Athens! thou birthplace of the great, the free!
Though bowed thy power, and dimmed thy name may be,
Though old Renown’s once dazzling sun hath set,
Fair beams the star of Memory o’er thee yet.
City! where sang the bard, and taught the sage,
Thy shrines may fall, thou ne’er wilt know old age;
Fresh shall thy image glow in every heart,
And but with Time’s last hour thy fame depart.
--NICHOLAS MICHELL.
The history of this time with its rush of events and its startling
changes exhibits on the Athenian side a picture of astonishing and
almost preternatural energy.[b] 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 in 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
Euphemus at Camarina in 415 B.C., to have been heard by Themistocles or
Aristides 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 splendour 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 Crete, and others,
as having been rulers of the Ægean in times anterior to Athens.
[Sidenote: [479-466 B.C.]]
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 Thucydides, 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. Hence, the little light which has fallen upon this blank
has all been borrowed--if we except the careful Thucydides--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 Themistocles 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 Aristides
and Cimon dismissed the Lacedæmonian admiral Dorcis, 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 organise a confederacy
as yet only inchoate. This was quite enough to occupy their attention,
without ascribing to them distant views of Athenian maritime empire.
In that brief sketch of incidents preceding the Peloponnesian War,
which Thucydides introduces as “the throwing off of his narrative,” 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 Scyros, and appropriation of the island to Athenian cleruchs,
or out-citizens; thirdly, the war with Carystus 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 Thucydides 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 Scyros in the time of Thucydides was the property of
outlying Athenian citizens, or cleruchs.
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, all of
whom were conquered by the Greeks after that invasion, with the single
exception of Mascames, governor of Doriscus, 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 Boges, governor
of Eion.” Boges, after bravely defending himself, and refusing offers
of capitulation, found his provisions exhausted, and further 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. 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 Cimon, has been
mentioned, as already stated, by Thucydides; but Herodotus here gives
us to understand that it was only one of a string of enterprises, all
unnoticed by Thucydides, against the Persians. Nay, it would seem from
his language, that Mascames maintained himself in Doriscus during the
whole reign of Xerxes, and perhaps longer, repelling successive Grecian
assaults.
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 Mycale,
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 Doriscus teaches
us. The fear of these Persians, yet remaining in the neighbourhood,
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 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
organise 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 organised operations against them, during the ten years
between 477 and 466 B.C.
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
labour and privation, it was a welcome relief, while to the Athenians,
full of ardour and patient of labour, as well as discipline, for
the aggrandisement 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 Thucydides that this altered practice was
introduced from the petition of the confederates themselves, not from
any pressure or stratagem on the part of Athens. 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 was
made over to the English.
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 honourable 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.
There were two 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 oppression they had little ground for discontent and little
feeling of actual discontent. 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. 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
Lade, in the very crisis of the Ionic revolt from Persia, we detect the
same want of energy, the same incapacity of personal effort and labour,
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 characterised 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.
It has already been mentioned that the first aggregate assessment of
tribute, proposed by Aristides, and adopted by the synod at Delos, was
four hundred and sixty talents in money (about £92,000, or $460,000). 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 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 Sinope and Ægina, subsequently added.
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.
[Sidenote: [470-468 B.C.]]
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,
Boges, 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 Scyros, seemingly about 470
B.C., and the Dryopes in the town and district of Carystus, in Eubœa.
To the latter, who were of a different kindred from the inhabitants
of Chalcis and Eretria, and received no aid from them, they granted a
capitulation: the former were more rigorously dealt with, and expelled
from their island. Scyros was barren, and had little to recommend it,
except a good maritime position and an excellent harbour; 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 Amphictyonic 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 Cimon 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, and became, as well as Lemnos, a
recognised 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 favour 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 Scyros, 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 Cimon had taken the island that he found,
or pretended to find, the body. It was brought to Athens in the year
469 B.C., 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 Theseum, 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. 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.
THE VICTORIES OF CIMON
[Sidenote: [468-465 B.C.]]
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 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; its armed ships being doubtless taken away, and its
fortifications razed: whether any fine or ulterior penalty was levied, we
have no information.
[Illustration: GREEK HELMET AND WEAPONS
(In the British Museum)]
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 Cimon, 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 southwestern
and southern coast of Asia Minor. He attacked and drove out several of
their garrisons from various Grecian settlements, both in Caria and
Lycia: among others, the important trading city of Phaselis, though
at first resisting, and even standing a siege, was prevailed upon by
the friendly suggestions of the Chians in Cimon’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
Tithraustes and Pherendates, both of the regal blood. The fleet, chiefly
Phœnician, seems to have consisted of two hundred ships, but a further
reinforcement of eighty Phœnician ships was expected, and was actually
near at hand, and the commanders were unwilling to hazard a battle before
its arrival. Cimon, 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 Cimon
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 Cimon 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 Phœnician 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. The number of prisoners, as well as the booty taken
by the victors, was immense.
A victory thus remarkable, which thrust back the Persians to the region
eastward of Phaselis, 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 popularise 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, and at the same time it
explains the increasing fear and dislike of the Peloponnesians.[c]
Athens, become, within a very few years, from the capital of a small
province, in fact though not yet in avowed pretension, the head of an
empire, exhibited a new and singular phenomenon in politics, a sovereign
people; a people, not, as in many other Grecian democracies, sovereign
merely of that state which themselves, maintained by slaves, composed,
but supreme over other people in subordinate republics, acknowledging a
degree of subjection, yet claiming to be free. Under this extraordinary
political constitution philosophy and the arts were beginning to make
Athens their principal resort. Migrating from Egypt and the east, they
had long been fostered on the western coast of Asia. In Greece itself
they had owed some temporary encouragement principally to those called
tyrants; the Pisistratidæ at Athens, and Periander at Corinth. But their
efforts were desultory and comparatively feeble till the communication
with the Asian Greeks, checked and interrupted by their subjection to
Persia, was restored, and Athens, chief of the glorious confederacy by
whose arms the deliverance had been effected, began to draw everything
toward itself as a common centre, the capital of an empire. Already
science and fine taste were so far perfected that Æschylus had exhibited
tragedy in its utmost dignity, and Sophocles and Euripides were giving it
the highest polish, when Cimon returned in triumph to his country.
MITFORD’S VIEW OF THE PERIOD
It was the peculiar felicity of Athens in this period that, of the
constellation of great men which arose there, each was singularly fitted
for the situation in which the circumstances of the time required him
to act; and none filled his place more advantageously than Cimon. But
the fate of all those great men, and the resources employed, mostly in
vain, to avert it, sufficiently mark, in this splendid era, a defective
constitution, and law and justice ill assured. Aristides, we are told,
though it is not undisputed, had founded his security upon extreme
poverty: Cimon endeavoured to establish himself by a splendid, and almost
unbounded, yet politic liberality. To ward against envy, and to secure
his party with that tremendous tyrant, as the comic poet not inaptly
calls the sovereign people, he made a parade of throwing down the fences
of his gardens and orchards in the neighbourhood of Athens, and permitted
all to partake of their produce; a table was daily spread at his house
for the poorer citizens, but more particularly for those of his own ward,
whom he invited from the agora, the courts of justice, or the general
assembly; a bounty which both enabled and disposed them to give their
time at his call whenever his interest required their support. In going
about the city he was commonly attended by a large retinue, handsomely
clothed; and if he met an elderly citizen ill clad, he directed one of
his attendants to change cloaks with him. To the indigent of higher rank
he was equally attentive, lending or giving money, as he found their
circumstances required, and always managing his bounty with the utmost
care that the object of it should not be put to shame.[42]
His conduct, in short, was a continual preparation for an election; not,
as in England, to decide whether the candidate should or should not
be a member of the legislature; but whether he should be head of the
commonwealth or an exile.[43] In his youth he had affected a roughness of
manners, and a contempt for the elegances generally reckoned becoming his
rank, and which his fortune enabled him to command. In his riper years
he discovered that virtue and grossness have no natural connection: he
became himself a model of politeness, patronised every liberal art, and
studied to procure elegant as well as useful indulgences for the people.
By him were raised the first of those edifices which, for want of a more
proper name, we call porticos, under whose magnificent shelter, in their
torrid climate, it became the delight of the Athenians to assemble, and
pass their leisure in promiscuous conversation. The widely celebrated
groves of Academia acknowledged him as the founder of their fame. In the
wood, before rude and without water, he formed commodious and elegant
walks, and adorned them with running fountains. Nor was the planting of
the agora, or great market-place of Athens, with that beautiful tree,
the oriental plane, forgotten as a benefit from Cimon; while, ages after
him, his trees flourished, affording an agreeable and salutary shade to
those who exposed their wares there, and to those who came to purchase
them. Much, if not the whole of these things, we are given to understand,
was done at his private expense; but our information upon the subject
is inaccurate. Those stores, with which his victories had enriched the
treasury, probably furnished the sums employed upon some of the public
works executed under his direction, as, more especially, the completion
of the fortification of the citadel, whose principal defence hitherto, on
the southern side, had been the precipitous form of the rock.
While with this splendid and princely liberality Cimon endeavoured
to confirm his own interest, he was attentive to promote the general
welfare, and to render permanent the superiority of Athens among the
Grecian republics. The citizens of the allied states grew daily more
impatient of the requisitions regularly made to take their turn of
service on shipboard, and longed for uninterrupted enjoyment of their
homes, in that security against foreign enemies which their past labours
had, they thought, now sufficiently established. But that the common
interest still required the maintenance of a fleet was a proposition
that could not be denied, while the Persian empire existed, or while the
Grecian seas offered temptation for piracy. Cimon therefore proposed
that any commonwealth of the confederacy might compound for the personal
service of its citizens, by furnishing ships, and paying a sum of money
to the common treasury: the Athenians would then undertake the manning
of the fleet. The proposal was at the moment popular; most of the allies
acceded to it, unaware or heedless of the consequences; for, while they
were thus depriving themselves of all maritime force, making that of
Athens irresistible, they gave that ambitious republic claims upon them,
uncertain in their nature, and which, as they might be made, could now
also be enforced, at its pleasure.
[Sidenote: [465-463 B.C.]]
Having thus at the same time strengthened itself and reduced to impotence
many of the allied states, the Athenian government became less scrupulous
of using force against any of the rest which might dispute its sovereign
authority. The reduction of Eion, by the confederate arms under Cimon,
had led to new information of the value of the adjacent country; where
some mines of gold and silver, and a lucrative commerce with the
surrounding Thracian hordes, excited avidity. But the people of the
neighbouring island of Thasos, very anciently possessed of that commerce,
and of the more accessible mines, insisted that these, when recovered
from the common enemy by the arms of that confederacy of which they were
members, should revert entire to them. The Athenians, asserting the
right of conquest, on the contrary, claimed the principal share as their
own. The Thasians, irritated, renounced the confederacy. Cimon then was
commanded to lead the confederate armament against them. They venturing
an action at sea, were defeated; and Cimon, debarking his forces on the
island, became quickly master of everything but the principal town, to
which he laid siege. The Athenians then hastened to appropriate that
inviting territory on the continent, which was their principal object,
by sending thither a colony of no less than ten thousand men, partly
Athenian citizens, partly from the allied commonwealths.
The Thasians had not originally trusted in their own strength alone for
the hope of final success. Early in the dispute they had sent ministers
to Lacedæmon, soliciting protection against the oppression of Athens. The
pretence was certainly favourable, and the Lacedæmonian government, no
longer pressed by domestic troubles, determined to use the opportunity
for interfering to check the growing power of the rival commonwealth,
so long an object of jealousy, and now become truly formidable. Without
a fleet capable of contending with the Athenian, they could not send
succour immediately to Thasos: but they were taking measures secretly
for a diversion in its favour, by invading Attica, when a sudden and
extraordinary calamity, an earthquake which overthrew the city of
Sparta, and in its immediate consequences threatened destruction to the
commonwealth, compelled them to confine all their attention at home.
Nevertheless the siege, carried on with great vigour, and with all
the skill of the age under the direction of Cimon, was, during three
years, obstinately resisted. Even then the Thasians obtained terms,
severe indeed, but by which they obviated the miseries, death often for
themselves and slavery for their families, to which Grecian people, less
able to defend themselves, were frequently reduced by Grecian arms.
Their fortifications however were destroyed; their ships of war were
surrendered; they paid immediately a sum of money; they bound themselves
to an annual tribute; and they yielded all claim upon the opposite
continent, and the valuable mines there.
The sovereignty of the Athenian people over the allied republics would
thus gain some present confirmation; but in the principal object
their ambition and avarice were, apparently through over-greediness,
disappointed. The town of Eion stood at the mouth of the river Strymon.
For the new settlement a place called the Nine Ways, a few miles up the
river, was chosen; commodious for the double purpose of communicating
with the sea, and commanding the neighbouring country. But the Edonian
Thracians, in whose territory it was, resenting the encroachment,
infested the settlers with irregular but continual hostilities. To put
an end to so troublesome a war the whole force of the colony marched
against them. As the Greeks advanced, the Edonians retreated; avoiding a
general action, while they sent to all the neighbouring Thracian tribes
for assistance, as in a common cause. When they were at length assembled
in sufficient numbers, having engaged the Greeks far within a wild and
difficult country, they attacked, overpowered, and cut in pieces their
army, and annihilated the colony.
Cimon, on his return to Athens, did not meet the acclamations to which
he had been accustomed. Faction had been busy in his absence. Apparently
the fall of the colony of the Nine Ways furnished both instigation and
opportunity, perhaps assisted by circumstances of which no information
remains. A prosecution was instituted against him, on the pretence,
according to the biographers, that he ought to have extended the Athenian
dominion by conquest in Macedonia, and that bribes from Alexander,
king of that country, had stopped his exertions. The covetous ambition
indeed of the Athenian people, inflamed by interested demagogues, was
growing boundless. Cimon, indignant at the ungrateful return for a life
divided between performing the most important services to his country,
and studying how most to gratify the people, would enter little into
particulars in refuting a charge, one part of which he considered as
attributing to him no crime, the other as incapable of credit, and
therefore beneath his regard. He told the assembled people that “they
mistook both him and the country which it was said he ought to have
conquered. Other generals have cultivated an interest with the Ionians
and the Thessalians, whose riches might make an interference in their
concerns profitable. For himself, he had never sought any connection with
those people; but he confessed he esteemed the Macedonians, who were
virtuous and brave, but not rich; nor would he ever prefer riches to
those qualities, though he had his satisfaction in having enriched his
country with the spoils of its enemies.” The popularity of Cimon was yet
great; his principal opponents apparently found it not a time for pushing
matters to extremity against him, and such a defence sufficed to procure
an honourable acquittal.
[Sidenote: [464-462 B.C.]]
Meanwhile Lacedæmon had been in the utmost confusion and on the brink
of ruin. In the year 464 B.C. the earthquake came suddenly at mid-day,
with a violence before unheard of. The youths of the principal families,
assembled in the gymnasium at the appointed hour for exercise, were in
great numbers crushed by its fall: many of both sexes and of all ages
were buried under the ruins of other buildings: the shocks were repeated;
the earth opened in several places; vast fragments from the summits
of Taygetus were tumbled down its sides: in the end only five houses
remained standing in Sparta, and it was computed that twenty thousand
lives were lost.
The first strokes of this awful calamity filled all ranks with the same
apprehensions. But, in the continuance of it, that wretched multitude,
excluded from all participation in the prosperity of their country, began
to found hope on its distress: a proposal, obscurely made, was rapidly
communicated, and the helots assembled from various parts with one
purpose, of putting their severe masters to death, and making the country
their own. The ready foresight and prudent exertion of Archidamus, who
had succeeded his grandfather Leotychides in the throne of the house
of Procles, preserved Lacedæmon. In the confusion of the first alarm,
while some were endeavouring to save their most valuable effects from
the ruins of the city, others flying various ways for personal safety,
Archidamus, collecting what he could of his friends and attendants
about him, caused trumpets to sound to arms, as if an enemy were at
hand. The Lacedæmonians, universally trained to the strictest military
discipline, obeyed the signal; arms were the only necessaries sought; and
civil rule, dissipated by the magnitude of the calamity, was, for the
existing circumstances, most advantageously supplied by military order.
The helots, awed by the very unexpected appearance of a regular army
instead of a confused and flying multitude, desisted from their meditated
attempt; but, quitting the city, spread themselves over the country, and
excited their fellows universally to rebellion.
[Sidenote: [462 B.C.]]
The greater part of those miserable men, whom the Lacedæmonians held in
so cruel a bondage, were descendants of the Messenians, men of the same
blood with themselves, Greeks and Dorians. Memory of the wars of their
ancestors, of their hero Aristomenes, and of the defence of Ithome,
was not obsolete among them. Ithome accordingly they seized and made
their principal post; and they so outnumbered the Lacedæmonians that,
though deficiently armed, yet, being not without discipline acquired
in attendance upon their masters in war, they were capable of being
formidable even in the field. Nor was it thus only that the rebellion
was distressing.[44] The Lacedæmonians, singularly ready and able in the
use of arms, were singularly helpless in almost every other business.
Deprived of their slaves they were nearly deprived of the means of
subsistence; agriculture stopped, and mechanic arts ceased. Application
was therefore made to the neighbouring allies for succour. The zealous
friendship of the Æginetans upon the occasion we find afterwards
acknowledged by the Lacedæmonian government, and assistance came from as
far as Platæa. Thus re-enforced the spirited and well-directed exertions
of Archidamus quickly so far reduced the rebellion that the insurgents
remaining in arms were blockaded in Ithome. But the extraordinary natural
strength of that place, the desperate obstinacy of the defenders, and
the deficiency of the assailants in the science of attack, giving reason
to apprehend that the business might not be soon accomplished, the
Lacedæmonians sent to desire assistance from the Athenians, who were
esteemed, beyond the other Greeks, experienced and skilful in the war of
sieges.
This measure seems to have been on many accounts imprudent. There was
found at Athens a strong disposition to refuse the aid. But Cimon, who,
with a universal liberality, always professed particular esteem for the
Lacedæmonians, prevailed upon his countrymen to take the generous part;
and a considerable body of forces marched under his command into the
Peloponnesus. Upon their arrival at the camp of the besiegers an assault
upon the place was attempted, but with so little success that recourse
was again had to the old method of blockade. It was in the leisure of
that inactive and tedious mode of attack that principally arose those
heartburnings which first occasioned an avowed national aversion between
the Athenians and Lacedæmonians, and led, not indeed immediately, but
in a direct line, to the fatal Peloponnesian War. All the prudence and
all the authority of Cimon could not prevent the vivacious spirit of
the Athenians from exulting, perhaps rather insultingly, in the new
pre-eminence of their country; wherever danger called, they would be
ostentatiously forward to meet it; and an assumed superiority, without a
direct pretension to it, was continually appearing.
The Spartan pride was offended by their arrogance; the Spartan gravity
was disturbed by their lively forwardness: it began to be considered
that, though Greeks, they were Ionians, whom the Peloponnesians
considered as an alien race; and it occurred that if, in the continuance
of the siege, any disgust should arise, there was no security that they
might not renounce their present engagements, and even connect themselves
with the helots; who, as Greeks, had, not less than the Lacedæmonians,
a claim to friendship and protection from every other Grecian people.
Mistrust thus arose on one side; disgust became quickly manifest on
both; and the Lacedæmonians shortly resolved to dismiss the Athenian
forces. This however they endeavoured to do, as far as might be, without
offence, by declaring that an “assault having been found ineffectual,
the assistance of the Athenians was superfluous for the blockade, and
the Lacedæmonians would not give their allies unnecessary trouble.” All
the other allies were however retained, and the Athenians alone returned
home; so exasperated by this invidious distinction that, on their arrival
at Athens, the party adverse to Cimon proposing a decree for renouncing
the confederacy with Lacedæmon, it was carried. An alliance with Argos,
the inveterate enemy of Sparta, immediately followed; and soon after the
Thessalians acceded to the new confederacy.
While Lacedæmon was engaged with this dangerous insurrection, a petty
war arose in the Peloponnesus, affording one of the most remarkable,
among the many strong instances on record, of the miseries to which the
greater part of Greece was perpetually liable from the defects of its
political system. Argos, the capital of Argolis, and formerly of the
Peloponnesus under the early kings of the Danaan race, or perhaps before
them, lost its preeminence, as we have already seen, during the reigns
of the Persidæan and Pelopidæan princes, under whom Mycenæ became the
first city of Greece. On the return of the Heraclidæ, Temenus fixed
his residence at Argos, which thus regained its superiority. But, as
the oppressions, arising from a defective political system, occasioned
very generally through Greece the desire, so the troubles of the Argive
government gave the means for the inferior towns to become independent
republics. Like the rest, or perhaps more than the rest, generally
oppressive, that government was certainly often ill-conducted and weak;
and Lacedæmon, its perpetual enemy, fomented the rebellious disposition
of its dependencies. During the ancient wars of Sparta and Messenia, the
Argives had expelled the people of their towns of Asine and Nauplia,
and forced them to seek foreign settlements; a resource sufficiently
marking a government both weak and oppressive. Mycenæ was now a much
smaller town than Argos; but its people, encouraged by Lacedæmon, formed
lofty pretensions. The far-famed temple of Juno, the tutelar deity of
the country, situated about five miles from Argos, and little more than
one from Mycenæ, was considered by the Argives as theirs; and, from the
time, it was supposed, of the Heraclidæ, the priestess had been appointed
and the sacred ceremonies administered under the protection of their
government. Nevertheless the Mycenæans now claimed the right to this
superintendency. The games of Nemea, from their institution, or, as
it was called, their restoration, had been under the direction of the
Argives; but the Mycenæan government claimed also the prior right to
preside there. These however were but branches of a much more important
claim; for they wanted only power, or sufficient assistance from Sparta,
to assert a right of sovereignty over Argos itself and all Argolis; and
they were continually urging another pretension, not the less invidious
to Argos because better founded, a pretension to merit with all the
Greek nation for having joined the confederacy against Persia, while
the Argives allied themselves with the common enemy of Greece. The
favourable opportunity afforded by the helot rebellion was eagerly seized
by the Argives for ridding themselves of such troublesome and dangerous
neighbours, whom they considered as rebellious subjects. Laying siege to
Mycenæ they took the place, reduced the surviving people to slavery, and
dedicating a tenth of the spoil to the gods destroyed the town, which was
never rebuilt.
At Athens, after the banishment of Themistocles, Cimon remained long
in possession of a popularity which nothing could resist; and his
abilities, his successes, and his moderation, his connection with
the aristocratical interest, and his favour with the people, seemed
altogether likely to insure, if anything could insure, permanency and
quiet to his administration. But in Athens, as in every free government,
there would always be a party adverse to the party in the direction of
public affairs: matters had been for some time ripening for a change;
and the renunciation of the Lacedæmonian alliance was the triumph of the
opposition.[d]
FOOTNOTES
[42] Plutarch says that “Cimon’s house was a kind of common hall for
all the people; the first fruits of his lands were theirs; whatever
the seasons produced of excellent and agreeable, they freely gathered;
nor were strangers in the least debarred from them: so that he in some
measure revived the community of goods, which prevailed in the reign of
Saturn, and which the poets tell so much of.”
[43] Gorgias the Leontine gave him this character: “He got riches to use
them, and used them so as to be honoured on their account.”
[44] [This war has been called the Third Messenian War.]
[Illustration: TEMPLE OF ERECHTHEUS]
[Illustration]