Chapter XLVII (2)

Considering these prodigious achievements in the field of art only as they bear upon Athenian and Grecian history, they are phenomena of extraordinary importance. When we read the profound impression which they produced upon Grecian spectators of a later age, we may judge how immense was the effect upon that generation which saw them both begun and finished. In the year 480 B.C., Athens had been ruined by the occupation of Xerxes: since that period, the Greeks had seen, first, the rebuilding and fortifying of the city on an enlarged scale,—next, the addition of Peiræus with its docks and magazines,—thirdly, the junction of the two by the long walls, thus including the most numerous concentrated population, wealth, arms, ships, etc., in Greece,[43]—lastly, the rapid creation of so many new miracles of art,—the sculptures of Pheidias as well as the paintings of the Thasian painter, Polygnôtus, in the temple of Theseus, and in the portico called Pœkilê. Plutarch observes[44] that the celerity with which the works were completed was the most remarkable circumstance connected with them; and so it probably might be, in respect to the effect upon the contemporary Greeks. The gigantic strides by which Athens had reached her maritime empire were now immediately succeeded by a series of works which stamped her as the imperial city of Greece, gave to her an appearance of power even greater than the reality, and especially put to shame the old-fashioned simplicity of Sparta.[45] The cost was doubtless prodigious, and could only have been borne at a time when there was a large treasure in the acropolis, as well as a considerable tribute annually coming in: if we may trust a computation which seems to rest on plausible grounds, it cannot have been much less than three thousand talents in the aggregate,—about six hundred and ninety thousand pounds.[46] The expenditure of so large a sum was, of course, the source of great private gain to the contractors, tradesmen, merchants, artisans of various descriptions, etc., concerned in it: in one way or another, it distributed itself over a large portion of the whole city. And it appears that the materials employed for much of the work were designedly of the most costly description, as being most consistent with the reverence due to the gods: marble was rejected as too common for the statue of Athênê, and ivory employed in its place;[47] while the gold with which it was surrounded weighed not less than forty talents.[48] A large expenditure for such purposes, considered as pious towards the gods, was at the same time imposing in reference to Grecian feeling, which regarded with admiration every variety of public show and magnificence, and repaid by grateful deference the rich men who indulged in it. Periklês knew well that the visible splendor of the city, so new to all his contemporaries, would cause her great real power to appear even greater than its reality, and would thus procure for her a real, though unacknowledged influence—perhaps even an ascendency—over all cities of the Grecian name. And it is certain that even among those who most hated and feared her, at the outbreak of the Peloponnesian war, there prevailed a powerful sentiment of involuntary deference.

[43] Thucyd. i, 80. καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις ἅπασιν ἄριστα ἐξήρτυνται,
πλούτῳ τε ἰδίῳ καὶ δημοσίῳ καὶ ναυσὶ καὶ ἵπποις καὶ ὅπλοις, καὶ
ὄχλῳ ὅσος οὐκ ἐν ἄλλῳ ἑνί γε χωρίῳ Ἑλληνικῷ ἐστὶν, etc.

[44] Plutarch, Periklês, c. 13.

[45] Thucyd. i, 10.

[46] See Leake, Topography of Athens, Append. iii, p. 329, 2d ed.
Germ. transl. Colonel Leake, with much justice, contends that the
amount of two thousand and twelve talents, stated by Harpokration
out of Philochorus as the cost of the Propylæa alone, must be
greatly exaggerated. Mr. Wilkins (Atheniensia, p. 84) expresses
the same opinion; remarking that the transport of marble from
Pentelikus to Athens is easy and on a descending road.

Demetrius Phalereus (ap. Cicer. de Officiis, ii, 17) blamed
Periklês for the large sum expended upon the Propylæa; nor is it
wonderful that he uttered this censure, if he had been led to
rate the cost of them at two thousand and twelve talents.

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

[48] Thucyd. ii, 13.

A step taken by Periklês, apparently not long after the commencement of the thirty years’ truce, evinces how much this ascendency was in his direct aim, and how much he connected it with views both of harmony and usefulness for Greece generally. He prevailed upon the people to send envoys to every city of the Greek name, great and small, inviting each to appoint deputies for a congress to be held at Athens. Three points were to be discussed in this intended congress. 1. The restitution of those temples which had been burnt by the Persian invaders. 2. The fulfilment of such vows, as on that occasion had been made to the gods. 3. The safety of the sea and of maritime commerce for all. Twenty elderly Athenians were sent round to obtain the convocation of this congress at Athens,—a Pan-Hellenic congress for Pan-Hellenic purposes. But those who were sent to Bœotia and Peloponnesus completely failed in their object, from the jealousy, noway astonishing, of Sparta and her allies: of the rest we hear nothing, for this refusal was quite sufficient to frustrate the whole scheme.[49] It is to be remarked that the dependent allies of Athens appear to have been summoned just as much as the cities perfectly autonomous; so that their tributary relation to Athens was not understood to degrade them. We may sincerely regret that such congress did not take effect, as it might have opened some new possibilities of converging tendency and alliance for the dispersed fractions of the Greek name,—a comprehensive benefit, to which Sparta was at once incompetent and indifferent, but which might, perhaps, have been realized under Athens, and seems in this case to have been sincerely aimed at by Periklês. The events of the Peloponnesian war, however, extinguished all hopes of any such union.

[49] Plutarch, Periklês, c. 17. Plutarch gives no precise date,
and O. Müller (De Phidiæ Vitâ, p. 9) places these steps for
convocation of a congress before the first war between Sparta and
Athens and the battle of Tanagra,—_i. e._, before 460 B.C. But
this date seems to me improbable: Thebes was not yet renovated
in power, nor had Bœotia as yet recovered from the fruits of her
alliance with the Persians; moreover, neither Athens nor Periklês
himself seem to have been at that time in a situation to conceive
so large a project; which suits in every respect much better for
the later period, after the thirty years’ truce, but before the
Peloponnesian war.

The interval of fourteen years, between the beginning of the thirty years’ truce and that of the Peloponnesian war, was by no means one of undisturbed peace to Athens. In the sixth year of that period occurred the formidable revolt of Samos.

That island appears to have been the most powerful of all the allies of Athens,[50]—more powerful even than Chios or Lesbos, and standing on the same footing as the two latter; that is, paying no tribute-money,—a privilege when compared with the body of the allies,—but furnishing ships and men when called upon, and retaining, subject to this condition, its complete autonomy, its oligarchical government, its fortifications, and its military force. Like most of the other islands near the coast, Samos possessed a portion of territory on the mainland, between which and the territory of Milêtus, lay the small town of Priênê, one of the twelve original members contributing to the Pan-Ionic solemnity. Respecting the possession of this town of Priênê, a war broke out between the Samians and Milesians, in the sixth year of the thirty years’ truce (B.C. 440-439): whether the town had before been independent, we do not know, but in this war the Milesians were worsted, and it fell into the hands of the Samians. The defeated Milesians, enrolled as they were among the tributary allies of Athens, complained to her of the conduct of the Samians, and their complaint was seconded by a party in Samos itself opposed to the oligarchy and its proceedings. The Athenians required the two disputing cities to bring the matter before discussion and award at Athens, with which the Samians refused to comply:[51] whereupon an armament of forty ships was despatched from Athens to the island, and established in it a democratical government; leaving in it a garrison, and carrying away to Lemnos fifty men and as many boys from the principal oligarchical families, to serve as hostages. Of these families, however, a certain number retired to the mainland, where they entered into negotiations with Pissuthnês, the satrap of Sardis, to procure aid and restoration. Obtaining from him seven hundred mercenary troops, and passing over in the night to the island, by previous concert with the oligarchical party, they overcame the Samian democracy as well as the Athenian garrison, who were sent over as prisoners to Pissuthnês. They were farther lucky enough to succeed in stealing away from Lemnos their own recently deposited hostages, and they then proclaimed open revolt against Athens, in which Byzantium also joined. It seems remarkable, that though, by such a proceeding, they would of course draw upon themselves the full strength of Athens, yet their first step was to resume aggressive hostilities against Milêtus,[52] whither they sailed with a powerful naval force of seventy ships, twenty of them carrying troops aboard.

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

[51] Thucyd. i, 115; Plutarch, Periklês, c. 25. Most of the
statements which appear in this chapter of Plutarch—over and
above the concise narrative of Thucydidês—appear to be borrowed
from exaggerated party stories of the day. We need make no remark
upon the story, that Periklês was induced to take the side of
Milêtus against Samos, by the fact that Aspasia was a native
of Milêtus. Nor is it at all more credible that the satrap
Pissuthnês, from good-will towards Samos, offered Periklês ten
thousand golden staters as an inducement to spare Samos. It may
perhaps be true however, that the Samian oligarchy, and those
wealthy men whose children were likely to be taken as hostages,
tried the effect of large bribes upon the mind of Periklês, to
prevail upon him not to alter the government.

[52] Thucyd. i, 114, 115.

Immediately on the receipt of this grave intelligence, a fleet of sixty triremes—probably all that were in complete readiness—was despatched to Samos under ten generals, two of whom were Periklês himself and the poet Sophoklês,[53] both seemingly included among the ten ordinary stratêgi of the year. But it was necessary to employ sixteen of these ships, partly in summoning contingents from Chios and Lesbos, to which islands Sophoklês went in person;[54] partly in keeping watch off the coast of Karia for the arrival of the Phenician fleet, which report stated to be approaching; so that Periklês had only forty-four ships remaining in his squadron. Yet he did not hesitate to attack the Samian fleet of seventy ships on its way back from Milêtus, near the island of Tragia, and was victorious in the action. Presently, he was reinforced by forty ships from Athens, and by twenty-five from Chios and Lesbos, so as to be able to disembark at Samos, where he overcame the Samian land-force, and blocked up the harbor with a portion of his fleet, surrounding the city on the land-side with a triple wall. Meanwhile, the Samians had sent Stesagoras with five ships to press the coming of the Phenician fleet, and the report of their approach became again so prevalent that Periklês felt obliged to take sixty ships, out of the total one hundred and twenty-five, to watch for them off the coast of Kaunus and Karia, where he remained for about fourteen days. The Phenician fleet[55] never came, though Diodorus affirms that it was actually on its voyage. Pissuthnês certainly seems to have promised, and the Samians to have expected it: but I incline to believe that, though willing to hold out hopes and encourage revolt among the Athenian allies, the satrap, nevertheless, did not choose openly to violate the convention of Kallias, whereby the Persians were forbidden to send a fleet westward of the Chelidonian promontory. The departure of Periklês, however, so much weakened the Athenian fleet off Samos, that the Samians, suddenly sailing out of their harbor in an opportune moment, at the instigation and under the command of one of their most eminent citizens, the philosopher Melissus,—surprised and ruined the blockading squadron, and gained a victory over the remaining fleet, before the ships could be fairly got out to sea.[56] For fourteen days they remained masters of the sea, carrying in and out all that they thought proper: nor was it until the return of Periklês that they were again blocked up. Reinforcements, however, were now multiplied to the blockading squadron,—from Athens, forty ships, under Thucydidês,[57] Agnon, and Phormion, and twenty under Tlepolemus and Antiklês, besides thirty from Chios and Lesbos,—making altogether near two hundred sail. Against this overwhelming force, Melissus and the Samians made an unavailing attempt at resistance, but were presently quite blocked up, and remained so for nearly nine months, until they could hold out no longer. They then capitulated, being compelled to raze their fortifications, to surrender all their ships of war, to give hostages for future good conduct, and to make good by stated instalments the whole expense of the enterprise, said to have reached one thousand talents. The Byzantines, too, made their submission at the same time.[58]

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

[54] See the interesting particulars recounted respecting
Sophoklês by the Chian poet, Ion, who met and conversed with him
during the course of this expedition (Athenæus, xiii, p. 603).
He represents the poet as uncommonly pleasing and graceful in
society, but noway distinguished for active capacity. Sophoklês
was at this time in peculiar favor, from the success of his
tragedy, Antigonê, the year before. See the chronology of
these events discussed and elucidated in Boeckh’s preliminary
Dissertation to the Antigonê, c. 6-9.

[55] Diodor. xi, 27.

[56] Plutarch, Periklês, c. 26. Plutarch seems to have had
before him accounts respecting this Samian campaign, not only
from Ephorus, Stesimbrotus, and Duris, but also from Aristotle:
and the statements of the latter must have differed thus far
from Thucydidês, that he affirmed Melissus the Samian general to
have been victorious over Periklês himself, which is not to be
reconciled with the narrative of Thucydidês.

The Samian historian, Duris, living about a century after this
siege, seems to have introduced many falsehoods respecting the
cruelties of Athens: see Plutarch, _l. c._

[57] It appears very improbable that this Thucydidês can be the
historian himself. If it be Thucydidês son of Melêsias, we must
suppose him to have been restored from ostracism before the
regular time,—a supposition indeed noway inadmissible in itself,
but which there is nothing else to countenance. The author of the
Life of Sophoklês, as well as most of the recent critics, adopt
this opinion.

On the other hand, it may have been a third person named
Thucydidês; for the name seems to have been common, as we might
guess from the two words of which it is compounded. We find a
third Thucydidês mentioned viii, 92—a native of Pharsalus: and
the biographer, Marcellinus seems to have read of many persons so
called (Θουκύδιδαι πολλοὶ, p. xvi, ed. Arnold). The subsequent
history of Thucydidês son of Melêsias, is involved in complete
obscurity. We do not know the incident to which the remarkable
passage in Aristophanês (Acharn. 703) alludes,—compare Vespæ,
946: nor can we confirm the statement which the Scholiast cites
from Idomeneus, to the effect that Thucydidês was banished and
fled to Artaxerxes: see Bergk. Reliq. Com. Att. p. 61.

[58] Thucyd. i, 117; Diodor. xii, 27, 28; Isokratês, De Permutat.
Or. xv, sect. 118; Cornel. Nepos, Vit. Timoth. c. 1.

The assertion of Ephorus (see Diodorus, xii, 28, and Ephori
Fragm. 117 ed. Marx, with the note of Marx) that Periklês
employed battering machines against the town, under the
management of the Klazomenian Artemon, was called in question
by Herakleidês Ponticus, on the ground that Artemon was a
contemporary of Anakreon, near a century before: and Thucydidês
represents Periklês to have captured the town altogether by
blockade.

Two or three circumstances deserve notice respecting this revolt, as illustrating the existing condition of the Athenian empire. First, that the whole force of Athens, together with the contingents from Chios and Lesbos, was necessary in order to crush it, so that even Byzantium, which joined in the revolt, seems to have been left unassailed. Now, it is remarkable that none of the dependent allies near Byzantium, or anywhere else, availed themselves of so favorable an opportunity to revolt also: a fact which seems plainly to imply that there was little positive discontent then prevalent among them. Had the revolt spread to other cities, probably Pissuthnês might have realized his promise of bringing in the Phenician fleet, which would have been a serious calamity for the Ægean Greeks, and was only kept off by the unbroken maintenance of the Athenian empire.

Next, the revolted Samians applied for aid, not only to Pissuthnês, but also to Sparta and her allies; among whom, at a special meeting, the question of compliance or refusal was formally debated. Notwithstanding the thirty years’ truce then subsisting, of which only six years had elapsed, and which had been noway violated by Athens,—many of the allies of Sparta voted for assisting the Samians: what part Sparta herself took, we do not know,—but the Corinthians were the main and decided advocates for the negative. They not only contended that the truce distinctly forbade compliance with the Samian request, but also recognized the right of each confederacy to punish its own recusant members, and this was the decision ultimately adopted, for which the Corinthians afterwards took credit, in the eyes of Athens, as the chief authors.[59] Certainly, if the contrary policy had been pursued, the Athenian empire might have been in great danger, the Phenician fleet would probably have been brought in also, and the future course of events might have been greatly altered.

[59] Thucyd. i, 40, 41.

Again, after the reconquest of Samos, we should assume it almost as a matter of certainty, that the Athenians would renew the democratical government which they had set up just before the revolt. Yet, if they did so, it must have been again overthrown, without any attempt to uphold it on the part of Athens. For we hardly hear of Samos again, until twenty-seven years afterwards, towards the latter division of the Peloponnesian war, in 412 B.C., and it then appears with an established oligarchical government of geomori, or landed proprietors, against which the people make a successful rising during the course of that year.[60] As Samos remained, during the interval between 439 B.C. and 412 B.C., unfortified, deprived of its fleet, and enrolled among the tribute-paying allies of Athens,—and as it, nevertheless, either retained or acquired its oligarchical government; so we may conclude that Athens cannot have systematically interfered to democratize by violence the subject-allies, in cases where the natural tendency of parties ran towards oligarchy. The condition of Lesbos at the time of its revolt, hereafter to be related, will be found to confirm this conclusion.[61]

[60] Thucyd. viii, 21.

[61] Compare Wachsmuth, Hellenische Alterthumskunde, sect. 58,
vol. ii, p. 82.

On returning to Athens after the reconquest of Samos, Periklês was chosen to pronounce the funeral oration over the citizens slain in the war, to whom, according to custom, solemn and public obsequies were celebrated in the suburb called Kerameikus. This custom appears to have been introduced shortly after the Persian war,[62] and would doubtless contribute to stimulate the patriotism of the citizens, especially when the speaker elected to deliver it was of the personal dignity as well as the oratorical powers of Periklês. He was twice public funeral orator by the choice of the citizens: once after the Samian success, and a second time in the first year of the Peloponnesian war. His discourse on the first occasion has not reached us,[63] but the second has been fortunately preserved, in substance at least, by Thucydidês, who also briefly describes the funeral ceremony,—doubtless the same on all occasions. The bones of the deceased warriors were exposed in tents three days before the ceremony, in order that the relatives of each might have the opportunity of bringing offerings: they were then placed in coffins of cypress, and carried forth on carts to the public burial-place at the Kerameikus; one coffin for each of the ten tribes, and one empty couch, formally laid out, to represent those warriors whose bones had not been discovered or collected. The female relatives of each followed the carts, with loud wailings, and after them a numerous procession both of citizens and strangers. So soon as the bones had been consigned to the grave, some distinguished citizen, specially chosen for the purpose, mounted an elevated stage, and addressed to the multitude an appropriate discourse. Such was the effect produced by that of Periklês after the Samian expedition, that, when he had concluded, the audience present testified their emotion in the liveliest manner, and the women especially crowned him with garlands, like a victorious athlete.[64] Only Elpinikê, sister of the deceased Kimon, reminded him that the victories of her brother had been more felicitous, as gained over Persians and Phenicians, and not over Greeks and kinsmen. And the contemporary poet Ion, the friend of Kimon, reported what he thought an unseemly boast of Periklês,—to the effect that Agamemnon had spent ten years in taking a foreign city, while _he_ in nine months had reduced the first and most powerful of all the Ionic communities.[65] But if we possessed the actual speech pronounced, we should probably find that he assigned all the honor of the exploit to Athens and her citizens generally, placing their achievement in favorable comparison with that of Agamemnon and his host,—not himself with Agamemnon.

[62] See Westermann, Geschichte der Beredsamkeit in Griechenland
und Rom; Diodor. xi, 33; Dionys. Hal. A. R. v, 17.

Periklês, in the funeral oration preserved by Thucydidês (ii,
35-40), begins by saying—Οἱ μὲν πολλοὶ τῶν ἐνθάδε εἰρηκότων ἤδη
ἐπαινοῦσι ~τὸν προσθέντα~ τῷ νόμῳ τὸν λόγον τόνδε, etc.

The Scholiast, and other commentators—K. F. Weber and Westermann
among the number—make various guesses as to _what_ celebrated man
is here designated as the introducer of the custom of a funeral
harangue. The Scholiast says, Solon: Weber fixes on Kimon:
Westermann, on Aristeidês: another commentator on Themistoklês.
But we may reasonably doubt whether _any one_ very celebrated man
is specially indicated by the words τὸν προσθέντα. To commend the
introducer of the practice, is nothing more than a phrase for
commending the practice itself.

[63] Some fragments of it seem to have been preserved, in the
time of Aristotle: see his treatise De Rhetoricâ, i, 7; iii, 10,
3.

[64] Compare the enthusiastic demonstrations which welcomed
Brasidas at Skiônê (Thucyd. iv, 121).

[65] Plutarch, Periklês, c. 28; Thucyd. ii, 34.

Whatever may be thought of this boast, there can be no doubt that the result of the Samian war not only rescued the Athenian empire from great peril,[66] but rendered it stronger than ever: while the foundation of Amphipolis, which was effected two years afterwards, strengthened it still farther. Nor do we hear, during the ensuing few years, of any farther tendencies to disaffection among its members, until the period immediately before the Peloponnesian war. The feeling common among them towards Athens, seems to have been neither attachment nor hatred, but simple indifference and acquiescence in her supremacy. Such amount of positive discontent as really existed among them, arose, not from actual hardships suffered, but from the general political instinct of the Greek mind,—desire of separate autonomy for each city; which manifested itself in each, through the oligarchical party, whose power was kept down by Athens, and was stimulated by the sentiment communicated from the Grecian communities without the Athenian empire. According to that sentiment, the condition of a subject-ally of Athens was treated as one of degradation and servitude: and in proportion as fear and hatred of Athens became more and more predominant among the allies of Sparta, they gave utterance to the sentiment more and more emphatically, so as to encourage discontent artificially among the subject-allies of the Athenian empire. Possessing complete mastery of the sea, and every sort of superiority requisite for holding empire over islands, Athens had yet no sentiment to appeal to in her subjects, calculated to render her empire popular, except that of common democracy, which seems at first to have acted without any care on her part to encourage it, until the progress of the Peloponnesian war made such encouragement a part of her policy. And had she even tried sincerely to keep up in the allies the feeling of a common interest, and the attachment to a permanent confederacy, the instinct of political separation would probably have baffled all her efforts. But she took no such pains,—with the usual morality that grows up in the minds of the actual possessors of power, she conceived herself entitled to exact obedience as her right; and some of the Athenian speakers in Thucydidês go so far as to disdain all pretence of legitimate power, even such as might fairly be set up, resting the supremacy of Athens on the naked plea of superior force.[67] As the allied cities were mostly under democracies,—through the indirect influence rather than the systematic dictation of Athens,—yet each having its own internal aristocracy in a state of opposition; so the movements for revolt against Athens originated with the aristocracy or with some few citizens apart: while the people, though sharing more or less in the desire for autonomy, had yet either a fear of their own aristocracy or a sympathy with Athens, which made them always backward in revolting, sometimes decidedly opposed to it. Neither Periklês nor Kleon, indeed, lay stress on the attachment of the people as distinguished from that of the Few, in these dependent cities; but the argument is strongly insisted on by Diodorus,[68] in the discussion respecting Mitylênê after its surrender: and as the war advanced, the question of alliance with Athens or Sparta became more and more identified with the internal preponderance of democracy or oligarchy in each.[69] We shall find that in most of those cases of actual revolt where we are informed of the preceding circumstances, the step is adopted or contrived by a small number of oligarchical malcontents, without consulting the general voice; while in those cases where the general assembly is consulted beforehand, there is manifested indeed a preference for autonomy, but nothing like a hatred of Athens or decided inclination to break with her. In the case of Mitylênê,[70] in the fourth year of the war, it was the aristocratical government which revolted, while the people, as soon as they obtained arms, actually declared in favor of Athens: and the secession of Chios, the greatest of all the allies, in the twentieth year of the Peloponnesian war, even after all the hardships which the allies had been called upon to bear in that war, and after the ruinous disasters which Athens had sustained before Syracuse,—was both prepared beforehand and accomplished by secret negotiations of the Chian oligarchy, not only without the concurrence, but against the inclination, of their own people.[71] In like manner, the revolt of Thasos would not have occurred, had not the Thasian democracy been previously subverted by the Athenian Peisander and his oligarchical confederates. So in Akanthus, in Amphipolis, in Mendê, and those other Athenian dependencies which were wrested from Athens by Brasidas, we find the latter secretly introduced by a few conspirators, while the bulk of the citizens do not hail him at once as a deliverer, like men sick of Athenian supremacy: they acquiesce, not without debate, when Brasidas is already in the town, and his demeanor, just as well as conciliating, soon gains their esteem: but neither in Akanthus nor in Amphipolis would he have been admitted by the free decision of the citizens, if they had not been alarmed for the safety of their friends, their properties, and their harvest, still exposed in the lands without the walls.[72] These particular examples warrant us in affirming, that though the oligarchy in the various allied cities desired eagerly to shake off the supremacy of Athens, the people were always backward in following them, sometimes even opposed, and hardly ever willing to make sacrifices for the object. They shared the universal Grecian desire for separate autonomy,[73] felt the Athenian empire as an extraneous pressure which they would have been glad to shake off, whenever the change could be made with safety: but their condition was not one of positive hardship, nor did they overlook the hazardous side of such a change,—partly from the coercive hand of Athens, partly from new enemies against whom Athens had hitherto protected them, and not least, from their own oligarchy. Of course, the different allied cities were not all animated by the same feelings, some being more averse to Athens than others.

[66] A short fragment remaining from the comic poet Eupolis
(Κόλακες, Fr. xvi, p. 493, ed. Meineke), attests the anxiety at
Athens about the Samian war, and the great joy when the island
was reconquered: compare Aristophan. Vesp. 283.

[67] Thucyd. iii, 37; ii, 63. See the conference, at the island
of Melos in the sixteenth year of the Peloponnesian war (Thucyd.
v, 89, _seq._), between the Athenian commissioners and the
Melians. I think, however, that this conference is less to be
trusted as based in reality, than the speeches in Thucydidês
generally,—of which more hereafter.

[68] Thucyd. iii, 47. Νῦν μὲν γὰρ ὑμῖν ὁ δῆμος ἐν ἁπάσαις ταῖς
πόλεσιν εὔνους ἐστὶ, καὶ ἢ οὐ ξυναφίσταται τοῖς ὀλίγοις, ἢ ἐὰν
βιασθῇ, ὑπάρχει τοῖς ἀποστήσασι πολέμιος εὐθὺς, etc.

[69] See the striking observations of Thucydidês, iii, 82, 83;
Aristotel. Politic. v, 6, 9.

[70] Thucyd. iii, 27.

[71] Thucyd. viii, 9-14. He observes, also, respecting the
Thasian oligarchy just set up in lieu of the previous democracy
by the Athenian oligarchical conspirators who were then
organizing the revolution of the Four Hundred at Athens,—that
they immediately made preparations for revolting from
Athens,—ξυνέβη οὖν αὐτοῖς μάλιστα ἃ ἐβούλοντο, τὴν πόλιν τε
ἀκινδύνως ὀρθοῦσθαι, καὶ ~τὸν ἐναντιωσόμενον δῆμον καταλελύσθαι~
(viii, 64).

[72] Thucyd. iv, 86, 88, 106, 123.

[73] See the important passage, Thucyd. viii, 48.

The particular modes in which Athenian supremacy was felt as a grievance by the allies appear to have been chiefly three. 1. The annual tribute. 2. The encroachments, exactions, or perhaps plunder, committed by individual Athenians, who would often take advantage of their superior position, either as serving in the naval armaments, as invested with the function of inspectors as placed in garrison, or as carrying on some private speculation. 3. The obligation under which the allies were placed, of bringing a large proportion of their judicial trials to be settled before the dikasteries at Athens.

As to the tribute, I have before remarked that its amount had been but little raised from its first settlement down to the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, at which time it was six hundred talents yearly:[74] it appears to have been reviewed, and the apportionment corrected, in every fifth year, at which period the collecting officers may probably have been changed; but we shall afterwards find it becoming larger and more burdensome. The same gradual increase may probably be affirmed respecting the second head of inconvenience,—vexation caused to the allies by individual Athenians, chiefly officers of armaments, or powerful citizens.[75] Doubtless this was always more or less a real grievance, from the moment when the Athenians became despots in place of chiefs, but it was probably not very serious in extent until after the commencement of the Peloponnesian war, when revolt on the part of the allies became more apprehended, and when garrisons, inspectors, and tribute-gathering ships became more essential in the working of the Athenian empire.

[74] Xenophon. Repub. Athen. iii, 5. πλὴν αἱ τάξεις τοῦ φόρου·
τοῦτο δὲ γίγνεται ὡς τὰ πολλὰ δι᾽ ἔτους πέμπτου.

[75] Xenophon. Repub. Athen. i, 14. Περὶ δὲ τῶν συμμάχων, οἱ
ἐκπλέοντες συκοφαντοῦσιν, ὡς δοκοῦσι, καὶ μισοῦσι τοὺς χρηστοὺς,
etc.

Who are the persons designated by the expression οἱ ἐκπλέοντες,
appears to be specified more particularly a little farther on (i,
18); it means the generals, the officers, the envoys, etc. sent
forth by Athens.

But the third circumstance above noticed—the subjection of the allied cities to the Athenian dikasteries—has been more dwelt upon as a grievance than the second, and seems to have been unduly exaggerated. We can hardly doubt that the beginning of this jurisdiction exercised by the Athenian dikasteries dates with the synod of Delos, at the time of the first formation of the confederacy. It was an indispensable element of that confederacy, that the members should forego their right of private war among each other, and submit their differences to peaceable arbitration,—a covenant introduced even into alliances much less intimate than this was, and absolutely essential to the efficient maintenance of any common action against Persia.[76] Of course, many causes of dispute, public as well as private, must have arisen among these wide-spread islands and seaports of the Ægean, connected with each other by relations of fellow-feeling, of trade, and of common apprehensions. The synod of Delos, composed of the deputies of all, was the natural board of arbitration for such disputes, and a habit must thus have been formed, of recognizing a sort of federal tribunal,—to decide peaceably how far each ally had faithfully discharged its duties, both towards the confederacy collectively, and towards other allies with their individual citizens separately,—as well as to enforce its decisions and punish refractory members, pursuant to the right which Sparta and her confederacy claimed and exercised also.[77] Now from the beginning, the Athenians were the guiding and enforcing presidents of this synod, and when it gradually died away, they were found occupying its place as well as clothed with its functions. It was in this manner that their judicial authority over the allies appears first to have begun, as the confederacy became changed into an Athenian empire,—the judicial functions of the synod being transferred along with the common treasure to Athens, and doubtless much extended. And on the whole, these functions must have been productive of more good than evil to the allies themselves, especially to the weakest and most defenceless among them.

[76] See the expression in Thucydidês (v, 27) describing the
conditions required when Argos was about to extend her alliances
in Peloponnesus. The conditions were two. 1. That the city should
be autonomous. 2. Next, that it should be willing to submit its
quarrels to equitable arbitration,—ἥτις αὐτόνομός τέ ἐστι, καὶ
δίκας ἴσας καὶ ὁμοίας δίδωσι.

In the oration against the Athenians, delivered by the Syracusan
Hermokratês at Kamarina, Athens is accused of having enslaved her
allies partly on the ground that they neglected to perform their
military obligations, partly because they made war upon each
other (Thucyd. vi, 76), partly also on other specious pretences.
How far this charge against Athens is borne out by the fact, we
can hardly say; in all those particular examples which Thucydidês
mentions of subjugation of allies by Athens, there is a cause
perfectly definite and sufficient,—not a mere pretence devised by
Athenian ambition.

[77] According to the principle laid down by the Corinthians
shortly before the Peloponnesian war,—τοὺς προσήκοντας ξυμμάχους
αὐτόν τινα κολάζειν (Thucyd. i, 40-43).

The Lacedæmonians, on preferring their accusation of treason
against Themistoklês, demanded that he should be tried at Sparta,
before the common Hellenic synod which held its sitting there,
and of which Athens was then a member: that is, the Spartan
confederacy, or alliance,—ἐπὶ τοῦ κοινοῦ συνεδρίου τῶν Ἑλλήνων
(Diodor. xi, 55).

Among the thousand towns which paid tribute to Athens,—taking this numerical statement of Aristophanês, not in its exact meaning, but simply as a great number,—if a small town, or one of its citizens, had cause of complaint against a larger, there was no channel except the synod of Delos, or the Athenian tribunal, through which it could have any reasonable assurance of fair trial or justice. It is not to be supposed that all the private complaints and suits between citizen and citizen, in each respective subject town, were carried up for trial to Athens: yet we do not know distinctly how the line was drawn between matters carried up thither and matters tried at home. The subject cities appear to have been interdicted from the power of capital punishment, which could only be inflicted after previous trial and condemnation at Athens:[78] so that the latter reserved to herself the cognizance of most of the grave crimes,—or what may be called “the higher justice” generally. And the political accusations preferred by citizen against citizen, in any subject city, for alleged treason, corruption, non-fulfilment of public duty, etc., were doubtless carried to Athens for trial,—perhaps the most important part of her jurisdiction.

[78] Antipho, De Cæde Herôdis, c. 7, p. 135. ὃ οὐδὲ πόλει
ἔξεστιν, ἄνευ Ἀθηναίων οὐδένα θανάτῳ ζημιῶσαι.

But the maintenance of this judicial supremacy was not intended by Athens for the substantive object of amending the administration of justice in each separate allied city: it went rather to regulate the relations between city and city,—between citizens of different cities,—between Athenian citizens or officers, and any of these allied cities with which they had relations,—between each city itself, as a dependent government with contending political parties, and the imperial head, Athens. All these were problems which imperial Athens was called on to solve, and the best way of solving them would have been through some common synod emanating from all the allies: putting this aside, we shall find that the solution provided by Athens was perhaps the next best, and we shall be the more induced to think so, when we compare it with the proceedings afterwards adopted by Sparta, when she had put down the Athenian empire. Under Sparta, the general rule was, to place each of the dependent cities under the government of a dekadarchy or oligarchical council of ten among its chief citizens, together with a Spartan harmost, or governor, having a small garrison under his orders. It will be found, when we come to describe the Spartan maritime empire, that these arrangements exposed each dependent city to very great violence and extortion, while, after all, they solved only a part of the problem: they served only to maintain each separate city under the dominion of Sparta, without contributing to regulate the dealings between the citizens of one and those of another, or to bind together the empire as a whole. Now the Athenians did not, as a system, place in their dependent cities, governors analogous to the harmosts, though they did so occasionally under special need; but their fleets and their officers were in frequent relation with these cities; and as the principal officers were noways indisposed to abuse their position, so the facility of complaint, constantly open to the Athenian popular dikastery, served both as redress and guarantee against misrule of this description. It was a guarantee which the allies themselves sensibly felt and valued, as we know from Thucydidês: the chief source from whence they had to apprehend evil was the Athenian officials and principal citizens, who could misemploy the power of Athens for their own private purposes,—but they looked up to the “Athenian Demos as a chastener of such evil-doers and as a harbor of refuge to themselves.”[79] If the popular dikasteries at Athens had not been thus open, the allied cities would have suffered much more severely from the captains and officials of Athens in their individual capacity. And the maintenance of political harmony, between the imperial city and the subject ally, was insured by Athens through the jurisdiction of her dikasteries with much less cost of injustice and violence than by Sparta; for though oligarchical partisans might sometimes be unjustly condemned at Athens, yet such accidental wrong was immensely overpassed by the enormities of the Spartan harmosts and dekadarchies, who put numbers to death without any trial at all.

[79] Thucyd. viii, 48. Τούς τε καλοὺς κἀγαθοὺς ὀνομαζομένους
οὐκ ἐλάσσω αὐτοὺς (that is, the subject-allies) νομίζειν σφίσι
πράγματα παρέξειν τοῦ δήμου, ποριστὰς ὄντας καὶ ἐσηγητὰς τῶν
κακῶν τῷ δήμῳ, ἐξ ὧν τὰ πλείω αὐτοὺς ὠφελεῖσθαι· καὶ τὸ μὲν ἐπ᾽
ἐκείνοις εἶναι καὶ ἄκριτοι ἂν καὶ βιαιότερον ἀποθνήσκειν, τὸν δὲ
δῆμον σφῶν τε καταφυγὴν εἶναι καὶ ἐκείνων σωφρονιστήν. Καὶ ταῦτα
παρ᾽ αὐτῶν τῶν ἔργων ἐπισταμένας τὰς πόλεις σαφῶς αὐτὸς εἰδέναι,
ὅτι οὕτω νομίζουσιν. This is introduced as the deliberate
judgment of the Athenian commander Phrynichus, whom Thucydidês
greatly commends for his sagacity, and with whom he seems in this
case to have concurred.

Xenophon (Rep. Ath. i. 14, 15) affirms that the Athenian officers
on service passed many unjust sentences upon the oligarchical
party in the allied cities,—fines, sentences of banishment,
capital punishments; and that the Athenian people, though they
had a strong public interest in the prosperity of the allies, in
order that their tribute might be larger, nevertheless thought
it better that any individual citizen of Athens should pocket
what he could out of the plunder of the allies, and leave to the
latter nothing more than was absolutely necessary for them to
live and work, without any superfluity, such as might tempt them
to revolt.

That the Athenian officers on service may have succeeded too
often in unjust peculation at the cost of the allies, is probable
enough: but that the Athenian people were pleased to see their
own individual citizens so enriching themselves is certainly not
true. The large jurisdiction of the dikasteries was intended,
among other effects, to open to the allies a legal redress
against such misconduct on the part of the Athenian officers: and
the passage above cited from Thucydidês proves that it really
produced such an effect.

So again, it is to be recollected that Athenian private citizens, not officially employed, were spread over the whole range of the empire as kleruchs, proprietors, or traders; of course, therefore, disputes would arise between them and the natives of the subject cities, as well as among these latter themselves, in cases where both parties did not belong to the same city. Now in such cases the Spartan imperial authority was so exercised as to afford little or no remedy, since the action of the harmost or the dekadarchy was confined to one separate city; while the Athenian dikasteries, with universal competence and public trial, afforded the only redress which the contingency admitted. If a Thasian citizen believed himself aggrieved by the historian Thucydidês, either as commander of the Athenian fleet off the station, or as proprietor of gold mines in Thrace, he had his remedy against the latter by accusation before the Athenian dikasteries, to which the most powerful Athenian was amenable not less than the meanest Thasian. To a citizen of any allied city, it might be an occasional hardship to be sued before the courts at Athens, but it was also often a valuable privilege to him to be able to sue before those courts others whom else he could not have reached. He had his share both of the benefit and of the hardship. Athens, if she robbed her subject-allies of their independence, at least gave them in exchange the advantage of a central and common judiciary authority; thus enabling each of them to enforce claims of justice against the rest, in a way which would not have been practicable, to the weaker at least, even in a state of general independence.

Now Sparta seems not even to have attempted anything of the kind with regard to her subject-allies, being content to keep them under the rule of a harmost, and a partisan oligarchy; and we read anecdotes which show that no justice could be obtained at Sparta, even for the grossest outrages committed by the harmost, or by private Spartans out of Laconia. The two daughters of a Bœotian named Skedasus, of Leuktra in Bœotia, had been first violated and then slain by two Spartan citizens: the son of a citizen of Oreus, in Eubœa, had been also outraged and killed by the harmost Aristodêmus:[80] in both cases the fathers went to Sparta to lay the enormity before the ephors and other authorities, and in both cases a deaf ear was turned to their complaints. But such crimes, if committed by Athenian citizens or officers, might have been brought to a formal exposure before the public sitting of the dikastery, and there can be no doubt that both would have been severely punished: we shall see hereafter that an enormity of this description, committed by the Athenian general Pachês, at Mitylênê, cost him his life before the Athenian dikasts.[81] Xenophon, in the dark and one-sided representation which he gives of the Athenian democracy, remarks, that if the subject-allies had not been made amenable to justice, at Athens, they would have cared little for the people of Athens, and would have paid court only to those individual Athenians—generals, trierarchs, or envoys—who visited the islands on service; but under the existing system, the subjects were compelled to visit Athens either as plaintiffs or defendants, and were thus under the necessity of paying court to the bulk of the people also,—that is, to those humbler citizens out of whom the dikasteries were formed; they supplicated the dikasts in court for favor or lenient dealing.[82] However true this may be, we must remark that it was a lighter lot to be brought for trial before the dikastery, than to be condemned without redress by the general on service, or to be forced to buy off his condemnation by a bribe; and, moreover, that the dikastery was open not merely to receive accusations against citizens of the allied cities, but also to entertain the complaints which they preferred against others.

[80] Plutarch, Pelopidas, c. 20; Plutarch, Amator. Narrat. c. 3,
p. 773.

[81] See _infra_, chap. 49.

[82] Xenophon, Rep. Athen, i, 18. Πρὸς δὲ τούτοις, εἰ μὲν μὴ
ἐπὶ δίκας ᾔεσαν οἱ σύμμαχοι, τοὺς ἐκπλέοντας Ἀθηναίων ἐτίμων ἂν
μόνους, τούς τε στρατηγοὺς καὶ τοὺς τριηράρχους καὶ πρέσβεις· νῦν
δ᾽ ἠνάγκασται τὸν δῆμον κολακεύειν τῶν Ἀθηναίων εἷς ἕκαστος τῶν
συμμάχων, γιγνώσκων ὅτι δεῖ μὲν ἀφικόμενον Ἀθήναζε δίκην δοῦναι
καὶ λαβεῖν, οὐκ ἐν ἄλλοις τισὶν, ἀλλ᾽ ἐν τῷ δήμῳ, ὅς ἐστι δὴ
νόμος Ἀθήνῃσι. Καὶ ἀντιβολῆσαι ἀναγκάζεται ἐν τοῖς δικαστηρίοις,
καὶ εἰσιόντος του, ἐπιλαμβάνεσθαι τῆς χειρός. Διὰ τοῦτο οὖν οἱ
σύμμαχοι δοῦλοι τοῦ δήμου τῶν Ἀθηναίων καθεστᾶσι μᾶλλον.

Assuming the dikasteries at Athens to be ever so defective as tribunals for administering justice, we must recollect that they were the same tribunals under which every Athenian citizen held his own fortune or reputation, and that the native of any subject city was admitted to the same chance of justice as the native of Athens. Accordingly, we find the Athenian envoy at Sparta, immediately before the Peloponnesian war, taking peculiar credit to the imperial city on this ground for equal dealing with her subject-allies. “If our power (he says) were to pass into other hands, the comparison would presently show how moderate we are in the use of it: but as regards us, our very moderation is unfairly turned to our disparagement rather than to our praise. For even though we put ourselves at disadvantage in matters litigated with our allies, and though we have appointed such matters to be judged among ourselves and under laws equal to both parties, we are represented as animated by nothing better than a love of litigation.”[83] “Our allies (he adds) would complain less if we made open use of our superior force with regard to them; but we discard such maxims, and deal with them upon an equal footing: and they are so accustomed to this, that they think themselves entitled to complain at every trifling disappointment of their expectations.[84] They suffered worse hardships under the Persians before our empire began, and they would suffer worse under you (the Spartans), if you were to succeed in conquering us and making our empire yours.” History bears out the boast of the Athenian orator, both as to the time preceding and following the empire of Athens.[85] And an Athenian citizen, indeed, might well regard it, not as a hardship, but as a privilege, that subject-allies should be allowed to sue him before the dikastery, and to defend themselves before the same tribunal, either in case of wrong done to him, or in case of alleged treason to the imperial authority of Athens: they were thereby put upon a level with himself. Still more would he find reason to eulogize the universal competence of these dikasteries in providing a common legal authority for all disputes of the numerous distinct communities of the empire, one with another, and for the safe navigation and general commerce of the Ægean. That complaints were raised against it among the subject-allies, is noway surprising: for the empire of Athens generally was inconsistent with that separate autonomy to which every town thought itself entitled,—and this was one of its prominent and constantly operative institutions, as well as a striking mark of dependence to the subordinate communities. Yet we may safely affirm, that if empire was to be maintained at all, no way of maintaining it could be found at once less oppressive and more beneficial than the superintending competence of the dikasteries,—a system not taking its rise in the mere “love of litigation,” if, indeed, we are to reckon this a real feature in the Athenian character, which I shall take another opportunity of examining, much less in those petty collateral interests indicated by Xenophon,[86] such as the increased customs duty, rent of houses, and hire of slaves at Peiræus, and the larger profits of the heralds, arising from the influx of suitors. It was nothing but the power, originally inherent in the confederacy of Delos, of arbitration between members and enforcement of duties towards the whole,—a power inherited by Athens from that synod, and enlarged to meet the political wants of her empire; to which end it was essential, even in the view of Xenophon himself.[87] It may be that the dikastery was not always impartial between Athenian citizens privately, or the Athenian commonwealth collectively, and the subject-allies,—and in so far the latter had good reason to complain; but on the other hand, we have no ground for suspecting it of deliberate or standing unfairness, or of any other defects than such as were inseparable from its constitution and procedure, whoever might be the parties under trial.

[83] Thucyd. i, 76, 77. Ἄλλους γ᾽ ἂν οὖν οἰόμεθα τὰ ἡμέτερα
λαβόντας δεῖξαι ἂν μάλιστα εἴ τι μετριάζομεν· ἡμῖν δὲ καὶ ἐκ τοῦ
ἐπιεικοῦς ἀδοξία τὸ πλέον ἢ ἔπαινος οὐκ εἰκότως περιέστη. Καὶ
ἐλασσούμενοι γὰρ ἐν ταῖς ξυμβολαίαις πρὸς τοὺς ξυμμάχους δίκαις,
καὶ παρ᾽ ἡμῖν αὐτοῖς ἐν τοῖς ὁμοίοις νόμοις ποιήσαντες τὰς
κρίσεις, φιλοδικεῖν δοκοῦμεν, etc.

I construe ξυμβολαίαις δίκαις as connected in meaning with
ξυμβόλαια and not with ξύμβολα—following Duker and Bloomfield in
preference to Poppo and Göller: see the elaborate notes of the
two latter editors. Δίκαι ἀπὸ ξυμβόλων indicated the arrangements
concluded by special convention between two different cities, by
consent of both, for the purpose of determining controversies
between their respective citizens: they were something
essentially apart from the ordinary judicial arrangements of
either state. Now what the Athenian orator here insists upon
is exactly the contrary of this idea: he says, that the allies
were admitted to the benefit of Athenian trial and Athenian
laws, in like manner with the citizens themselves. The judicial
arrangements by which the Athenian allies were brought before
the Athenian dikasteries cannot, with propriety, be said to be
δίκαι ἀπὸ ξυμβόλων; unless the act of original incorporation into
the confederacy of Delos is to be regarded as a ξύμβολον, or
agreement,—which in a large sense it might be, though not in the
proper sense in which δίκαι ἀπὸ ξυμβόλων are commonly mentioned.
Moreover. I think that the passage of Antipho (De Cæde Herôdis,
p. 745) proves that it was the citizens of places _not in
alliance with Athens_, who litigated with Athenians according to
δίκαι ἀπὸ ξυμβόλων,—not the allies of Athens while they resided
in their own native cities; for I agree with the interpretation
which Boeckh puts upon this passage, in opposition to Platner
and Schömann (Boeckh, Public Econ. of Athens, book iii, ch. xvi,
p. 403, Eng. transl.; Schömann, Der Attisch. Prozess, p. 778;
Platner, Prozess und Klagen bei den Attikern, ch. iv, 2, pp.
110-112, where the latter discusses both the passages of Antipho
and Thucydidês).

The passages in Demosthenês Orat. de Halones. c. 3, pp. 98, 99;
and Andokidês cont. Alkibiad. c. 7, p. 121 (I quote this latter
oration, though it is undoubtedly spurious, because we may well
suppose the author of it to be conversant with the nature and
contents of ξύμβολα), give us a sufficient idea of these judicial
conventions, or ξύμβολα,—special and liable to differ in each
particular case. They seem to me essentially distinct from that
systematic scheme of proceeding whereby the dikasteries of Athens
were made cognizant of all, or most, important controversies
among or between the allied cities, as well as of political
accusations.