CHAPTER XLVII.

FROM THE THIRTY YEARS’ TRUCE, FOURTEEN YEARS BEFORE THE PELOPONNESIAN

WAR, DOWN TO THE BLOCKADE OF POTIDÆA, IN THE YEAR BEFORE THE

PELOPONNESIAN WAR.

The judicial alterations effected at Athens by Periklês and

Ephialtês, described in the preceding chapter, gave to a large

proportion of the citizens direct jury functions and an active

interest in the constitution, such as they had never before enjoyed;

the change being at once a mark of previous growth of democratical

sentiment during the past, and a cause of its farther development

during the future. The Athenian people were at this time ready for

personal exertion in all directions: military service on land or

sea was not less conformable to their dispositions than attendance

in the ekklesia or in the dikastery at home. The naval service

especially was prosecuted with a degree of assiduity which brought

about continual improvement in skill and efficiency, and the poorer

citizens, of whom it chiefly consisted, were more exact in obedience

and discipline than any of the more opulent persons from whom the

infantry or the cavalry were drawn.[1] The maritime multitude, in

addition to self-confidence and courage, acquired by this laborious

training an increased skill, which placed the Athenian navy every

year more and more above the rest of Greece: and the perfection of

this force became the more indispensable as the Athenian empire

was now again confined to the sea and seaport towns; the reverses

immediately preceding the thirty years truce having broken up

all Athenian land ascendency over Megara, Bœotia, and the other

continental territories adjoining to Attica.

[1] Xenophon, Memorab. iii, 5, 18.

The maritime confederacy,—originally commenced at Delos, under

the headship of Athens, but with a common synod and deliberative

voice on the part of each member,—had now become transformed into a

confirmed empire on the part of Athens, over the remaining states as

foreign dependencies; all of them rendering tribute except Chios,

Samos, and Lesbos. These three still remained on their original

footing of autonomous allies, retaining their armed force, ships, and

fortifications, with the obligation of furnishing military and naval

aid when required, but not of paying tribute: the discontinuance of

the deliberative synod, however, had deprived them of their original

security against the encroachments of Athens. I have already stated

generally the steps, we do not know them in detail, whereby this

important change was brought about, gradually and without any violent

revolution,—for even the transfer of the common treasure from Delos

to Athens, which was the most palpable symbol and evidence of the

change, was not an act of Athenian violence, since it was adopted

on the proposition of the Samians. The change resulted in fact

almost inevitably from the circumstances of the case, and from the

eager activity of the Athenians contrasted with the backwardness

and aversion to personal service on the part of the allies. We must

recollect that the confederacy, even in its original structure, was

contracted for permanent objects, and was permanently binding by

the vote of its majority, like the Spartan confederacy, upon every

individual member:[2] it was destined to keep out the Persian fleet,

and to maintain the police of the Ægean. Consistently with these

objects, no individual member could be allowed to secede from the

confederacy, and thus to acquire the benefit of protection at the

cost of the remainder: so that when Naxos and other members actually

did secede, the step was taken as a revolt, and Athens only did her

duty as president of the confederacy in reducing them. By every

such reduction, as well as by that exchange of personal service for

money-payment, which most of the allies voluntarily sought, the

power of Athens increased, until at length she found herself with an

irresistible navy in the midst of disarmed tributaries, none of whom

could escape from her constraining power,—and mistress of the sea,

the use of which was indispensable to them. The synod of Delos, even

if it had not before become partially deserted, must have ceased at

the time when the treasure was removed to Athens,—probably about 460

B.C., or shortly afterwards.

[2] Thucyd. v. 30: about the Spartan confederacy,—εἰρημένον,

κύριον εἶναι, ὅ,τι ἂν τὸ πλῆθος τῶν ξυμμάχων ψηφίσηται, ἢν μή τι

θεῶν ἢ ἡρώων κώλυμα ᾖ.

The relations between Athens and her allies were thus materially

changed by proceedings which gradually evolved themselves and

followed one upon the other without any preconcerted plan: she became

an imperial or despot city, governing an aggregate of dependent

subjects, all without their own active concurrence, and in many

cases doubtless contrary to their own sense of political right. It

was not likely that they should conspire unanimously to break up

the confederacy, and discontinue the collection of contribution

from each of the members: nor would it have been at all desirable

that they should do so: for while Greece generally would have been

a great loser by such a proceeding, the allies themselves would

have been the greatest losers of all, inasmuch as they would have

been exposed without defence to the Persian and Phenician fleets.

But the Athenians committed the capital fault of taking the whole

alliance into their own hands, and treating the allies purely as

subjects, without seeking to attach them by any form of political

incorporation or collective meeting and discussion,—without taking

any pains to maintain community of feeling with the idea of a joint

interest,—without admitting any control, real or even pretended,

over themselves as managers. Had they attempted to do this, it might

have proved difficult to accomplish,—so powerful was the force of

geographical dissemination, the tendency to isolated civic life, and

the repugnance to any permanent extramural obligations, in every

Grecian community: but they do not appear to have ever made the

attempt. Finding Athens exalted by circumstances to empire, and the

allies degraded into subjects, the Athenian statesmen grasped at

the exaltation as a matter of pride as well as profit:[3] nor did

even Periklês, the most prudent and far-sighted of them, betray any

consciousness that an empire without the cement of some all-pervading

interest or attachment, must have a natural tendency to become more

and more burdensome and odious, and ultimately to crumble in pieces.

Such was the course of events which, if the judicious counsels of

Periklês had been followed, might have been postponed but could not

have been averted.

[3] Thucyd. ii, 63. τῆς τε πόλεως ὑμᾶς εἰκὸς τῷ τιμωμένῳ ἀπὸ τοῦ

ἄρχειν, ᾧπερ ἅπαντες ἀγάλλεσθε, βοηθεῖν, καὶ μὴ φεύγειν τοὺς

πόνους, ἢ μηδὲ τὰς τιμὰς διώκειν, etc.

Instead of trying to cherish or restore the feelings of equal

alliance, Periklês formally disclaimed it. He maintained that Athens

owed to her subject allies no account of the money received from

them, so long as she performed her contract by keeping away the

Persian enemy, and maintaining the safety of the Ægean waters.[4]

This was, as he represented, the obligation which Athens had

undertaken; and, provided it were faithfully discharged, the allies

had no right to ask questions or institute control. That it was

faithfully discharged no one could deny: no ship of war except that

of Athens and her allies was ever seen between the eastern and

western shores of the Ægean. An Athenian fleet of sixty triremes was

kept on duty in these waters, chiefly manned by Athenian citizens,

and beneficial as well from the protection afforded to commerce as

for keeping the seaman in constant pay and training.[5] And such was

the effective superintendence maintained, that in the disastrous

period preceding the thirty years’ truce, when Athens lost Megara and

Bœotia, and with difficulty recovered Eubœa, none of her numerous

maritime subjects took the opportunity to revolt.

[4] Plutarch, Periklês, c. 12.

[5] Plutarch, Periklês, c. 11.

The total of these distinct tributary cities is said to have amounted

to one thousand, according to a verse of Aristophanês,[6] which

cannot be under the truth, though it may well be, and probably is,

greatly above the truth. The total annual tribute collected at

the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, and probably also for the

years preceding it, is given by Thucydidês at about six hundred

talents; of the sums paid by particular states, however, we have

little or no information.[7] It was placed under the superintendence

of the Hellenotamiæ; originally officers of the confederacy, but

now removed from Delos to Athens, and acting altogether as an

Athenian treasury-board. The sum total of the Athenian revenue,[8]

from all sources, including this tribute, at the beginning of the

Peloponnesian war, is stated by Xenophon at one thousand talents:

customs, harbor, and market dues, receipts from the silver-mines at

Laurium, rents of public property, fines from judicial sentences,

a tax per head upon slaves, the annual payment made by each metic,

etc., may have made up a larger sum than four hundred talents; which

sum, added to the six hundred talents from tribute, would make the

total named by Xenophon. But a verse of Aristophanês,[9] during the

ninth year of the Peloponnesian war, B.C. 422, gives the general

total of that time as “nearly two thousand talents:” this is in all

probability much above the truth, though we may well imagine that

the amount of tribute-money levied upon the allies may have been

augmented during the interval: I think that the alleged duplication

of the tribute by Alkibiadês, which Thucydidês nowhere notices, is

not borne out by any good evidence, nor can I believe that it ever

reached the sum of twelve hundred talents.[10] Whatever may have

been the actual magnitude of the Athenian budget, however, prior to

the Peloponnesian war, we know that during the larger part of the

administration of Periklês, the revenue, including tribute, was so

managed as to leave a large annual surplus; insomuch that a treasure

of coined money was accumulated in the acropolis during the years

preceding the Peloponnesian war,—which treasure, when at its maximum,

reached the great sum of nine thousand seven hundred talents (equal

to two million two hundred and thirty thousand pounds), and was still

at six thousand talents, after a serious drain for various purposes,

at the moment when that war began.[11] This system of public economy,

constantly laying by a considerable sum year after year,—in which

Athens stood alone, since none of the Peloponnesian states had any

public reserve whatever,[12]—goes far of itself to vindicate Periklês

from the charge of having wasted the public money in mischievous

distributions for the purpose of obtaining popularity; and also to

exonerate the Athenian Demos from that reproach of a greedy appetite

for living by the public purse which it is common to ascribe

to them. After the death of Kimon, no farther expeditions were

undertaken against the Persians, and even for some years before his

death, not much appears to have been done: so that the tribute-money

remained unexpended, though it was the duty of Athens to hold it in

reserve against future attack, which might at any time be renewed.

[6] Aristophan. Vesp. 707.

[7] The island of Kythêra was conquered by the Athenians from

Sparta in 425 B.C., and the annual tribute then imposed upon

it was four talents (Thucyd. iv, 57). In the Inscription No.

143, ap. Boeckh, Corp. Inscr., we find some names enumerated of

tributary towns, with the amount of tribute opposite to each,

but the stone is too much damaged to give us much information.

Tyrodiza, in Thrace, paid one thousand drachms: some other towns,

or junctions of towns, not clearly discernible, are rated at one

thousand, two thousand, three thousand drachms, one talent, and

even ten talents. This inscription must be anterior to 415 B.C.,

when the tribute was converted into a five per cent. duty upon

imports and exports: see Boeckh, Public Econ. of Athens, and his

Notes upon the above-mentioned Inscription.

It was the practice of Athens not always to rate each tributary

city separately, but sometimes to join several in one collective

rating; probably each responsible for the rest. This seems to

have provoked occasional remonstrances from the allies, in some

of which the rhetor, Antipho, was employed to furnish the speech

which the complainants pronounced before the dikastery: see

Antipho ap. Harpokration, v. Ἀπόταξις—Συντελεῖς. It is greatly

to be lamented that the orations composed by Antipho, for the

Samothrakians and Lindians,—the latter inhabiting one of the

three separate towns in the island of Rhodes,—have not been

preserved.

[8] Xenophon, Anab. vii, 1, 27. οὐ μεῖον χιλίων ταλάντων: compare

Boeckh, Public Econ. of Athens, b. iii, ch. 7, 15, 19.

[9] Aristophan. Vesp. 660. τάλαντ᾽ ἐγγὺς δισχίλια.

[10] Very excellent writers on Athenian antiquity (Boeckh, Public

Econ. of Athens, c. 15, 19, b. iii; Schömann, Antiq. J. P. Att.

sect. lxxiv; K. F. Hermann, Gr. Staatsalterthümer, sect. 157:

compare, however, a passage in Boeckh, ch. 17, p. 421, Eng.

transl., where he seems to be of an opposite opinion) accept

this statement, that the tribute levied by Athenians upon her

allies was doubled some years after the commencement of the

Peloponnesian war,—at which time it was six hundred talents,—and

that it came to amount to twelve hundred talents. Nevertheless,

I cannot follow them, upon the simple authority of Æschinês, and

the Pseudo-Andokidês (Æschin. De Fals. Legat. c. 54, p. 301;

Andokidês, De Pace, c. 1, and the same orator cont. Alkibiad.

c. 4). For we may state pretty confidently, that neither of the

two orations here ascribed to Andokidês is genuine: the oration

against Alkibiadês most decidedly not genuine. There remains,

therefore, as an original evidence, only the passage of Æschinês,

which has, apparently, been copied by the author of the Oration

De Pace, ascribed to Andokidês. Now the chapter of Æschinês,

which professes to furnish a general but brief sketch of Athenian

history for the century succeeding the Persian invasion, is so

full of historical and chronological inaccuracies, that we can

hardly accept it, when standing alone, as authority for any

matter of fact. In a note on the chapter immediately preceding,

I have already touched upon its extraordinary looseness of

statement,—pointed out by various commentators, among them

particularly by Mr. Fynes Clinton: see above, chap. xlv, note 2,

pp. 409-411, in the preceding volume.

The assertion, therefore, that the tribute from the Athenian

allies was raised to the sum of twelve hundred talents annually,

comes to us only from the orator Æschinês as an original

witness: and in him it forms part of a tissue of statements

alike confused and incorrect. But against it we have a powerful

negative argument,—the perfect silence of Thucydidês. Is it

possible that that historian would have omitted all notice of

a step so very important in its effects, if Athens had really

adopted it? He mentions to us the commutation by Athens of the

tribute from her allies into a duty of five per cent. payable

by them on their exports and imports (vii, 28)—this was in the

nineteenth year of the war, 413 B.C. But anything like the

duplication of the tribute all at once, would have altered much

more materially the relations between Athens and her allies and

would have constituted in the minds of the latter a substantive

grievance, such as to aggravate the motive for revolt in a

manner which Thucydidês could hardly fail to notice. The orator

Æschinês refers the augmentation of the tribute, up to twelve

hundred talents, to the time succeeding the peace of Nikias: M.

Boeckh (Public Econ. of Athens, b. iii, ch. 15-19, pp. 400-434)

supposes it to have taken place earlier than the representation

of the Vespæ of Aristophanês, that is, about three years before

that peace, or 423 B.C. But this would have been just before the

time of the expedition of Brasidas into Thrace, and his success

in exciting revolt among the dependencies of Athens: if Athens

had doubled her tribute upon all the allies, just before that

expedition, Thucydidês could not have omitted to mention it, as

increasing the chances of success to Brasidas, and helping to

determine the resolutions of the Akanthians and others, which

were by no means adopted unanimously or without hesitation, to

revolt.

In reference to the oration called that of Andokidês against

Alkibiadês, I made some remarks in the fourth volume of this

History (vol. iv, ch. xxxi, p. 151), tending to show it to be

spurious and of a time considerably later than that to which

it purports to belong. I will here add one other remark, which

appears to me decisive, tending to the same conclusion.

The oration professes to be delivered in a contest of ostracism

between Nikias, Alkibiadês, and the speaker: one of the three,

he says, must necessarily be ostracized, and the question is,

to determine which of the three: accordingly, the speaker

dwells upon many topics calculated to raise a bad impression of

Alkibiadês, and a favorable impression of himself.

Among the accusations against Alkibiadês, one is, that after

having recommended, in the assembly of the people, that the

inhabitants of Melos should be sold as slaves, he had himself

purchased a Melian woman among the captives, and had had a son by

her: it was criminal, argues the speaker, to beget offspring by

a woman whose relations he had contributed to cause to be put to

death, and whose city he had contributed to ruin (c. 8).

Upon this argument I do not here touch, any farther than to bring

out the point of chronology. The speech, if delivered at all,

must have been delivered, at the earliest, nearly a year after

the capture of Melos by the Athenians: it may be of later date,

but it _cannot possibly be earlier_.

Now Melos surrendered in the winter immediately preceding the

great expedition of the Athenians to Sicily in 415 B.C., which

expedition sailed about midsummer (Thucyd. v, 116; vi, 30).

Nikias and Alkibiadês both went as commanders of that expedition:

the latter was recalled to Athens for trial on the charge of

impiety about three months afterwards, but escaped in the way

home, was condemned and sentenced to banishment in his absence,

and did not return to Athens until 407 B.C., long after the death

of Nikias, who continued in command of the Athenian armament in

Sicily, enjoying the full esteem of his countrymen, until its

complete failure and ruin before Syracuse,—and perished himself

afterwards as a Syracusan prisoner.

Taking these circumstances together, it will at once be seen that

there never can have been any time, ten months or more after the

capture of Melos, when Nikias and Alkibiadês _could_ have been

exposed to a vote of ostracism at Athens. The thing is absolutely

impossible: and the oration in which such historical and

chronological incompatibilities are embodied, must be spurious:

furthermore, it must have been composed long after the pretended

time of delivery, when the chronological series of events had

been forgotten.

I may add that the story of this duplication of the tribute by

Alkibiadês is virtually contrary to the statement of Plutarch,

probably borrowed from Æschinês, who states that the demagogues

_gradually_ increased (κατὰ μικρὸν) the tribute to thirteen

hundred talents (Plutarch, Aristeid. c. 24).

[11] Thucyd. ii, 13.

[12] Thucyd. i, 80. The foresight of the Athenian people, in

abstaining from immediate use of public money and laying it up

for future wants, would be still more conspicuously demonstrated,

if the statement of Æschinês, the orator, were true, that they

got together seven thousand talents between the peace of Nikias

and the Sicilian expedition. M. Boeckh believes this statement,

and says: “It is not impossible that one thousand talents might

have been laid by every year, as the amount of tribute received

was so considerable.” (Public Economy of Athens, ch. xx. p. 446,

Eng. Trans.) I do not believe the statement: but M. Boeckh and

others, who do admit it, ought in fairness to set it against the

many remarks which they pass in condemnation of the democratical

prodigality.

Though we do not know the exact amount of the other sources of

Athenian revenue, however, we know that the tribute received from

the allies was by far the largest item in it.[13] And altogether the

exercise of empire abroad became a prominent feature in Athenian

life, and a necessity to Athenian sentiment, not less than democracy

at home. Athens was no longer, as she had been once, a single city,

with Attica for her territory: she was a capital or imperial city,—a

despot city, was the expression used by her enemies, and even

sometimes by her own citizens,[14]—with many dependencies attached

to her, and bound to follow her orders. Such was the manner in which

not merely Periklês and the other leading statesmen, but even the

humblest Athenian citizen, conceived the dignity of Athens; and the

sentiment was one which carried with it both personal pride and

stimulus to active patriotism. To establish Athenian interests among

the dependent territories, was one important object in the eyes of

Periklês, and while he discountenanced all distant[15] and rash

enterprises, such as invasions of Egypt or Cyprus, he planted out

many kleruchies and colonies of Athenian citizens, intermingled with

allies, on islands, and parts of the coast. He conducted one thousand

citizens to the Thracian Chersonese, five hundred to Naxos, and two

hundred and fifty to Andros. In the Chersonese, he farther repelled

the barbarous Thracian invaders from without, and even undertook

the labor of carrying a wall of defence across the isthmus, which

connected the peninsula with Thrace; since the barbarous Thracian

tribes, though expelled some time before by Kimon,[16] had still

continued to renew their incursions from time to time. Ever since the

occupation of the elder Miltiadês, about eighty years before, there

had been in this peninsula many Athenian proprietors, apparently

intermingled with half-civilized Thracians: the settlers now acquired

both greater numerical strength and better protection, though it

does not appear that the cross-wall was permanently maintained.

The maritime expeditions of Periklês even extended into the Euxine

sea, as far as the important Greek city of Sinôpê, then governed by

a despot named Timesilaus, against whom a large proportion of the

citizens were in active discontent. He left Lamachus with thirteen

Athenian triremes to assist in expelling the despot, who was driven

into exile along with his friends and party: the properties of

these exiles were confiscated, and assigned to the maintenance of

six hundred Athenian citizens, admitted to equal fellowship and

residence with the Sinôpeans. We may presume that on this occasion

Sinôpê became a member of the Athenian tributary alliance, if it had

not been so before: but we do not know whether Kotyôra and Trapezus,

dependencies of Sinôpê, farther eastward, which the ten thousand

Greeks found on their retreat fifty years afterwards, existed in the

time of Periklês or not. Moreover, the numerous and well-equipped

Athenian fleet, under the command of Periklês, produced an imposing

effect upon the barbarous princes and tribes along the coast,[17]

contributing certainly to the security of Grecian trade, and probably

to the acquisition of new dependent allies.

[13] Thucyd. i. 122-143; ii, 13. The πεντηκοστὴ, or duty of two

per cent. upon imports and exports at the Peiræus, produced to

the state a revenue of thirty-six talents in the year in which

it was farmed by Andokidês, somewhere about 400 B.C., after

the restoration of the democracy at Athens from its defeat and

subversion at the close of the Peloponnesian war (Andokidês de

Mysteriis, c. 23, p. 65). This was at a period of depression in

Athenian affairs, and when trade was doubtless not near so good

as it had been during the earlier part of the Peloponnesian war.

It seems probable that this must have been the most considerable

permanent source of Athenian revenue next to the tribute; though

we do not know what rate of customs-duty was imposed at the

Peiræus during the Peloponnesian war. Comparing together the two

passages of Xenophon (Republ. Ath. 1, 17, and Aristophan. Vesp.

657), we may suppose that the regular and usual rate of duty

was one per cent. or one ἑκατοστὴ,—while in case of need this

may have been doubled or tripled.—τὰς πολλὰς ἑκατοστάς, (see

Boeckh, b. iii, chs. 1-4, pp. 298-318, Eng. Trans.) The amount of

revenue derived even from this source, however, can have borne no

comparison to the tribute.

[14] By Periklês, Thucyd. ii, 63. By Kleon, Thucyd. iii, 37. By

the envoys at Melos, v, 89. By Euphemus, vi, 85. By the hostile

Corinthians, i, 124 as a matter of course.

[15] Plutarch, Periklês. c. 20.

[16] Plutarch, Kimon. c. 14.

[17] Plutarch, Periklês, c. 19, 20.

It was by successive proceedings of this sort that many detachments

of Athenian citizens became settled in various portions of the

maritime empire of the city,—some rich, investing their property

in the islands as more secure—from the incontestable superiority

of Athens at sea—even than Attica, which, since the loss of

the Megarid, could not be guarded against a Peloponnesian land

invasion,[18]—others poor, and hiring themselves out as laborers.[19]

The islands of Lemnos, Imbros, and Skyros, as well as the territory

of Estiæa, on the north of Eubœa, were completely occupied by

Athenian proprietors and citizens,—other places partially so

occupied. And it was doubtless advantageous to the islanders to

associate themselves with Athenians in trading enterprises, since

they thereby obtained a better chance of the protection of the

Athenian fleet. It seems that Athens passed regulations occasionally

for the commerce of her dependent allies, as we see by the fact, that

shortly before the Peloponnesian war, she excluded the Megarians

from all their ports. The commercial relations between Peiræus and

the Ægean reached their maximum during the interval immediately

preceding the Peloponnesian war: nor were these relations confined to

the country east and north of Attica: they reached also the western

regions. The most important settlements founded by Athens during this

period were Amphipolis in Thrace, and Thurii in Italy.

[18] Xenophon, Rep. Ath. ii, 16. τὴν μὲν οὐσίαν ταῖς νήσοις

παρατίθενται, πιστεύοντες τῇ ἀρχῇ τῇ κατὰ θάλασσαν· τὴν δὲ

Ἀττικὴν γῆν περιορῶσι τεμνομένην, γιγνώσκοντες ὅτι εἰ αὐτὴν

ἐλεήσουσιν, ἑτέρων ἀγαθῶν μειζόνων στερήσονται.

Compare also Xenophon (Memorabil. ii, 8, 1, and Symposion, iv,

31).

[19] See the case of the free laborer and the husbandman at

Naxos, Plato, Euthyphro, c. 3.

Amphipolis was planted by a colony of Athenians and other Greeks,

under the conduct of the Athenian Agnon, in 437 B.C. It was situated

near the river Strymon, in Thrace, on the eastern bank, and at the

spot where the Strymon resumes its river-course after emerging

from the lake above. It was originally a township or settlement

of the Edonian Thracians, called Ennea Hodoi, or Nine Ways,—in a

situation doubly valuable, both as being close upon the bridge over

the Strymon, and as a convenient centre for the ship-timber and gold

and silver mines of the neighboring region,—and distant about three

English miles from the Athenian settlement of Eion at the mouth of

the river. The previous unsuccessful attempts to form establishments

at Ennea Hodoi have already been noticed,—first, that of Histiæus

the Milesian, followed up by his brother Aristagoras (about 497-496

B.C.), next, that of the Athenians about 465 B.C., under Leagrus

and others,—on both these occasions the intruding settlers had

been defeated and expelled by the native Thracian tribes, though

on the second occasion the number sent by Athens was not less than

ten thousand.[20] So serious a loss deterred the Athenians for a

long time from any repetition of the attempt: though it is highly

probable that individual citizens from Eion and from Thasus connected

themselves with powerful Thracian families, and became in this

manner actively engaged in mining, to their own great profit,—as

well as to the profit of the city collectively, since the property

of the kleruchs, or Athenian citizens occupying colonial lands,

bore its share in case of direct taxes being imposed on Athenian

property generally. Among such fortunate adventurers we may number

the historian Thucydidês himself; seemingly descended from Athenian

parents intermarrying with Thracians, and himself married to a wife

either Thracian or belonging to a family of Athenian colonists in

that region, through whom he became possessed of a large property in

the mines, as well as of great influence in the districts around.[21]

This was one of the various ways in which the collective power of

Athens enabled her chief citizens to enrich themselves individually.

[20] Thucyd. i. 100.

[21] Thucyd. iv, 105; Marcellinus, Vit. Thucyd. c. 19. See

Rotscher, Leben des Thukydides, ch. i, 4, p. 96, who gives a

genealogy of Thucydidês, as far as it can be made out with any

probability. The historian was connected by blood with Miltiadês

and Kimon, as well as with Olorus, king of one of the Thracian

tribes, whose daughter Hegesipylê was wife of Miltiadês, the

conqueror of Marathon. In this manner, therefore, he belonged to

one of the ancient heroic families of Athens, and even of Greece,

being an Ækid through Ajax and Philæus (Marcellin. c. 2).

The colony under Agnon, despatched from Athens in the year 437 B.C.,

appears to have been both numerous and well sustained, inasmuch as

it conquered and maintained the valuable position of Ennea Hodoi in

spite of those formidable Edonian neighbors who had baffled the two

preceding attempts. Its name of Ennea Hodoi was exchanged for that of

Amphipolis,—the hill on which the new town was situated being bounded

on three sides by the river. The settlers seem to have been of mixed

extraction, comprising no large proportion of Athenians: some were of

Chalkidic race, others came from Argilus, a Grecian city colonized

from Andros, which possessed the territory on the western bank of

the Strymon, immediately opposite to Amphipolis,[22] and which was

included among the subject allies of Athens. Amphipolis, connected

with the sea by the Strymon and the port of Eion, became the most

important of all the Athenian dependencies in reference to Thrace and

Macedonia.

[22] Thucyd. iv, 102; v, 6.

The colony of Thurii on the coast of the gulf of Tarentum in

Italy, near the site and on the territory of the ancient Sybaris,

was founded by Athens about seven years earlier than Amphipolis,

not long after the conclusion of the thirty years’ truce with

Sparta, B.C. 443. Since the destruction of the old Sybaris by the

Krotoniates, in 509 B.C., its territory had for the most part

remained unappropriated: the descendants of the former inhabitants,

dispersed at Laus and in other portions of the territory, were not

strong enough to establish any new city; nor did it suit the views

of the Krotoniates themselves to do so. After an interval of more

than sixty years, however, during which one unsuccessful attempt

at occupation had been made by some Thessalian settlers, these

Sybarites at length prevailed upon the Athenians to undertake and

protect the recolonization; the proposition having been made in

vain to the Spartans. Lampon and Xenokritus, the former a prophet

and interpreter of oracles, were sent by Periklês with ten ships as

chiefs of the new colony of Thurii, founded under the auspices of

Athens. The settlers were collected from all parts of Greece, and

included Dorians, Ionians, islanders, Bœotians, as well as Athenians.

But the descendants of the ancient Sybarites procured themselves to

be treated as privileged citizens, and monopolized for themselves

the possession of political powers, as well as the most valuable

lands in the immediate vicinity of the walls; while their wives also

assumed an offensive preëminence over the other women of the city

in the public religious processions. Such spirit of privilege and

monopoly appears to have been a frequent manifestation among the

ancient colonies, and often fatal either to their tranquillity or

to their growth; sometimes to both. In the case of Thurii, founded

under the auspices of the democratical Athens, it was not likely

to have any lasting success: and we find that after no very long

period, the majority of the colonists rose in insurrection against

the privileged Sybarites, either slew or expelled them, and divided

the entire territory of the city, upon equal principles, among the

colonists of every different race. This revolution enabled them to

make peace with the Krotoniates, who had probably been unfriendly

so long as their ancient enemies, the Sybarites, were masters of

the city, and likely to turn its powers to the purpose of avenging

their conquered ancestors. And the city from this time forward,

democratically governed, appears to have flourished steadily and

without internal dissension for thirty years, until the ruinous

disasters of the Athenians before Syracuse occasioned the overthrow

of the Athenian party at Thurii. How miscellaneous the population

of Thurii was, we may judge from the denominations of the ten

tribes,—such was the number of tribes established, after the model

of Athens,—Arkas, Achaïs, Eleia, Bœotia, Amphiktyonis, Doris, Ias,

Athenaïs, Euboïs, Nesiôtis. From this mixture of race they could not

agree in recognizing or honoring an Athenian œkist, or indeed any

œkist except Apollo.[23] The Spartan general, Kleandridas, banished a

few years before for having suffered himself to be bribed by Athens

along with king Pleistoanax, removed to Thurii, and was appointed

general of the citizens in their war against Tarentum. That war

was ultimately adjusted by the joint foundation of the new city of

Herakleia, half-way between the two,—in the fertile territory called

Siritis.[24]

[23] Diodor. xii, 35.

[24] Diodor. xii, 11, 12; Strabo. vi, 264: Plutarch, Periklês, c.

22.

The most interesting circumstance respecting Thurii is, that the

rhetor Lysias, and the historian Herodotus, were both domiciliated

there as citizens. The city was connected with Athens, yet seemingly

only by a feeble tie; nor was it numbered among the tributary subject

allies.[25] From the circumstance that so large a proportion of the

settlers at Thurii were not native Athenians, we may infer that

there were not many of the latter at that time who were willing to

put themselves so far out of connection with Athens,—even though

tempted by the prospect of lots of land in a fertile and promising

territory. And Periklês was probably anxious that those poor citizens

for whom emigration was desirable should become kleruchs in some

of the islands or ports of the Ægean, where they would serve—like

the colonies of Rome—as a sort of garrison for the insurance of the

Athenian empire.[26]

[25] The Athenians pretended to no subject allies beyond the

Ionian gulf, Thucyd. vi, 14: compare vi, 45, 104; vii, 34.

Thucydidês does not even mention Thurii, in his catalogue of

the allies of Athens at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war

(Thucyd. ii, 15).

[26] Plutarch, Periklês, c. 11.

The fourteen years between the thirty years’ truce and the breaking

out of the Peloponnesian war, are a period of full maritime empire

on the part of Athens,—partially indeed resisted, but never with

success. They are a period of peace with all cities extraneous to

her own empire; and of splendid decorations to the city itself,

from the genius of Pheidias and others, in sculpture as well as in

architecture. Since the death of Kimon, Periklês had become more and

more the first citizen in the commonwealth: his qualities told for

more the longer they were known, and even the disastrous reverses

which preceded the thirty years’ truce had not overthrown him,

since he had protested against that expedition of Tolmidês into

Bœotia out of which they first arose. But if the personal influence

of Periklês had increased, the party opposed to him seems also to

have become stronger and better organized than it had been before;

and to have acquired a leader in many respects more effective

than Kimon,—Thucydidês, son of Melêsias. The new chief was a near

relative of Kimon, but of a character and talents more analogous to

that of Periklês: a statesman and orator rather than a general,

though competent to both functions if occasion demanded, as every

leading man in those days was required to be. Under Thucydidês, the

political and parliamentary opposition against Periklês assumed

a constant character and an organization such as Kimon, with his

exclusively military aptitudes, had never been able to establish.

The aristocratical party in the commonwealth,—the “honorable and

respectable” citizens, as we find them styled, adopting their

own nomenclature,—now imposed upon themselves the obligation of

undeviating regularity in their attendance on the public assembly,

sitting together in a particular section, so as to be conspicuously

parted from the Demos. In this manner, their applause and dissent,

their mutual encouragement to each other, their distribution of parts

to different speakers, was made more conducive to the party purposes

than it had been before, when these distinguished persons had been

intermingled with the mass of citizens.[27] Thucydidês himself was

eminent as a speaker, inferior only to Periklês,—perhaps hardly

inferior even to him. We are told that in reply to a question put to

him by Archidamus, whether Periklês or he were the better wrestler,

Thucydidês replied: “Even when I throw him, he denies that he has

fallen, gains his point, and talks over those who have actually seen

him fall.”[28]

[27] Compare the speech of Nikias, in reference to the younger

citizens and partisans of Alkibiadês sitting together near the

latter in the assembly,—οὓς ἐγὼ ὁρῶν νῦν ἐνθάδε τῷ αὐτῷ ἀνδρὶ

~παρακελευστοὺς καθημένους~ φοβοῦμαι, καὶ τοῖς πρεσβυτέροις

ἀντιπαρακελεύομαι μὴ καταισχυνθῆναι, εἴ τῴ τις παρακάθηται τῶνδε,

etc. (Thucyd. vi, 13.) See also Aristophanês, Ekklesiaz. 298,

_seq._, about partisans sitting near together.

[28] Plutarch, Periklês, c. 8. Ὅταν ἐγὼ καταβάλω παλαίων, ἐκεῖνος

ἀντιλέγων ὡς οὐ πέπτωκε, νικᾷ, καὶ μεταπείθει τοὺς ὁρῶντας.

Such an opposition made to Periklês, in all the full license which a

democratical constitution permitted, must have been both efficient

and embarrassing; but the pointed severance of the aristocratical

chiefs, which Thucydidês, son of Melêsias, introduced, contributed

probably at once to rally the democratical majority round Periklês,

and to exasperate the bitterness of party-conflict.[29] As far as

we can make out the grounds of the opposition, it turned partly

upon the pacific policy of Periklês towards the Persians, partly

upon his expenditure for home ornament. Thucydidês contended that

Athens was disgraced in the eyes of the Greeks, by having drawn the

confederate treasure from Delos to her own acropolis, under pretence

of greater security, and then employing it, not in prosecuting war

against the Persians,[30] but in beautifying Athens by new temples

and costly statues. To this Periklês replied, that Athens had

undertaken the obligation, in consideration of the tribute-money, to

protect her allies and keep off from them every foreign enemy,—that

she had accomplished this object completely at the present, and

retained a reserve sufficient to guarantee the like security for

the future;—that, under such circumstances, she owed no account to

her allies of the expenditure of the surplus, but was at liberty

to expend it for purposes useful and honorable to the city. In

this point of view it was an object of great public importance to

render Athens imposing in the eyes both of the allies and of Hellas

generally, by improved fortifications,—by accumulated ornaments,

sculptural and architectural,—and by religious festivals,—frequent,

splendid, musical, and poetical.

[29] Plutarch, Periklês, c. 11. ἡ δ᾽ ἐκείνων ἅμιλλα καὶ φιλοτιμία

τῶν ἀνδρῶν βαθυτάτην τομὴν τεμοῦσα τῆς πόλεως, τὸ μὲν δῆμον, τὸ

δ᾽ ὀλίγους ἐποίησε καλεῖσθαι.

[30] Plutarch, Periklês, c. 12. διέβαλλον ἐν ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις

βοῶντες, ὡς ὁ μὲν δῆμος ἀδοξεῖ καὶ κακῶς ἀκούει τὰ κοινὰ τῶν

Ἑλλήνων χρήματα πρὸς αὑτὸν ἐκ Δήλου μεταγαγών, ἣ δ᾽ ἔνεστιν αὐτῷ

πρὸς τοὺς ἐγκαλοῦντας εὐπρεπεστάτη τῶν προφάσεων, δείσαντα τοὺς

βαρβάρους ἐκεῖθεν ἀνελέσθαι καὶ φυλάττειν ἐν ὀχυρῷ τὰ κοινά,

ταύτην ἀνῄρηκε Περικλῆς, etc.

Compare the speech of the Lesbians, and their complaints against

Athens, at the moment of their revolt in the fourth year of the

Peloponnesian war (Thucyd. iii, 10); where a similar accusation

is brought forward,—ἐπειδὴ δὲ ἑωρῶμεν αὐτοὺς (the Athenians)

τὴν μὲν τοῦ Μήδου ἔχθραν ἀνιέντας, τὴν δὲ τῶν ξυμμάχων δούλωσιν

ἐπαγομένους, etc.

Such was the answer made by Periklês in defence of his policy

against the opposition headed by Thucydidês. And as far as we can

make out the ground taken by both parties, the answer was perfectly

satisfactory. For when we look at the very large sum which Periklês

continually kept in reserve in the treasury, no one could reasonably

complain that his expenditure for ornamental purposes was carried so

far as to encroach upon the exigences of defence. What Thucydidês and

his partisans appear to have urged, was, that this common fund should

still continue to be spent in aggressive warfare against the Persian

king, in Egypt and elsewhere,—conformably to the projects pursued

by Kimon during his life.[31] But Periklês was right in contending

that such outlay would have been simply wasteful; of no use either

to Athens or her allies, though risking all the chances of distant

defeat, such as had been experienced a few years before in Egypt.

The Persian force was already kept away, both from the waters of the

Ægean and the coast of Asia, either by the stipulations of the treaty

of Kallias, or—if that treaty be supposed apocryphal—by a conduct

practically the same as those stipulations would have enforced. The

_allies_, indeed, might have had some ground of complaint against

Periklês, either for not reducing the amount of tribute required from

them, seeing that it was more than sufficient for the legitimate

purposes of the confederacy, or for not having collected their

positive sentiment as to the disposal of it. But we do not find that

this was the argument adopted by Thucydidês and his party, nor was it

calculated to find favor either with aristocrats or democrats, in the

Athenian assembly.

[31] Plutarch, Periklês, c. 20.

Admitting the injustice of Athens—an injustice common to both the

parties in that city, not less to Kimon than to Periklês—in acting

as despot instead of chief, and in discontinuing all appeal to the

active and hearty concurrence of her numerous allies, we shall

find that the schemes of Periklês were at the same time eminently

Pan-Hellenic. In strengthening and ornamenting Athens, in developing

the full activity of her citizens, in providing temples, religious

offerings, works of art, solemn festivals, all of surpassing

attraction,—he intended to exalt her into something greater than an

imperial city with numerous dependent allies. He wished to make her

the centre of Grecian feeling, the stimulus of Grecian intellect,

and the type of strong democratical patriotism combined with full

liberty of individual taste and aspiration. He wished not merely

to retain the adherence of the subject states, but to attract the

admiration and spontaneous deference of independent neighbors, so

as to procure for Athens a moral ascendency much beyond the range

of her direct power. And he succeeded in elevating the city to a

visible grandeur,[32] which made her appear even much stronger than

she really was,—and which had the farther effect of softening to the

minds of the subjects the humiliating sense of obedience; while it

served as a normal school, open to strangers from all quarters, of

energetic action even under full license of criticism,—of elegant

pursuits economically followed,—and of a love for knowledge without

enervation of character. Such were the views of Periklês in regard

to his country, during the years which preceded the Peloponnesian

war, as we find them recorded in his celebrated Funeral Oration,

pronounced in the first year of that war,—an exposition forever

memorable of the sentiment and purpose of Athenian democracy, as

conceived by its ablest president.

[32] Thucyd. i, 10.

So bitter, however, was the opposition made by Thucydidês and his

party to this projected expenditure,—so violent and pointed did

the scission of aristocrats and democrats become,—that the dispute

came after no long time to that ultimate appeal which the Athenian

constitution provided for the case of two opposite and nearly equal

party-leaders,—a vote of ostracism. Of the particular details which

preceded this ostracism, we are not informed; but we see clearly

that the general position was such as the ostracism was intended to

meet. Probably the vote was proposed by the party of Thucydidês, in

order to procure the banishment of Periklês, the more powerful person

of the two, and the most likely to excite popular jealousy. The

challenge was accepted by Periklês and his friends, and the result

of the voting was such that an adequate legal majority condemned

Thucydidês to ostracism.[33] And it seems that the majority must have

been very decisive, for the party of Thucydidês was completely broken

by it: and we hear of no other single individual equally formidable

as a leader of opposition, throughout all the remaining life of

Periklês.

[33] Plutarch, Periklês, c. 11-14. Τέλος δὲ πρὸς τὸν Θουκυδίδην

~εἰς ἀγῶνα~ περὶ τοῦ ὀστράκου καταστὰς ~καὶ διακινδυνεύσας~,

ἐκεῖνον μὲν ἐξέβαλε, κατέλυσε δὲ τὴν ἀντιτεταγμένην ἑταιρείαν.

See, in reference to the principle of the ostracism, a remarkable

incident at Magnesia, between two political rivals, Krêtinês and

Hermeias: also the just reflections of Montesquieu, Esprit des

Loix, xxvi, c. 17; xxix, c. 7.

The ostracism of Thucydidês apparently took place about two years[34]

after the conclusion of the thirty years’ truce,—443-442 B.C.,—and

it is to the period immediately following that the great Periklêan

works belong. The southern wall of the acropolis had been built out

of the spoils brought by Kimon from his Persian expeditions; but the

third of the long walls connecting Athens with the harbor was the

proposition of Periklês, at what precise time we do not know. The

long walls originally completed—not long after the battle of Tanagra,

as has already been stated—were two, one from Athens to Peiræus,

another from Athens to Phalêrum: the space between them was broad,

and if in the hands of an enemy, the communication with Peiræus

would be interrupted. Accordingly, Periklês now induced the people

to construct a third or intermediate wall, running parallel with the

first wall to Peiræus, and within a short distance[35]—seemingly

near one furlong—from it: so that the communication between the

city and the port was placed beyond all possible interruption, even

assuming an enemy to have got within the Phaleric wall. It was

seemingly about this time, too, that the splendid docks and arsenal

in Peiræus, alleged by Isokratês to have cost one thousand talents,

were constructed:[36] while the town itself of Peiræus was laid out

anew with straight streets intersecting at right angles. Apparently,

this was something new in Greece,—the towns generally, and Athens

itself in particular, having been built without any symmetry, or

width, or continuity of streets:[37] and Hippodamus the Milesian, a

man of considerable attainments in the physical philosophy of the

age, derived much renown as the earliest town architect, for having

laid out the Peiræus on a regular plan. The market-place, or one of

them at least, permanently bore his name,—the Hippodamian agora.[38]

At a time when so many great architects were displaying their genius

in the construction of temples, we are not surprised to hear that the

structure of towns began to be regularized also: moreover, we are

told that the new colonial town of Thurii, to which Hippodamus went

as a settler, was also constructed in the same systematic form as to

straight and wide streets.[39]

[34] Plutarch, Periklês, c. 16: the indication of time, however,

is vague.

[35] Plato, Gorgias, p. 455, with Scholia; Plutarch, Periklês, c.

13: Forchhammer, Topographie von Athen, in Kieler Philologische

Studien, pp. 279-282.

[36] Isokratês, Orat. vii: Areopagit. p. 153. c. 27.

[37] See Dikæarchus, Vit. Græciæ, Fragm. ed. Fuhr. p. 140:

compare the description of Platæa in Thucydidês, ii, 3.

All the older towns now existing in the Grecian islands are put

together in this same manner,—narrow, muddy, crooked ways,—few

regular continuous lines of houses: see Ross, Reisen in den

Griechischen Inseln, Letter xxvii, vol. ii, p. 20.

[38] Aristotle, Politic. ii, 5, 1; Xenophon, Hellen. ii, 4, 1;

Harpokration, v, Ἱπποδάμεια.

[39] Diodor, xii, 9.

The new scheme upon which the Peiræus was laid out, was not without

its value as one visible proof of the naval grandeur of Athens.

But the buildings in Athens and on the acropolis formed the real

glory of the Periklêan age. A new theatre, termed the Odeon, was

constructed for musical and poetical representations at the great

Panathenaic solemnity; next, the splendid temple of Athênê, called

the Parthenon, with all its masterpieces of decorative sculpture and

reliefs; lastly, the costly portals erected to adorn the entrance of

the acropolis, on the western side of the hill, through which the

solemn processions on festival days were conducted. It appears that

the Odeon and the Parthenon were both finished between 445 and 437

B.C.: the Propylæa somewhat later, between 437 and 431 B.C., in which

latter year the Peloponnesian war began.[40] Progress was also made

in restoring or reconstructing the Erechtheion, or ancient temple of

Athênê Polias, the patron goddess of the city,—which had been burnt

in the invasion of Xerxes; but the breaking out of the Peloponnesian

war seems to have prevented the completion of this, as well as of

the great temple of Dêmêter, at Eleusis, for the celebration of

the Eleusinian mysteries,—that of Athênê, at Sunium,—and that of

Nemesis, at Rhamnus. Nor was the sculpture less memorable than the

architecture: three statues of Athênê, all by the hand of Pheidias,

decorated the acropolis,—one colossal, forty-seven feet high, of

ivory, in the Parthenon,[41]—a second of bronze, called the Lemnian

Athênê,—a third of colossal magnitude, also in bronze, called Athênê

Promachos, placed between the Propylæa and the Parthenon, and visible

from afar off, even to the navigator approaching Peiræus by sea.

[40] Leake, Topography of Athens, Append. ii and iii, pp.

328-336, 2d edit.

[41] See Leake, Topography of Athens, 2d ed. p. 111, Germ.

transl. O. Müller (De Phidiæ Vitâ, p. 18) mentions no less than

eight celebrated statues of Athênê, by the hand of Pheidias,—four

in the acropolis of Athens.

It is not, of course, to Periklês that the renown of these splendid

productions of art belongs: but the great sculptors and architects

by whom they were conceived and executed, belonged to that same

period of expanding and stimulating Athenian democracy which called

forth a similar creative genius in oratory, in dramatic poetry,

and in philosophical speculation. One man especially, of immortal

name,—Pheidias,—born a little before the battle of Marathon, was the

original mind in whom the sublime ideal conceptions of genuine art

appear to have disengaged themselves from that hardness of execution

and adherence to a consecrated type, which marked the efforts of his

predecessors.[42] He was the great director and superintendent of

all those decorative additions whereby Periklês imparted to Athens

a majesty such as had never before belonged to any Grecian city:

the architects of the Parthenon and the other buildings—Iktînus,

Kallikratês, Korœbus, Mnesiklês, and others—worked under his

superintendence: and he had, besides, a school of pupils and

subordinates to whom the mechanical part of his labors was confided.

With all the great additions which Pheidias made to the grandeur of

Athens, his last and greatest achievement was out of Athens,—the

colossal statue of Zeus, in the great temple of Olympia, executed in

the years immediately preceding the Peloponnesian war. The effect

produced by this stupendous work, sixty feet high, in ivory and

gold, embodying in visible majesty some of the grandest conceptions

of Grecian poetry and religion, upon the minds of all beholders for

many centuries successively,—was such as never has been, and probably

never will be, equalled in the annals of art, sacred or profane.

[42] Plutarch, Periklês, c. 13-15; O. Müller, De Phidiæ Vitâ, pp

34-60, also his work, Archäologie der Kunst, sects. 108-113.

Considering these prodigious achievements in the field of art only

as they bear upon Athenian and Grecian history, they are phenomena

of extraordinary importance. When we read the profound impression

which they produced upon Grecian spectators of a later age, we may

judge how immense was the effect upon that generation which saw

them both begun and finished. In the year 480 B.C., Athens had been

ruined by the occupation of Xerxes: since that period, the Greeks

had seen, first, the rebuilding and fortifying of the city on an

enlarged scale,—next, the addition of Peiræus with its docks and

magazines,—thirdly, the junction of the two by the long walls,

thus including the most numerous concentrated population, wealth,

arms, ships, etc., in Greece,[43]—lastly, the rapid creation of so

many new miracles of art,—the sculptures of Pheidias as well as

the paintings of the Thasian painter, Polygnôtus, in the temple of

Theseus, and in the portico called Pœkilê. Plutarch observes[44]

that the celerity with which the works were completed was the most

remarkable circumstance connected with them; and so it probably

might be, in respect to the effect upon the contemporary Greeks. The

gigantic strides by which Athens had reached her maritime empire

were now immediately succeeded by a series of works which stamped

her as the imperial city of Greece, gave to her an appearance of

power even greater than the reality, and especially put to shame

the old-fashioned simplicity of Sparta.[45] The cost was doubtless

prodigious, and could only have been borne at a time when there

was a large treasure in the acropolis, as well as a considerable

tribute annually coming in: if we may trust a computation which

seems to rest on plausible grounds, it cannot have been much less

than three thousand talents in the aggregate,—about six hundred and

ninety thousand pounds.[46] The expenditure of so large a sum was,

of course, the source of great private gain to the contractors,

tradesmen, merchants, artisans of various descriptions, etc.,

concerned in it: in one way or another, it distributed itself over a

large portion of the whole city. And it appears that the materials

employed for much of the work were designedly of the most costly

description, as being most consistent with the reverence due to the

gods: marble was rejected as too common for the statue of Athênê,

and ivory employed in its place;[47] while the gold with which it

was surrounded weighed not less than forty talents.[48] A large

expenditure for such purposes, considered as pious towards the gods,

was at the same time imposing in reference to Grecian feeling,

which regarded with admiration every variety of public show and

magnificence, and repaid by grateful deference the rich men who

indulged in it. Periklês knew well that the visible splendor of

the city, so new to all his contemporaries, would cause her great

real power to appear even greater than its reality, and would thus

procure for her a real, though unacknowledged influence—perhaps even

an ascendency—over all cities of the Grecian name. And it is certain

that even among those who most hated and feared her, at the outbreak

of the Peloponnesian war, there prevailed a powerful sentiment of

involuntary deference.

[43] Thucyd. i, 80. καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις ἅπασιν ἄριστα ἐξήρτυνται,

πλούτῳ τε ἰδίῳ καὶ δημοσίῳ καὶ ναυσὶ καὶ ἵπποις καὶ ὅπλοις, καὶ

ὄχλῳ ὅσος οὐκ ἐν ἄλλῳ ἑνί γε χωρίῳ Ἑλληνικῷ ἐστὶν, etc.

[44] Plutarch, Periklês, c. 13.

[45] Thucyd. i, 10.

[46] See Leake, Topography of Athens, Append. iii, p. 329, 2d ed.

Germ. transl. Colonel Leake, with much justice, contends that the

amount of two thousand and twelve talents, stated by Harpokration

out of Philochorus as the cost of the Propylæa alone, must be

greatly exaggerated. Mr. Wilkins (Atheniensia, p. 84) expresses

the same opinion; remarking that the transport of marble from

Pentelikus to Athens is easy and on a descending road.

Demetrius Phalereus (ap. Cicer. de Officiis, ii, 17) blamed

Periklês for the large sum expended upon the Propylæa; nor is it

wonderful that he uttered this censure, if he had been led to

rate the cost of them at two thousand and twelve talents.

[47] Valer. Maxim. i, 7, 2.

[48] Thucyd. ii, 13.

A step taken by Periklês, apparently not long after the commencement

of the thirty years’ truce, evinces how much this ascendency was

in his direct aim, and how much he connected it with views both

of harmony and usefulness for Greece generally. He prevailed upon

the people to send envoys to every city of the Greek name, great

and small, inviting each to appoint deputies for a congress to be

held at Athens. Three points were to be discussed in this intended

congress. 1. The restitution of those temples which had been burnt

by the Persian invaders. 2. The fulfilment of such vows, as on that

occasion had been made to the gods. 3. The safety of the sea and of

maritime commerce for all. Twenty elderly Athenians were sent round

to obtain the convocation of this congress at Athens,—a Pan-Hellenic

congress for Pan-Hellenic purposes. But those who were sent to

Bœotia and Peloponnesus completely failed in their object, from the

jealousy, noway astonishing, of Sparta and her allies: of the rest

we hear nothing, for this refusal was quite sufficient to frustrate

the whole scheme.[49] It is to be remarked that the dependent allies

of Athens appear to have been summoned just as much as the cities

perfectly autonomous; so that their tributary relation to Athens

was not understood to degrade them. We may sincerely regret that

such congress did not take effect, as it might have opened some new

possibilities of converging tendency and alliance for the dispersed

fractions of the Greek name,—a comprehensive benefit, to which Sparta

was at once incompetent and indifferent, but which might, perhaps,

have been realized under Athens, and seems in this case to have been

sincerely aimed at by Periklês. The events of the Peloponnesian war,

however, extinguished all hopes of any such union.

[49] Plutarch, Periklês, c. 17. Plutarch gives no precise date,

and O. Müller (De Phidiæ Vitâ, p. 9) places these steps for

convocation of a congress before the first war between Sparta and

Athens and the battle of Tanagra,—_i. e._, before 460 B.C. But

this date seems to me improbable: Thebes was not yet renovated

in power, nor had Bœotia as yet recovered from the fruits of her

alliance with the Persians; moreover, neither Athens nor Periklês

himself seem to have been at that time in a situation to conceive

so large a project; which suits in every respect much better for

the later period, after the thirty years’ truce, but before the

Peloponnesian war.

The interval of fourteen years, between the beginning of the thirty

years’ truce and that of the Peloponnesian war, was by no means one

of undisturbed peace to Athens. In the sixth year of that period

occurred the formidable revolt of Samos.

That island appears to have been the most powerful of all the

allies of Athens,[50]—more powerful even than Chios or Lesbos, and

standing on the same footing as the two latter; that is, paying

no tribute-money,—a privilege when compared with the body of the

allies,—but furnishing ships and men when called upon, and retaining,

subject to this condition, its complete autonomy, its oligarchical

government, its fortifications, and its military force. Like most

of the other islands near the coast, Samos possessed a portion

of territory on the mainland, between which and the territory of

Milêtus, lay the small town of Priênê, one of the twelve original

members contributing to the Pan-Ionic solemnity. Respecting the

possession of this town of Priênê, a war broke out between the

Samians and Milesians, in the sixth year of the thirty years’ truce

(B.C. 440-439): whether the town had before been independent, we do

not know, but in this war the Milesians were worsted, and it fell

into the hands of the Samians. The defeated Milesians, enrolled as

they were among the tributary allies of Athens, complained to her of

the conduct of the Samians, and their complaint was seconded by a

party in Samos itself opposed to the oligarchy and its proceedings.

The Athenians required the two disputing cities to bring the matter

before discussion and award at Athens, with which the Samians refused

to comply:[51] whereupon an armament of forty ships was despatched

from Athens to the island, and established in it a democratical

government; leaving in it a garrison, and carrying away to Lemnos

fifty men and as many boys from the principal oligarchical families,

to serve as hostages. Of these families, however, a certain number

retired to the mainland, where they entered into negotiations with

Pissuthnês, the satrap of Sardis, to procure aid and restoration.

Obtaining from him seven hundred mercenary troops, and passing over

in the night to the island, by previous concert with the oligarchical

party, they overcame the Samian democracy as well as the Athenian

garrison, who were sent over as prisoners to Pissuthnês. They were

farther lucky enough to succeed in stealing away from Lemnos their

own recently deposited hostages, and they then proclaimed open revolt

against Athens, in which Byzantium also joined. It seems remarkable,

that though, by such a proceeding, they would of course draw upon

themselves the full strength of Athens, yet their first step was

to resume aggressive hostilities against Milêtus,[52] whither they

sailed with a powerful naval force of seventy ships, twenty of them

carrying troops aboard.

[50] Thucyd. i, 115; viii, 76; Plutarch, Periklês, c. 28.

[51] Thucyd. i, 115; Plutarch, Periklês, c. 25. Most of the

statements which appear in this chapter of Plutarch—over and

above the concise narrative of Thucydidês—appear to be borrowed

from exaggerated party stories of the day. We need make no remark

upon the story, that Periklês was induced to take the side of

Milêtus against Samos, by the fact that Aspasia was a native

of Milêtus. Nor is it at all more credible that the satrap

Pissuthnês, from good-will towards Samos, offered Periklês ten

thousand golden staters as an inducement to spare Samos. It may

perhaps be true however, that the Samian oligarchy, and those

wealthy men whose children were likely to be taken as hostages,

tried the effect of large bribes upon the mind of Periklês, to

prevail upon him not to alter the government.

[52] Thucyd. i, 114, 115.

Immediately on the receipt of this grave intelligence, a fleet of

sixty triremes—probably all that were in complete readiness—was

despatched to Samos under ten generals, two of whom were Periklês

himself and the poet Sophoklês,[53] both seemingly included among

the ten ordinary stratêgi of the year. But it was necessary to

employ sixteen of these ships, partly in summoning contingents from

Chios and Lesbos, to which islands Sophoklês went in person;[54]

partly in keeping watch off the coast of Karia for the arrival of

the Phenician fleet, which report stated to be approaching; so that

Periklês had only forty-four ships remaining in his squadron. Yet

he did not hesitate to attack the Samian fleet of seventy ships

on its way back from Milêtus, near the island of Tragia, and was

victorious in the action. Presently, he was reinforced by forty

ships from Athens, and by twenty-five from Chios and Lesbos, so

as to be able to disembark at Samos, where he overcame the Samian

land-force, and blocked up the harbor with a portion of his fleet,

surrounding the city on the land-side with a triple wall. Meanwhile,

the Samians had sent Stesagoras with five ships to press the coming

of the Phenician fleet, and the report of their approach became

again so prevalent that Periklês felt obliged to take sixty ships,

out of the total one hundred and twenty-five, to watch for them off

the coast of Kaunus and Karia, where he remained for about fourteen

days. The Phenician fleet[55] never came, though Diodorus affirms

that it was actually on its voyage. Pissuthnês certainly seems to

have promised, and the Samians to have expected it: but I incline

to believe that, though willing to hold out hopes and encourage

revolt among the Athenian allies, the satrap, nevertheless, did not

choose openly to violate the convention of Kallias, whereby the

Persians were forbidden to send a fleet westward of the Chelidonian

promontory. The departure of Periklês, however, so much weakened the

Athenian fleet off Samos, that the Samians, suddenly sailing out of

their harbor in an opportune moment, at the instigation and under

the command of one of their most eminent citizens, the philosopher

Melissus,—surprised and ruined the blockading squadron, and gained

a victory over the remaining fleet, before the ships could be

fairly got out to sea.[56] For fourteen days they remained masters

of the sea, carrying in and out all that they thought proper: nor

was it until the return of Periklês that they were again blocked

up. Reinforcements, however, were now multiplied to the blockading

squadron,—from Athens, forty ships, under Thucydidês,[57] Agnon, and

Phormion, and twenty under Tlepolemus and Antiklês, besides thirty

from Chios and Lesbos,—making altogether near two hundred sail.

Against this overwhelming force, Melissus and the Samians made an

unavailing attempt at resistance, but were presently quite blocked

up, and remained so for nearly nine months, until they could hold

out no longer. They then capitulated, being compelled to raze their

fortifications, to surrender all their ships of war, to give hostages

for future good conduct, and to make good by stated instalments the

whole expense of the enterprise, said to have reached one thousand

talents. The Byzantines, too, made their submission at the same

time.[58]

[53] Strabo, xiv, p. 638; Schol. Aristeidês, t. iii, p. 485,

Dindorf.

[54] See the interesting particulars recounted respecting

Sophoklês by the Chian poet, Ion, who met and conversed with him

during the course of this expedition (Athenæus, xiii, p. 603).

He represents the poet as uncommonly pleasing and graceful in

society, but noway distinguished for active capacity. Sophoklês

was at this time in peculiar favor, from the success of his

tragedy, Antigonê, the year before. See the chronology of

these events discussed and elucidated in Boeckh’s preliminary

Dissertation to the Antigonê, c. 6-9.

[55] Diodor. xi, 27.

[56] Plutarch, Periklês, c. 26. Plutarch seems to have had

before him accounts respecting this Samian campaign, not only

from Ephorus, Stesimbrotus, and Duris, but also from Aristotle:

and the statements of the latter must have differed thus far

from Thucydidês, that he affirmed Melissus the Samian general to

have been victorious over Periklês himself, which is not to be

reconciled with the narrative of Thucydidês.

The Samian historian, Duris, living about a century after this

siege, seems to have introduced many falsehoods respecting the

cruelties of Athens: see Plutarch, _l. c._

[57] It appears very improbable that this Thucydidês can be the

historian himself. If it be Thucydidês son of Melêsias, we must

suppose him to have been restored from ostracism before the

regular time,—a supposition indeed noway inadmissible in itself,

but which there is nothing else to countenance. The author of the

Life of Sophoklês, as well as most of the recent critics, adopt

this opinion.

On the other hand, it may have been a third person named

Thucydidês; for the name seems to have been common, as we might

guess from the two words of which it is compounded. We find a

third Thucydidês mentioned viii, 92—a native of Pharsalus: and

the biographer, Marcellinus seems to have read of many persons so

called (Θουκύδιδαι πολλοὶ, p. xvi, ed. Arnold). The subsequent

history of Thucydidês son of Melêsias, is involved in complete

obscurity. We do not know the incident to which the remarkable

passage in Aristophanês (Acharn. 703) alludes,—compare Vespæ,

946: nor can we confirm the statement which the Scholiast cites

from Idomeneus, to the effect that Thucydidês was banished and

fled to Artaxerxes: see Bergk. Reliq. Com. Att. p. 61.

[58] Thucyd. i, 117; Diodor. xii, 27, 28; Isokratês, De Permutat.

Or. xv, sect. 118; Cornel. Nepos, Vit. Timoth. c. 1.

The assertion of Ephorus (see Diodorus, xii, 28, and Ephori

Fragm. 117 ed. Marx, with the note of Marx) that Periklês

employed battering machines against the town, under the

management of the Klazomenian Artemon, was called in question

by Herakleidês Ponticus, on the ground that Artemon was a

contemporary of Anakreon, near a century before: and Thucydidês

represents Periklês to have captured the town altogether by

blockade.

Two or three circumstances deserve notice respecting this revolt, as

illustrating the existing condition of the Athenian empire. First,

that the whole force of Athens, together with the contingents from

Chios and Lesbos, was necessary in order to crush it, so that even

Byzantium, which joined in the revolt, seems to have been left

unassailed. Now, it is remarkable that none of the dependent allies

near Byzantium, or anywhere else, availed themselves of so favorable

an opportunity to revolt also: a fact which seems plainly to imply

that there was little positive discontent then prevalent among them.

Had the revolt spread to other cities, probably Pissuthnês might have

realized his promise of bringing in the Phenician fleet, which would

have been a serious calamity for the Ægean Greeks, and was only kept

off by the unbroken maintenance of the Athenian empire.

Next, the revolted Samians applied for aid, not only to Pissuthnês,

but also to Sparta and her allies; among whom, at a special

meeting, the question of compliance or refusal was formally debated.

Notwithstanding the thirty years’ truce then subsisting, of which

only six years had elapsed, and which had been noway violated by

Athens,—many of the allies of Sparta voted for assisting the Samians:

what part Sparta herself took, we do not know,—but the Corinthians

were the main and decided advocates for the negative. They not only

contended that the truce distinctly forbade compliance with the

Samian request, but also recognized the right of each confederacy to

punish its own recusant members, and this was the decision ultimately

adopted, for which the Corinthians afterwards took credit, in the

eyes of Athens, as the chief authors.[59] Certainly, if the contrary

policy had been pursued, the Athenian empire might have been in great

danger, the Phenician fleet would probably have been brought in also,

and the future course of events might have been greatly altered.

[59] Thucyd. i, 40, 41.

Again, after the reconquest of Samos, we should assume it almost as a

matter of certainty, that the Athenians would renew the democratical

government which they had set up just before the revolt. Yet, if

they did so, it must have been again overthrown, without any attempt

to uphold it on the part of Athens. For we hardly hear of Samos

again, until twenty-seven years afterwards, towards the latter

division of the Peloponnesian war, in 412 B.C., and it then appears

with an established oligarchical government of geomori, or landed

proprietors, against which the people make a successful rising

during the course of that year.[60] As Samos remained, during the

interval between 439 B.C. and 412 B.C., unfortified, deprived of its

fleet, and enrolled among the tribute-paying allies of Athens,—and

as it, nevertheless, either retained or acquired its oligarchical

government; so we may conclude that Athens cannot have systematically

interfered to democratize by violence the subject-allies, in cases

where the natural tendency of parties ran towards oligarchy. The

condition of Lesbos at the time of its revolt, hereafter to be

related, will be found to confirm this conclusion.[61]

[60] Thucyd. viii, 21.

[61] Compare Wachsmuth, Hellenische Alterthumskunde, sect. 58,

vol. ii, p. 82.

On returning to Athens after the reconquest of Samos, Periklês was

chosen to pronounce the funeral oration over the citizens slain in

the war, to whom, according to custom, solemn and public obsequies

were celebrated in the suburb called Kerameikus. This custom

appears to have been introduced shortly after the Persian war,[62]

and would doubtless contribute to stimulate the patriotism of the

citizens, especially when the speaker elected to deliver it was of

the personal dignity as well as the oratorical powers of Periklês.

He was twice public funeral orator by the choice of the citizens:

once after the Samian success, and a second time in the first year

of the Peloponnesian war. His discourse on the first occasion has

not reached us,[63] but the second has been fortunately preserved,

in substance at least, by Thucydidês, who also briefly describes the

funeral ceremony,—doubtless the same on all occasions. The bones

of the deceased warriors were exposed in tents three days before

the ceremony, in order that the relatives of each might have the

opportunity of bringing offerings: they were then placed in coffins

of cypress, and carried forth on carts to the public burial-place at

the Kerameikus; one coffin for each of the ten tribes, and one empty

couch, formally laid out, to represent those warriors whose bones

had not been discovered or collected. The female relatives of each

followed the carts, with loud wailings, and after them a numerous

procession both of citizens and strangers. So soon as the bones had

been consigned to the grave, some distinguished citizen, specially

chosen for the purpose, mounted an elevated stage, and addressed to

the multitude an appropriate discourse. Such was the effect produced

by that of Periklês after the Samian expedition, that, when he had

concluded, the audience present testified their emotion in the

liveliest manner, and the women especially crowned him with garlands,

like a victorious athlete.[64] Only Elpinikê, sister of the deceased

Kimon, reminded him that the victories of her brother had been more

felicitous, as gained over Persians and Phenicians, and not over

Greeks and kinsmen. And the contemporary poet Ion, the friend of

Kimon, reported what he thought an unseemly boast of Periklês,—to the

effect that Agamemnon had spent ten years in taking a foreign city,

while _he_ in nine months had reduced the first and most powerful of

all the Ionic communities.[65] But if we possessed the actual speech

pronounced, we should probably find that he assigned all the honor

of the exploit to Athens and her citizens generally, placing their

achievement in favorable comparison with that of Agamemnon and his

host,—not himself with Agamemnon.

[62] See Westermann, Geschichte der Beredsamkeit in Griechenland

und Rom; Diodor. xi, 33; Dionys. Hal. A. R. v, 17.

Periklês, in the funeral oration preserved by Thucydidês (ii,

35-40), begins by saying—Οἱ μὲν πολλοὶ τῶν ἐνθάδε εἰρηκότων ἤδη

ἐπαινοῦσι ~τὸν προσθέντα~ τῷ νόμῳ τὸν λόγον τόνδε, etc.

The Scholiast, and other commentators—K. F. Weber and Westermann

among the number—make various guesses as to _what_ celebrated man

is here designated as the introducer of the custom of a funeral

harangue. The Scholiast says, Solon: Weber fixes on Kimon:

Westermann, on Aristeidês: another commentator on Themistoklês.

But we may reasonably doubt whether _any one_ very celebrated man

is specially indicated by the words τὸν προσθέντα. To commend the

introducer of the practice, is nothing more than a phrase for

commending the practice itself.

[63] Some fragments of it seem to have been preserved, in the

time of Aristotle: see his treatise De Rhetoricâ, i, 7; iii, 10,

3.

[64] Compare the enthusiastic demonstrations which welcomed

Brasidas at Skiônê (Thucyd. iv, 121).

[65] Plutarch, Periklês, c. 28; Thucyd. ii, 34.

Whatever may be thought of this boast, there can be no doubt that

the result of the Samian war not only rescued the Athenian empire

from great peril,[66] but rendered it stronger than ever: while the

foundation of Amphipolis, which was effected two years afterwards,

strengthened it still farther. Nor do we hear, during the ensuing few

years, of any farther tendencies to disaffection among its members,

until the period immediately before the Peloponnesian war. The

feeling common among them towards Athens, seems to have been neither

attachment nor hatred, but simple indifference and acquiescence

in her supremacy. Such amount of positive discontent as really

existed among them, arose, not from actual hardships suffered, but

from the general political instinct of the Greek mind,—desire of

separate autonomy for each city; which manifested itself in each,

through the oligarchical party, whose power was kept down by Athens,

and was stimulated by the sentiment communicated from the Grecian

communities without the Athenian empire. According to that sentiment,

the condition of a subject-ally of Athens was treated as one of

degradation and servitude: and in proportion as fear and hatred of

Athens became more and more predominant among the allies of Sparta,

they gave utterance to the sentiment more and more emphatically, so

as to encourage discontent artificially among the subject-allies of

the Athenian empire. Possessing complete mastery of the sea, and

every sort of superiority requisite for holding empire over islands,

Athens had yet no sentiment to appeal to in her subjects, calculated

to render her empire popular, except that of common democracy,

which seems at first to have acted without any care on her part to

encourage it, until the progress of the Peloponnesian war made such

encouragement a part of her policy. And had she even tried sincerely

to keep up in the allies the feeling of a common interest, and the

attachment to a permanent confederacy, the instinct of political

separation would probably have baffled all her efforts. But she took

no such pains,—with the usual morality that grows up in the minds

of the actual possessors of power, she conceived herself entitled

to exact obedience as her right; and some of the Athenian speakers

in Thucydidês go so far as to disdain all pretence of legitimate

power, even such as might fairly be set up, resting the supremacy

of Athens on the naked plea of superior force.[67] As the allied

cities were mostly under democracies,—through the indirect influence

rather than the systematic dictation of Athens,—yet each having its

own internal aristocracy in a state of opposition; so the movements

for revolt against Athens originated with the aristocracy or with

some few citizens apart: while the people, though sharing more or

less in the desire for autonomy, had yet either a fear of their

own aristocracy or a sympathy with Athens, which made them always

backward in revolting, sometimes decidedly opposed to it. Neither

Periklês nor Kleon, indeed, lay stress on the attachment of the

people as distinguished from that of the Few, in these dependent

cities; but the argument is strongly insisted on by Diodorus,[68]

in the discussion respecting Mitylênê after its surrender: and as

the war advanced, the question of alliance with Athens or Sparta

became more and more identified with the internal preponderance of

democracy or oligarchy in each.[69] We shall find that in most of

those cases of actual revolt where we are informed of the preceding

circumstances, the step is adopted or contrived by a small number of

oligarchical malcontents, without consulting the general voice; while

in those cases where the general assembly is consulted beforehand,

there is manifested indeed a preference for autonomy, but nothing

like a hatred of Athens or decided inclination to break with her. In

the case of Mitylênê,[70] in the fourth year of the war, it was the

aristocratical government which revolted, while the people, as soon

as they obtained arms, actually declared in favor of Athens: and the

secession of Chios, the greatest of all the allies, in the twentieth

year of the Peloponnesian war, even after all the hardships which

the allies had been called upon to bear in that war, and after the

ruinous disasters which Athens had sustained before Syracuse,—was

both prepared beforehand and accomplished by secret negotiations

of the Chian oligarchy, not only without the concurrence, but

against the inclination, of their own people.[71] In like manner,

the revolt of Thasos would not have occurred, had not the Thasian

democracy been previously subverted by the Athenian Peisander and

his oligarchical confederates. So in Akanthus, in Amphipolis, in

Mendê, and those other Athenian dependencies which were wrested

from Athens by Brasidas, we find the latter secretly introduced by

a few conspirators, while the bulk of the citizens do not hail him

at once as a deliverer, like men sick of Athenian supremacy: they

acquiesce, not without debate, when Brasidas is already in the town,

and his demeanor, just as well as conciliating, soon gains their

esteem: but neither in Akanthus nor in Amphipolis would he have

been admitted by the free decision of the citizens, if they had not

been alarmed for the safety of their friends, their properties, and

their harvest, still exposed in the lands without the walls.[72]

These particular examples warrant us in affirming, that though the

oligarchy in the various allied cities desired eagerly to shake off

the supremacy of Athens, the people were always backward in following

them, sometimes even opposed, and hardly ever willing to make

sacrifices for the object. They shared the universal Grecian desire

for separate autonomy,[73] felt the Athenian empire as an extraneous

pressure which they would have been glad to shake off, whenever the

change could be made with safety: but their condition was not one

of positive hardship, nor did they overlook the hazardous side of

such a change,—partly from the coercive hand of Athens, partly from

new enemies against whom Athens had hitherto protected them, and not

least, from their own oligarchy. Of course, the different allied

cities were not all animated by the same feelings, some being more

averse to Athens than others.

[66] A short fragment remaining from the comic poet Eupolis

(Κόλακες, Fr. xvi, p. 493, ed. Meineke), attests the anxiety at

Athens about the Samian war, and the great joy when the island

was reconquered: compare Aristophan. Vesp. 283.

[67] Thucyd. iii, 37; ii, 63. See the conference, at the island

of Melos in the sixteenth year of the Peloponnesian war (Thucyd.

v, 89, _seq._), between the Athenian commissioners and the

Melians. I think, however, that this conference is less to be

trusted as based in reality, than the speeches in Thucydidês

generally,—of which more hereafter.

[68] Thucyd. iii, 47. Νῦν μὲν γὰρ ὑμῖν ὁ δῆμος ἐν ἁπάσαις ταῖς

πόλεσιν εὔνους ἐστὶ, καὶ ἢ οὐ ξυναφίσταται τοῖς ὀλίγοις, ἢ ἐὰν

βιασθῇ, ὑπάρχει τοῖς ἀποστήσασι πολέμιος εὐθὺς, etc.

[69] See the striking observations of Thucydidês, iii, 82, 83;

Aristotel. Politic. v, 6, 9.

[70] Thucyd. iii, 27.

[71] Thucyd. viii, 9-14. He observes, also, respecting the

Thasian oligarchy just set up in lieu of the previous democracy

by the Athenian oligarchical conspirators who were then

organizing the revolution of the Four Hundred at Athens,—that

they immediately made preparations for revolting from

Athens,—ξυνέβη οὖν αὐτοῖς μάλιστα ἃ ἐβούλοντο, τὴν πόλιν τε

ἀκινδύνως ὀρθοῦσθαι, καὶ ~τὸν ἐναντιωσόμενον δῆμον καταλελύσθαι~

(viii, 64).

[72] Thucyd. iv, 86, 88, 106, 123.

[73] See the important passage, Thucyd. viii, 48.

The particular modes in which Athenian supremacy was felt as a

grievance by the allies appear to have been chiefly three. 1. The

annual tribute. 2. The encroachments, exactions, or perhaps plunder,

committed by individual Athenians, who would often take advantage of

their superior position, either as serving in the naval armaments, as

invested with the function of inspectors as placed in garrison, or as

carrying on some private speculation. 3. The obligation under which

the allies were placed, of bringing a large proportion of their

judicial trials to be settled before the dikasteries at Athens.

As to the tribute, I have before remarked that its amount had been

but little raised from its first settlement down to the beginning

of the Peloponnesian war, at which time it was six hundred talents

yearly:[74] it appears to have been reviewed, and the apportionment

corrected, in every fifth year, at which period the collecting

officers may probably have been changed; but we shall afterwards

find it becoming larger and more burdensome. The same gradual

increase may probably be affirmed respecting the second head of

inconvenience,—vexation caused to the allies by individual Athenians,

chiefly officers of armaments, or powerful citizens.[75] Doubtless

this was always more or less a real grievance, from the moment when

the Athenians became despots in place of chiefs, but it was probably

not very serious in extent until after the commencement of the

Peloponnesian war, when revolt on the part of the allies became more

apprehended, and when garrisons, inspectors, and tribute-gathering

ships became more essential in the working of the Athenian empire.

[74] Xenophon. Repub. Athen. iii, 5. πλὴν αἱ τάξεις τοῦ φόρου·

τοῦτο δὲ γίγνεται ὡς τὰ πολλὰ δι᾽ ἔτους πέμπτου.

[75] Xenophon. Repub. Athen. i, 14. Περὶ δὲ τῶν συμμάχων, οἱ

ἐκπλέοντες συκοφαντοῦσιν, ὡς δοκοῦσι, καὶ μισοῦσι τοὺς χρηστοὺς,

etc.

Who are the persons designated by the expression οἱ ἐκπλέοντες,

appears to be specified more particularly a little farther on (i,

18); it means the generals, the officers, the envoys, etc. sent

forth by Athens.

But the third circumstance above noticed—the subjection of the allied

cities to the Athenian dikasteries—has been more dwelt upon as a

grievance than the second, and seems to have been unduly exaggerated.

We can hardly doubt that the beginning of this jurisdiction

exercised by the Athenian dikasteries dates with the synod of Delos,

at the time of the first formation of the confederacy. It was an

indispensable element of that confederacy, that the members should

forego their right of private war among each other, and submit their

differences to peaceable arbitration,—a covenant introduced even

into alliances much less intimate than this was, and absolutely

essential to the efficient maintenance of any common action against

Persia.[76] Of course, many causes of dispute, public as well as

private, must have arisen among these wide-spread islands and

seaports of the Ægean, connected with each other by relations of

fellow-feeling, of trade, and of common apprehensions. The synod

of Delos, composed of the deputies of all, was the natural board

of arbitration for such disputes, and a habit must thus have been

formed, of recognizing a sort of federal tribunal,—to decide

peaceably how far each ally had faithfully discharged its duties,

both towards the confederacy collectively, and towards other

allies with their individual citizens separately,—as well as to

enforce its decisions and punish refractory members, pursuant to

the right which Sparta and her confederacy claimed and exercised

also.[77] Now from the beginning, the Athenians were the guiding

and enforcing presidents of this synod, and when it gradually died

away, they were found occupying its place as well as clothed with its

functions. It was in this manner that their judicial authority over

the allies appears first to have begun, as the confederacy became

changed into an Athenian empire,—the judicial functions of the synod

being transferred along with the common treasure to Athens, and

doubtless much extended. And on the whole, these functions must have

been productive of more good than evil to the allies themselves,

especially to the weakest and most defenceless among them.

[76] See the expression in Thucydidês (v, 27) describing the

conditions required when Argos was about to extend her alliances

in Peloponnesus. The conditions were two. 1. That the city should

be autonomous. 2. Next, that it should be willing to submit its

quarrels to equitable arbitration,—ἥτις αὐτόνομός τέ ἐστι, καὶ

δίκας ἴσας καὶ ὁμοίας δίδωσι.

In the oration against the Athenians, delivered by the Syracusan

Hermokratês at Kamarina, Athens is accused of having enslaved her

allies partly on the ground that they neglected to perform their

military obligations, partly because they made war upon each

other (Thucyd. vi, 76), partly also on other specious pretences.

How far this charge against Athens is borne out by the fact, we

can hardly say; in all those particular examples which Thucydidês

mentions of subjugation of allies by Athens, there is a cause

perfectly definite and sufficient,—not a mere pretence devised by

Athenian ambition.

[77] According to the principle laid down by the Corinthians

shortly before the Peloponnesian war,—τοὺς προσήκοντας ξυμμάχους

αὐτόν τινα κολάζειν (Thucyd. i, 40-43).

The Lacedæmonians, on preferring their accusation of treason

against Themistoklês, demanded that he should be tried at Sparta,

before the common Hellenic synod which held its sitting there,

and of which Athens was then a member: that is, the Spartan

confederacy, or alliance,—ἐπὶ τοῦ κοινοῦ συνεδρίου τῶν Ἑλλήνων

(Diodor. xi, 55).