Chapter XLIV (2)

I notice this last passage especially (construing it as
the Scholiast seems to do), not less because it conveys an
interesting comparison, than because it has been understood by
Dr. Arnold, Göller, and other commentators, in a sense which
seems to me erroneous. They interpret thus: αὐτοῖς to mean the
Athenians only, and not the Lacedæmonians,—ἡ ἰδία παρασκευὴ
to denote the forces equipped by Athens herself, apart from
her allies,—and ἀκραιφνοῦς ξυμμαχίας to refer “to the Athenian
alliance only, at a period a little before the conclusion of the
thirty years’ treaty, when the Athenians were masters not only
of the islands, and the Asiatic Greek colonies, but had also
united to their confederacy Bœotia and Achaia on the continent
of Greece itself.” (Dr. Arnold’s note.) Now so far, as the words
go, the meaning assigned by Dr. Arnold might be admissible; but
if we trace the thread of ideas in Thucydidês, we shall see
that the comparison, as these commentators conceive it, between
Athens alone and Athens aided by her allies—between the Athenian
empire as it stood during the Peloponnesian war, and the same
empire as it _had_ stood before the thirty years’ truce—is quite
foreign to his thoughts. Nor had Thucydidês said one word to
inform the reader, that the Athenian empire at the beginning
of the Peloponnesian war had diminished in magnitude, and thus
was no longer ἀκραιφνής: without which previous notification,
the comparison supposed by Dr. Arnold could not be clearly
understood. I conceive that there are two periods, and two sets
of circumstances, which, throughout all this passage, Thucydidês
means to contrast: first, confederate Greece at the time of the
Persian war; next, bisected Greece in a state of war, under the
double headship of Sparta and Athens. Αὐτοῖς refers as much to
Sparta as to Athens—ἀκραιφνοῦς τῆς ξυμμαχίας means what had been
before expressed by ὁμαιχμία—and ποτε set against τόνδε τὸν
πόλεμον, is equivalent to the expression which had before been
used—ἀπὸ τῶν Μηδικῶν ἐς τόνδε ἀεὶ τὸν πόλεμον.

The departure of the Spartan Dorkis left the Athenian generals at liberty; and their situation imposed upon them the duty of organizing the new confederacy which they had been chosen to conduct. The Ionic allies were at this time not merely willing and unanimous, but acted as the forward movers in the enterprise; for they stood in obvious need of protection against the attacks of Persia, and had no farther kindness to expect from Sparta or the Peloponnesians. But even had they been less under the pressure of necessity, the conduct of Athens, and of Aristeidês as the representative of Athens, might have sufficed to bring them into harmonious coöperation. The new leader was no less equitable towards the confederates than energetic against the common enemy. The general conditions of the confederacy were regulated in a common synod of the members, appointed to meet periodically for deliberative purposes, in the temple of Apollo and Artemis at Delos,—of old, the venerated spot for the religious festivals of the Ionic cities, and at the same time a convenient centre for the members. A definite obligation, either in equipped ships of war or in money, was imposed upon every separate city; and the Athenians, as leaders, determined in which form contribution should be made by each: their assessment must of course have been reviewed by the synod, nor had they at this time power to enforce any regulation not approved by that body. It had been the good fortune of Athens to profit by the genius of Themistoklês on two recent critical occasions (the battle of Salamis and the rebuilding of her walls), where sagacity, craft, and decision were required in extraordinary measure, and where pecuniary probity was of less necessity: it was no less her good fortune now,—in the delicate business of assessing a new tax and determining how much each state should bear, without precedents to guide them, when unimpeachable honesty in the assessor was the first of all qualities,—_not_ to have Themistoklês; but to employ in his stead the well-known, we might almost say the ostentatious, probity of Aristeidês. This must be accounted good fortune, since at the moment when Aristeidês was sent out, the Athenians could not have anticipated that any such duty would devolve upon him. His assessment not only found favor at the time of its original proposition, when it must have been freely canvassed by the assembled allies—but also maintained its place in general esteem, as equitable and moderate, after the once responsible headship of Athens had degenerated into an unpopular empire.[535]

[535] Thucyd. v, 18; Plutarch, Aristeidês, c. 24. Plutarch states
that the allies expressly asked the Athenians to send Aristeidês
for the purpose of assessing the tribute. This is not at all
probable: Aristeidês, as commander of the Athenian contingent
under Pausanias, was at Byzantium when the mutiny of the Ionians
against Pausanias occurred, and was the person to whom they
applied for protection. As such, he was the natural person to
undertake such duties as devolved upon Athens, without any
necessity of supposing that he was specially asked for to perform
it.

Plutarch farther states that a certain contribution had been
levied from the Greeks towards the war, even during the headship
of Sparta. This statement also is highly improbable. The headship
of Sparta covers only one single campaign, in which Pausanias
had the command: the Ionic Greeks sent their ships to the fleet,
which would be held sufficient, and there was no time for
measuring commutations into money.

Pausanias states, but I think quite erroneously, that the name
of Aristeidês was robbed of its due honor because he was the
first person who ἔταξε φοροὺς τοῖς Ἕλλησι (Pausan. viii, 52, 2).
Neither the assessment nor the name of Aristeidês was otherwise
than popular.

Aristotle employs the name of Aristeidês as a symbol of
unrivalled probity (Rhetoric. ii, 24, 2).

Respecting this first assessment, we scarcely know more than one single fact,—the aggregate in money was four hundred and sixty talents, equal to about one hundred and six thousand pounds sterling. Of the items composing such aggregate,—of the individual cities which paid it,—of the distribution of obligations to furnish ships and to furnish money,—we are entirely ignorant: the little information which we possess on these points relates to a period considerably later, shortly before the Peloponnesian war, under the uncontrolled empire then exercised by Athens. Thucydidês, in his brief sketch, makes us clearly understand the difference between _presiding_ Athens, with her autonomous and regularly assembled allies in 476 B. C., and _imperial_ Athens, with her subject allies in 432 B. C.; the Greek word equivalent to _ally_ left either of these epithets to be understood, by an ambiguity exceedingly convenient to the powerful states,—and he indicates the general causes of the change: but he gives us few particulars as to the modifying circumstances, and none at all as to the first start. He tells us only that the Athenians appointed a peculiar board of officers, called the Hellênotamiæ, to receive and administer the common fund,—that Delos was constituted the general treasury, where the money was to be kept,—and that the payment thus levied was called the _phorus_;[536] a name which appears then to have been first put into circulation, though afterwards usual,—and to have conveyed at first no degrading import, though it afterwards became so odious as to be exchanged for a more innocent synonym.

[536] Thucyd. i, 95, 96.

Endeavoring as well as we can to conceive the Athenian alliance in its infancy, we are first struck with the magnitude of the total sum contributed; which will appear the more remarkable when we reflect that many of the contributing cities furnished ships besides. We may be certain that all which was done at first was done by general consent, and by a freely determining majority: for Athens, at the time when the Ionic allies besought her protection against Spartan arrogance, could have had no power of constraining unwilling parties, especially when the loss of supremacy, though quietly borne, was yet fresh and rankling among the countrymen of Pausanias. So large a total implies, from the very first, a great number of contributing states, and we learn from hence to appreciate the powerful, wide-spread, and voluntary movement which then brought together the maritime and insular Greeks distributed throughout the Ægean sea and the Hellespont. The Phenician fleet, and the Persian land-force, might at any moment reappear, nor was there any hope of resisting either except by confederacy: so that confederacy, under such circumstances, became, with these exposed Greeks, not merely a genuine feeling, but at that time the first of all their feelings. It was their common fear, rather than Athenian ambition, which gave birth to the alliance, and they were grateful to Athens for organizing it. The public import of the name Hellênotamiæ, coined for the occasion,—the selection of Delos as a centre, and the provision for regular meetings of the members,—demonstrate the patriotic and fraternal purpose which the league was destined to serve. In truth, the protection of the Ægean sea against foreign maritime force and lawless piracy, as well as that of the Hellespont and Bosphorus against the transit of a Persian force, was a purpose essentially public, for which all the parties interested were bound in equity to provide by way of common contribution: any island or seaport which might refrain from contributing, was a gainer at the cost of others: and we cannot doubt that the general feeling of this common danger as well as equitable obligation, at a moment when the fear of Persia was yet serious, was the real cause which brought together so many contributing members, and enabled the forward parties to shame into concurrence such as were more backward. How the confederacy came to be turned afterwards to the purposes of Athenian ambition, we shall see at the proper time: but in its origin it was an equal alliance, in so far as alliance between the strong and the weak can ever be equal,—not an Athenian empire: nay, it was an alliance in which every individual member was more exposed, more defenceless, and more essentially benefited in the way of protection, than Athens. We have here in truth one of the few moments in Grecian history wherein a purpose at once common, equal, useful, and innocent, brought together spontaneously many fragments of this disunited race, and overlaid for a time that exclusive bent towards petty and isolated autonomy which ultimately made slaves of them all. It was a proceeding equitable and prudent, in principle as well as in detail; promising at the time the most beneficent consequences,—not merely protection against the Persians, but a standing police of the Ægean sea, regulated by a common superintending authority. And if such promise was not realized, we shall find that the inherent defects of the allies, indisposing them to the hearty appreciation and steady performance of their duties as equal confederates, are at least as much chargeable with the failure as the ambition of Athens. We may add that, in selecting Delos as a centre, the Ionic allies were conciliated by a renovation of the solemnities which their fathers, in the days of former freedom, had crowded to witness in that sacred island.

At the time when this alliance was formed, the Persians still held not only the important posts of Eion on the Strymon and Doriskus in Thrace, but also several other posts in that country,[537] which are not specified to us. We may thus understand why the Greek cities on and near the Chalkidic peninsula,—Argilus, Stageirus, Akanthus, Skôlus, Olynthus, Spartôlus, etc.,—which we know to have joined under the first assessment of Aristeidês, were not less anxious[538] to seek protection in the bosom of the new confederacy, than the Dorian islands of Rhodes and Kos, the Ionic islands of Samos and Chios, the Æolic Lesbos and Tenedos, or continental towns such as Milêtus and Byzantium: by all of whom adhesion to this alliance must have been contemplated, in 477 or 476 B. C., as the sole condition of emancipation from Persia. Nothing more was required, for the success of a foreign enemy against Greece generally, than complete autonomy of every Grecian city, small as well as great,—such as the Persian monarch prescribed and tried to enforce ninety years afterwards, through the Lacedæmonian Antalkidas, in the pacification which bears the name of the latter: some sort of union, organized and obligatory upon each city, was indispensable to the safety of all. Nor was it by any means certain, at the time when the confederacy of Delos was first formed, that, even with that aid, the Asiatic enemy would be effectually kept out; especially as the Persians were strong, not merely from their own force, but also from the aid of internal parties in many of the Grecian states,—traitors within, as well as exiles without.

[537] Herodot. vii, 106. ὕπαρχοι ἐν τῇ Θρηΐκῃ καὶ τοῦ Ἑλλησπόντου
~πανταχῇ~. Οὗτοι ὦν ~πάντες~, οἵ τε ἐκ Θρηΐκης καὶ τοῦ
Ἑλλησπόντου, πλὴν τοῦ ἐν Δορίσκῳ, ὑπὸ Ἑλλήνων ὕστερον ταύτης τῆς
στρατηλασίης ἐξῃρέθησαν, etc.

[538] Thucyd. v, 18. Τὰς δὲ πόλεις, φερούσας τὸν φόρον τὸν ἐπ’
Ἀριστείδου, αὐτονόμους εἶναι.... εἰσὶ δὲ, Ἄργιλος, Στάγειρος,
Ἄκανθος, Σκῶλος, Ὄλυνθος, Σπάρτωλος.

Among these, the first in rank as well as the most formidable, was the Spartan Pausanias. Summoned home from Byzantium to Sparta, in order that the loud complaints against him might be examined, he had been acquitted[539] of the charges of wrong and oppression against individuals; yet the presumptions of _medism_, or treacherous correspondence with the Persians, appeared so strong that, though not found guilty, he was still not reappointed to the command. Such treatment seems to have only emboldened him in the prosecution of his designs against Greece, and he came out with this view to Byzantium in a trireme belonging to Hermionê, under pretence of aiding as a volunteer without any formal authority in the war. He there resumed his negotiations with Artabazus: his great station and celebrity still gave him a strong hold on men’s opinions, and he appears to have established a sort of mastery in Byzantium, from whence the Athenians, already recognized heads of the confederacy, were constrained to expel him by force:[540] and we may be very sure that the terror excited by his presence as well as by his known designs tended materially to accelerate the organization of the confederacy under Athens. He then retired to Kolônæ in the Troad, where he continued for some time in the farther prosecution of his schemes, trying to form a Persian party, despatching emissaries to distribute Persian gold among various cities of Greece, and probably employing the name of Sparta to impede the formation of the new confederacy:[541] until at length the Spartan authorities, apprized of his proceedings, sent a herald out to him, with peremptory orders that he should come home immediately along with the herald: if he disobeyed, “the Spartans would declare war against him,” or constitute him a public enemy.

[539] Cornelius Nepos states that he was fined (Pausanias, c.
2), which is neither noticed by Thucydidês, nor at all probable,
looking at the subsequent circumstances connected with him.

[540] Thucyd. i, 130, 131. Καὶ ἐκ τοῦ Βυζαντίου βίᾳ ὑπὸ τῶν
Ἀθηναίων ἐκπολιορκηθεὶς, etc.: these words seem to imply that he
had acquired a strong position in the town.

[541] It is to this time that I refer the mission of Arthmius
of Zeleia (an Asiatic town, between Mount Ida and the southern
coast of the Propontis) to gain over such Greeks as he could by
means of Persian gold. In the course of his visit to Greece,
Arthmius went to Athens: his purpose was discovered, and he
was compelled to flee: while the Athenians, at the instance of
Themistoklês, passed an indignant decree, declaring him and his
race enemies of Athens, and of all the allies of Athens,—and
proclaiming that whoever should slay him would be guiltless;
because he had brought in Persian gold to bribe the Greeks. This
decree was engraven on a brazen column, and placed on record in
the acropolis, where it stood near the great statue of Athênê
Promachos, even in the time of Demosthenês and his contemporary
orators. See Demosthen. Philippic. iii, c. 9, p. 122, and De
Fals. Legat. c. 76, p. 428; Æschin. cont. Ktesiphont. ad fin.
Harpokrat. v. Ἄτιμος—Deinarchus cont. Aristogeiton, sects. 25, 26.

Plutarch (Themistoklês, c. 6, and Aristeidês, tom. ii, p. 218)
tells us that Themistoklês proposed this decree against Arthmius
and caused it to be passed. But Plutarch refers it to the time
when Xerxes was on the point of invading Greece. Now it appears
to me that the incident cannot well belong to that point of time.
Xerxes did not rely upon bribes, but upon other and different
means, for conquering Greece: besides, the very tenor of the
decree shows that it must have been passed after the formation
of the confederacy of Delos,—for it pronounces Arthmius to be
an enemy of Athens and of all the allies of Athens. To a native
of Zeleia it might be a serious penalty to be excluded and
proscribed from all the cities in alliance with Athens; many
of them being on the coast of Asia. I know no point of time to
which the mission of Arthmius can be so conveniently referred
as this,—when Pausanias and Artabazus were engaged in this very
part of Asia, in contriving plots to get up a party in Greece.
Pausanias was thus engaged for some years,—before the banishment
of Themistoklês.

As the execution of this threat would have frustrated all the ulterior schemes of Pausanias, he thought it prudent to obey; the rather, as he felt entire confidence of escaping all the charges against him at Sparta by the employment of bribes,[542] the means for which were abundantly furnished to him through Artabazus. He accordingly returned along with the herald, and was, in the first moments of indignation, imprisoned by order of the ephors; who, it seems, were legally competent to imprison him, even had he been king instead of regent. But he was soon let out, on his own requisition, and under a private arrangement with friends and partisans, to take his trial against all accusers.[543] Even to stand forth as accuser against so powerful a man was a serious peril: to undertake the proof of specific matter of treason against him was yet more serious: nor does it appear that any Spartan ventured to do either. It was known that nothing short of the most manifest and invincible proof would be held to justify his condemnation, and amidst a long chain of acts carrying conviction when taken in the aggregate, there was no single treason sufficiently demonstrable for the purpose. Accordingly, Pausanias remained not only at large but unaccused, still audaciously persisting both in his intrigues at home and his correspondence abroad with Artabazus. He ventured to assail the unshielded side of Sparta by opening negotiations with the Helots, and instigating them to revolt; promising them both liberation and admission to political privilege;[544] with a view, first, to destroy the board of ephors, and render himself despot in his own country,—next, to acquire through Persian help the supremacy of Greece. Some of those Helots to whom he addressed himself revealed the plot to the ephors, who, nevertheless, in spite of such grave peril, did not choose to take measures against Pausanias upon no better information,—so imposing was still his name and position. But though some few Helots might inform, probably many others both gladly heard the proposition and faithfully kept the secret: we shall find, by what happened a few years afterwards, that there were a large number of them who had their spears in readiness for revolt. Suspected as Pausanias was, yet by the fears of some and the connivance of others, he was allowed to bring his plans to the very brink of consummation; and his last letters to Artabazus,[545] intimating that he was ready for action, and bespeaking immediate performance of the engagements concerted between them, were actually in the hands of the messenger. Sparta was saved from an outbreak of the most formidable kind, not by the prudence of her authorities, but by a mere accident, or rather by the fact that Pausanias was not only a traitor to his country, but also base and cruel in his private relations.

[542] Thucyd. i, 131. Ὁ δὲ βουλόμενος ὡς ἥκιστα ὕποπτος εἶναι καὶ
πιστεύων χρήμασι διαλύσειν τὴν διαβολὴν, ἀνεχώρει τὸ δεύτερον ἐς
Σπάρτην.

[543] Thucyd. i, 131. Καὶ ἐς μὲν τὴν εἱρκτὴν ἐσπίπτει τὸ πρῶτον
ὑπὸ τῶν ἐφόρων· ἔπειτα διαπραξάμενος ὕστερον ἐξῆλθε, καὶ
καθίστησιν ἑαυτὸν ἐς κρίσιν τοῖς βουλομένοις περὶ αὐτῶν ἐλέγχειν.

The word διαπραξάμενος indicates, first, that Pausanias
himself originated the efforts to get free,—next, that he
came to an underhand arrangement: very probably by a bribe,
though the word does not necessarily imply it. The Scholiast
says so, distinctly,—χρήμασι καὶ λόγοις διαπραξάμενος
δηλόνοτι διακρουσάμενος τὴν κατηγορίαν. Dr. Arnold translates
διαπραξάμενος, “having settled the business.”

[544] Aristotel. Politic. iv, 13, 13; v, 1, 5; v, 6, 2; Herodot.
v, 32. Aristotle calls Pausanias _king_, though he was only
_regent_: the truth is, that he had all the power of a Spartan
king, and seemingly more, if we compare his treatment with that
of the Prokleid king Leotychidês.

[545] Thucyd. i, 132. ὁ μέλλων ~τὰς τελευταίας~ βασιλεῖ ἐπιστολὰς
πρὸς Ἀρτάβαζον κομιεῖν, ἀνὴρ Ἀργίλιος, etc.

The messenger to whom these last letters were intrusted was a native of Argilus in Thrace, a favorite and faithful slave of Pausanias; once connected with him by that intimate relation which Grecian manners tolerated, and admitted even to the full confidence of his treasonable projects. It was by no means the intention of this Argilian to betray his master; but, on receiving the letter to carry, he recollected, with some uneasiness, that none of the previous messengers had ever come back. Accordingly, he broke the seal and read it, with the full view of carrying it forward to its destination, if he found nothing inconsistent with his own personal safety: he had farther taken the precaution to counterfeit his master’s seal, so that he could easily reclose the letter. On reading it, he found his suspicions confirmed by an express injunction that the bearer was to be put to death,—a discovery which left him no alternative except to deliver it to the ephors. But those magistrates, who had before disbelieved the Helot informers, still refused to believe even the confidential slave with his master’s autograph and seal, and with the full account besides, which doubtless he would communicate at the same time, of all that had previously passed in the Persian correspondence, not omitting copies of those letters between Pausanias and Xerxes, which I have already cited from Thucydidês—for in no other way can they have become public. Partly from the suspicion which, in antiquity, always attached to the testimony of slaves, except when it was obtained under the pretended guarantee of torture, partly from the peril of dealing with so exalted a criminal,—the ephors would not be satisfied with any evidence less than his own speech and their own ears. They directed the Argilian slave to plant himself as a suppliant in the sacred precinct of Poseidon, near Cape Tænarus, under the shelter of a double tent, or hut, behind which two of them concealed themselves. Apprized of this unexpected mark of alarm, Pausanias hastened to the temple, and demanded the reason: upon which the slave disclosed his knowledge of the contents of the letter, and complained bitterly that, after long and faithful service,—with a secrecy never once betrayed, throughout this dangerous correspondence,—he was at length rewarded with nothing better than the same miserable fate which had befallen the previous messengers. Pausanias, admitting all these facts, tried to appease the slave’s disquietude, and gave him a solemn assurance of safety if he would quit the sanctuary; urging him at the same time to proceed on the journey forthwith, in order that the schemes in progress might not be retarded.

All this passed within the hearing of the concealed ephors; who at length thoroughly satisfied, determined to arrest Pausanias immediately on his return to Sparta. They met him in the public street, not far from the temple of Athênê Chalkiœkus (or of the Brazen House); but as they came near, either their menacing looks, or a significant nod from one of them, revealed to this guilty man their purpose; and he fled for refuge to the temple, which was so near that he reached it before they could overtake him. He planted himself as a suppliant, far more hopeless than the Argilian slave whom he had so recently talked over at Tænarus, in a narrow-roofed chamber belonging to the sacred building; where the ephors, not warranted in touching him, took off the roof, built up the doors, and kept watch until he was on the point of death by starvation. According to a current story,[546]—not recognized by Thucydidês, yet consistent with Spartan manners,—his own mother was the person who placed the first stone to build up the door, in deep abhorrence of his treason. His last moments being carefully observed, he was brought away just in time to expire without, and thus to avoid the desecration of the temple. The first impulse of the ephors was to cast his body into the ravine, or hollow, called the Kæadas, the usual place of punishment for criminals: probably, his powerful friends averted this disgrace, and he was buried not far off, until, some time afterwards, under the mandate of the Delphian oracle, his body was exhumed and transported to the exact spot where he had died. Nor was the oracle satisfied even with this reinterment: pronouncing the whole proceeding to be a profanation of the sanctity of Athênê, it enjoined that two bodies should be presented to her as an atonement for the one carried away. In the very early days of Greece,—or among the Carthaginians, even at this period,—such an injunction would probably have produced the slaughter of two human victims: on the present occasion, Athênê, or Hikesius, the tutelary god of suppliants, was supposed to be satisfied by two brazen statues; not, however, without some attempts to make out that the expiation was inadequate.[547]

[546] Diodor. xi, 45; Cornel. Nepos, Pausan. c. 5; Polyæn. viii,
51.

[547] Thucyd. i, 133, 134: Pausanias, iii, 17, 9.

Thus perished a Greek who reached the pinnacle of renown simply from the accidents of his lofty descent, and of his being general at Platæa, where it does not appear that he displayed any superior qualities. His treasonable projects implicated and brought to disgrace a man far greater than himself, the Athenian Themistoklês.

The chronology of this important period is not so fully known as to enable us to make out the full dates of particular events; but we are obliged—in consequence of the subsequent events connected with Themistoklês, whose flight to Persia is tolerably well marked as to date—to admit an interval of about nine years between the retirement of Pausanias from his command at Byzantium, and his death. To suppose so long an interval engaged in treasonable correspondence, is perplexing; and we can only explain it to ourselves very imperfectly by considering that the Spartans were habitually slow in their movements, and that the suspected regent may perhaps have communicated with partisans, real or expected, in many parts of Greece. Among those whom he sought to enlist as accomplices was Themistoklês, still in great power,—though, as it would seem, in declining power,—at Athens: and the charge of collusion with the Persians connects itself with the previous movement of political parties in that city.

The rivalry of Themistoklês and Aristeidês had been greatly appeased by the invasion of Xerxes, which had imposed upon both the peremptory necessity of coöperation against a common enemy. Nor was it apparently resumed, during the times which immediately succeeded the return of the Athenians to their country: at least we hear of both in effective service, and in prominent posts. Themistoklês stands forward as the contriver of the city walls and architect of Peiræus: Aristeidês is commander of the fleet, and first organizer of the confederacy of Delos. Moreover, we seem to detect a change in the character of the latter: he had ceased to be the champion of Athenian old-fashioned landed interest, against Themistoklês as the originator of the maritime innovations. Those innovations had now, since the battle of Salamis, become an established fact; a fact of overwhelming influence on the destinies and character, public as well as private, of the Athenians. During the exile at Salamis, every man, rich or poor, landed proprietor or artisan, had been for the time a seaman: and the anecdote of Kimon, who dedicated the bridle of his horse in the acropolis, as a token that he was about to pass from the cavalry to service on shipboard,[548] is a type of that change of feeling which must have been impressed more or less upon every rich man in Athens. From henceforward the fleet is endeared to every man as the grand force, offensive and defensive, of the state, in which character all the political leaders agree in accepting it: we ought to add, at the same time, that this change was attended with no detriment either to the land-force or to the landed cultivation of Attica, both of which will be found to acquire extraordinary development during the interval between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars. Still, the triremes and the men who manned them, taken collectively, were now the determining element in the state: moreover, the men who manned them had just returned from Salamis, fresh from a scene of trial and danger, and from a harvest of victory, which had equalized for the moment all Athenians as sufferers, as combatants, and as patriots. Such predominance of the maritime impulse, having become pronounced immediately after the return from Salamis, was farther greatly strengthened by the construction and fortification of the Peiræus,—a new maritime Athens, as large as the old inland city,—as well as by the unexpected formation of the confederacy at Delos, with all its untried prospects and stimulating duties.

[548] Plutarch, Kimon, c. 8.

The political change arising from hence in Athens was not less important than the military. “The maritime multitude, authors of the victory of Salamis,”[549] and instruments of the new vocation of Athens as head of the Delian confederacy, appear now ascendant in the political constitution also; not in any way as a separate or privileged class, but as leavening the whole mass, strengthening the democratical sentiment, and protesting against all recognized political inequalities. In fact, during the struggle at Salamis, the whole city of Athens had been nothing else than “a maritime multitude,” among which the proprietors and chief men had been confounded, until, by the efforts of all, the common country had been reconquered: nor was it likely that this multitude, after a trying period of forced equality, during which political privilege had been effaced, would patiently acquiesce in the full restoration of such privilege at home. We see by the active political sentiment of the German people, after the great struggles of 1813 and 1814, how much an energetic and successful military effort of the people at large, blended with endurance of serious hardship, tends to stimulate the sense of political dignity and the demand for developed citizenship: and if this be the tendency even among a people habitually passive on such subjects, much more was it to be expected in the Athenian population, who had gone through a previous training of near thirty years under the democracy of Kleisthenês. At the time when that constitution was first established,[550] it was perhaps the most democratical in Greece: it had worked extremely well and had diffused among the people a sentiment favorable to equal citizenship and unfriendly to avowed privilege: so that the impressions made by the struggle at Salamis found the popular mind prepared to receive them. Early after the return to Attica, the Kleisthenean constitution was enlarged as respects eligibility to the magistracy. According to that constitution, the fourth or last class on the Solonian census, including the considerable majority of the freemen, were not admissible to offices of state, though they possessed votes in common with the rest: no person was eligible to be a magistrate unless he belonged to one of the three higher classes. This restriction was now annulled, and eligibility extended to all the citizens. We may appreciate the strength of feeling with which such reform was demanded, when we find that it was proposed by Aristeidês; a man the reverse of what is called a demagogue, and a strenuous friend of the Kleisthenean constitution. No political system would work after the Persian war, which formally excluded “the maritime multitude” from holding magistracy. I rather imagine, as has been stated in the previous volume, that election of magistrates was still retained, and not exchanged for drawing lots until a certain time, though not a long time, afterwards. That which the public sentiment first demanded was the recognition of the equal and open principle: after a certain length of experience, it was found that poor men, though legally qualified to be chosen, were in point of fact rarely chosen: then came the lot, to give them an equal chance with the rich. The principle of sortition, or choice by lot, was never applied, as I have before remarked, to all offices at Athens,—never, for example, to the stratêgi, or generals, whose functions were more grave and responsible than those of any other person in the service of the state, and who always continued to be elected by show of hands.

[549] Aristotel. Politic. v, 3, 5. Καὶ πάλιν ~ὁ ναυτικὸς ὄχλος~,
γενόμενος αἴτιος τῆς περὶ Σαλαμῖνα νίκης, καὶ διὰ ταύτης τῆς
ἡγεμονίας καὶ διὰ τὴν κατὰ θάλασσαν δύναμιν, τὴν δημοκατίαν
ἰσχυροτέραν ἐποίησεν.

Ὁ ναυτικὸς ὄχλος (Thucyd. viii, 72 and _passim_).

[550] For the constitution of Kleisthenês, see vol. iv, of this
History, ch. xxxi, p. 142, _seqq._

In the new position into which Athens was now thrown, with so great an extension of what may be termed her foreign relations, and with a confederacy which imposed the necessity of distant military service, the functions of the stratêgi naturally tended to become both more absorbing and complicated; while the civil administration became more troublesome, if not more difficult, from the enlargement of the city, and the still greater enlargement of Peiræus,—leading to an increase of town population, and especially to an increase of the metics, or resident non-freemen. And it was probably about this period, during the years immediately succeeding the battle of Salamis,—when the force of old habit and tradition had been partially enfeebled by so many stirring novelties,—that the archons were withdrawn altogether from political and military duties, and confined to civil or judicial administration. At the battle of Marathon, the polemarch is a military commander, president of the ten stratêgi:[551] we know him afterwards only as a civil magistrate, administering justice to the metics, or non-freemen, while the stratêgi perform military duties without him. I conceive that this alteration, indicating as it does a change in the character of the archons generally, must have taken place at the time which we have now reached,[552]—a time when the Athenian establishments on all sides required a more elaborate distribution of functionaries. The distribution of so many Athenian boards of functionaries, part to do duty in the city, and part in the Peiræus, cannot have commenced until after this period, when Peiræus had been raised by Themistoklês to the dignity of town, fortress, and state-harbor. Such boards were the astynomi and agoranomi, who maintained the police of streets and markets,—the metronomi, who watched over weights and measures,—the sitophylakes, who carried into effect various state regulations respecting the custody and sale of corn,—with various others who acted not less in Peiræus than in the city.[553] We may presume that each of these boards was originally created as the exigency appeared to call for it, at a period later than that which we have now reached, most of these duties of detail having been at first discharged by the archons, and afterwards, when these latter became too full of occupation, confided to separate administrators. The special and important change which characterized the period immediately succeeding the battle of Salamis, was the more accurate line drawn between the archons and the stratêgi; assigning the foreign and military department entirely to the stratêgi, and rendering the archons purely civil magistrates,—administrative as well as judicial; while the first creation of the separate boards above named was probably an ulterior enlargement, arising out of increase of population, power, and trade, between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars. It was by some such steps that the Athenian administration gradually attained that complete development which it exhibits in practice during the century from the Peloponnesian war downward, to which nearly all our positive and direct information relates.

[551] Herod. vi, 109.

[552] Aristotel. Πολιτειῶν Fragm. xlvii, ed. Neumann;
Harpokration, v. Πολέμαρχος; Pollux, viii, 91: compare Meier und
Schömann, Der Attische Prozess, ch. ii, p. 50, _seqq._

[553] See Aristotel. Πολιτειῶν Fragm. ii, v, xxiii, xxxviii, l,
ed. Neumann; Schömann, Antiqq. Jur. Publ. Græc. c. xli, xlii,
xliii.

With this expansion both of democratical feeling and of military activity at Athens, Aristeidês appears to have sympathized; and the popularity thus insured to him, probably heightened by some regret for his previous ostracism, was calculated to acquire permanence from his straightforward and incorruptible character, now brought into strong relief from his function as assessor to the new Delian confederacy. On the other hand, the ascendency of Themistoklês, though so often exalted by his unrivalled political genius and daring, as well as by the signal value of his public recommendations, was as often overthrown by his duplicity of means and unprincipled thirst for money. New political opponents sprung up against him, men sympathizing with Aristeidês, and far more violent in their antipathy than Aristeidês himself. Of these, the chief were Kimon—son of Miltiades—and Alkmæon; moreover, it seems that the Lacedæmonians, though full of esteem for Themistoklês immediately after the battle of Salamis, had now become extremely hostile to him,—a change which may be sufficiently explained from his stratagem respecting the fortifications of Athens, and his subsequent ambitious projects in reference to the Peiræus. The Lacedæmonian influence, then not inconsiderable in Athens, was employed to second the political combinations against him.[554] He is said to have given offence by manifestations of personal vanity,—by continual boasting of his great services to the state, and by the erection of a private chapel, close to his own house, in honor of Artemis Aristobulê, or Artemis of admirable counsel; just as Pausanias had irritated the Lacedæmonians by inscribing his own single name on the Delphian tripod, and as the friends of Aristeidês had displeased the Athenians by endless encomiums upon his justice.[555] But the main cause of his discredit was, the prostitution of his great influence for arbitrary and corrupt purposes. In the unsettled condition of so many different Grecian communities, recently emancipated from Persia, when there was past misrule to avenge, wrong-doers to be deposed and perhaps punished, exiles to be restored, and all the disturbance and suspicions accompanying so great a change of political condition as well as of foreign policy,—the influence of the leading men at Athens must have been great in determining the treatment of particular individuals. Themistoklês, placed at the head of an Athenian squadron and sailing among the islands, partly for the purposes of war against Persia, partly for organizing the new confederacy,—is affirmed to have accepted bribes without scruple, for executing sentences just and unjust,—restoring some citizens, expelling others, and even putting some to death. We learn this from a friend and guest of Themistoklês,—the poet Timokreon of Ialysus in Rhodes, who had expected his own restoration from the Athenian commander, but found that it was thwarted by a bribe of three talents from his opponents; so that he was still kept in exile on the charge of _medism_. The assertions of Timokreon, personally incensed on this ground against Themistoklês, are doubtless to be considered as passionate and exaggerated: nevertheless, they are a valuable memorial of the feelings of the time, and are far too much in harmony with the general character of this eminent man to allow of our disbelieving them entirely. Timokreon is as emphatic in his admiration of Aristeidês as in his censure of Themistoklês, whom he denounces as “a lying and unjust traitor.”[556]

[554] Plutarch, Kimon, c. 16; Scholion 2, ad Aristophan. Equit.
84.

[555] Plutarch (Themistoklês, c. 22; Kimon, c. 5-8; Aristeidês,
c. 25); Diodorus, xi, 54.

[556] Plutarch, Themist. c. 21

Such conduct as that described by this new Archilochus, even making every allowance for exaggeration, must have caused Themistoklês to be both hated and feared among the insular allies, whose opinion was now of considerable importance to the Athenians. A similar sentiment grew up partially against him in Athens itself, and appears to have been connected with suspicions of treasonable inclinations towards the Persians. As the Persians could offer the highest bribes, a man open to corruption might naturally be suspected of inclinations towards their cause; and if Themistoklês had rendered preëminent service against them, so also had Pausanias, whose conduct had undergone so fatal a change for the worse. It was the treason of Pausanias, suspected and believed against him by the Athenians even when he was in command at Byzantium, though not proved against him at Sparta until long afterwards,—which first seems to have raised the presumption of _medism_ against Themistoklês also, when combined with the corrupt proceedings which stained his public conduct: we must recollect, also, that Themistoklês had given some color to these presumptions, even by the stratagems in reference to Xerxes, which wore a double-faced aspect, capable of being construed either in a Persian or in a Grecian sense. The Lacedæmonians, hostile to Themistoklês since the time when he had outwitted them respecting the walls of Athens,—and fearing him also as a supposed accomplice of the suspected Pausanias,—procured the charge of _medism_ to be preferred against him at Athens; by secret instigations, and, as it is said, by bribes, to his political opponents.[557] But no satisfactory proof could be furnished of the accusation, which Themistoklês himself strenuously denied, not without emphatic appeals to his illustrious services. In spite of violent invectives against him from Alkmæon and Kimon, tempered, indeed, by a generous moderation on the part of Aristeidês,[558] his defence was successful. He carried the people with him and was acquitted of the charge. Nor was he merely acquitted, but, as might naturally be expected, a reaction took place in his favor: his splendid qualities and exploits were brought impressively before the public mind, and he seemed for the time to acquire greater ascendency than ever.[559]

[557] This accusation of treason brought against Themistoklês
at Athens, _prior to his ostracism_, and at the instigation of
the Lacedæmonians,—is mentioned by Diodorus (xi, 54). Thucydidês
and Plutarch take notice only of the second accusation, _after_
his ostracism. But Diodorus has made his narrative confused,
by supposing the first accusation preferred at Athens to have
come after the full detection of Pausanias and exposure of his
correspondence; whereas these latter events, coming after the
first accusation, supplied new proofs before unknown, and thus
brought on the second, after Themistoklês had been ostracized.
But Diodorus has preserved to us the important notice of this
first accusation at Athens, followed by trial, acquittal, and
temporary glorification of Themistoklês,—and preceding his
ostracism.

The indictment stated by Plutarch to have been preferred against
Themistoklês by Leôbotas son of Alkmæon, at the instance of the
Spartans, probably relates to the first accusation at which
Themistoklês was acquitted. For when Themistoklês was arraigned
after the discovery of Pausanias, he did not choose to stay,
nor was there any actual trial: it is not, therefore, likely
that the name of the accuser would be preserved,—Ὁ δὲ γραψάμενος
αὐτὸν προδοσίας Λεωβώτης ἦν Ἀλκμαίωνος, ἅμα συνεπαιτιωμένων τῶν
Σπαρτιατῶν (Plutarch, Themist. c. 23).

Compare the second Scholion on Aristophan. Equit. 84, and
Aristeidês, Orat. xlvi, Ὑπὲρ τῶν Τεττάρων (vol. ii, p. 318, ed.
Dindorf, p. 243, Jebb).

[558] Plutarch, Aristeidês, c. 25.

[559] Diodor. xi, 54. ~τότε μὲν~ ἀπέφυγε τὴν τῆς προδοσίας
κρίσιν· διὸ καὶ τὸ μὲν πρῶτον μετὰ τὴν ἀπόλυσιν μέγας ἦν παρὰ
τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις· ἠγάπων γὰρ αὐτὸν διαφερόντως οἱ πολῖται· ~μετὰ
δὲ ταῦτα~, οἱ μὲν, φοβηθέντες αὐτοῦ τὴν ὑπερβολὴν, οἱ δὲ,
φθονήσαντες τῇ δόξῃ, τῶν μὲν εὐεργεσιῶν ἐπελάθοντο, τὴν δὲ ἴσχυν
καὶ τὸ φρόνημα ταπεινοῦν ἔσπευδον.

Such a charge, and such a failure, must have exasperated to the utmost the animosity between him and his chief opponents,—Aristeidês, Kimon, Alkmæon, and others; nor can we wonder that they were anxious to get rid of him by ostracism. In explaining this peculiar process, I have already stated that it could never be raised against any one individual separately and ostensibly,—and that it could never be brought into operation at all, unless its necessity were made clear, not merely to violent party men, but also to the assembled senate and people, including, of course, a considerable proportion of the more moderate citizens. We may well conceive that the conjuncture was deemed by many dispassionate Athenians well suited for the tutelary intervention of ostracism, the express benefit of which consisted in its separating political opponents when the antipathy between them threatened to push one or the other into extra-constitutional proceedings,—especially when one of those parties was Themistoklês, a man alike vast in his abilities and unscrupulous in his morality. Probably also there were not a few who wished to revenge the previous ostracism of Aristeidês: and lastly, the friends of Themistoklês himself, elate with his acquittal and his seemingly augmented popularity, might indulge hopes that the vote of ostracism would turn out in his favor, and remove one or other of his chief political opponents. From all these circumstances we learn without astonishment, that a vote of ostracism was soon after resorted to. It ended in the temporary banishment of Themistoklês.

He retired into exile, and was residing at Argos, whither he carried a considerable property, yet occasionally visiting other parts of Peloponnesus,[560]—when the exposure and death of Pausanias, together with the discovery of his correspondence, took place at Sparta. Among this correspondence were found proofs, which Thucydidês seems to have considered as real and sufficient, of the privity of Themistoklês. According to Ephorus and others, he is admitted to have been solicited by Pausanias, and to have known his plans,—but to have kept them secret while refusing to coöperate in them,[561]—but probably after his exile he took a more decided share in them than before; being well-placed for that purpose at Argos, a city not only unfriendly to Sparta, but strongly believed to have been in collusion with Xerxes at his invasion of Greece. On this occasion the Lacedæmonians sent to Athens, publicly to prefer a formal charge of treason against him, and to urge the necessity of trying him as a Pan-Hellenic criminal before the synod of the allies assembled at Sparta.[562] Whether this latter request would have been granted, or whether Themistoklês would have been tried at Athens, we cannot tell: for no sooner was he apprized that joint envoys from Sparta and Athens had been despatched to arrest him, than he fled forthwith from Argos to Korkyra. The inhabitants of that island, though owing gratitude to him and favorably disposed, could not venture to protect him against the two most powerful states in Greece, but sent him to the neighboring continent. Here, however, being still tracked and followed by the envoys, he was obliged to seek protection from a man whom he had formerly thwarted in a demand at Athens, and who had become his personal enemy,—Admêtus, king of the Molossians. Fortunately for him, at the moment when he arrived, Admêtus was not at home; and Themistoklês, becoming a suppliant to his wife, conciliated her sympathy so entirely, that she placed her child in his arms and planted him at the hearth in the full solemnity of supplication to soften her husband. As soon as Admêtus returned, Themistoklês revealed his name, his pursuers, and his danger,—entreating protection as a helpless suppliant in the last extremity. He appealed to the generosity of the Epirotic prince not to take revenge on a man now defenceless, for offence given under such very different circumstances; and for an offence too, after all, not of capital moment, while the protection now entreated was to the suppliant a matter of life or death. Admêtus raised him up from the hearth with the child in his arms,—an evidence that he accepted the appeal and engaged to protect him; refusing to give him up to the envoys, and at last only sending him away on the expression of his own wish to visit the king of Persia. Two Macedonian guides conducted him across the mountains to Pydna, in the Thermaic gulf, where he found a merchant-ship about to set sail for the coast of Asia Minor, and took a passage on board; neither the master nor the crew knowing his name. An untoward storm drove the vessel to the island of Naxos, at that moment besieged by an Athenian armament: had he been forced to land there, he would of course have been recognized and seized, but his wonted subtlety did not desert him. Having communicated both his name and the peril which awaited him, he conjured the master of the ship to assist in saving him, and not to suffer any one of the crew to land; menacing that if by any accident he were discovered, he would bring the master to ruin along with himself, by representing him as an accomplice induced by money to facilitate the escape of Themistoklês: on the other hand, in case of safety, he promised a large reward. Such promises and threats weighed with the master, who controlled his crew, and forced them to beat about during a day and a night off the coast, without seeking to land. After that dangerous interval, the storm abated, and the ship reached Ephesus in safety.[563]

[560] Thucyd. i, 137. ἦλθε γὰρ αὐτῷ ὕστερον ἔκ τε Ἀθηνῶν παρὰ τῶν
φίλων, καὶ ἐξ Ἄργους ἃ ~ὑπεξέκειτο~, etc.

I follow Mr. Fynes Clinton, in considering the year 471 B. C. to
be the date of the ostracism of Themistoklês. It may probably
be so, nor is there any evidence positively to contradict it:
but I think Mr. Clinton states it too confidently, as he admits
that Diodorus includes, in the chapters which he devotes to one
archon, events which must have happened in several different
years (see Fast. Hellen. B. C. 471).

After the expedition under the command of Pausanias in 478 B.
C., we have no one date at once certain and accurate, until
we come to the death of Xerxes, where Diodorus is confirmed
by the Canon of the Persian kings, B. C. 465. This last event
determines by close approximation and inference, the flight of
Themistoklês, the siege of Naxos, and the death of Pausanias: for
the other events of this period, we are reduced to a more vague
approximation, and can ascertain little beyond their order of
succession.

[561] Thucyd. i, 135; Ephorus ap. Plutarch. de Malign. Herodoti,
c. 5, p. 855; Diodor. xi, 54; Plutarch, Themist. c. 23.

[562] Diodor. xi, 55.

[563] Thucyd. i, 137. Cornelius Nepos (Themist. c. 8) for the
most part follows Thucydidês, and professes to do so; yet he
is not very accurate, especially about the relations between
Themistoklês and Admêtus. Diodorus (xi, 56) seems to follow
chiefly other guides: also to a great extent Plutarch (Themist.
c. 24-26). There were evidently different accounts of his voyage,
which represented him as reaching, not Ephesus, but the Æolic
Kymê. Diodorus does not notice his voyage by sea.

Thus did Themistoklês, after a series of perils, find himself safe on the Persian side of the Ægean. At Athens, he was proclaimed a traitor, and his property confiscated: nevertheless, as it frequently happened in cases of confiscation, his friends secreted a considerable sum, and sent it over to him in Asia, together with the money which he had left at Argos; so that he was thus enabled liberally to reward the ship-captain who had preserved him. With all this deduction, the property which he possessed of a character not susceptible of concealment, and which was therefore actually seized, was found to amount to eighty talents, according to Theophrastus,—to one hundred talents, according to Theopompus. In contrast with this large sum, it is melancholy to learn that he had begun his political career with a property not greater than three talents.[564] The poverty of Aristeidês at the end of his life presents an impressive contrast to the enrichment of his rival.

[564] Plutarch, Themist. c. 25; also Kritias ap. Ælian. V. H. x,
17: compare Herodot. viii, 12.