and
an excellent harbor; while its inhabitants, seemingly akin to the
Pelasgian residents in Lemnos, prior to the Athenian occupation of
that spot, were alike piratical and cruel. Some Thessalian traders,
recently plundered and imprisoned by them, had raised a complaint
against them before the Amphiktyonic synod, which condemned the
island to make restitution: the mass of the islanders threw the
burden upon those who had committed the crime; and these men, in
order to evade payment, invoked Kimon with the Athenian armament,—who
conquered the island, expelled the inhabitants, and peopled it with
Athenian settlers.
Such clearance was a beneficial act, suitable to the new character
of Athens as guardian of the Ægean sea against piracy: but it seems
also connected with Athenian plans. The island lay very convenient
for the communication with Lemnos, which the Athenians had doubtless
reoccupied after the expulsion of the Persians,[592] and became,
as well as Lemnos, a recognized adjunct, or outlying portion,
of Attica: moreover, there were old legends which connected the
Athenians with it, as the tomb of their hero Theseus, whose name,
as the mythical champion of democracy, was in peculiar favor at
the period immediately following the return from Salamis. It was
in the year 476 B. C., that the oracle had directed them to bring
home the bones of Theseus from Skyros, and to prepare for that
hero a splendid entombment and edifice in their new city: they had
tried to effect this, but the unsocial manners of the Dolopians had
prevented a search, and it was only after Kimon had taken the island
that he found, or pretended to find, the body. It was brought to
Athens in the year 469 B. C.,[593] and after being welcomed by the
people in solemn and joyous procession, as if the hero himself had
come back, was deposited in the interior of the city,—the monument
called the Theseium, with its sacred precinct being built on the
spot, and invested with the privilege of a sanctuary for men of poor
condition who might feel ground for dreading the oppressions of the
powerful, as well as for slaves in case of cruel usage.[594] Such
were the protective functions of the mythical hero of democracy,
whose installation is interesting as marking the growing intensity of
democratical feeling in Athens since the Persian war.
[592] Xenophon, Hellenic, v, 1, 31.
[593] Mr. Fynes Clinton (Fasti Hellenic. ad ann. 476 B. C.)
places the conquest of Skyros by Kimon in the year 476 B. C.
He says, after citing a passage from Thucyd. i, 98, and from
Plutarch, Theseus, c. 36, as well as a proposed correction of
Bentley, which he justly rejects: “The island was actually
conquered in the year of the archon Phædon, B. C. 476. This
we know from Thucyd. i, 98, and Diodor. xi, 41-48, combined.
Plutarch named the archon Phædon, with reference to the
_conquest_ of the island: then, by a negligence not unusual with
him, connected the oracle with that fact, as a contemporary
transaction: although in truth the oracle was not procured till
six or seven years afterwards.”
Plutarch has many sins to answer for against chronological
exactness; but the charge here made against him is undeserved. He
states that the oracle was given in (476 B. C.) the year of the
archon Phædon; and that the body of Theseus was brought back to
Athens in (469 B. C.) the year of the archon Aphepsion. There is
nothing to contradict either statement; nor do the passages of
Thucydidês and Diodorus, which Mr. Clinton adduces, prove that
which he asserts. The two passages of Diodorus have, indeed, no
bearing upon the event: and in so far as Diodorus is in this
case an authority at all, he goes against Mr. Clinton, for he
states Skyros to have been conquered in 470 B. C. (Diodor. xi,
60). Thucydidês only tells us that the operations against Eion,
Skyros, and Karystus, took place in the order here indicated,
and at some periods between 476 and 466 B. C.; but he does not
enable us to determine positively the date of either. Upon
what authority Mr. Clinton states, that “the oracle was not
procured till six or seven years afterwards,” (_i. e._, after the
conquest,) I do not know: the account of Plutarch goes rather
to show that it was procured six or seven years _before_ the
conquest: and this may stand good until some better testimony
is produced to contradict it. As our information now stands, we
have no testimony as to the year of the conquest except that of
Diodorus, who assigns it to 470 B. C., but as he assigns both the
conquest of Eion and the expeditions of Kimon against Karia and
Pamphylia with the victories of the Eurymedon, all to the same
year, we cannot much trust his authority. Nevertheless, I incline
to believe him as to the date of the conquest of Skyros: because
it seems to me very probable that this conquest took place in
the year immediately before that in which the body of Theseus
was brought to Athens, which latter event may be referred with
great confidence to 469 B. C., in consequence of the interesting
anecdote related by Plutarch about the first prize gained by the
poet Sophoklês.
Mr. Clinton has given in his Appendix (Nos. vi-viii, pp. 248-253)
two Dissertations respecting the chronology of the period from
the Persian war down to the close of the Peloponnesian war. He
has rendered much service by correcting the mistake of Dodwell,
Wesseling, and Mitford (founded upon an inaccurate construction
of a passage in Isokratês) in supposing, after the Persian
invasion of Greece, a Spartan hegemony, lasting ten years,
prior to the commencement of the Athenian hegemony. He has
shown that the latter must be reckoned as commencing in 477, or
476 B. C., immediately after the mutiny of the allies against
Pausanias,—whose command, however, need not be peremptorily
restricted to one year, as Mr. Clinton (p. 252) and Dodwell
maintain: for the words of Thucydidês, ἐν τῇδε τῇ ἡγεμονίᾳ, imply
nothing as to annual duration, and designate merely “the hegemony
which preceded that of Athens.”
But the refutation of this mistake does not enable us to
establish any good positive chronology for the period between
477 and 466 B. C. It will not do to construe Πρῶτον μὲν (Thuc.
i, 98) in reference to the Athenian conquest of Eion, as if it
must necessarily mean “_the year after_” 477 B. C. If we could
imagine that Thucydidês had told us all the military operations
between 477-466 B. C., we should be compelled to admit plenty of
that “interval of inaction” against which Mr. Clinton so strongly
protests (p. 252). Unhappily, Thucydidês has told us but a small
portion of the events which really happened.
Mr. Clinton compares the various periods of duration assigned
by ancient authors to that which is improperly called the
Athenian “empire,”—between 477-405 B. C. (pp. 248, 249.) I
confess that I rather agree with Dr. Gillies, who admits the
discrepancy between these authors broadly and undisguisedly,
than with Mr. Clinton, who seeks to bring them into comparative
agreement. His explanation is only successful in regard to one
of them,—Demosthenês; whose two statements (forty-five years
in one place and seventy-three years in another) are shown to
be consistent with each other as well as chronologically just.
But surely it is not reasonable to correct the text of the
orator Lykurgus from ἐννενήκοντα to ἑβδομήκοντα, and then to
say, that “Lykurgus may be added to the number of those who
describe the period as seventy years,” (p. 250.) Neither are
we to bring Andokidês into harmony with others, by supposing
that “his calculation ascends to the battle of Marathon, from
the date of which (B. C. 490) to the battle of Ægos Potami,
are just eighty-five years.” (Ibid.) Nor ought we to justify a
computation by Demosthenês, of sixty-five years, by saying, “that
it terminates at the Athenian defeat in Sicily,” (p. 249).
The truth is, that there is more or less chronological inaccuracy
in all these passages, except those of Demosthenês,—and
historical inaccuracy in _all_ of them, not even excepting those.
It is not true that the Athenians ἦρξαν τῆς θαλάσσης—ἦρξαν τῶν
Ἑλλήνων—προστάται ἦσαν τῶν Ἑλλήνων—for seventy-three years. The
historical language of Demosthenês, Plato, Lysias, Isokratês,
Andokidês, Lykurgus, requires to be carefully examined before we
rely upon it.
[594] Plutarch (Kimon, c. 8; Theseus, c. 36). ἐστὶ δὲ φύξιον
οἰκέταις καὶ πᾶσι τοῖς ταπεινοτέροις καὶ δεδιόσι κρείττονας, ὡς
καὶ τοῦ Θησέως προστατικοῦ τινος καὶ βοηθητικοῦ γενομένου καὶ
προσδεχομένου φιλανθρώπως τὰς τῶν ταπεινοτέρων δεήσεις.
It was about two years or more after this incident, that the first
breach of union in the confederacy of Delos took place. The important
island of Naxos, the largest of the Cyclades,—an island which
thirty years before had boasted a large marine force and eight
thousand hoplites,—revolted; on what special ground we do not know:
but probably the greater islands fancied themselves better able to
dispense with the protection of the confederacy than the smaller,—at
the same time that they were more jealous of Athens. After a siege,
of unknown duration, by Athens and the confederate force, it was
forced to surrender, and reduced to the condition of a tributary
subject;[595] its armed ships being doubtless taken away, and its
fortifications razed: whether any fine or ulterior penalty was
levied, we have no information.
[595] Thucyd. i, 98. It has already been stated in the preceding
chapter, that Themistoklês, as a fugitive, passed close to Naxos
while it was under siege, and incurred great danger of being
taken.
We cannot doubt that the reduction of this powerful island, however
untoward in its effects upon the equal and self-maintaining character
of the confederacy, strengthened its military force by placing the
whole Naxian fleet with new pecuniary contributions in the hands
of the chief: nor is it surprising to hear that Athens sought
both to employ this new force, and to obliterate the late act of
severity, by increased exertions against the common enemy. Though
we know no particulars respecting operations against Persia, since
the attack on Eion, such operations must have been going on; but
the expedition under Kimon, undertaken not long after the Naxian
revolt, was attended with memorable results. That commander, having
under him two hundred triremes from Athens, and one hundred from
the various confederates, was despatched to attack the Persians on
the south-western and southern coast of Asia Minor. He attacked
and drove out several of their garrisons from various Grecian
settlements, both in Karia and Lykia: among others, the important
trading city of Phasêlis, though at first resisting, and even
standing a siege, was prevailed upon by the friendly suggestions of
the Chians in Kimon’s armament to pay a contribution of ten talents
and join in the expedition. From the length of time occupied in
these various undertakings, the Persian satraps had been enabled to
assemble a powerful force, both fleet and army, near the mouth of
the river Eurymedon, in Pamphylia, under the command of Tithraustês
and Pherendatês, both of the regal blood. The fleet, chiefly
Phenician, seems to have consisted of two hundred ships, but a
farther reinforcement of eighty Phenician ships was expected, and was
actually near at hand, and the commanders were unwilling to hazard
a battle before its arrival. Kimon, anxious for the same reason to
hasten on the combat, attacked them vigorously: partly from their
inferiority of numbers, partly from discouragement at the absence of
the reinforcement, they seem to have made no strenuous resistance.
They were put to flight and driven ashore; so speedily, and with so
little loss to the Greeks, that Kimon was enabled to disembark his
men forthwith, and attack the land-force which was drawn up on shore
to protect them. The battle on land was long and gallantly contested,
but Kimon at length gained a complete victory, dispersed the army
with the capture of many prisoners, and either took or destroyed the
entire fleet. As soon as his victory and his prisoners were secured,
he sailed to Cyprus for the purpose of intercepting the reinforcement
of eighty Phenician ships in their way, and was fortunate enough
to attack them while yet they were ignorant of the victories of
the Eurymedon. These ships too were all destroyed, though most of
the crews appear to have escaped ashore on the island. Two great
victories, one at sea and the other on land, gained on the same day
by the same armament, counted with reason among the most glorious of
all Grecian exploits, and were extolled as such in the inscription on
the commemorative offering to Apollo, set up out of the tithe of the
spoils.[596] The number of prisoners, as well as the booty taken by
the victors, was immense.
[596] For the battles of the Eurymedon, see Thucyd. i, 100;
Diodor. xi, 60-62; Plutarch, Kimon, 12, 13.
The accounts of the two latter appear chiefly borrowed from
Ephorus and Kallisthenês, authors of the following century; and
from Phanodemus, an author later still. I borrow sparingly from
them, and only so far as consists with the brief statement of
Thucydidês. The narrative of Diodorus is exceedingly confused,
indeed hardly intelligible.
Phanodemus stated the number of the Persian fleet at six hundred
ships; Ephorus, at three hundred and fifty. Diodorus, following
the latter, gives three hundred and forty. Plutarch mentions the
expected reinforcement of eighty Phenician ships; which appears
to me a very credible circumstance, explaining the easy nautical
victory of Kimon at the Eurymedon. From Thucydidês, we know that
the vanquished fleet at the Eurymedon consisted of no more than
two hundred ships; for so I venture to construe the words of
Thucydidês, in spite of the authority of Dr. Arnold,—Καὶ εἶλον
(Ἀθηναῖοι) τριήρεις Φοινίκων καὶ διέφθειραν τὰς πάσας ἐς (τὰς)
διακοσίας. Upon which Dr. Arnold observes: “Amounting in all to
two hundred: that is, that the whole number of ships taken or
destroyed was two hundred,—not that the whole fleet consisted
of no more.” Admitting the correctness of this construction
(which may be defended by viii, 21), we may remark that the
defeated Phenician fleet, according to the universal practice of
antiquity, ran ashore to seek protection from its accompanying
land-force. When, therefore, this land-force was itself defeated
and dispersed, the ships would all naturally fall into the
power of the victors; or if any escaped, it would be merely by
accident. Moreover, the smaller number is in this case more
likely to be the truth, as we must suppose an easy naval victory
in order to leave strength for a strenuous land-battle on the
same day.
It is remarkable that the inscription on the commemorative
offering only specifics “one hundred Phenician ships with their
crews” as having been captured (Diodor. xi, 62). The other
hundred ships were probably destroyed. Diodorus represents Kimon
as having captured three hundred and forty ships, though he
himself cites the inscription which mentions only one hundred.
A victory thus remarkable, which thrust back the Persians to the
region eastward of Phasêlis, doubtless fortified materially the
position of the Athenian confederacy against them; but it tended not
less to exalt the reputation of Athens, and even to popularize her
with the confederates generally, from the large amount of plunder
divisible among them. Probably this increased power and popularity
stood her in stead throughout her approaching contest with Thasos, at
the same time that it explains the increasing fear and dislike of the
Peloponnesians.
Thasos was a member of the confederacy of Delos; but her quarrel
with Athens seems to have arisen out of causes quite distinct from
confederate relations. It has been already stated that the Athenians
had within the last few years expelled the Persians from the
important post of Eion, on the Strymon, the most convenient post for
the neighboring region of Thrace, which was not less distinguished
for its fertility than for its mining wealth. In the occupation of
this post, the Athenians had had time to become acquainted with the
productive character of the adjoining region, chiefly occupied by the
Edonian Thracians; and it is extremely probable that many private
settlers arrived from Athens, with the view of procuring grants
or making their fortunes by partnership with powerful Thracians
in working the gold-mines round Mount Pangæus. In so doing, they
speedily found themselves in collision with the Greeks of the
opposite island of Mount Thasos, who possessed a considerable strip
of land, with various dependent towns on the continent of Thrace, and
derived a large revenue from the mines of Skaptê Hylê, as well as
from others in the neighborhood.[597] The condition of Thasos at this
time, about 465 B. C., indicates to us the progress which the Grecian
states in the Ægean had made since their liberation from Persia. It
had been deprived both of its fortifications and of its maritime
force, by order of Darius, about 491 B. C., and must have remained in
this condition until after the repulse of Xerxes; but we now find it
well-fortified and possessing a powerful maritime force.
[597] About Thasos, see Herodot. vi, 46-48; vii, 118. The
position of Ragusa in the Adriatic, in reference to the despots
of Servia and Bosnia in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,
was very similar to that of Athens and Thasos in regard to the
Thracian princes of the interior. In Engel’s History of Ragusa
we find an account of the large gains made in that city by its
contracts to work the gold and silver mines belonging to these
princes (Engel, Geschichte des Freystaates Ragusa, sect. 36, p.
163. Wien, 1807).
In what precise manner the quarrel between the Thasians and the
Athenians of Eion manifested itself, respecting the trade and the
mines in Thrace, we are not informed; but it reached such a height
that the Athenians were induced to send a powerful armament against
the island, under the command of Kimon.[598] Having vanquished the
Thasian force at sea, they disembarked, gained various battles,
and blocked up the city by land as well as by sea. And at the same
time they undertook—what seems to have been part and parcel of the
same scheme—the establishment of a larger and more powerful colony
on Thracian ground not far from Eion. On the Strymon, about three
miles higher up than Eion, near the spot where the river narrows
itself again out of a broad expanse of the nature of a lake, was
situated the Edonian town or settlement called Ennea Hodoi, (Nine
Ways), a little above the bridge, which here served as an important
communication for all the people of the interior. Both Histiæus
and Aristagoras, the two Milesian despots, had been tempted by the
advantages of this place to commence a settlement there: both of
them had failed, and a third failure on a still grander scale was
now about to be added. The Athenians sent thither a large body of
colonists, ten thousand in number, partly from their own citizens,
partly collected from their allies: and the temptations of the site
probably rendered volunteers numerous. As far as Ennea Hodoi was
concerned, they were successful in conquering it and driving away the
Edonian possessors: but on trying to extend themselves farther to
the eastward, to a spot called Drabêskus, convenient for the mining
region, they encountered a more formidable resistance from a powerful
alliance of Thracian tribes, who had come to the aid of the Edonians
in decisive hostility to the new colony,—probably not without
instigation from the inhabitants of Thasos. All or most of the ten
thousand colonists were slain in this warfare, and the new colony
was for the time completely abandoned: we shall find it resumed
hereafter.[599]
[598] Thucyd. i, 100, 101; Plutarch, Kimon, c. 14; Diodor xi, 70.
[599] Thucyd. i, 101. Philip of Macedon, in his dispute more than
a century after this period with the Athenians respecting the
possession of Amphipolis, pretended that his ancestor, Alexander,
had been the first to acquire possession of the spot after the
expulsion of the Persians from Thrace, (see Philippi Epistola
ap. Demosthen. p. 164, R.) If this pretence had been true, Ennea
Hodoi would have been in possession of the Macedonians at this
time, when the first Athenian attempt was made upon it: but
the statement of Thucydidês shows that it was then an Edonian
township.
Disappointed as the Athenians were in this enterprise, they did not
abandon the blockade of Thasos, which held out more than two years,
and only surrendered in the third year. Its fortifications were
razed; its ships of war, thirty-three in number, taken away:[600]
its possessions and mining establishments on the opposite continent
relinquished: moreover, an immediate contribution in money was
demanded from the inhabitants, over and above the annual payment
assessed upon them for the future. The subjugation of this powerful
island was another step in the growing dominion of Athens over her
confederates.
[600] Plutarch, Kimon, c. 14. Galêpsus and Œsymê were among the
Thasian settlements on the mainland of Thrace (Thucyd. iv, 108).
The year before the Thasians surrendered, however, they had
taken a step which deserves particular notice, as indicating the
newly-gathering clouds in the Grecian political horizon. They had
made secret application to the Lacedæmonians for aid, entreating
them to draw off the attention of Athens by invading Attica; and
the Lacedæmonians, without the knowledge of Athens, having actually
engaged to comply with this request, were only prevented from
performing their promise by a grave and terrible misfortune at
home.[601] Though accidentally unperformed, however, this hostile
promise is a most significant event: it marks the growing fear
and hatred on the part of Sparta and the Peloponnesians towards
Athens, merely on general grounds of the magnitude of her power, and
without any special provocation. Nay, not only had Athens given no
provocation, but she was still actually included as a member of the
Lacedæmonian alliance, and we shall find her presently both appealed
to and acting as such. We shall hear so much of Athens, and that too
with truth, as pushing and aggressive,—and of Sparta as homekeeping
and defensive,—that the incident just mentioned becomes important
to remark. The first intent of unprovoked and even treacherous
hostility—the germ of the future Peloponnesian war—is conceived and
reduced to an engagement by Sparta.
[601] Thucyd. i, 101. οἱ δὲ ὑπέσχοντο μὲν κρύφα τῶν Ἀθηναίων καὶ
ἔμελλον, διεκωλύθησαν δὲ ὑπὸ τοῦ γενομένου σεισμοῦ.
We are told by Plutarch, that the Athenians, after the surrender of
Thasos and the liberation of the armament, had expected from Kimon
some farther conquests in Macedonia,—and even that he had actually
entered upon that project with such promise of success, that its
farther consummation was certain as well as easy. Having under
these circumstances relinquished it and returned to Athens, he was
accused by Periklês and others of having been bought off by bribes
from the Macedonian king Alexander; but was acquitted after a public
trial.[602]
[602] Plutarch, Kimon, c. 14.
During the period which had elapsed between the first formation
of the confederacy of Delos and the capture of Thasos (about
thirteen or fourteen years, B. C. 477-463), the Athenians seem to
have been occupied almost entirely in their maritime operations,
chiefly against the Persians,—having been free from embarrassments
immediately around Attica. But this freedom was not destined to
last much longer; and during the ensuing ten years, their foreign
relations near home become both active and complicated; while their
strength expands so wonderfully, that they are found competent at
once to obligations on both sides of the Ægean sea, the distant as
well as the near.
Of the incidents which had taken place in Central Greece during the
twelve or fifteen years immediately succeeding the battle of Platæa,
we have scarcely any information. The feelings of the time, between
those Greeks who had supported and those who had resisted the Persian
invader, must have remained unfriendly even after the war was at
an end, and the mere occupation of the Persian numerous host must
have inflicted severe damage both upon Thessaly and Bœotia. At the
meeting of the Amphiktyonic synod which succeeded the expulsion of
the invaders, a reward was proclaimed for the life of the Melian
Ephialtês, who had betrayed to Xerxes the mountain-path over Œta,
and thus caused the ruin of Leonidas at Thermopylæ: moreover, if
we may trust Plutarch, it was even proposed by Lacedæmon that all
the _medizing_ Greeks should be expelled from the synod,[603]—a
proposition which the more long-sighted views of Themistoklês
successfully resisted. Even the stronger measure, of razing the
fortifications of all the extra-Peloponnesian cities, from fear
that they might be used to aid some future invasion, had suggested
itself to the Lacedæmonians,—as we see from their language on the
occasion of rebuilding the walls of Athens; and in regard to Bœotia,
it appears that the headship of Thebes as well as the coherence of
the federation was for the time almost suspended. The destroyed
towns of Platæa and Thespiæ were restored, and the latter in part
repeopled,[604] under Athenian influence; and the general sentiment
of Peloponnesus as well as of Athens would have sustained these towns
against Thebes, if the latter had tried at that time to enforce
her supremacy over them in the name of “ancient Bœotian right and
usage.”[605] The Theban government was then in discredit for its
previous _medism_,—even in the eyes of Thebans themselves;[606] while
the party opposed to Thebes in the other towns was so powerful, that
many of them would probably have been severed from the federation to
become allies of Athens like Platæa, if the interference of Lacedæmon
had not arrested such a tendency. The latter was in every other
part of Greece an enemy to organized aggregation of cities, either
equal or unequal, and was constantly bent on keeping the little
autonomous communities separate;[607] whence she sometimes became
by accident the protector of the weaker cities against compulsory
alliance imposed upon them by the stronger: the interest of her own
ascendency was in this respect analogous to that of the Persians when
they dictated the peace of Antalkidas,—of the Romans in administering
their extensive conquests,—and of the kings of medieval Europe in
breaking the authority of the barons over their vassals. But though
such was the policy of Sparta elsewhere, her fear of Athens, which
grew up during the ensuing twenty years, made her act differently in
regard to Bœotia: she had no other means of maintaining that country
as her own ally and as the enemy of Athens, except by organizing the
federation effectively, and strengthening the authority of Thebes.
It is to this revolution in Spartan politics that Thebes owed the
recovery of her ascendency,[608]—a revolution so conspicuously
marked, that the Spartans even aided in enlarging her circuit and
improving her fortifications: nor was it without difficulty that she
maintained this position, even when recovered, against the dangerous
neighborhood of Athens, a circumstance which made her not only a
vehement partisan of Sparta, but even more furiously anti-Athenian
than Sparta, down to the close of the Peloponnesian war.
[603] Plutarch, Themistokl. c. 20.
[604] See the case of Sikinnus, the person through whom
Themistoklês communicated with Xerxes before the battle of
Salamis, and for whom he afterwards procured admission among the
batch of newly-introduced citizens at Thespiæ (Herodot. viii. 75).
[605] Τὰ τῶν Βοιωτῶν πάτρια—τὰ κοινὰ τῶν πάντων Βοιωτῶν πάτρια
(Thucyd. iii, 61-65).
[606] Thucyd. iii, 62.
[607] See, among many other evidences, the remarkable case of the
Olynthian confederacy (Xenophon, Hellen. v, 2, 16).
[608] Diodor. xi, 81; Justin, iii, 6.
The revolution, just noticed, in Spartan politics towards Bœotia, did
not manifest itself until about twenty years after the commencement
of the Athenian maritime confederacy. During the course of those
twenty years, we know that Sparta had had more than one battle to
sustain in Arcadia, against the towns and villages of that country,
in which she came forth victorious: but we have no particulars
respecting these incidents. We also know that a few years after the
Persian invasion, the inhabitants of Elis concentrated themselves
from many dispersed townships into the one main city of Elis:[609]
and it seems probable that Lepreum in Triphylia, and one or two of
the towns of Achaia, were either formed or enlarged by a similar
process near about the same time.[610] Such aggregation of towns
out of preëxisting separate villages was not conformable to the
views, nor favorable to the ascendency, of Lacedæmon: but there
can be little doubt that her foreign policy, after the Persian
invasion, was both embarrassed and discredited by the misconduct of
her two contemporary kings, Pausanias, who, though only regent, was
practically equivalent to a king, and Leotychidês,—not to mention
the rapid development of Athens and Peiræus. But in the year B. C.
464, the year preceding the surrender of Thasos to the Athenian
armament, a misfortune of yet more terrific moment befell Sparta.
A violent earthquake took place in the immediate neighborhood of
Sparta itself, destroying a large portion of the town, and a vast
number of lives, many of them Spartan citizens. It was the judgment
of the earth-shaking god Poseidon, according to the view of the
Lacedæmonians themselves, for a recent violation of his sanctuary
at Tænarus, from whence certain suppliant Helots had been dragged
away not long before for punishment,[611]—not improbably some of
those Helots whom Pausanias had instigated to revolt. The sentiment
of the Helots, at all times one of enmity towards their masters,
appears at this moment to have been unusually inflammable: so that an
earthquake at Sparta, especially an earthquake construed as divine
vengeance for Helot blood recently spilt, was sufficient to rouse
many of them at once into revolt, together with some even of the
Periœki. The insurgents took arms and marched directly upon Sparta,
which they were on the point of mastering during the first moments
of consternation, had not the bravery and presence of mind of the
young king Archidamus reanimated the surviving citizens and repelled
the attack. But though repelled, the insurgents were not subdued:
for some time they maintained the field against the Spartan force,
and sometimes with considerable advantage, since Aeimnêstus, the
warrior by whose hand Mardonius had fallen at Platæa, was defeated
and slain with three hundred followers in the plain of Stenyklêrus,
overpowered by superior numbers.[612] When at length defeated, they
occupied and fortified the memorable hill of Ithômê, the ancient
citadel of their Messenian forefathers. Here they made a long and
obstinate defence, supporting themselves doubtless by incursions
throughout Laconia: nor was defence difficult, seeing that the
Lacedæmonians were at that time confessedly incapable of assailing
even the most imperfect species of fortification. After the siege had
lasted some two or three years, without any prospect of success, the
Lacedæmonians, beginning to despair of their own sufficiency for the
undertaking, invoked the aid of their various allies, among whom we
find specified the Æginetans, the Athenians, and the Platæans.[613]
The Athenian troops are said to have consisted of four thousand men,
under the command of Kimon; Athens being still included in the list
of Lacedæmonian allies.
[609] Diodor. xi. 54; Strabo, viii, p. 337.
[610] Strabo, viii, pp. 337, 348, 356.
[611] Thucyd. i, 101-128; Diodor. xi, 62.
[612] Herodot. ix. 64.
[613] Thucyd. i, 102; iii, 54; iv, 57.
So imperfect were the means of attacking walls at that day, even
for the most intelligent Greeks, that this increased force made no
immediate impression on the fortified hill of Ithômê. And when the
Lacedæmonians saw that their Athenian allies were not more successful
than they had been themselves, they soon passed from surprise into
doubt, mistrust, and apprehension. The troops had given no ground
for such a feeling, and Kimon, their general, was notorious for his
attachment to Sparta; yet the Lacedæmonians could not help calling to
mind the ever-wakeful energy and ambition of these Ionic strangers,
whom they had introduced into the interior of Laconia, together
with their own promise—though doubtless a secret promise—to invade
Attica, not long before, for the benefit of the Thasians. They even
began to fear that the Athenians might turn against them, and listen
to solicitations for espousing the cause of the besieged. Under
the influence of such apprehensions, they dismissed the Athenian
contingent forthwith, on pretence of having no farther occasion for
them; while all the other allies were retained, and the siege or
blockade went on as before.[614]
[614] Thucyd. i, 102. τὴν μὲν ὑποψίαν οὐ δηλοῦντες, εἰπόντες δὲ
ὅτι οὐδὲν προσδέονται αὐτῶν ἔτι.
Mr. Fynes Clinton (Fast. Hellen. ann. 464-461 B. C.), following
Plutarch, recognizes two Lacedæmonian requests to Athens, and
two Athenian expeditions to the aid of the Spartans, both under
Kimon; the first in 464 B. C., immediately on the happening of
the earthquake and consequent revolt,—the second in 461 B. C.,
after the war had lasted some time.
In my judgment, there is no ground for supposing more than
one application made to Athens, and one expedition. The
duplication has arisen from Plutarch, who has construed too much
as historical reality the comic exaggeration of Aristophanês
(Aristoph. Lysistrat. 1138; Plutarch, Kimon, 16). The heroine
of the latter, Lysistrata, wishing to make peace between the
Lacedæmonians and Athenians, and reminding each of the services
which they had received from the other, might permit herself
to say to the Lacedæmonians: “Your envoy, Perikleidas, came to
Athens, pale with terror, and put himself a suppliant at the
altar to entreat our help as a matter of life and death, while
Poseidon was still shaking the earth, and the Messenians were
pressing you hard: then Kimon with four thousand hoplites went
and achieved your complete salvation.” This is all very telling
and forcible, as a portion of the Aristophanic play, but there is
no historical truth in it except the fact of an application made
and an expedition sent in consequence.
We know that the earthquake took place at the time when the
siege of Thasos was yet going on, because it was the reason
which prevented the Lacedæmonians from aiding the besieged by an
invasion of Attica. But Kimon commanded at the siege of Thasos
(Plutarch, Kimon, c. 14); accordingly, he could not have gone as
commander to Laconia at the time when this first expedition is
alleged to have been undertaken.
Next, Thucydidês acknowledges only one expedition: nor, indeed,
does Diodorus (xi, 64), though this is of minor consequence.
Now mere silence on the part of Thucydidês, in reference to the
events of a period which he only professes to survey briefly,
is not always a very forcible negative argument. But in this
case, his account of the expedition of 461 B. C., with its very
important consequences, is such as to exclude the supposition
that _he knew_ of any prior expedition, two or three years
earlier. Had he known of any such, he could not have written
the account which now stands in his text. He dwells especially
on the prolongation of the war, and on the incapacity of the
Lacedæmonians for attacking walls, as the reasons why they
invoked the Athenians as well as their other allies: he implies
that their presence in Laconia was a new and threatening
incident: moreover, when he tells us how much the Athenians were
incensed by their abrupt and mistrustful dismissal, he could
not have omitted to notice, as an aggravation of this feeling,
that, only two or three years before, they had rescued Lacedæmon
from the brink of ruin. Let us add, that the supposition of
Sparta, the first military power in Greece, and distinguished
for her unintermitting discipline, being reduced all at once
to a condition of such utter helplessness as to owe her safety
to foreign intervention,—is highly improbable in itself:
inadmissible, except on very good evidence.
For the reasons here stated. I reject the first expedition into
Laconia mentioned in Plutarch.
This dismissal, ungracious in the extreme, and probably rendered
even more offensive by the habitual roughness of Spartan dealing,
excited the strongest exasperation both among the Athenian soldiers
and the Athenian people,—an exasperation heightened by circumstances
immediately preceding. For the resolution to send auxiliaries into
Laconia, when the Lacedæmonians first applied for them, had not been
taken without considerable debate at Athens: the party of Periklês
and Ephialtês, habitually in opposition to Kimon, and partisans of
the forward democratical movement, had strongly discountenanced
it, and conjured their countrymen not to assist in renovating and
strengthening their most formidable rival. Perhaps the previous
engagement of the Lacedæmonians to invade Attica on behalf of the
Thasians may have become known to them, though not so formally as to
exclude denial; and even supposing this engagement to have remained
unknown at that time to every one, there were not wanting other
grounds to render the policy of refusal plausible. But Kimon, with
an earnestness which even the philo-Laconian Kritias afterwards
characterized as a sacrifice of the grandeur of Athens to the
advantage of Lacedæmon,[615] employed all his credit and influence
in seconding the application. The maintenance of alliance with
Sparta on equal footing,—peace among the great powers of Greece,
and common war against Persia,—together with the prevention of all
farther democratical changes in Athens,—were the leading points
of his political creed. As yet, both his personal and political
ascendency was predominant over his opponents: as yet, there was
no manifest conflict, which had only just begun to show itself in
the case of Thasos, between the maritime power of Athens, and the
union of land-force under Sparta: and Kimon could still treat both
of these phenomena as coexisting necessities of Hellenic well-being.
Though no way distinguished as a speaker, he carried with him the
Athenian assembly by appealing to a large and generous patriotism,
which forbade them to permit the humiliation of Sparta. “Consent
not to see Hellas lamed of one leg, and Athens drawing without her
yoke-fellow;”[616] such was his language, as we learn from his friend
and companion, the Chian poet Ion: and in the lips of Kimon it proved
effective. It is a speech of almost melancholy interest, since ninety
years passed over before such an appeal was ever again addressed to
an Athenian assembly.[617] The despatch of the auxiliaries was thus
dictated by a generous sentiment, to the disregard of what might seem
political prudence: and we may imagine the violent reaction which
took place in Athenian feeling, when the Lacedæmonians repaid them
by singling out their troops from all the other allies as objects
of insulting suspicion,—we may imagine the triumph of Periklês
and Ephialtês, who had opposed the mission,—and the vast loss of
influence to Kimon, who had brought it about,—when Athens received
again into her public assemblies the hoplites sent back from Ithômê.
[615] Plutarch, Kimon, c. 16.
[616] Plutarch, Kimon, c. 16. Ὁ δ’ Ἴων ἀπομνημονεύει καὶ τὸν
λόγον, ᾧ μάλιστα τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἐκίνησε, παρακαλὼν μήτε τὴν
Ἑλλάδα χωλὴν, μήτε τὴν πόλιν ἑτερόζυγα, περιϊδεῖν γεγενημένην.
[617] See Xenophon, Hellenic. vi, 3,—about 372 B. C.—a little
before the battle of Leuktra.
Both in the internal constitution, indeed,—of which more
presently,—and in the external policy of Athens, the dismissal of
these soldiers was pregnant with results. The Athenians immediately
passed a formal resolution to renounce the alliance between
themselves and Lacedæmon against the Persians. They did more:
they looked out for land enemies of Lacedæmon, with whom to ally
themselves. Of these by far the first, both in Hellenic rank and
in real power, was Argos. That city, neutral during the Persian
invasion, had now recovered from the effects of the destructive
defeat suffered about thirty years before from the Spartan king
Kleomenês: the sons of the ancient citizens had grown to manhood, and
the temporary predominance of the Periœki, acquired in consequence
of the ruinous loss of citizens in that defeat, had been again put
down. In the neighborhood of Argos, and dependent upon it, were
situated Mykenæ, Tiryns, and Midea,—small in power and importance,
but rich in mythical renown. Disdaining the inglorious example of
Argos, at the period of danger, these towns had furnished contingents
both to Thermopylæ and Platæa, which their powerful neighbor had
been unable either to prevent at the time, or to avenge afterwards,
from fear of the intervention of Lacedæmon. But so soon as the
latter was seen to be endangered and occupied at home, with a
formidable Messenian revolt, the Argeians availed themselves of the
opportunity to attack not only Mykenæ and Tiryns, but also Orneæ,
Midea, and other semi-dependent towns around them. Several of these
were reduced; and the inhabitants robbed of their autonomy, were
incorporated with the domain of Argos: but the Mykenians, partly from
the superior gallantry of their resistance, partly from jealousy
of their mythical renown, were either sold as slaves or driven
into banishment.[618] Through these victories Argos was now more
powerful than ever, and the propositions of alliance made to her by
Athens, while strengthening both the two against Lacedæmon, opened
to her a new chance of recovering her lost headship in Peloponnesus.
The Thessalians became members of this new alliance, which was a
defensive alliance against Lacedæmon: and hopes were doubtless
entertained of drawing in some of the habitual allies of the latter.
[618] Diodor. xi, 65; Strabo, viii, p. 372; Pausan. ii, 16,
17, 25. Diodorus places this incident in 468 B. C.: but as it
undoubtedly comes after the earthquake at Sparta, we must suppose
it to have happened about 463 B. C. See Mr. Fynes Clinton, Fasti
Hellenici, Appendix, 8.