Chapter XLV (3)

After the victory of Tanagra, the Lacedæmonians made no farther expeditions out of Peloponnesus for several succeeding years, not even to prevent Bœotia and Phocis from being absorbed into the Athenian alliance. The reason of this remissness lay, partly, in their general character; partly, in the continuance of the siege of Ithômê, which occupied them at home; but still more, perhaps, in the fact that the Athenians, masters of the Megarid, were in occupation of the road over the highlands of Geraneia, and could therefore obstruct the march of any army out from Peloponnesus. Even after the surrender of Ithômê, the Lacedæmonians remained inactive for three years, after which time a formal truce was concluded with Athens by the Peloponnesians generally, for five years longer.[639] This truce was concluded in a great degree through the influence of Kimon,[640] who was eager to resume effective operations against the Persians; while it was not less suitable to the political interests of Periklês that his most distinguished rival should be absent on foreign service,[641] so as not to interfere with his influence at home. Accordingly, Kimon equipped a fleet of two hundred triremes, from Athens and her confederates, and set sail for Cyprus, from whence he despatched sixty ships to Egypt, at the request of the insurgent prince Amyrtæus, who was still maintaining himself against the Persians amidst the fens,—while with the remaining armament he laid siege to Kitium. In the prosecution of this siege, he died, either of disease or of a wound. The armament, under his successor, Anaxikrates, became so embarrassed for want of provisions that they abandoned the undertaking altogether, and went to fight the Phenician and Kilikian fleet near Salamis, in Cyprus. They were here victorious, first on sea, and afterwards on land, though probably not on the same day, as at the Eurymedon; after which they returned home, followed by the sixty ships which had gone to Egypt for the purpose of aiding Amyrtæus.[642]

[639] Thucyd. i, 112.

[640] Theopompus, Fragm. 92, ed. Didot; Plutarch, Kimon, c. 18;
Diodor. xi, 86.

It is to be presumed that this is the peace which Æschines (De
Fals. Legat. c. 54, p. 300) and Andokides or the Pseudo-Andokides
(De Pace, c. 1), state to have been made by Miltiades, son of
Kimon, proxenus of the Lacedæmonians; assuming that Miltiades
son of Kimon is put by them, through lapse of memory, for Kimon
son of Miltiades. But the passages of these orators involve so
much both of historical and chronological inaccuracy, that it
is unsafe to cite them, and impossible to amend them except
by conjecture. Mr. Fynes Clinton (Fasti Hellen. Appendix, 8,
p. 257) has pointed out some of these inaccuracies; and there
are others besides, not less grave, especially in the oration
ascribed to Andokides. It is remarkable that both of them seem to
recognize only _two_ long walls, the northern and the southern
wall; whereas, in the time of Thucydidês, there were _three_ long
walls: the two near and parallel, connecting Athens with Peiræus,
and a third connecting it with Phalêrum. This last was never
renewed, after all of them had been partially destroyed at the
disastrous close of the Peloponnesian war: and it appears to have
passed out of the recollection of Æschines, who speaks of the
two walls as they existed in his time. I concur with the various
critics who pronounce the oration ascribed to Andokides to be
spurious.

[641] Plutarch, Periklês, c. 10, and Reipublic. Gerend. Præcep.
p. 812.

An understanding to this effect between the two rivals is
so natural, that we need not resort to the supposition of a
secret agreement concluded between them through the mediation
of Elpinikê, sister of Kimon, which Plutarch had read in some
authors. The charms as well as the intrigues of Elpinikê appear
to have figured conspicuously in the memoirs of Athenian
biographers: they were employed by one party as a means of
calumniating Kimon, by the other for discrediting Periklês.

[642] Thucyd. i, 112; Diodorus, xii, 13. Diodorus mentions the
name of the general Anaxikrates. He affirms farther that Kimon
lived not only to take Kitium and Mallus, but also to gain these
two victories. But the authority of Thucydidês, superior on every
ground to Diodorus, is more particularly superior as to the death
of Kimon, with whom he was connected by relationship.

From this time forward no farther operations were undertaken by Athens and her confederacy against the Persians. And it appears that a convention was concluded between them, whereby the Great King on his part promised two things: To leave free, undisturbed, and untaxed, the Asiatic maritime Greeks, not sending troops within a given distance of the coast: to refrain from sending any ships of war either westward of Phasêlis (others place the boundary at the Chelidonean islands, rather more to the westward) or within the Kyanean rocks at the confluence of the Thracian Bosphorus with the Euxine. On their side, the Athenians agreed to leave him in undisturbed possession of Cyprus and Egypt. Kallias, an Athenian of distinguished family, with some others of his countrymen, went up to Susa to negotiate this convention: and certain envoys from Argos, then in alliance with Athens, took the opportunity of going thither at the same time, to renew the friendly understanding which their city had established with Xerxes at the period of his invasion of Greece.[643]

[643] Herodot. vii, 151; Diodor. xii, 3, 4. Demosthenês (De False
Legat. c. 77, p. 428, R: compare De Rhodior. Libert. c. 13, p.
199) speaks of this peace as τὴν ὑπὸ πάντων θρυλλουμένην εἰρήνεν.
Compare Lykurgus, cont. Leokrat. c. 17, p. 187; Isokratês,
Panegyr. c. 33, 34, p. 244; Areopagitic. c. 37, pp. 150, 229;
Panathenaic, c. 20, p. 360.

The loose language of these orators makes it impossible to
determine what was the precise limit in respect of vicinity to
the coast. Isokratês is careless enough to talk of the river
Halys as the boundary; Demosthenês states it as “a day’s course
for a horse,”—which is probably larger than the truth.

The two boundaries marked by sea, on the other hand, are both
clear and natural, in reference to the Athenian empire,—the
Kyanean rocks at one end, Phasêlis, or the Chelidonian
islands—there is no material distance between these two
last-mentioned places—on the other.

Dahlmann, at the end of his Dissertation on the reality of
this Kimonian peace, collects the various passages of authors
wherein it is mentioned: among them are several out of the rhetor
Aristeidês (Forschungen pp. 140-148).

As is generally the case with treaties after hostility,—this convention did little more than recognize the existing state of things, without introducing any new advantage or disadvantage on either side, or calling for any measures to be taken in consequence of it. We may hence assign a reasonable ground for the silence of Thucydidês, who does not even notice the convention as having been made: we are to recollect always that in the interval between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars, he does not profess to do more than glance briefly at the main events. But the boastful and inaccurate authors of the ensuing century, orators, rhetors, and historians, indulged in so much exaggeration and untruth respecting this convention, both as to date and as to details,—and extolled as something so glorious the fact of having imposed such hard conditions on the Great King,—that they have raised a suspicion against themselves. Especially, they have occasioned critics to ask the very natural question, how this splendid achievement of Athens came to be left unnoticed by Thucydidês? Now the answer to such question is, that the treaty itself was really of no great moment: it is the state of facts and relations implied in the treaty, and existing substantially before it was concluded, which constitutes the real glory of Athens. But to the later writers, the treaty stood forth as the legible evidence of facts which in their time were passed and gone; while Thucydidês and his contemporaries, living in the actual fulness of the Athenian empire, would certainly not appeal to the treaty as an evidence, and might well pass it over, even as an event, when studying to condense the narrative. Though Thucydidês has not mentioned the treaty, he says nothing which disproves its reality, and much which is in full harmony with it. For we may show, even from him: 1. That all open and direct hostilities between Athens and Persia ceased, after the last-mentioned victories of the Athenians near Cyprus: that this island is renounced by Athens, not being included by Thucydidês in his catalogue of Athenian allies prior to the Peloponnesian war;[644] and that no farther aid is given by Athens to the revolted Amyrtæus in Egypt. 2. That down to the time when the Athenian power was prostrated by the ruinous failure at Syracuse, no tribute was collected by the Persian satraps in Asia Minor from the Greek cities on the coast, nor were Persian ships of war allowed to appear in the waters of the Ægean,[645] nor was the Persian king admitted to be sovereign of the country down to the coast. Granting, therefore, that we were even bound, from the silence of Thucydidês, to infer that no treaty was concluded, we should still be obliged also to infer, from his positive averments, that a state of historical fact, such as the treaty acknowledged and prescribed, became actually realized. But when we reflect farther, that Herodotus[646] certifies the visit of Kallias and other Athenian envoys to the court of Susa, we can assign no other explanation of such visit so probable as the reality of this treaty: certainly, no envoys would have gone thither during a state of recognized war; and though it may be advanced as possible that they may have gone with the view to conclude a treaty, and yet not have succeeded,—this would be straining the limits of possibility beyond what is reasonable.[647]

[644] Thucyd. ii, 14.

[645] Thucyd. viii, 5, 6, 56. As this is a point on which very
erroneous representations have been made by some learned critics,
especially by Dahlmann and Manso (see the treatises cited in the
subsequent note 647), I transcribe the passage of Thucydidês.
He is speaking of the winter of B. C. 412, immediately succeeding
the ruin of the Athenian army at Syracuse, and after redoubled
exertions had been making—even some months before that ruin
actually took place—to excite active hostile proceedings against
Athens from every quarter (Thucyd. vii, 25): it being seen that
there was a promising opportunity for striking a heavy blow
at the Athenian power. The satrap Tissaphernes encouraged the
Chians and Erythræans to revolt, sending an envoy along with
them to Sparta with persuasions and promises of aid,—ἐπήγετο
καὶ ὁ Τισσαφέρνης τοὺς Πελοποννησίους καὶ ὑπισχνεῖτο τροφὴν
παρέξειν. Ὑπὸ βασιλέως γὰρ ~νεωστὶ ἐτύγχανε~ πεπραγμένος τοὺς
ἐκ τῆς ἑαυτοῦ ἀρχῆς φόρους, οὓς δι’ Ἀθηναίους ἀπὸ τῶν Ἑλληνίδων
πόλεων οὐ δυνάμενος πράσσεσθαι ~ἐπωφείλησε~. Τούς τε οὖν φόρους
μᾶλλον ἐνόμιζε κομιεῖσθαι, κακώσας τοὺς Ἀθηναίους, καὶ ἅμα
βασιλεῖ ξυμμάχους Λακεδαιμονίους ποιήσειν, etc. In the next
chapter, Thucydidês tells us that the satrap Pharnabazus wanted
to obtain Lacedæmonian aid in the same manner as Tissaphernes,
for _his_ satrapy also, in order that he might detach the Greek
cities from Athens, and be able to levy the tribute upon them.
Two Greeks go to Sparta, sent by Pharnabazus, ὅπως ναῦς κομίσειαν
ἐς τὸν Ἑλλήσποντον, καὶ αὐτὸς, εἰ δύναιτο ἅπερ ὁ Τισσαφέρνης
προὐθυμεῖτο, τάς τε ἐν τῇ ἑαυτοῦ ἀρχῇ πόλεις Ἀθηναίων ἀποστήσειε
~διὰ τοὺς φόρους~, καὶ ἀφ’ ἑαυτοῦ βασιλεῖ τὴν ξυμμαχίαν τῶν
Λακεδαιμονίων ποιήσειε.

These passages, strange to say, are considered by Manso and
Dahlmann as showing that the Grecian cities on the Asiatic coast,
though subject to the Athenian empire, continued, nevertheless,
to pay their tribute regularly to Susa. To me, the passages
appear to disprove this very supposition: they show that it was
essential for the satrap to detach these cities from the Athenian
empire, as a means of procuring tribute from them to Persia:
that the Athenian empire, while it lasted, prevented him from
getting any tribute from the cities subject to it. Manso and
Dahlmann have overlooked the important meaning of the adverb
of time νεωστὶ—“lately.” By that word, Thucydidês expressly
intimates that the court of Susa _had only recently_ demanded
from Tissaphernes and Pharnabazus, tribute from the maritime
Greeks within their satrapies: and he implies that _until
recently no such demand_ had been made upon them. The court of
Susa, apprized, doubtless, by Grecian exiles and agents, of the
embarrassments into which Athens had fallen, conceived this a
suitable moment for exacting tributes; to which, doubtless, it
always considered itself entitled, though the power of Athens
had compelled it to forego them. Accordingly, the demand was now
for the first time sent down to Tissaphernes, and he “_became
a debtor_ for them” to the court (ἐπωφείλησε), until he could
collect them: which he could not at first do, even then,
embarrassed as Athens was,—and which, _à fortiori_, he could not
have done before, when Athens was in full power.

We learn from these passages two valuable facts. 1. That the
maritime Asiatic cities belonging to the Athenian empire paid no
tribute to Susa, from the date of the full organization of the
Athenian confederacy down to a period after the Athenian defeat
in Sicily. 2. That, nevertheless, these cities always continued,
throughout this period, to stand rated in the Persian king’s
books each for its appropriate tribute,—the court of Susa waiting
for a convenient moment to occur, when it should be able to
enforce its demands, from misfortune accruing to Athens.

This state of relations, between the Asiatic Greeks and the
Persian court under the Athenian empire, authenticated by
Thucydidês, enables us to explain a passage of Herodotus, on
which also both Manso and Dahlmann have dwelt (p. 94) with rather
more apparent plausibility, as proving their view of the case.
Herodotus, after describing the rearrangement and remeasurement
of the territories of the Ionic cities by the satrap Artaphernes
(about 493 B. C., after the suppression of the Ionic revolt),
proceeds to state that he assessed the tribute of each with
reference to this new measurement, and that the assessment
remained unchanged until his own (Herodotus’s) time,—καὶ
τὰς χώρας σφέων μετρήσας κατὰ παρασάγγας ... φόρους ~ἔταξε~
ἑκάστοισι, οἳ κατὰ χώρην διατελέουσι ἔχοντες ἐκ τούτου τοῦ χρόνου
αἰεὶ ἔτι καὶ ἐς ἐμὲ, ὡς ἐτάχθησαν ἐξ Ἀρταφέρνεος· ~ἐτάχθησαν~ δὲ
σχεδὸν κατὰ τὰ αὐτὰ τὰ καὶ πρότερον εἶχον (vi, 42). Now Dahlmann
and Manso contend that Herodotus here affirms the tribute
of the Ionic cities to Persia to have been continuously and
regularly paid, down to his own time. But in my judgment this is
a mistake: Herodotus speaks, not about the _payment_, but about
the _assessment_: and these were two very different things, as
Thucydidês clearly intimates in the passage which I have cited
above. The _assessment_ of all the Ionic cities in the Persian
king’s books remained unaltered all through the Athenian empire;
but the _payment_ was not enforced until immediately before 412
B. C., when the Athenians were supposed to be too weak to hinder
it. It is evident by the account of the general Persian revenues,
throughout all the satrapies, which we find in the third book
of Herodotus, that he had access to official accounts of the
Persian finances, or at least to Greek secretaries who knew those
accounts. He would be told, that these assessments remained
unchanged from the time of Artaphernes downward: whether they
were _realized_ or not was another question, which the “books”
would probably not answer, and which he might or might not know.

The passages above cited from Thucydidês appear to me to afford
positive proof that the Greek cities on the Asiatic _coast_—not
those in the interior, as we may see by the case of Magnesia
given to Themistoklês—paid no tribute to Persia during the
continuance of the Athenian empire. But if there were no such
positive proof, I should still maintain the same opinion. For
if these Greeks went on paying tribute, what is meant by the
phrases, of their having “_revolted_ from Persia,” of their
“having _been liberated_ from the king,” (οἱ ἀποστάντες βασιλέως
Ἕλληνες—οἱ ἀπὸ Ἰωνίας καὶ Ἑλλησπόντου ἤδη ἀφεστηκότες ἀπὸ
βασιλέως—ὅσοι ἀπὸ βασιλέως νεωστὶ ἠλευθέρωντο, Thucyd. i, 18, 89,
95)?

So much respecting the payment of tribute. As to the other
point,—that between 477 and 412 B. C., no Persian ships were
tolerated along the coast of Ionia, which coast, though
claimed by the Persian king, was not recognized by the Greeks
as belonging to him,—proof will be found in Thucyd. viii, 56:
compare Diodor. iv, 26.

[646] Herodot. vi, 151. Diodorus also states that this peace was
concluded by Kallias the Athenian (xii, 4).

[647] I conclude, on the whole, in favor of this treaty as an
historical fact,—though sensible that some of the arguments
urged against it are not without force. Mr. Mitford and Dr.
Thirlwall (ch. xvii, p. 474), as well as Manso and Dahlmann, not
to mention others, have impugned the reality of the treaty: and
the last-mentioned author, particularly, has examined the case at
length and set forth all the grounds of objection; urging, among
some which are really serious, others which appear to me weak and
untenable (Manso, Sparta, vol. iii, Beylage x, p. 471; Dahlmann,
Forschungen auf dem Gebiete der Geschichte, vol. i, Ueber den
Kimonischen Frieden, pp. 1-148). Boëckh admits the treaty as an
historical fact.

If we deny altogether the historical reality of the treaty, we
must adopt some such hypothesis as that of Dahlmann (p. 40):
“The distinct mention and averment of such a peace as having
been formally concluded, appears to have first arisen among the
schools of the rhetors at Athens, shortly after the peace of
Antalkidas, and as an oratorical antithesis to oppose to that
peace.”

To which we must add the supposition, that some persons must have
taken the trouble to cause this fabricated peace to be engraved
on a pillar, and placed, either in the Metrôon or somewhere else
in Athens, among the records of Athenian glories. For that it was
so engraved on a column is certain (Theopompus ap. Harpokration.
Ἀττικοῖς γράμμασι). The suspicion started by Theopompus (and
founded on the fact that the peace was engraved, not in ancient
Attic, but in Ionic letters—the latter sort having been only
legalized in Athens after the archonship of Eukleides), that this
treaty was a subsequent invention and not an historical reality,
does not weigh with me very much. Assuming the peace to be real,
it would naturally be drawn up and engraved in the character
habitually used among the Ionic cities of Asia Minor, since they
were the parties most specially interested in it: or it might
even have been reëngraved, seeing that nearly a century must
have elapsed between the conclusion of the treaty and the time
when Theopompus saw the pillar. I confess that the hypothesis
of Dahlmann appears to me more improbable than the historical
reality of the treaty. I think it more likely that there _was_ a
treaty, and that the orators talked exaggerated and false matters
respecting it,—rather than that they fabricated the treaty from
the beginning with a deliberate purpose, and with the false name
of an envoy conjoined.

Dahlmann exposes justly and forcibly—an easy task, indeed—the
loose, inconsistent, and vainglorious statements of the orators
respecting this treaty. The chronological error by which it
was asserted to have been made shortly after the victories of
the Eurymedon—and was thus connected with the name of Kimon—is
one of the circumstances which have most tended to discredit
the attesting witnesses: but we must not forget that Ephorus
(assuming that Diodorus in this case copies Ephorus, which is
highly probable—xii, 3, 4) did not fall into this mistake,
but placed the treaty in its right chronological place, after
the Athenian expedition under Kimon against Cyprus and Egypt
in 450-449 B. C. Kimon died before the great results of this
expedition were consummated, as we know from Thucydidês: on this
point Diodorus speaks equivocally, but rather giving it to be
understood that Kimon lived to complete the whole, and then died
of sickness.

The absurd exaggeration of Isokratês, that the treaty bound the
Persian kings not to come westward of the river Halys, has also
been very properly censured. He makes this statement in two
different orations (Areopagatic. p. 150; Panathenaic. p. 462).

But though Dahlmann succeeds in discrediting the orators, he
tries in vain to show that the treaty is in itself improbable,
or inconsistent with any known historical facts. A large portion
of his dissertation is employed in this part of the case, and I
think quite unsuccessfully. The fact that the Persian satraps are
seen at various periods after the treaty lending aid—underhand,
yet without taking much pains to disguise it—to Athenian revolted
subjects, does not prove that no treaty had been concluded.
These satraps would, doubtless, be very glad to infringe the
treaty, whenever they thought they could do so with advantage:
if any misfortune had happened to Athens from the hands of the
Peloponnesians,—for example, if the Athenians had been unwise
enough to march their aggregate land-force out of the city to
repel the invading Peloponnesians from Attica, and had been
totally defeated,—the Persians would, doubtless, have tried to
regain Ionia forthwith. So the Lacedæmonians, at a time when
they were actually in alliance with Athens, listened to the
persuasions of the revolted Thasians, and promised secretly to
invade Attica, in order to aid their revolt (Thucyd. i, 103).
Because a treaty is very imperfectly observed,—or rather because
the parties, without coming to open war, avail themselves of
opportunities to evade it and encroach upon its prescriptions,—we
are not entitled to deny that it has ever been made (Dahlmann, p.
116).

It seems to me that the objections which have been taken by
Dahlmann and others against the historical reality of this
treaty, tell for the most part only against the exaggerated
importance assigned to it by subsequent orators.

We may therefore believe in the reality of this treaty between Athens and Persia, improperly called the Kimonian treaty: improperly, since not only was it concluded after the death of Kimon, but the Athenian victories by which it was immediately brought on were gained after his death. Nay, more,—the probability is, that if Kimon had lived, it would not have been concluded at all; for his interest as well as his glory led him to prosecute the war against Persia, since he was no match for his rival Periklês, either as a statesman or as an orator, and could only maintain his popularity by the same means whereby he had earned it,—victories and plunder at the cost of the Persians. His death insured more complete ascendency to Periklês, whose policy and character were of a cast altogether opposite:[648] while even Thucydidês, son of Melêsias, who succeeded Kimon, his relation, as leader of the anti-Periklean party, was also a man of the senate and public assembly rather than of campaigns and conquests. Averse to distant enterprises and precarious acquisitions, Periklês was only anxious to maintain unimpaired the Hellenic ascendency of Athens, now at its very maximum: he was well aware that the undivided force and vigilance of Athens would not be too much for this object,—nor did they in fact prove sufficient, as we shall presently see. With such dispositions he was naturally glad to conclude a peace, which excluded the Persians from all the coasts of Asia Minor, westward of the Chelidoneans, as well as from all the waters of the Ægean, under the simple condition of renouncing on the part of Athens farther aggressions against Cyprus, Phenicia, Kilikia, and Egypt. The Great King on his side had had sufficient experience of Athenian energy to fear the consequences of such aggressions, if prosecuted; nor did he lose much by relinquishing formally a tribute which at the time he could have little hope of realizing, and which of course he intended to resume on the first favorable opportunity. Weighing all these circumstances, we shall find that the peace, improperly called Kimonian, results naturally from the position and feelings of the contracting parties.

[648] Plutarch, Periklês, c. 21-28.

Athens was now at peace both abroad and at home, under the administration of Periklês, with a great empire, a great fleet, and a great accumulated treasure. The common fund collected from the contributions of the confederates, and originally deposited at Delos, had before this time been transferred to the acropolis at Athens. At what precise time this transfer took place, we cannot state: nor are we enabled to assign the successive stages whereby the confederacy, chiefly with the freewill of its own members, became transformed from a body of armed and active warriors under the guidance of Athens, into disarmed and passive tribute-payers, defended by the military force of Athens,—from allies free, meeting at Delos, and self-determining, into subjects isolated, sending their annual tribute, and awaiting Athenian orders. But it would appear that the change had been made before this time: some of the more resolute of the allies had tried to secede, but Athens had coerced them by force, and reduced them to the condition of tribute-payers, without ships or defence; and Chios, Lesbos, and Samos were now the only allies free and armed on the original footing. Every successive change of an armed ally into a tributary,—every subjugation of a seceder,—tended of course to cut down the numbers, and enfeeble the authority, of the Delian synod; and, what was still worse, it altered the reciprocal relation and feelings both of Athens and her allies,—exalting the former into something like a despot, and degrading the latter into mere passive subjects.

Of course, the palpable manifestation of the change must have been the transfer of the confederate fund from Delos to Athens. The only circumstance which we know respecting this transfer is, that it was proposed by the Samians,[649]—the second power in the confederacy, inferior only to Athens, and least of all likely to favor any job or sinister purpose of the Athenians. It is farther said that, when the Samians proposed it, Aristeidês characterized it as a motion unjust, but useful: we may well doubt, however, whether it was made during his lifetime. When the synod at Delos ceased to be so fully attended as to command respect,—when war was lighted up, not only with Persia, but with Ægina and Peloponnesus,—the Samians might not unnaturally feel that the large accumulated fund, with its constant annual accessions, would be safer at Athens than at Delos, which latter island would require a permanent garrison and squadron to insure it against attack. But whatever may have been the grounds on which the Samians proceeded, when we find them coming forward to propose the transfer, we may reasonably infer that it was not displeasing, and did not appear unjust, to the larger members of the confederacy,—and that it was no high-handed and arbitrary exercise of power, as it is often called, on the part of Athens.

[649] Plutarch, Aristeidês. c. 25.

After the conclusion of the war with Ægina, and the consequences of the battle of Œnophyta, the position of Athens became altered more and more. She acquired a large catalogue of new allies, partly tributary, like Ægina,—partly in the same relation as Chios, Lesbos, and Samos; that is, obliged only to a conformity of foreign policy and to military service. In this last category were Megara, the Bœotian cities, the Phocians, Lokrians, etc. All these, though allies of Athens, were strangers to Delos and the confederacy against Persia; and accordingly, that confederacy passed insensibly into a matter of history, giving place to the new conception of imperial Athens, with her extensive list of allies, partly free, partly subject. Such transition, arising spontaneously out of the character and circumstances of the confederates themselves, was thus materially forwarded by the acquisitions of Athens extraneous to the confederacy. She was now not merely the first maritime state of Greece, but perhaps equal to Sparta even in land-power,—possessing in her alliance Megara, Bœotia, Phocis, Lokris, together with Achæa and Trœzen, in Peloponnesus. Large as this aggregate already was, both at sea and on land, yet the magnitude of the annual tribute, and still more the character of the Athenians themselves, superior to all Greeks in that combination of energy and discipline which is the grand cause of progress, threatened still farther increase. Occupying the Megarian harbor of Pêgæ, the Athenians had full means of naval action on both sides of the Corinthian isthmus: but, what was of still greater importance to them, by their possession of the Megarid, and of the highlands of Geraneia, they could restrain any land-force from marching out of Peloponnesus, and were thus, considering besides their mastery at sea, completely unassailable in Attica. Ever since the repulse of Xerxes, Athens had been advancing in an uninterrupted course of power and prosperity at home, as well as of victory and ascendency abroad,—to which there was no exception, except the ruinous enterprise in Egypt. Looking at the position of Greece, therefore, about 448 B. C.,—after the conclusion of the five years’ truce between the Peloponnesians and Athens, and of the so-called Kimonian peace between Persia and Athens,—a discerning Greek might well calculate upon farther aggrandizement of this imperial state as the tendency of the age; and accustomed as every Greek was to the conception of separate town-autonomy as essential to a freeman and a citizen, such prospect could not but inspire terror and aversion. The sympathy of the Peloponnesians for the islanders and ultra-maritime states, who constituted the original confederacy of Athens, was not considerable; but when the Dorian island of Ægina was subjugated also, and passed into the condition of a defenceless tributary, they felt the blow sorely on every ground. The ancient celebrity and eminent service rendered at the battle of Salamis, of this memorable island, had not been able to protect it; while those great Æginetan families, whose victories at the sacred festival-games Pindar celebrates in a large proportion of his odes, would spread the language of complaint and indignation throughout their numerous “guests” in every Hellenic city. Of course, the same anti-Athenian feeling would pervade those Peloponnesian states who had been engaged in actual hostility with Athens,—Corinth, Sikyon, Epidaurus, etc., as well as Sparta, the once-recognized head of Hellas, but now tacitly degraded from her preëminence, baffled in her projects respecting Bœotia, and exposed to the burning of her port at Gythium, without being able even to retaliate upon Attica. Putting all those circumstances together, we may comprehend the powerful feeling of dislike and apprehension now diffused so widely over Greece against the upstart despot city; whose ascendency, newly acquired, maintained by superior force, and not recognized as legitimate,—threatened, nevertheless, still farther increase. Sixteen years hence, this same sentiment will be found exploding into the Peloponnesian war; but it became rooted in the Greek mind during the period which we have now reached, when Athens was much more formidable than she had come to be at the commencement of that war: nor shall we thoroughly appreciate the ideas of that later period, unless we take them as handed down from the earlier date of the five years’ truce, about 451-446 B. C.

Formidable as the Athenian empire both really was and appeared to be, however, this wide-spread feeling of antipathy proved still stronger, so that, instead of the threatened increase, the empire underwent a most material diminution. This did not arise from the attack of open enemies; for during the five years’ truce, Sparta undertook only one movement, and that not against Attica: she sent troops to Delphi, in an expedition dignified with the name of the Sacred War,—expelled the Phocians, who had assumed to themselves the management of the temple,—and restored it to the native Delphians. To this the Athenians made no direct opposition: but as soon as the Lacedæmonians were gone, they themselves marched thither and placed the temple again in the hands of the Phocians, who were then their allies.[650] The Delphians were members of the Phocian league, and there was a dispute of old standing as to the administration of the temple,—whether it belonged to them separately or to the Phocians collectively. The favor of those who administered it counted as an element of considerable moment in Grecian politics; the sympathies of the leading Delphians led them to embrace the side of Sparta, but the Athenians now hoped to counteract this tendency by means of their preponderance in Phocis. We are not told that the Lacedæmonians took any ulterior step in consequence of their views being frustrated by Athens,—a significant evidence of the politics of that day.

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

The blow which brought down the Athenian empire from this its greatest exaltation, was struck by the subjects themselves. The Athenian ascendency over Bœotia, Phocis, Lokris, and Eubœa, was maintained, not by means of garrisons, but through domestic parties favorable to Athens, and a suitable form of government; just in the same way as Sparta maintained her influence over her Peloponnesian allies.[651] After the victory of Œnophyta, the Athenians had broken up the governments in the Bœotian cities established by Sparta before the battle of Tanagra, and converted them into democracies at Thebes and elsewhere. Many of the previous leading men had thus been sent into exile: and as the same process had taken place in Phocis and Lokris, there was at this time a considerable aggregate body of exiles, Bœotian, Phocian, Lokrian, Eubœan, Æginetan, etc., all bitterly hostile to Athens, and ready to join in any attack upon her power. We learn farther that the democracy,[652] established at Thebes after the battle of Œnophyta, was ill-conducted and disorderly: which circumstances laid open Bœotia still farther to the schemes of assailants on the watch for every weak point. These various exiles, all joining their forces and concerting measures with their partisans in the interior, succeeded in mastering Orchomenus, Chæroneia, and some other less important places in Bœotia. The Athenian general, Tolmidês, marched to expel them, with one thousand Athenian hoplites and an auxiliary body of allies. It appears that this march was undertaken in haste and rashness: the hoplites of Tolmidês, principally youthful volunteers, and belonging to the best families of Athens, disdained the enemy too much to await a larger and more commanding force: nor would the people listen even to Periklês, when he admonished them that the march would be full of hazard, and adjured them not to attempt it without greater numbers as well as greater caution.[653] Fatally, indeed, were his predictions justified. Though Tolmidês was successful in his first enterprise,—the recapture of Chæroneia, wherein he placed a garrison,—yet in his march, probably incautious and disorderly, when departing from that place, he was surprised and attacked unawares, near Korôneia, by the united body of exiles and their partisans. No defeat in Grecian history was ever more complete or ruinous. Tolmidês himself was slain, together with many of the Athenian hoplites, while a large number of them were taken prisoners. In order to recover these prisoners, who belonged to the best families in the city, the Athenians submitted to a convention whereby they agreed to evacuate Bœotia altogether: in all the cities of that country, the exiles were restored, the democratical government overthrown, and Bœotia was transformed from an ally of Athens into her bitter enemy.[654] Long, indeed, did the fatal issue of this action dwell in the memory of the Athenians,[655] and inspire them with an apprehension of Bœotian superiority in heavy armor on land: but if the hoplites under Tolmidês had been all slain on the field, their death would probably have been avenged and Bœotia would not have been lost,—whereas, in the case of living citizens, the Athenians deemed no sacrifice too great to redeem them. We shall discover hereafter in the Lacedæmonians a feeling very similar, respecting their brethren captured at Sphakteria.

[651] Thucyd. i, 19. Λακεδαιμόνιοι, οὐχ ὑποτελεῖς ἔχοντες φόρου
τοὺς ξυμμάχους, κατ’ ὀλιγαρχίαν δὲ σφίσιν αὐτοῖς μόνον ἐπιτηδείως
ὅπως πολιτεύσουσι θεραπεύοντες—the same also i, 76-144.

[652] Aristotel. Politic. v, 2, 6. Καὶ ἐν Θήβαις μετὰ τὴν ἐν
Οἰνοφύτοις μάχην, κακῶς πολιτευομένων, ἡ δημοκρατία διεφθάρη.

[653] Plutarch, Periklês, c. 18; also, his comparison between
Periklês and Fabius Maximus, c. 3.

Kleinias, father of the celebrated Alkibiadês, was slain in
this battle: he had served, thirty-three years before, at
the sea-fight of Artemisium: he cannot therefore be numbered
among the youthful warriors, though a person of the first rank
(Plutarch, Alkibiad. c. 1).

[654] Thucyd. i, 113; Diodor. xii, 6. Platæa appears to have
been considered as quite dissevered from Bœotia: it remained in
connection with Athens as intimately as before.

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

The calamitous consequences of this defeat came upon Athens in thick and rapid succession. The united exiles, having carried their point in Bœotia, proceeded to expel the philo-Athenian government both from Phocis and Lokris, and to carry the flame of revolt into Eubœa. To this important island Periklês himself proceeded forthwith, at the head of a powerful force; but before he had time to complete the reconquest, he was summoned home by news of a still more formidable character. The Megarians had revolted from Athens: by a conspiracy previously planned, a division of hoplites from Corinth, Sikyon, and Epidaurus, was already admitted as garrison into their city: the Athenian soldiers who kept watch over the Long Walls had been overpowered and slain, except a few who escaped into the fortified port of Nisæa. As if to make the Athenians at once sensible how seriously this disaster affected them, by throwing open the road over Geraneia,—Pleistoanax, king of Sparta, was announced as already on his march for an invasion of Attica. He did, in truth, conduct an army, of mixed Lacedæmonians and Peloponnesian allies, into Attica, as far as the neighborhood of Eleusis and the Thriasian plain. He was a very young man, so that a Spartan of mature years, Kleandridês, had been attached to him by the ephors as adjutant and counsellor. Periklês, it is said, persuaded both the one and the other, by means of large bribes, to evacuate Attica without advancing to Athens. We may well doubt whether they had force enough to adventure so far into the interior, and we shall hereafter observe the great precautions with which Archidamus thought it necessary to conduct his invasion, during the first year of the Peloponnesian war, though at the head of a more commanding force. Nevertheless, on their return, the Lacedæmonians, believing that they might have achieved it, found both of them guilty of corruption. Both were banished: Kleandridês never came back, and Pleistoanax himself lived for a long time in sanctuary near the temple of Athênê, at Tegea, until at length he procured his restoration by tampering with the Pythian priestess, and by bringing her bought admonitions to act upon the authorities at Sparta.[656]

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

So soon as the Lacedæmonians had retired from Attica, Periklês returned with his forces to Eubœa, and reconquered the island completely. With that caution which always distinguished him as a military man, so opposite to the fatal rashness of Tolmidês, he took with him an overwhelming force of fifty triremes and five thousand hoplites. He admitted most of the Eubœan towns to surrender, altering the government of Chalkis by the expulsion of the wealthy oligarchy called the Hippobotæ; but the inhabitants of Histiæa, at the north of the island, who had taken an Athenian merchantman and massacred all the crew, were more severely dealt with,—the free population being all or in great part expelled, and the land distributed among Athenian kleruchs, or out-settled citizens.[657]

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

But the reconquest of Eubœa was far from restoring Athens to the position which she had occupied before the fatal engagement of Korôneia. Her land empire was irretrievably gone, together with her recently acquired influence over the Delphian oracle; and she reverted to her former condition of an exclusively maritime potentate. For though she still continued to hold Nisæa and Pegæ, yet her communication with the latter harbor was now out off by the loss of Megara and its appertaining territory, so that she thus lost her means of acting in the Corinthian gulf, and of protecting as well as of constraining her allies in Achaia. Nor was the port of Nisæa of much value to her, disconnected from the city to which it belonged, except as a post for annoying that city. Moreover, the precarious hold which she possessed over unwilling allies had been demonstrated in a manner likely to encourage similar attempts among her maritime subjects,—attempts which would now be seconded by Peloponnesian armies invading Attica. The fear of such a combination of embarrassments, and especially of an irresistible enemy carrying ruin over the flourishing territory round Eleusis and Athens, was at this moment predominant in the Athenian mind. We shall find Periklês, at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, fourteen years afterwards, exhausting all his persuasive force, and not succeeding without great difficulty, in prevailing upon his countrymen to endure the hardship of invasion,—even in defence of their maritime empire, and when events had been gradually so ripening as to render the prospect of war familiar, if not inevitable. But the late series of misfortunes had burst upon them so rapidly and unexpectedly, as to discourage even Athenian confidence, and to render the prospect of continued war full of gloom and danger. The prudence of Periklês would doubtless counsel the surrender of their remaining landed possessions or alliances, which had now become unprofitable, in order to purchase peace; but we may be sure that nothing short of extreme temporary despondency could have induced the Athenian assembly to listen to such advice, and to accept the inglorious peace which followed. A truce for thirty years was concluded with Sparta and her allies, in the beginning of 445 B. C., whereby Athens surrendered Nisæa, Pegæ, Achaia, and Trœzen,—thus abandoning Peloponnesus altogether,[658] and leaving the Megarians—with their full territory and their two ports—to be included among the Peloponnesian allies of Sparta.

[658] Thucyd. i, 114, 115; ii, 21; Diodor. xii, 5. I do not at
all doubt that the word Achaia here used, means the country in
the north part of Peloponnesus, usually known by that name.
The suspicions of Göller and others, that it means, not this
territory, but some unknown town, appear to me quite unfounded.
Thucydidês had never noticed the exact time when the Athenians
acquired Achaia as a dependent ally, though he notices the
Achæans (i, 111) in that capacity. This is one argument, among
many, to show that we must be cautious in reasoning from the
silence of Thucydidês against the reality of an event,—in
reference to this period between the Persian and Peloponnesian
wars, where his whole summary is so brief.

In regard to the chronology of these events, Mr. Fynes Clinton
remarks: “The disasters in Bœotia produced the revolt of Eubœa
and Megara about eighteen months after, in Anthestêrion 445 B.
C.: and the Peloponnesian invasion of Attica, on the expiration
of the five years’ truce,” (ad ann. 447 B. C.)

Mr. Clinton seems to me to allow a longer interval than is
probable: I incline to think that the revolt of Eubœa and Megara
followed more closely upon the disasters in Bœotia, in spite of
the statement of archons given by Diodorus: οὐ πολλῷ ὕστερον,
the expression of Thucydidês means probably no more than three
or four months; and the whole series of events were evidently
the product of one impulse. The truce having been concluded in
the beginning of 445 B. C., it seems reasonable to place the
revolt of Eubœa and Megara, as well as the invasion of Attica by
Pleistoanax, in 446 B. C.—and the disasters in Bœotia, either in
the beginning of 446 B. C., or the close of 447 B. C.

It is hardly safe to assume, moreover (as Mr. Clinton does, ad
ann. 450, as well as Dr. Thirlwall, Hist. Gr. ch. xvii, p. 478),
that the five years’ truce must have been actually expired before
Pleistoanax and the Lacedæmonians invaded Attica: the thirty
years’ truce, afterwards concluded, did not run out its full time.

It was to the Megarians, especially, that the altered position of Athens after this truce was owing: it was their secession from Attica and junction with the Peloponnesians, which laid open Attica to invasion. Hence, arose the deadly hatred on the part of the Athenians towards Megara, manifested during the ensuing years,—a sentiment the more natural, as Megara had spontaneously sought the alliance of Athens a few years before as a protection against the Corinthians, and had then afterwards, without any known ill-usage on the part of Athens, broken off from the alliance and become her enemy, with the fatal consequence of rendering her vulnerable on the land-side. Under such circumstances we shall not be surprised to find the antipathy of the Athenians against Megara strongly pronounced, insomuch that the system of exclusion which they adopted against her was among the most prominent causes of the Peloponnesian war.

Having traced what we may call the foreign relations of Athens down to this thirty years’ truce, we must notice the important internal and constitutional changes which she had experienced during the same interval.