The new character which Athens had thus assumed, as a competitor

for landed alliances, not less than for maritime ascendency,

came opportunely for the protection of the neighboring town of

Megara. It appears that Corinth, perhaps instigated, like Argos,

by the helplessness of the Lacedæmonians, had been making border

encroachments on the one side upon Kleônæ, on the other side upon

Megara:[619] on which ground the latter, probably despairing of

protection from Lacedæmon, renounced the Lacedæmonian connection,

and obtained permission to enrol herself as an ally of Athens.[620]

This was an acquisition of signal value to the Athenians, since it

both opened to them the whole range of territory across the outer

isthmus of Corinth to the interior of the Krissæan gulf, on which the

Megarian port of Pegæ was situated, and placed them in possession

of the passes of Mount Geraneia, so that they could arrest the

march of a Peloponnesian army over the isthmus, and protect Attica

from invasion. It was, moreover, of great importance in its effects

on Grecian politics: for it was counted as a wrong by Lacedæmon,

gave deadly offence to the Corinthians, and lighted up the flames

of war between them and Athens; their allies, the Epidaurians and

Æginetans, taking their part. Though Athens had not yet been guilty

of unjust encroachment against any Peloponnesian state, her ambition

and energy had inspired universal awe; while the maritime states in

the neighborhood, such as Corinth, Epidaurus, and Ægina, saw these

terror-striking qualities threatening them at their own doors,

through her alliance with Argos and Megara. Moreover, it is probable

that the ancient feud between the Athenians and Æginetans, though

dormant since a little before the Persian invasion, had never been

appeased or forgotten: so that the Æginetans, dwelling within sight

of Peiræus, were at once best able to appreciate, and most likely to

dread, the enormous maritime power now possessed by Athens. Periklês

was wont to call Ægina the eyesore of Peiræus:[621] but we may be

very sure that Peiræus, grown into a vast fortified port, within the

existing generation, was in a much stronger degree the eyesore of

Ægina.

[619] Plutarch, Kimon, c. 17.

[620] Thucyd. i. 103.

[621] Plutarch, Periklês, c. 8.

The Athenians were at this time actively engaged in prosecuting

the war against Persia, having a fleet of no less than two hundred

sail, equipped by or from the confederacy collectively, now serving

in Cyprus and on the Phenician coast. Moreover, the revolt of the

Egyptians under Inaros, about 460 B. C., opened to them new means

of action against the Great King; and their fleet, by invitation of

the revolters, sailed up the Nile to Memphis, where there seemed at

first a good prospect of throwing off the Persian dominion. Yet in

spite of so great an abstraction from their disposable force, their

military operations near home were conducted with unabated vigor:

and the inscription which remains,—a commemoration of their citizens

of the Erechtheid tribe, who were slain in one and the same year,

in Cyprus, Egypt, Phenicia, the Halieis, Ægina, and Megara,—brings

forcibly before us that energy which astonished and even alarmed

their contemporaries. Their first proceedings at Megara were of a

nature altogether novel, in the existing condition of Greece. It was

necessary for the Athenians to protect their new ally against the

superiority of Peloponnesian land-force, and to insure a constant

communication with it by sea; but the city, like most of the ancient

Hellenic towns, was situated on a hill at some distance from the sea,

separated from its port Nisæa by a space of nearly one mile. One of

the earliest proceedings of the Athenians was to build two lines

of wall, near and parallel to each other, connecting the city with

Nisæa, so that the two thus formed one continuous fortress, wherein

a standing Athenian garrison was maintained, with the constant means

of succor from Athens in case of need. These “long walls,” though

afterwards copied in other places, and on a larger scale, were at

that juncture an ingenious invention, for the purpose of extending

the maritime arm of Athens to an inland city.

The first operations of Corinth, however, were not directed against

Megara. The Athenians having undertaken a landing in the territory

of the Halieis, the population of the southern Argolic peninsula,

bordering on Trœzen and Hermionê, were defeated on land by the

Corinthian and Epidaurian forces: possibly it may have been in this

expedition that they acquired possession of Trœzen, which we find

afterwards in their dependence, without knowing when it became so.

But in a sea-fight which took place off the island of Kekryphaleia,

between Ægina and the Argolic peninsula, the Athenians gained the

victory. After this victory and defeat,—neither of them apparently

very decisive,—the Æginetans began to take a more energetic part in

the war, and brought out their full naval force, together with that

of their allies,—Corinthians, Epidaurians, and other Peloponnesians:

while Athens equipped a fleet of corresponding magnitude, summoning

her allies also; though we do not know the actual numbers on either

side. In the great naval battle which ensued off the island of Ægina,

the superiority of the new nautical tactics, acquired by twenty

years’ practice of the Athenians since the Persian war,—over the old

Hellenic ships and seamen, as shown in those states where, at the

time of the battle of Marathon, the maritime strength of Greece had

resided,—was demonstrated by a victory most complete and decisive.

The Peloponnesian and Dorian seamen had as yet had no experience

of the improved seacraft of Athens, and when we find how much they

were disconcerted with it, even twenty-eight years afterwards, at

the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, we shall not wonder at its

destructive effect upon them in this early battle. The maritime power

of Ægina was irrecoverably ruined: the Athenians captured seventy

ships of war, landed a large force upon the island, and commenced the

siege of the city by land as well as by sea.[622]

[622] Thucyd. i, 105; Lysias, Orat. Funebr. c. 10. Diodor. xi. 78.

If the Lacedæmonians had not been occupied at home by the blockade

of Ithômê, they would have been probably induced to invade Attica as

a diversion to the Æginetans; especially as the Persian Megabazus

came to Sparta at this time on the part of Artaxerxes to prevail

upon them to do so, in order that the Athenians might be constrained

to retire from Egypt: this Persian brought with him a large sum of

money, but was nevertheless obliged to return without effecting his

mission.[623] The Corinthians and Epidaurians, however, while they

carried to Ægina a reinforcement of three hundred hoplites, did

their best to aid her farther by an attack upon Megara; which place,

it was supposed, the Athenians could not possibly relieve without

withdrawing their forces from Ægina, inasmuch as so many of their

men were at the same time serving in Egypt. But the Athenians showed

themselves equal to all these three exigencies at one and the same

time,—to the great disappointment of their enemies. Myrônidês marched

from Athens to Megara at the head of the citizens in the two extremes

of military age, old and young; these being the only troops at home.

He fought the Corinthians near the town, gaining a slight, but

debatable advantage, which he commemorated by a trophy, as soon as

the Corinthians had returned home. But the latter when they arrived

at home, were so much reproached by their own old citizens, for not

having vanquished the refuse of the Athenian military force,[624]

that they returned back at the end of twelve days and erected a

trophy on their side, laying claim to a victory in the past battle.

The Athenians, marching out of Megara, attacked them a second

time, and gained on this occasion a decisive victory. The defeated

Corinthians were still more unfortunate in their retreat; for a body

of them, missing their road, became entangled in a space of private

ground, inclosed on every side by a deep ditch, and having only one

narrow entrance. Myrônidês, detecting this fatal mistake, planted his

hoplites at the entrance to prevent their escape, and then surrounded

the enclosure with his light-armed troops, who, with their missile

weapons, slew all the Corinthian hoplites, without possibility either

of flight or resistance. The bulk of the Corinthian army effected

their retreat, but the destruction of this detachment was a sad blow

to the city.[625]

[623] Thucyd. i, 109.

[624] Lysias, Orat. Funebr. c. 10. ἐνίκων μαχόμενοι ἅπασαν τὴν

δύναμιν τὴν ἐκείνων τοῖς ἤδη ἀπειρηκόσι καὶ τοῖς οὔπω δυναμένοις,

etc.

The incident mentioned by Thucydidês about the Corinthians,

that the old men of their own city were so indignant against

them on their return, is highly characteristic of Grecian

manners,—κακιζόμενοι ὑπὸ τῶν ἐν τῇ πόλει πρεσβυτέρων, etc.

[625] Thucyd. i, 106. πάθος μέγα τοῦτο Κορινθίοις ἐγένετο.

Compare Diodor. xi, 78, 79,—whose chronology, however, is very

misleading.

Splendid as the success of the Athenians had been during this year,

both on land and at sea, it was easy for them to foresee that

the power of their enemies would presently be augmented by the

Lacedæmonians taking the field. Partly on this account,—partly also

from the more energetic phase of democracy, and the long-sighted

views of Periklês, which were now becoming ascendent in the city,—the

Athenians began the stupendous undertaking of connecting Athens

with the sea by means of long walls. The idea of this measure had

doubtless been first suggested by the recent erection of long walls,

though for so much smaller a distance, between Megara and Nisæa:

for without such an intermediate stepping-stone, the idea of a wall

forty stadia long (equal to four and a half miles) to join Athens

with Peiræus, and another wall of thirty-five stadia (equal to about

four miles) to join it with Phalêrum, would have appeared extravagant

even to the sanguine temper of Athenians,—as it certainly would

have seemed a few years earlier to Themistoklês himself. Coming as

an immediate sequel of great recent victories, and while Ægina,

the great Dorian naval power, was prostrate and under blockade, it

excited the utmost alarm among the Peloponnesians,—being regarded

as the second great stride,[626] at once conspicuous and of lasting

effect, in Athenian ambition, next to the fortification of Peiræus.

But besides this feeling in the bosom of enemies, the measure was

also interwoven with the formidable contention of political parties

then going on at Athens. Kimon had been recently ostracized; and the

democratical movement pressed by Periklês and Ephialtês—of which more

presently—was in its full tide of success, yet not without a violent

and unprincipled opposition on the part of those who supported the

existing constitution. Now, the long walls formed a part of the

foreign policy of Periklês, continuing on a gigantic scale the plans

of Themistoklês when he first schemed the Peiræus. They were framed

to render Athens capable of carrying on war against any superiority

of landed attack, and of bidding defiance to the united force of

Peloponnesus. But though thus calculated for contingencies which

a long-sighted man might see gathering in the distance, the new

walls were, almost on the same grounds, obnoxious to a considerable

number of Athenians: to the party recently headed by Kimon, who were

attached to the Lacedæmonian connection, and desired above all things

to maintain peace at home, reserving the energies of the state for

anti-Persian enterprise: to many landed proprietors in Attica, whom

they seemed to threaten with approaching invasion and destruction of

their territorial possessions: to the rich men and aristocrats of

Athens, averse to a still closer contact and amalgamation with the

maritime multitude in Peiræus: lastly, perhaps, to a certain vein of

old Attic feeling, which might look upon the junction of Athens with

the separate demes of Peiræus and Phalêrum as effacing the special

associations connected with the holy rock of Athênê. When, to all

these grounds of opposition, we add, the expense and trouble of the

undertaking itself, the interference with private property, the

peculiar violence of party which happened then to be raging, and the

absence of a large proportion of military citizens in Egypt,—we shall

hardly be surprised to find that the projected long walls brought

on a risk of the most serious character both for Athens and her

democracy. If any farther proof were wanting of the vast importance

of these long walls, in the eyes both of friends and of enemies, we

might find it in the fact, that their destruction was the prominent

mark of Athenian humiliation after the battle of Ægos Potamos, and

their restoration the immediate boon of Pharnabazus and Konon after

the victory of Knidus.

[626] Καὶ τῶνδε ὑμεῖς αἴτιοι, τό τε πρῶτον ἐάσαντες αὐτοὺς

τὴν πόλιν μετὰ τὰ Μηδικὰ κρατῦναι, καὶ ὕστερον τὰ μακρὰ

στῆσαι τείχη,—is the language addressed by the Corinthians

to the Spartans, in reference to Athens, a little before the

Peloponnesian war (Thucyd. i, 69).

Under the influence of the alarm now spread by the proceedings

of Athens, the Lacedæmonians were prevailed upon to undertake an

expedition out of Peloponnesus, although the Helots in Ithômê were

not yet reduced to surrender. Their force consisted of fifteen

hundred troops of their own, and ten thousand of their various

allies, under the regent Nikomêdês. The ostensible motive, or the

pretence, for this march, was the protection of the little territory

of Doris against the Phocians, who had recently invaded it and

taken one of its three towns. The mere approach of so large a force

immediately compelled the Phocians to relinquish their conquest,

but it was soon seen that this was only a small part of the objects

of Sparta, and that her main purposes, under instigation of the

Corinthians, were directed against the aggrandizement of Athens.

It could not escape the penetration of Corinth, that the Athenians

might presently either enlist or constrain the towns of Bœotia into

their alliance, as they had recently acquired Megara, in addition to

their previous ally, Platæa: for the Bœotian federation was at this

time much disorganized, and Thebes, its chief, had never recovered

her ascendency since the discredit of her support lent to the

Persian invasion. To strengthen Thebes, and to render her ascendency

effective over the Bœotian cities, was the best way of providing a

neighbor at once powerful and hostile to the Athenians, so as to

prevent their farther aggrandizement by land: it was the same policy

as Epaminondas pursued eighty years afterwards in organizing Arcadia

and Messênê against Sparta. Accordingly, the Peloponnesian force was

now employed partly in enlarging and strengthening the fortifications

of Thebes herself, partly in constraining the other Bœotian cities

into effective obedience to her supremacy: probably by placing

their governments in the hands of citizens of known oligarchical

politics,[627] and perhaps banishing suspected opponents. To this

scheme the Thebans lent themselves with earnestness; promising to

keep down for the future their border neighbors, so as to spare the

necessity of armies coming from Sparta.[628]

[627] Diodor. xii, 81; Justin, iii, 6. Τῆς μὲν τῶν Θηβαίων πόλεως

μείζονα τὸν περίβολον κατεσκεύασαν, τὰς δ’ ἐν Βοιωτίᾳ πόλεις

ἠνάγκασαν ὑποτάττεσθαι τοῖς Θηβαίοις.

[628] Diodor. l. c. It must probably be to the internal affairs

of Bœotia, somewhere about this time, full as they were of

internal dissension, that the dictum and simile of Periklês

alludes,—which Aristotle notices in his Rhetoric. iii, 4, 2.

But there was also a farther design, yet more important, in

contemplation by the Spartans and Corinthians. The oligarchical

opposition at Athens were so bitterly hostile to the Long Walls, to

Periklês, and to the democratical movement, that several of them

opened a secret negotiation with the Peloponnesian leaders, inviting

them into Attica, and entreating their aid in an internal rising

for the purpose not only of putting a stop to the Long Walls, but

also of subverting the democracy. And the Peloponnesian army, while

prosecuting its operations in Bœotia, waited in hopes of seeing the

Athenian malcontents in arms, encamping at Tanagra, on the very

borders of Attica, for the purpose of immediate coöperation with

them. The juncture was undoubtedly one of much hazard for Athens,

especially as the ostracized Kimon and his remaining friends in the

city were suspected of being implicated in the conspiracy. But the

Athenian leaders, aware of the Lacedæmonian operations in Bœotia,

knew also what was meant by the presence of the army on their

immediate borders, and took decisive measures to avert the danger.

Having obtained a reinforcement of one thousand Argeians and some

Thessalian horse, they marched out to Tanagra, with the full Athenian

force then at home; which must, of course, have consisted chiefly

of the old and the young, the same who had fought under Myrônidês

at Megara; for the blockade of Ægina was still going on. Nor was

it possible for the Lacedæmonian army to return into Peloponnesus

without fighting; for the Athenians, masters of the Megarid, were

in possession of the difficult highlands of Geraneia, the road of

march along the isthmus; while the Athenian fleet, by means of the

harbor of Pegæ, was prepared to intercept them, if they tried to come

by sea across the Krissæan gulf, by which way it would appear that

they had come out. Near Tanagra, a bloody battle took place between

the two armies, wherein the Lacedæmonians were victorious, chiefly

from the desertion of the Thessalian horse, who passed over to them

in the very heat of the engagement.[629] But though the advantage

was on their side, it was not sufficiently decisive to favor the

contemplated rising in Attica: nor did the Peloponnesians gain

anything by it, except an undisturbed retreat over the highlands of

Geraneia, after having partially ravaged the Megarid.

[629] Thucyd. i, 107.

Though the battle of Tanagra was a defeat, yet there were

circumstances connected with it which rendered its effects highly

beneficial to Athens. The ostracized Kimon presented himself on the

field as soon as the army had passed over the boundaries of Attica,

requesting to be allowed to occupy his station as an hoplite and to

fight in the ranks of his tribe,—the Œnêis. But such was the belief,

entertained by the members of the senate and by his political enemies

present, that he was an accomplice in the conspiracy known to be

on foot, that permission was refused and he was forced to retire.

In departing, he conjured his personal friends, Euthippus, of the

deme Anaphlystus, and others, to behave in such a manner as might

wipe away the stain resting upon his fidelity, and in part also upon

theirs. His friends retained his panoply, and assigned to it the

station in the ranks which he would himself have occupied: they then

entered the engagement with desperate resolution, and one hundred of

them fell side by side in their ranks. Periklês, on his part, who was

present among the hoplites of his own tribe, the Akamantis, aware of

this application and repulse of Kimon, thought it incumbent upon him

to display not merely his ordinary personal courage, but an unusual

recklessness of life and safety, though it happened that he escaped

unwounded. All these incidents brought about a generous sympathy and

spirit of compromise among the contending parties at Athens, while

the unshaken patriotism of Kimon and his friends discountenanced and

disarmed those conspirators who had entered into correspondence with

the enemy, at the same time that it roused a repentant admiration

towards the ostracized leader himself. Such was the happy working

of this new sentiment that a decree was shortly proposed and

carried,—proposed too, by Periklês himself,—to abridge the ten years

of Kimon’s ostracism, and permit his immediate return.[630] We may

recollect that, under circumstances partly analogous, Themistoklês

had himself proposed the restoration of his rival Aristeidês from

ostracism, a little before the battle of Salamis:[631] and in both

cases, the suspension of enmity between the two leaders was partly

the sign, partly also the auxiliary cause, of reconciliation and

renewed fraternity among the general body of citizens. It was a

moment analogous to that salutary impulse of compromise, and harmony

of parties, which followed the extinction of the oligarchy of Four

Hundred, forty-six years afterwards, and on which Thucydidês dwells

emphatically as the salvation of Athens in her distress,—a moment

rare in free communities generally, not less than among the jealous

competitors for political ascendency at Athens.[632]

[630] Plutarch, Kimon, c. 14; Periklês, c. 10. Plutarch

represents the Athenians as having recalled Kimon from fear of

the Lacedæmonians who had just beaten them at Tanagra, and for

the purpose of procuring peace. He adds that Kimon obtained

peace for them forthwith. Both these assertions are incorrect.

The extraordinary successes in Bœotia, which followed so quickly

after the defeat at Tanagra, show that the Athenians were under

no impressions of fear at that juncture, and that the recall of

Kimon proceeded from quite different feelings. Moreover, the

peace with Sparta was not made till some years afterwards.

[631] Plutarch, Themistoklês, c. 10.

[632] Plutarch, Kimon, c. 17; Periklês, c. 10; Thucyd. viii, 97.

Plutarch observes, respecting this reconciliation of parties

after the battle of Tanagra, after having mentioned that Periklês

himself proposed the restoration of Kimon—

Οὕτω τότε πολιτικαὶ μὲν ἦσαν αἱ διαφοραὶ, μέτριοι δὲ οἱ θυμοὶ

καὶ πρὸς τὸ κοινὸν εὐανάκλητοι σύμφερον, ἡ δὲ φιλοτιμία πάντων

ἐπικρατοῦσα τῶν παθῶν τοῖς τῆς πατρίδος ὑπεχώρει καίροις.

Which remarks are very analogous to those of Thucydidês, in

recounting the memorable proceedings of the year 411 B. C., after

the deposition of the oligarchy of Four Hundred (Thucyd. viii,

97).

Καὶ οὐχ ἥκιστα δὴ τὸν πρῶτον χρόνον ἐπί γε ἐμοῦ Ἀθηναῖοι

φαίνονται εὖ πολιτεύσαντες· μετρία γὰρ ἥ τε ἐς τοὺς ὀλίγους καὶ

τοὺς πολλοὺς ξύγκρασις ἐγένετο, καὶ ἐκ πονηρῶν τῶν πραγμάτων

γενομένων τοῦτο πρῶτον ἀνήνεγκε τὴν πόλιν. I may remark that

the explanatory note of Dr. Arnold on this passage is less

instructive than his notes usually are, and even involves, in

my judgment, an erroneous supposition as to the meaning. Dr.

Arnold says: “It appears that the constitution as now fixed, was

_at first_, in the opinion of Thucydidês, the best that Athens

had ever enjoyed within his memory; that is, the best since the

complete ascendancy of the democracy effected under Periklês.

But how long a period is meant to be included by the words τὸν

πρῶτον χρόνον, and when, and how, did the implied change take

place? Τὸν πρῶτον χρόνον can hardly apply to the whole remaining

term of the war, as if this improved constitution had been first

subverted by the triumph of the oligarchy under the Thirty, and

then superseded by the restoration of the old democracy after

their overthrow. Yet Xenophon mentions no intermediate change in

the government between the beginning of his history and the end

of the war,” etc.

Now I do not think that Dr. Arnold rightly interprets τὸν πρῶτον

χρόνον. The phrase appears to me equivalent to τοῦτον τὸν χρόνον

πρῶτον: the words τὸν πρῶτον χρόνον, apply the comparison

altogether to the period _preceding_ this event here described,

and not to the period _following_ it. “And it was _during this

period first_, in my time at least, that the Athenians most of

all behaved like good citizens: for the Many and the Few met

each other in a spirit of moderation, and this first brought up

the city from its deep existing distress.” No such comparison is

intended as Dr. Arnold supposes, between the first moments after

this juncture, and the subsequent changes: the comparison is

between the political temper of the Athenians at this juncture,

and their usual temper as far back as Thucydidês could recollect.

Next, the words εὖ πολιτεύσαντες are understood by Dr. Arnold

in a sense too special and limited,—as denoting merely the new

constitution, or positive organic enactments, which the Athenians

now introduced. But it appears to me that the words are of wider

import: meaning the general temper of political parties, both

reciprocally towards each other and towards the commonwealth:

their inclination to relinquish antipathies, to accommodate

points of difference, and to coöperate with each other heartily

against the enemy, suspending those ἰδίας φιλοτιμίας, ἰδίας

διαβολὰς περὶ τῆς τοῦ δήμου προστασίας (ii, 65) noticed as

having been so mischievous before. Of course, any constitutional

arrangements introduced at such a period would partake of

the moderate and harmonious spirit then prevalent, and would

therefore form a part of what is commended by Thucydidês: but

his commendation is not confined to them specially. Compare the

phrase ii, 38. ἐλευθέρως δὲ τά τε πρὸς τὸ κοινὸν πολιτεύομεν,

etc.

So powerful was this burst of fresh patriotism and unanimity after

the battle of Tanagra, which produced the recall of Kimon, and

appears to have overlaid the preëxisting conspiracy, that the

Athenians were quickly in a condition to wipe off the stain of

their defeat. It was on the sixty-second day after the battle that

they undertook an aggressive march under Myrônidês into Bœotia: the

extreme precision of this date,—being the single case throughout

the summary of events between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars,

wherein Thucydidês is thus precise, marks how strong an impression

it made upon the memory of the Athenians. At the battle of Œnophyta,

engaged against the aggregate Theban and Bœotian forces,—or, if

Diodorus is to be trusted, in two battles, of which that of Œnophyta

was the last, Myrônidês was completely victorious. The Athenians

became masters of Thebes as well as of the remaining Bœotian towns;

reversing all the arrangements recently made by Sparta,— establishing

democratical governments,—and forcing the aristocratical leaders,

favorable to Theban ascendency and Lacedæmonian connection, to

become exiles. Nor was it only Bœotia which the Athenians thus

acquired: Phocis and Lokris were both successively added to the list

of their dependent allies,—the former being in the main friendly to

Athens and not disinclined to the change, while the latter were so

decidedly hostile that one hundred of their chiefs were detained

and sent to Athens as hostages. The Athenians thus extended their

influence,—maintained through internal party-management, backed by

the dread of interference from without in case of need,—from the

borders of the Corinthian territory, including both Megara and Pêgæ,

to the strait of Thermopylæ.[633]

[633] Thucyd. i, 108; Diodor. xi, 81, 82.

These important acquisitions were soon crowned by the completion of

the Long Walls and the conquest of Ægina. That island, doubtless

starved out by its protracted blockade, was forced to capitulate on

condition of destroying its fortifications, surrendering all its

ships of war, and submitting to annual tribute as a dependent ally

of Athens. The reduction of this once powerful maritime city, marked

Athens as mistress of the sea on the Peloponnesian coast not less

than on the Ægean. Her admiral Tolmidês displayed her strength by

sailing round Peloponnesus, and even by the insult of burning the

Lacedæmonian ports of Methônê and of Gythium. He took Chalkis, a

possession of the Corinthians, and Naupaktus belonging to the Ozolian

Lokrians, near the mouth of the Corinthian gulf,—disembarked troops

near Sikyon with some advantage in a battle against opponents from

that town,—and either gained or forced into the Athenian alliance not

only Zakynthus and Kephallênia, but also some of the towns of Achaia;

for we afterwards find these latter attached to Athens without

knowing when the connection began.[634]

[634] Thucyd. i, 108-115; Diodor. xi, 84.

During the ensuing year the Athenians renewed their attack upon

Sikyon, with a force of one thousand hoplites under Periklês

himself, sailing from the Megarian harbor of Pêgæ in the Krissæan

gulf. This eminent man, however, gained no greater advantage than

Tolmidês,—defeating the Sikyonian forces in the field and driving

them within their walls: he afterwards made an expedition into

Akarnania, taking the Achæan allies in addition to his own forces,

but miscarried in his attack on Œniadæ and accomplished nothing. Nor

were the Athenians more successful in a march undertaken this same

year against Thessaly, for the purpose of restoring Orestes, one of

the exiled princes or nobles of Pharsalus. Though they took with them

an imposing force, including their Bœotian and Phocian allies, the

powerful Thessalian cavalry forced them to keep in a compact body

and confined them to the ground actually occupied by their hoplites;

while all their attempts against the city failed, and their hopes of

internal rising were disappointed.[635]

[635] Thucyd. i, 111; Diodor. xi, 85.

Had the Athenians succeeded in Thessaly, they would have acquired

to their alliance nearly the whole of extra-Peloponnesian Greece:

but even without Thessaly their power was prodigious, and had now

attained a maximum height, from which it never varied except to

decline. As a counterbalancing loss against so many successes, we

have to reckon their ruinous defeat in Egypt, after a war of six

years against the Persians (B. C. 460-455). At first, they had

gained brilliant advantages, in conjunction with the insurgent

prince Inarôs; expelling the Persians from all Memphis except the

strongest part, called the White Fortress: and such was the alarm of

the Persian king, Artaxerxes, at the presence of the Athenians in

Egypt, that he sent Megabazus with a large sum of money to Sparta,

in order to induce the Lacedæmonians to invade Attica. This envoy,

however, failed, and an augmented Persian force being sent to Egypt

under Megabyzus, son of Zopyrus,[636] drove the Athenians and their

allies, after an obstinate struggle, out of Memphis into the island

of the Nile called Prosôpîtis. Here they were blocked up for eighteen

months, until at length Megabyzus turned the arm of the river,

laid the channel dry, and stormed the island by land. A very few

Athenians escaped by land to Kyrênê: the rest were either slain or

made captive, and Inarôs himself was crucified. And the calamity of

Athens was farther aggravated by the arrival of fifty fresh Athenian

ships, which, coming after the defeat, but without being aware of it,

sailed into the Mendesian branch of the Nile, and thus fell unawares

into the power of the Persians and Phenicians; very few either of the

ships or men escaping. The whole of Egypt became again subject to

the Persians, except Amyrtæus, who contrived, by retiring into the

inaccessible fens, still to maintain his independence. One of the

largest armaments ever sent forth by Athens and her confederacy was

thus utterly ruined.[637]

[636] Herodot. iii, 160.

[637] Thucyd. i, 104, 109, 110; Diodor. xi, 77; xii, 3. The story

of Diodorus, in the first of these two passages,—that most of

the Athenian forces were allowed to come back under a favorable

capitulation granted by the Persian generals,—is contradicted by

the total ruin which he himself states to have befallen them in

the latter passages, as well as by Thucydidês.

It was about the time of the destruction of the Athenian army in

Egypt, and of the circumnavigation of Peloponnesus by Tolmidês, that

the internal war, carried on by the Lacedæmonians, against the Helots

or Messenians at Ithômê, ended. These besieged men, no longer able to

stand out against a protracted blockade, were forced to abandon this

last fortress of ancient Messenian independence, stipulating for a

safe retreat from Peloponnesus with their wives and families, with

the proviso, that if any one of them ever returned to Peloponnesus,

he should become the slave of the first person who seized him. They

were established by Tolmidês at Naupaktus, which had recently been

taken by the Athenians from the Ozolian Lokrians,[638]—where they

will be found rendering good service to Athens in the following wars.

[638] Thucyd. i, 103; Diodor. xi, 84.

After the victory of Tanagra, the Lacedæmonians made no farther

expeditions out of Peloponnesus for several succeeding years, not

even to prevent Bœotia and Phocis from being absorbed into the

Athenian alliance. The reason of this remissness lay, partly, in

their general character; partly, in the continuance of the siege

of Ithômê, which occupied them at home; but still more, perhaps,

in the fact that the Athenians, masters of the Megarid, were in

occupation of the road over the highlands of Geraneia, and could

therefore obstruct the march of any army out from Peloponnesus. Even

after the surrender of Ithômê, the Lacedæmonians remained inactive

for three years, after which time a formal truce was concluded with

Athens by the Peloponnesians generally, for five years longer.[639]

This truce was concluded in a great degree through the influence of

Kimon,[640] who was eager to resume effective operations against the

Persians; while it was not less suitable to the political interests

of Periklês that his most distinguished rival should be absent on

foreign service,[641] so as not to interfere with his influence at

home. Accordingly, Kimon equipped a fleet of two hundred triremes,

from Athens and her confederates, and set sail for Cyprus, from

whence he despatched sixty ships to Egypt, at the request of the

insurgent prince Amyrtæus, who was still maintaining himself against

the Persians amidst the fens,—while with the remaining armament he

laid siege to Kitium. In the prosecution of this siege, he died,

either of disease or of a wound. The armament, under his successor,

Anaxikrates, became so embarrassed for want of provisions that

they abandoned the undertaking altogether, and went to fight the

Phenician and Kilikian fleet near Salamis, in Cyprus. They were here

victorious, first on sea, and afterwards on land, though probably not

on the same day, as at the Eurymedon; after which they returned home,

followed by the sixty ships which had gone to Egypt for the purpose

of aiding Amyrtæus.[642]

[639] Thucyd. i, 112.

[640] Theopompus, Fragm. 92, ed. Didot; Plutarch, Kimon, c. 18;

Diodor. xi, 86.

It is to be presumed that this is the peace which Æschines (De

Fals. Legat. c. 54, p. 300) and Andokides or the Pseudo-Andokides

(De Pace, c. 1), state to have been made by Miltiades, son of

Kimon, proxenus of the Lacedæmonians; assuming that Miltiades

son of Kimon is put by them, through lapse of memory, for Kimon

son of Miltiades. But the passages of these orators involve so

much both of historical and chronological inaccuracy, that it

is unsafe to cite them, and impossible to amend them except

by conjecture. Mr. Fynes Clinton (Fasti Hellen. Appendix, 8,

p. 257) has pointed out some of these inaccuracies; and there

are others besides, not less grave, especially in the oration

ascribed to Andokides. It is remarkable that both of them seem to

recognize only _two_ long walls, the northern and the southern

wall; whereas, in the time of Thucydidês, there were _three_ long

walls: the two near and parallel, connecting Athens with Peiræus,

and a third connecting it with Phalêrum. This last was never

renewed, after all of them had been partially destroyed at the

disastrous close of the Peloponnesian war: and it appears to have

passed out of the recollection of Æschines, who speaks of the

two walls as they existed in his time. I concur with the various

critics who pronounce the oration ascribed to Andokides to be

spurious.

[641] Plutarch, Periklês, c. 10, and Reipublic. Gerend. Præcep.

p. 812.

An understanding to this effect between the two rivals is

so natural, that we need not resort to the supposition of a

secret agreement concluded between them through the mediation

of Elpinikê, sister of Kimon, which Plutarch had read in some

authors. The charms as well as the intrigues of Elpinikê appear

to have figured conspicuously in the memoirs of Athenian

biographers: they were employed by one party as a means of

calumniating Kimon, by the other for discrediting Periklês.

[642] Thucyd. i, 112; Diodorus, xii, 13. Diodorus mentions the

name of the general Anaxikrates. He affirms farther that Kimon

lived not only to take Kitium and Mallus, but also to gain these

two victories. But the authority of Thucydidês, superior on every

ground to Diodorus, is more particularly superior as to the death

of Kimon, with whom he was connected by relationship.

From this time forward no farther operations were undertaken by

Athens and her confederacy against the Persians. And it appears that

a convention was concluded between them, whereby the Great King

on his part promised two things: To leave free, undisturbed, and

untaxed, the Asiatic maritime Greeks, not sending troops within a

given distance of the coast: to refrain from sending any ships of

war either westward of Phasêlis (others place the boundary at the

Chelidonean islands, rather more to the westward) or within the

Kyanean rocks at the confluence of the Thracian Bosphorus with

the Euxine. On their side, the Athenians agreed to leave him in

undisturbed possession of Cyprus and Egypt. Kallias, an Athenian of

distinguished family, with some others of his countrymen, went up to

Susa to negotiate this convention: and certain envoys from Argos,

then in alliance with Athens, took the opportunity of going thither

at the same time, to renew the friendly understanding which their

city had established with Xerxes at the period of his invasion of

Greece.[643]

[643] Herodot. vii, 151; Diodor. xii, 3, 4. Demosthenês (De False

Legat. c. 77, p. 428, R: compare De Rhodior. Libert. c. 13, p.

199) speaks of this peace as τὴν ὑπὸ πάντων θρυλλουμένην εἰρήνεν.

Compare Lykurgus, cont. Leokrat. c. 17, p. 187; Isokratês,

Panegyr. c. 33, 34, p. 244; Areopagitic. c. 37, pp. 150, 229;

Panathenaic, c. 20, p. 360.

The loose language of these orators makes it impossible to

determine what was the precise limit in respect of vicinity to

the coast. Isokratês is careless enough to talk of the river

Halys as the boundary; Demosthenês states it as “a day’s course

for a horse,”—which is probably larger than the truth.

The two boundaries marked by sea, on the other hand, are both

clear and natural, in reference to the Athenian empire,—the

Kyanean rocks at one end, Phasêlis, or the Chelidonian

islands—there is no material distance between these two

last-mentioned places—on the other.

Dahlmann, at the end of his Dissertation on the reality of

this Kimonian peace, collects the various passages of authors

wherein it is mentioned: among them are several out of the rhetor

Aristeidês (Forschungen pp. 140-148).

As is generally the case with treaties after hostility,—this

convention did little more than recognize the existing state of

things, without introducing any new advantage or disadvantage on

either side, or calling for any measures to be taken in consequence

of it. We may hence assign a reasonable ground for the silence

of Thucydidês, who does not even notice the convention as having

been made: we are to recollect always that in the interval between

the Persian and Peloponnesian wars, he does not profess to do

more than glance briefly at the main events. But the boastful and

inaccurate authors of the ensuing century, orators, rhetors, and

historians, indulged in so much exaggeration and untruth respecting

this convention, both as to date and as to details,—and extolled

as something so glorious the fact of having imposed such hard

conditions on the Great King,—that they have raised a suspicion

against themselves. Especially, they have occasioned critics to ask

the very natural question, how this splendid achievement of Athens

came to be left unnoticed by Thucydidês? Now the answer to such

question is, that the treaty itself was really of no great moment:

it is the state of facts and relations implied in the treaty, and

existing substantially before it was concluded, which constitutes

the real glory of Athens. But to the later writers, the treaty stood

forth as the legible evidence of facts which in their time were

passed and gone; while Thucydidês and his contemporaries, living in

the actual fulness of the Athenian empire, would certainly not appeal

to the treaty as an evidence, and might well pass it over, even as

an event, when studying to condense the narrative. Though Thucydidês

has not mentioned the treaty, he says nothing which disproves its

reality, and much which is in full harmony with it. For we may show,

even from him: 1. That all open and direct hostilities between

Athens and Persia ceased, after the last-mentioned victories of the

Athenians near Cyprus: that this island is renounced by Athens, not

being included by Thucydidês in his catalogue of Athenian allies

prior to the Peloponnesian war;[644] and that no farther aid is given

by Athens to the revolted Amyrtæus in Egypt. 2. That down to the

time when the Athenian power was prostrated by the ruinous failure

at Syracuse, no tribute was collected by the Persian satraps in Asia

Minor from the Greek cities on the coast, nor were Persian ships

of war allowed to appear in the waters of the Ægean,[645] nor was

the Persian king admitted to be sovereign of the country down to

the coast. Granting, therefore, that we were even bound, from the

silence of Thucydidês, to infer that no treaty was concluded, we

should still be obliged also to infer, from his positive averments,

that a state of historical fact, such as the treaty acknowledged and

prescribed, became actually realized. But when we reflect farther,

that Herodotus[646] certifies the visit of Kallias and other Athenian

envoys to the court of Susa, we can assign no other explanation of

such visit so probable as the reality of this treaty: certainly, no

envoys would have gone thither during a state of recognized war; and

though it may be advanced as possible that they may have gone with

the view to conclude a treaty, and yet not have succeeded,—this would

be straining the limits of possibility beyond what is reasonable.[647]

[644] Thucyd. ii, 14.

[645] Thucyd. viii, 5, 6, 56. As this is a point on which very

erroneous representations have been made by some learned critics,

especially by Dahlmann and Manso (see the treatises cited in the

subsequent note 647), I transcribe the passage of Thucydidês.

He is speaking of the winter of B. C. 412, immediately succeeding

the ruin of the Athenian army at Syracuse, and after redoubled

exertions had been making—even some months before that ruin

actually took place—to excite active hostile proceedings against

Athens from every quarter (Thucyd. vii, 25): it being seen that

there was a promising opportunity for striking a heavy blow

at the Athenian power. The satrap Tissaphernes encouraged the

Chians and Erythræans to revolt, sending an envoy along with

them to Sparta with persuasions and promises of aid,—ἐπήγετο

καὶ ὁ Τισσαφέρνης τοὺς Πελοποννησίους καὶ ὑπισχνεῖτο τροφὴν

παρέξειν. Ὑπὸ βασιλέως γὰρ ~νεωστὶ ἐτύγχανε~ πεπραγμένος τοὺς

ἐκ τῆς ἑαυτοῦ ἀρχῆς φόρους, οὓς δι’ Ἀθηναίους ἀπὸ τῶν Ἑλληνίδων

πόλεων οὐ δυνάμενος πράσσεσθαι ~ἐπωφείλησε~. Τούς τε οὖν φόρους

μᾶλλον ἐνόμιζε κομιεῖσθαι, κακώσας τοὺς Ἀθηναίους, καὶ ἅμα

βασιλεῖ ξυμμάχους Λακεδαιμονίους ποιήσειν, etc. In the next

chapter, Thucydidês tells us that the satrap Pharnabazus wanted

to obtain Lacedæmonian aid in the same manner as Tissaphernes,

for _his_ satrapy also, in order that he might detach the Greek

cities from Athens, and be able to levy the tribute upon them.

Two Greeks go to Sparta, sent by Pharnabazus, ὅπως ναῦς κομίσειαν

ἐς τὸν Ἑλλήσποντον, καὶ αὐτὸς, εἰ δύναιτο ἅπερ ὁ Τισσαφέρνης

προὐθυμεῖτο, τάς τε ἐν τῇ ἑαυτοῦ ἀρχῇ πόλεις Ἀθηναίων ἀποστήσειε

~διὰ τοὺς φόρους~, καὶ ἀφ’ ἑαυτοῦ βασιλεῖ τὴν ξυμμαχίαν τῶν

Λακεδαιμονίων ποιήσειε.

These passages, strange to say, are considered by Manso and

Dahlmann as showing that the Grecian cities on the Asiatic coast,

though subject to the Athenian empire, continued, nevertheless,

to pay their tribute regularly to Susa. To me, the passages

appear to disprove this very supposition: they show that it was

essential for the satrap to detach these cities from the Athenian

empire, as a means of procuring tribute from them to Persia:

that the Athenian empire, while it lasted, prevented him from

getting any tribute from the cities subject to it. Manso and

Dahlmann have overlooked the important meaning of the adverb

of time νεωστὶ—“lately.” By that word, Thucydidês expressly

intimates that the court of Susa _had only recently_ demanded

from Tissaphernes and Pharnabazus, tribute from the maritime

Greeks within their satrapies: and he implies that _until

recently no such demand_ had been made upon them. The court of

Susa, apprized, doubtless, by Grecian exiles and agents, of the

embarrassments into which Athens had fallen, conceived this a

suitable moment for exacting tributes; to which, doubtless, it

always considered itself entitled, though the power of Athens

had compelled it to forego them. Accordingly, the demand was now

for the first time sent down to Tissaphernes, and he “_became

a debtor_ for them” to the court (ἐπωφείλησε), until he could

collect them: which he could not at first do, even then,

embarrassed as Athens was,—and which, _à fortiori_, he could not

have done before, when Athens was in full power.

We learn from these passages two valuable facts. 1. That the

maritime Asiatic cities belonging to the Athenian empire paid no

tribute to Susa, from the date of the full organization of the

Athenian confederacy down to a period after the Athenian defeat

in Sicily. 2. That, nevertheless, these cities always continued,

throughout this period, to stand rated in the Persian king’s

books each for its appropriate tribute,—the court of Susa waiting

for a convenient moment to occur, when it should be able to

enforce its demands, from misfortune accruing to Athens.

This state of relations, between the Asiatic Greeks and the

Persian court under the Athenian empire, authenticated by

Thucydidês, enables us to explain a passage of Herodotus, on

which also both Manso and Dahlmann have dwelt (p. 94) with rather

more apparent plausibility, as proving their view of the case.

Herodotus, after describing the rearrangement and remeasurement

of the territories of the Ionic cities by the satrap Artaphernes

(about 493 B. C., after the suppression of the Ionic revolt),

proceeds to state that he assessed the tribute of each with

reference to this new measurement, and that the assessment

remained unchanged until his own (Herodotus’s) time,—καὶ

τὰς χώρας σφέων μετρήσας κατὰ παρασάγγας ... φόρους ~ἔταξε~

ἑκάστοισι, οἳ κατὰ χώρην διατελέουσι ἔχοντες ἐκ τούτου τοῦ χρόνου

αἰεὶ ἔτι καὶ ἐς ἐμὲ, ὡς ἐτάχθησαν ἐξ Ἀρταφέρνεος· ~ἐτάχθησαν~ δὲ

σχεδὸν κατὰ τὰ αὐτὰ τὰ καὶ πρότερον εἶχον (vi, 42). Now Dahlmann

and Manso contend that Herodotus here affirms the tribute

of the Ionic cities to Persia to have been continuously and

regularly paid, down to his own time. But in my judgment this is

a mistake: Herodotus speaks, not about the _payment_, but about

the _assessment_: and these were two very different things, as

Thucydidês clearly intimates in the passage which I have cited

above. The _assessment_ of all the Ionic cities in the Persian

king’s books remained unaltered all through the Athenian empire;

but the _payment_ was not enforced until immediately before 412

B. C., when the Athenians were supposed to be too weak to hinder

it. It is evident by the account of the general Persian revenues,

throughout all the satrapies, which we find in the third book

of Herodotus, that he had access to official accounts of the

Persian finances, or at least to Greek secretaries who knew those

accounts. He would be told, that these assessments remained

unchanged from the time of Artaphernes downward: whether they

were _realized_ or not was another question, which the “books”

would probably not answer, and which he might or might not know.

The passages above cited from Thucydidês appear to me to afford

positive proof that the Greek cities on the Asiatic _coast_—not

those in the interior, as we may see by the case of Magnesia

given to Themistoklês—paid no tribute to Persia during the

continuance of the Athenian empire. But if there were no such

positive proof, I should still maintain the same opinion. For

if these Greeks went on paying tribute, what is meant by the

phrases, of their having “_revolted_ from Persia,” of their

“having _been liberated_ from the king,” (οἱ ἀποστάντες βασιλέως

Ἕλληνες—οἱ ἀπὸ Ἰωνίας καὶ Ἑλλησπόντου ἤδη ἀφεστηκότες ἀπὸ

βασιλέως—ὅσοι ἀπὸ βασιλέως νεωστὶ ἠλευθέρωντο, Thucyd. i, 18, 89,

95)?

So much respecting the payment of tribute. As to the other

point,—that between 477 and 412 B. C., no Persian ships were

tolerated along the coast of Ionia, which coast, though

claimed by the Persian king, was not recognized by the Greeks

as belonging to him,—proof will be found in Thucyd. viii, 56:

compare Diodor. iv, 26.

[646] Herodot. vi, 151. Diodorus also states that this peace was

concluded by Kallias the Athenian (xii, 4).

[647] I conclude, on the whole, in favor of this treaty as an

historical fact,—though sensible that some of the arguments

urged against it are not without force. Mr. Mitford and Dr.

Thirlwall (ch. xvii, p. 474), as well as Manso and Dahlmann, not

to mention others, have impugned the reality of the treaty: and

the last-mentioned author, particularly, has examined the case at

length and set forth all the grounds of objection; urging, among

some which are really serious, others which appear to me weak and

untenable (Manso, Sparta, vol. iii, Beylage x, p. 471; Dahlmann,

Forschungen auf dem Gebiete der Geschichte, vol. i, Ueber den

Kimonischen Frieden, pp. 1-148). Boëckh admits the treaty as an

historical fact.

If we deny altogether the historical reality of the treaty, we

must adopt some such hypothesis as that of Dahlmann (p. 40):

“The distinct mention and averment of such a peace as having

been formally concluded, appears to have first arisen among the

schools of the rhetors at Athens, shortly after the peace of

Antalkidas, and as an oratorical antithesis to oppose to that

peace.”

To which we must add the supposition, that some persons must have

taken the trouble to cause this fabricated peace to be engraved

on a pillar, and placed, either in the Metrôon or somewhere else

in Athens, among the records of Athenian glories. For that it was

so engraved on a column is certain (Theopompus ap. Harpokration.

Ἀττικοῖς γράμμασι). The suspicion started by Theopompus (and

founded on the fact that the peace was engraved, not in ancient

Attic, but in Ionic letters—the latter sort having been only

legalized in Athens after the archonship of Eukleides), that this

treaty was a subsequent invention and not an historical reality,

does not weigh with me very much. Assuming the peace to be real,

it would naturally be drawn up and engraved in the character

habitually used among the Ionic cities of Asia Minor, since they

were the parties most specially interested in it: or it might

even have been reëngraved, seeing that nearly a century must

have elapsed between the conclusion of the treaty and the time

when Theopompus saw the pillar. I confess that the hypothesis

of Dahlmann appears to me more improbable than the historical

reality of the treaty. I think it more likely that there _was_ a

treaty, and that the orators talked exaggerated and false matters

respecting it,—rather than that they fabricated the treaty from

the beginning with a deliberate purpose, and with the false name

of an envoy conjoined.

Dahlmann exposes justly and forcibly—an easy task, indeed—the

loose, inconsistent, and vainglorious statements of the orators

respecting this treaty. The chronological error by which it

was asserted to have been made shortly after the victories of

the Eurymedon—and was thus connected with the name of Kimon—is

one of the circumstances which have most tended to discredit

the attesting witnesses: but we must not forget that Ephorus

(assuming that Diodorus in this case copies Ephorus, which is

highly probable—xii, 3, 4) did not fall into this mistake,

but placed the treaty in its right chronological place, after

the Athenian expedition under Kimon against Cyprus and Egypt

in 450-449 B. C. Kimon died before the great results of this

expedition were consummated, as we know from Thucydidês: on this

point Diodorus speaks equivocally, but rather giving it to be

understood that Kimon lived to complete the whole, and then died

of sickness.

The absurd exaggeration of Isokratês, that the treaty bound the

Persian kings not to come westward of the river Halys, has also

been very properly censured. He makes this statement in two

different orations (Areopagatic. p. 150; Panathenaic. p. 462).

But though Dahlmann succeeds in discrediting the orators, he

tries in vain to show that the treaty is in itself improbable,

or inconsistent with any known historical facts. A large portion

of his dissertation is employed in this part of the case, and I

think quite unsuccessfully. The fact that the Persian satraps are

seen at various periods after the treaty lending aid—underhand,

yet without taking much pains to disguise it—to Athenian revolted

subjects, does not prove that no treaty had been concluded.

These satraps would, doubtless, be very glad to infringe the

treaty, whenever they thought they could do so with advantage:

if any misfortune had happened to Athens from the hands of the

Peloponnesians,—for example, if the Athenians had been unwise

enough to march their aggregate land-force out of the city to

repel the invading Peloponnesians from Attica, and had been

totally defeated,—the Persians would, doubtless, have tried to

regain Ionia forthwith. So the Lacedæmonians, at a time when

they were actually in alliance with Athens, listened to the

persuasions of the revolted Thasians, and promised secretly to

invade Attica, in order to aid their revolt (Thucyd. i, 103).

Because a treaty is very imperfectly observed,—or rather because

the parties, without coming to open war, avail themselves of

opportunities to evade it and encroach upon its prescriptions,—we

are not entitled to deny that it has ever been made (Dahlmann, p.

116).

It seems to me that the objections which have been taken by

Dahlmann and others against the historical reality of this

treaty, tell for the most part only against the exaggerated

importance assigned to it by subsequent orators.

We may therefore believe in the reality of this treaty between Athens

and Persia, improperly called the Kimonian treaty: improperly, since

not only was it concluded after the death of Kimon, but the Athenian

victories by which it was immediately brought on were gained after

his death. Nay, more,—the probability is, that if Kimon had lived, it

would not have been concluded at all; for his interest as well as his

glory led him to prosecute the war against Persia, since he was no

match for his rival Periklês, either as a statesman or as an orator,

and could only maintain his popularity by the same means whereby he

had earned it,—victories and plunder at the cost of the Persians.

His death insured more complete ascendency to Periklês, whose policy

and character were of a cast altogether opposite:[648] while even

Thucydidês, son of Melêsias, who succeeded Kimon, his relation, as

leader of the anti-Periklean party, was also a man of the senate and

public assembly rather than of campaigns and conquests. Averse to

distant enterprises and precarious acquisitions, Periklês was only

anxious to maintain unimpaired the Hellenic ascendency of Athens,

now at its very maximum: he was well aware that the undivided force

and vigilance of Athens would not be too much for this object,—nor

did they in fact prove sufficient, as we shall presently see. With

such dispositions he was naturally glad to conclude a peace, which

excluded the Persians from all the coasts of Asia Minor, westward of

the Chelidoneans, as well as from all the waters of the Ægean, under

the simple condition of renouncing on the part of Athens farther

aggressions against Cyprus, Phenicia, Kilikia, and Egypt. The Great

King on his side had had sufficient experience of Athenian energy

to fear the consequences of such aggressions, if prosecuted; nor

did he lose much by relinquishing formally a tribute which at the

time he could have little hope of realizing, and which of course he

intended to resume on the first favorable opportunity. Weighing all

these circumstances, we shall find that the peace, improperly called

Kimonian, results naturally from the position and feelings of the

contracting parties.

[648] Plutarch, Periklês, c. 21-28.

Athens was now at peace both abroad and at home, under the

administration of Periklês, with a great empire, a great fleet, and

a great accumulated treasure. The common fund collected from the

contributions of the confederates, and originally deposited at Delos,

had before this time been transferred to the acropolis at Athens. At

what precise time this transfer took place, we cannot state: nor are

we enabled to assign the successive stages whereby the confederacy,

chiefly with the freewill of its own members, became transformed

from a body of armed and active warriors under the guidance of

Athens, into disarmed and passive tribute-payers, defended by the

military force of Athens,—from allies free, meeting at Delos, and

self-determining, into subjects isolated, sending their annual

tribute, and awaiting Athenian orders. But it would appear that the

change had been made before this time: some of the more resolute of

the allies had tried to secede, but Athens had coerced them by force,

and reduced them to the condition of tribute-payers, without ships

or defence; and Chios, Lesbos, and Samos were now the only allies

free and armed on the original footing. Every successive change of an

armed ally into a tributary,—every subjugation of a seceder,—tended

of course to cut down the numbers, and enfeeble the authority, of the

Delian synod; and, what was still worse, it altered the reciprocal

relation and feelings both of Athens and her allies,—exalting the

former into something like a despot, and degrading the latter into

mere passive subjects.

Of course, the palpable manifestation of the change must have been

the transfer of the confederate fund from Delos to Athens. The only

circumstance which we know respecting this transfer is, that it was

proposed by the Samians,[649]—the second power in the confederacy,

inferior only to Athens, and least of all likely to favor any job or

sinister purpose of the Athenians. It is farther said that, when the

Samians proposed it, Aristeidês characterized it as a motion unjust,

but useful: we may well doubt, however, whether it was made during

his lifetime. When the synod at Delos ceased to be so fully attended

as to command respect,—when war was lighted up, not only with Persia,

but with Ægina and Peloponnesus,—the Samians might not unnaturally

feel that the large accumulated fund, with its constant annual

accessions, would be safer at Athens than at Delos, which latter

island would require a permanent garrison and squadron to insure it

against attack. But whatever may have been the grounds on which the

Samians proceeded, when we find them coming forward to propose the

transfer, we may reasonably infer that it was not displeasing, and

did not appear unjust, to the larger members of the confederacy,—and

that it was no high-handed and arbitrary exercise of power, as it is

often called, on the part of Athens.

[649] Plutarch, Aristeidês. c. 25.

After the conclusion of the war with Ægina, and the consequences

of the battle of Œnophyta, the position of Athens became altered

more and more. She acquired a large catalogue of new allies, partly

tributary, like Ægina,—partly in the same relation as Chios, Lesbos,

and Samos; that is, obliged only to a conformity of foreign policy

and to military service. In this last category were Megara, the

Bœotian cities, the Phocians, Lokrians, etc. All these, though

allies of Athens, were strangers to Delos and the confederacy

against Persia; and accordingly, that confederacy passed insensibly

into a matter of history, giving place to the new conception of

imperial Athens, with her extensive list of allies, partly free,

partly subject. Such transition, arising spontaneously out of the

character and circumstances of the confederates themselves, was thus

materially forwarded by the acquisitions of Athens extraneous to

the confederacy. She was now not merely the first maritime state of

Greece, but perhaps equal to Sparta even in land-power,—possessing

in her alliance Megara, Bœotia, Phocis, Lokris, together with Achæa

and Trœzen, in Peloponnesus. Large as this aggregate already was,

both at sea and on land, yet the magnitude of the annual tribute,

and still more the character of the Athenians themselves, superior

to all Greeks in that combination of energy and discipline which

is the grand cause of progress, threatened still farther increase.

Occupying the Megarian harbor of Pêgæ, the Athenians had full means

of naval action on both sides of the Corinthian isthmus: but, what

was of still greater importance to them, by their possession of

the Megarid, and of the highlands of Geraneia, they could restrain

any land-force from marching out of Peloponnesus, and were thus,

considering besides their mastery at sea, completely unassailable in

Attica. Ever since the repulse of Xerxes, Athens had been advancing

in an uninterrupted course of power and prosperity at home, as well

as of victory and ascendency abroad,—to which there was no exception,

except the ruinous enterprise in Egypt. Looking at the position of

Greece, therefore, about 448 B. C.,—after the conclusion of the

five years’ truce between the Peloponnesians and Athens, and of the

so-called Kimonian peace between Persia and Athens,—a discerning

Greek might well calculate upon farther aggrandizement of this

imperial state as the tendency of the age; and accustomed as every

Greek was to the conception of separate town-autonomy as essential to

a freeman and a citizen, such prospect could not but inspire terror

and aversion. The sympathy of the Peloponnesians for the islanders

and ultra-maritime states, who constituted the original confederacy

of Athens, was not considerable; but when the Dorian island of Ægina

was subjugated also, and passed into the condition of a defenceless

tributary, they felt the blow sorely on every ground. The ancient

celebrity and eminent service rendered at the battle of Salamis, of

this memorable island, had not been able to protect it; while those

great Æginetan families, whose victories at the sacred festival-games

Pindar celebrates in a large proportion of his odes, would spread

the language of complaint and indignation throughout their numerous

“guests” in every Hellenic city. Of course, the same anti-Athenian

feeling would pervade those Peloponnesian states who had been

engaged in actual hostility with Athens,—Corinth, Sikyon, Epidaurus,

etc., as well as Sparta, the once-recognized head of Hellas, but

now tacitly degraded from her preëminence, baffled in her projects

respecting Bœotia, and exposed to the burning of her port at Gythium,

without being able even to retaliate upon Attica. Putting all those

circumstances together, we may comprehend the powerful feeling of

dislike and apprehension now diffused so widely over Greece against

the upstart despot city; whose ascendency, newly acquired, maintained

by superior force, and not recognized as legitimate,—threatened,

nevertheless, still farther increase. Sixteen years hence, this same

sentiment will be found exploding into the Peloponnesian war; but

it became rooted in the Greek mind during the period which we have

now reached, when Athens was much more formidable than she had

come to be at the commencement of that war: nor shall we thoroughly

appreciate the ideas of that later period, unless we take them as

handed down from the earlier date of the five years’ truce, about

451-446 B. C.

Formidable as the Athenian empire both really was and appeared to

be, however, this wide-spread feeling of antipathy proved still

stronger, so that, instead of the threatened increase, the empire

underwent a most material diminution. This did not arise from the

attack of open enemies; for during the five years’ truce, Sparta

undertook only one movement, and that not against Attica: she sent

troops to Delphi, in an expedition dignified with the name of the

Sacred War,—expelled the Phocians, who had assumed to themselves the

management of the temple,—and restored it to the native Delphians.

To this the Athenians made no direct opposition: but as soon as the

Lacedæmonians were gone, they themselves marched thither and placed

the temple again in the hands of the Phocians, who were then their

allies.[650] The Delphians were members of the Phocian league, and

there was a dispute of old standing as to the administration of the

temple,—whether it belonged to them separately or to the Phocians

collectively. The favor of those who administered it counted as an

element of considerable moment in Grecian politics; the sympathies

of the leading Delphians led them to embrace the side of Sparta, but

the Athenians now hoped to counteract this tendency by means of their

preponderance in Phocis. We are not told that the Lacedæmonians took

any ulterior step in consequence of their views being frustrated by

Athens,—a significant evidence of the politics of that day.

[650] Thucyd. i, 112; compare Philochor. Fragm. 88, ed. Didot.

The blow which brought down the Athenian empire from this its

greatest exaltation, was struck by the subjects themselves. The

Athenian ascendency over Bœotia, Phocis, Lokris, and Eubœa, was

maintained, not by means of garrisons, but through domestic parties

favorable to Athens, and a suitable form of government; just in the

same way as Sparta maintained her influence over her Peloponnesian

allies.[651] After the victory of Œnophyta, the Athenians had broken

up the governments in the Bœotian cities established by Sparta

before the battle of Tanagra, and converted them into democracies

at Thebes and elsewhere. Many of the previous leading men had thus

been sent into exile: and as the same process had taken place in

Phocis and Lokris, there was at this time a considerable aggregate

body of exiles, Bœotian, Phocian, Lokrian, Eubœan, Æginetan, etc.,

all bitterly hostile to Athens, and ready to join in any attack upon

her power. We learn farther that the democracy,[652] established

at Thebes after the battle of Œnophyta, was ill-conducted and

disorderly: which circumstances laid open Bœotia still farther to

the schemes of assailants on the watch for every weak point. These

various exiles, all joining their forces and concerting measures with

their partisans in the interior, succeeded in mastering Orchomenus,

Chæroneia, and some other less important places in Bœotia. The

Athenian general, Tolmidês, marched to expel them, with one thousand

Athenian hoplites and an auxiliary body of allies. It appears that

this march was undertaken in haste and rashness: the hoplites of

Tolmidês, principally youthful volunteers, and belonging to the

best families of Athens, disdained the enemy too much to await

a larger and more commanding force: nor would the people listen

even to Periklês, when he admonished them that the march would be

full of hazard, and adjured them not to attempt it without greater

numbers as well as greater caution.[653] Fatally, indeed, were

his predictions justified. Though Tolmidês was successful in his

first enterprise,—the recapture of Chæroneia, wherein he placed a

garrison,—yet in his march, probably incautious and disorderly, when

departing from that place, he was surprised and attacked unawares,

near Korôneia, by the united body of exiles and their partisans. No

defeat in Grecian history was ever more complete or ruinous. Tolmidês

himself was slain, together with many of the Athenian hoplites,

while a large number of them were taken prisoners. In order to

recover these prisoners, who belonged to the best families in the

city, the Athenians submitted to a convention whereby they agreed

to evacuate Bœotia altogether: in all the cities of that country,

the exiles were restored, the democratical government overthrown,

and Bœotia was transformed from an ally of Athens into her bitter

enemy.[654] Long, indeed, did the fatal issue of this action dwell

in the memory of the Athenians,[655] and inspire them with an

apprehension of Bœotian superiority in heavy armor on land: but if

the hoplites under Tolmidês had been all slain on the field, their

death would probably have been avenged and Bœotia would not have been

lost,—whereas, in the case of living citizens, the Athenians deemed

no sacrifice too great to redeem them. We shall discover hereafter in

the Lacedæmonians a feeling very similar, respecting their brethren

captured at Sphakteria.

[651] Thucyd. i, 19. Λακεδαιμόνιοι, οὐχ ὑποτελεῖς ἔχοντες φόρου

τοὺς ξυμμάχους, κατ’ ὀλιγαρχίαν δὲ σφίσιν αὐτοῖς μόνον ἐπιτηδείως

ὅπως πολιτεύσουσι θεραπεύοντες—the same also i, 76-144.

[652] Aristotel. Politic. v, 2, 6. Καὶ ἐν Θήβαις μετὰ τὴν ἐν

Οἰνοφύτοις μάχην, κακῶς πολιτευομένων, ἡ δημοκρατία διεφθάρη.

[653] Plutarch, Periklês, c. 18; also, his comparison between

Periklês and Fabius Maximus, c. 3.

Kleinias, father of the celebrated Alkibiadês, was slain in

this battle: he had served, thirty-three years before, at

the sea-fight of Artemisium: he cannot therefore be numbered

among the youthful warriors, though a person of the first rank

(Plutarch, Alkibiad. c. 1).

[654] Thucyd. i, 113; Diodor. xii, 6. Platæa appears to have

been considered as quite dissevered from Bœotia: it remained in

connection with Athens as intimately as before.

[655] Xenophon, Memorabil. iii, 5, 4.

The calamitous consequences of this defeat came upon Athens in thick

and rapid succession. The united exiles, having carried their point

in Bœotia, proceeded to expel the philo-Athenian government both from

Phocis and Lokris, and to carry the flame of revolt into Eubœa. To

this important island Periklês himself proceeded forthwith, at the

head of a powerful force; but before he had time to complete the

reconquest, he was summoned home by news of a still more formidable

character. The Megarians had revolted from Athens: by a conspiracy

previously planned, a division of hoplites from Corinth, Sikyon,

and Epidaurus, was already admitted as garrison into their city:

the Athenian soldiers who kept watch over the Long Walls had been

overpowered and slain, except a few who escaped into the fortified

port of Nisæa. As if to make the Athenians at once sensible how

seriously this disaster affected them, by throwing open the road

over Geraneia,—Pleistoanax, king of Sparta, was announced as already

on his march for an invasion of Attica. He did, in truth, conduct an

army, of mixed Lacedæmonians and Peloponnesian allies, into Attica,

as far as the neighborhood of Eleusis and the Thriasian plain. He was

a very young man, so that a Spartan of mature years, Kleandridês,

had been attached to him by the ephors as adjutant and counsellor.

Periklês, it is said, persuaded both the one and the other, by means

of large bribes, to evacuate Attica without advancing to Athens. We

may well doubt whether they had force enough to adventure so far into

the interior, and we shall hereafter observe the great precautions

with which Archidamus thought it necessary to conduct his invasion,

during the first year of the Peloponnesian war, though at the head

of a more commanding force. Nevertheless, on their return, the

Lacedæmonians, believing that they might have achieved it, found both

of them guilty of corruption. Both were banished: Kleandridês never

came back, and Pleistoanax himself lived for a long time in sanctuary

near the temple of Athênê, at Tegea, until at length he procured his

restoration by tampering with the Pythian priestess, and by bringing

her bought admonitions to act upon the authorities at Sparta.[656]

[656] Thucyd. i, 114; v, 16, Plutarch, Periklês, c. 22.

So soon as the Lacedæmonians had retired from Attica, Periklês

returned with his forces to Eubœa, and reconquered the island

completely. With that caution which always distinguished him as a

military man, so opposite to the fatal rashness of Tolmidês, he took

with him an overwhelming force of fifty triremes and five thousand

hoplites. He admitted most of the Eubœan towns to surrender, altering

the government of Chalkis by the expulsion of the wealthy oligarchy

called the Hippobotæ; but the inhabitants of Histiæa, at the north

of the island, who had taken an Athenian merchantman and massacred

all the crew, were more severely dealt with,—the free population

being all or in great part expelled, and the land distributed among

Athenian kleruchs, or out-settled citizens.[657]

[657] Thucyd. i, 114; Plutarch, Periklês, c. 23; Diodor. xii, 7.

But the reconquest of Eubœa was far from restoring Athens to the

position which she had occupied before the fatal engagement of

Korôneia. Her land empire was irretrievably gone, together with

her recently acquired influence over the Delphian oracle; and

she reverted to her former condition of an exclusively maritime

potentate. For though she still continued to hold Nisæa and Pegæ,

yet her communication with the latter harbor was now out off by the

loss of Megara and its appertaining territory, so that she thus

lost her means of acting in the Corinthian gulf, and of protecting

as well as of constraining her allies in Achaia. Nor was the port

of Nisæa of much value to her, disconnected from the city to which

it belonged, except as a post for annoying that city. Moreover,

the precarious hold which she possessed over unwilling allies had

been demonstrated in a manner likely to encourage similar attempts

among her maritime subjects,—attempts which would now be seconded by

Peloponnesian armies invading Attica. The fear of such a combination

of embarrassments, and especially of an irresistible enemy carrying

ruin over the flourishing territory round Eleusis and Athens, was at

this moment predominant in the Athenian mind. We shall find Periklês,

at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, fourteen years afterwards,

exhausting all his persuasive force, and not succeeding without great

difficulty, in prevailing upon his countrymen to endure the hardship

of invasion,—even in defence of their maritime empire, and when

events had been gradually so ripening as to render the prospect of

war familiar, if not inevitable. But the late series of misfortunes

had burst upon them so rapidly and unexpectedly, as to discourage

even Athenian confidence, and to render the prospect of continued war

full of gloom and danger. The prudence of Periklês would doubtless

counsel the surrender of their remaining landed possessions or

alliances, which had now become unprofitable, in order to purchase

peace; but we may be sure that nothing short of extreme temporary

despondency could have induced the Athenian assembly to listen to

such advice, and to accept the inglorious peace which followed. A

truce for thirty years was concluded with Sparta and her allies, in

the beginning of 445 B. C., whereby Athens surrendered Nisæa, Pegæ,

Achaia, and Trœzen,—thus abandoning Peloponnesus altogether,[658]

and leaving the Megarians—with their full territory and their two

ports—to be included among the Peloponnesian allies of Sparta.

[658] Thucyd. i, 114, 115; ii, 21; Diodor. xii, 5. I do not at

all doubt that the word Achaia here used, means the country in

the north part of Peloponnesus, usually known by that name.

The suspicions of Göller and others, that it means, not this

territory, but some unknown town, appear to me quite unfounded.

Thucydidês had never noticed the exact time when the Athenians

acquired Achaia as a dependent ally, though he notices the

Achæans (i, 111) in that capacity. This is one argument, among

many, to show that we must be cautious in reasoning from the

silence of Thucydidês against the reality of an event,—in

reference to this period between the Persian and Peloponnesian

wars, where his whole summary is so brief.

In regard to the chronology of these events, Mr. Fynes Clinton

remarks: “The disasters in Bœotia produced the revolt of Eubœa

and Megara about eighteen months after, in Anthestêrion 445 B.

C.: and the Peloponnesian invasion of Attica, on the expiration

of the five years’ truce,” (ad ann. 447 B. C.)

Mr. Clinton seems to me to allow a longer interval than is

probable: I incline to think that the revolt of Eubœa and Megara

followed more closely upon the disasters in Bœotia, in spite of

the statement of archons given by Diodorus: οὐ πολλῷ ὕστερον,

the expression of Thucydidês means probably no more than three

or four months; and the whole series of events were evidently

the product of one impulse. The truce having been concluded in

the beginning of 445 B. C., it seems reasonable to place the

revolt of Eubœa and Megara, as well as the invasion of Attica by

Pleistoanax, in 446 B. C.—and the disasters in Bœotia, either in

the beginning of 446 B. C., or the close of 447 B. C.

It is hardly safe to assume, moreover (as Mr. Clinton does, ad

ann. 450, as well as Dr. Thirlwall, Hist. Gr. ch. xvii, p. 478),

that the five years’ truce must have been actually expired before

Pleistoanax and the Lacedæmonians invaded Attica: the thirty

years’ truce, afterwards concluded, did not run out its full time.

It was to the Megarians, especially, that the altered position of

Athens after this truce was owing: it was their secession from Attica

and junction with the Peloponnesians, which laid open Attica to

invasion. Hence, arose the deadly hatred on the part of the Athenians

towards Megara, manifested during the ensuing years,—a sentiment the

more natural, as Megara had spontaneously sought the alliance of

Athens a few years before as a protection against the Corinthians,

and had then afterwards, without any known ill-usage on the part of

Athens, broken off from the alliance and become her enemy, with the

fatal consequence of rendering her vulnerable on the land-side. Under

such circumstances we shall not be surprised to find the antipathy of

the Athenians against Megara strongly pronounced, insomuch that the

system of exclusion which they adopted against her was among the most

prominent causes of the Peloponnesian war.

Having traced what we may call the foreign relations of Athens down

to this thirty years’ truce, we must notice the important internal

and constitutional changes which she had experienced during the same

interval.