CHAPTER XXIII. THE GROWTH OF THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE
Athens! thou birthplace of the great, the free!
Though bowed thy power, and dimmed thy name may be,
Though old Renown’s once dazzling sun hath set,
Fair beams the star of Memory o’er thee yet.
City! where sang the bard, and taught the sage,
Thy shrines may fall, thou ne’er wilt know old age;
Fresh shall thy image glow in every heart,
And but with Time’s last hour thy fame depart.
—Nicholas Michell.
The history of this time with its rush of events and its startling changes exhibits on the Athenian side a picture of astonishing and almost preternatural energy.[b] The transition from the Athenian hegemony to the Athenian empire was doubtless gradual, so that no one could determine precisely where the former ends and the latter begins: but it had been consummated before the thirty years’ truce, which was concluded fourteen years before the Peloponnesian War, and it was in fact the substantial cause of that war. Empire then came to be held by Athens,—partly as a fact established, resting on acquiescence rather than attachment or consent in the minds of the subjects,—partly as a corollary from necessity of union combined with her superior force: while this latter point, superiority of force as a legitimate title, stood more and more forward, both in the language of her speakers and in the conceptions of her citizens. Nay, the Athenian orators of the middle of the Peloponnesian War venture to affirm that their empire had been of this same character ever since the repulse of the Persians: an inaccuracy so manifest, that if we could suppose the speech made by the Athenian Euphemus at Camarina in 415 B.C., to have been heard by Themistocles or Aristides fifty years before, it would have been alike offensive to the prudence of the one and to the justice of the other.
The imperial state of Athens, that which she held at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, when her allies, except Chios and Lesbos, were tributary subjects, and when the Ægean Sea was an Athenian lake, was of course the period of her greatest splendour and greatest action upon the Grecian world. It was also the period most impressive to historians, orators, and philosophers, suggesting the idea of some one state exercising dominion over the Ægean, as the natural condition of Greece, so that if Athens lost such dominion, it would be transferred to Sparta, holding out the dispersed maritime Greeks as a tempting prize for the aggressive schemes of some new conqueror, and even bringing up by association into men’s fancies the mythical Minos of Crete, and others, as having been rulers of the Ægean in times anterior to Athens.
[479-466 B.C.]
Even those who lived under the full-grown Athenian empire had before them no good accounts of the incidents between 479-450 B.C.; for we may gather from the intimation of Thucydides, as well as from his barrenness of facts, that while there were chroniclers both for the Persian invasion and for the times before, no one cared for the times immediately succeeding. Hence, the little light which has fallen upon this blank has all been borrowed—if we except the careful Thucydides—from a subsequent age; and the Athenian hegemony has been treated as a mere commencement of the Athenian empire: credit has been given to Athens for a long-sighted ambition, aiming from the Persian War downwards at results which perhaps Themistocles may have partially divined, but which only time and successive accidents opened even to distant view. But such systematic anticipation of subsequent results is fatal to any correct understanding, either of the real agents or of the real period; both of which are to be explained from the circumstances preceding and actually present, with some help, though cautious and sparing, from our acquaintance with that which was then an unknown future. When Aristides and Cimon dismissed the Lacedæmonian admiral Dorcis, and drove Pausanias away from Byzantium on his second coming out, they had to deal with the problem immediately before them; they had to complete the defeat of the Persian power, still formidable, and to create and organise a confederacy as yet only inchoate. This was quite enough to occupy their attention, without ascribing to them distant views of Athenian maritime empire.
In that brief sketch of incidents preceding the Peloponnesian War, which Thucydides introduces as “the throwing off of his narrative,” he neither gives, nor professes to give, a complete enumeration of all which actually occurred. During the interval between the first desertion of the Asiatic allies from Pausanias to Athens, in 477 B.C., and the revolt of Naxos in 466 B.C., he recites three incidents only: first, the siege and capture of Eion, on the Strymon, with its Persian garrison; next, the capture of Scyros, and appropriation of the island to Athenian cleruchs, or out-citizens; thirdly, the war with Carystus in Eubœa and reduction of the place by capitulation. It has been too much the practice to reason as if these three events were the full history of ten or eleven years. Considering what Thucydides states respecting the darkness of this period, we might perhaps suspect that they were all which he could learn about it on good authority: and they are all, in truth, events having a near and special bearing on the subsequent history of Athens herself; for Eion was the first stepping-stone to the important settlement of Amphipolis, and Scyros in the time of Thucydides was the property of outlying Athenian citizens, or cleruchs.
Still, we are left in almost entire ignorance of the proceedings of Athens, as conducting the newly established confederate force: for it is certain that the first ten years of the Athenian hegemony must have been years of most active warfare against the Persians. One positive testimony to this effect has been accidentally preserved to us by Herodotus, who mentions, that “before the invasion of Xerxes, there were Persian commanders and garrisons everywhere in Thrace and the Hellespont, all of whom were conquered by the Greeks after that invasion, with the single exception of Mascames, governor of Doriscus, who could never be taken, though many different Grecian attempts were made upon the fortress. Of those who were captured by the Greeks, not one made any defence sufficient to attract the admiration of Xerxes, except Boges, governor of Eion.” Boges, after bravely defending himself, and refusing offers of capitulation, found his provisions exhausted, and further resistance impracticable. He then kindled a vast funeral pile, slew his wives, children, concubines, and family, and cast them into it, threw his precious effects over the wall into the Strymon, and lastly, precipitated himself into the flames. His brave despair was the theme of warm encomium among the Persians, and his relatives in Persia were liberally rewarded by Xerxes. This capture of Eion, effected by Cimon, has been mentioned, as already stated, by Thucydides; but Herodotus here gives us to understand that it was only one of a string of enterprises, all unnoticed by Thucydides, against the Persians. Nay, it would seem from his language, that Mascames maintained himself in Doriscus during the whole reign of Xerxes, and perhaps longer, repelling successive Grecian assaults.
The valuable indication here cited from Herodotus would be of itself a sufficient proof that the first years of the Athenian hegemony were full of busy and successful hostility against the Persians. And in truth this is what we should expect: the battles of Salamis, Platæa, and Mycale, drove the Persians out of Greece, and overpowered their main armaments, but did not remove them at once from all the various posts which they occupied throughout the Ægean and Thrace. Without doubt, the Athenians had to clear the coasts and the islands of a great number of different Persian detachments: an operation never short nor easy, with the then imperfect means of siege, as we may see by the cases of Sestus and Eion; nor, indeed, always practicable, as the case of Doriscus teaches us. The fear of these Persians, yet remaining in the neighbourhood, and even the chance of a renewed Persian invading armament, formed one pressing motive for Grecian cities to join the new confederacy: while the expulsion of the enemy added to it those places which he had occupied. It was by these years of active operations at sea against the common enemy, that the Athenians first established that constant, systematic, and laborious training, among their own ships’ crews, which transmitted itself with continual improvements down to the Peloponnesian War: it was by these, combined with the present fear, that they were enabled to organise the largest and most efficient confederacy ever known among Greeks, to bring together deliberative deputies, to plant their own ascendency as enforcers of the collective resolutions, and to raise a prodigious tax from universal contribution. Lastly, it was by these same operations, prosecuted so successfully as to remove present alarm, that they at length fatigued the more lukewarm and passive members of the confederacy, and created in them a wish either to commute personal service for pecuniary contribution, or to escape from the obligation of service in any way. The Athenian nautical training would never have been acquired, the confederacy would never have become a working reality, the fatigue and discontents among its members would never have arisen, unless there had been a real fear of the Persians, and a pressing necessity for vigorous and organised operations against them, during the ten years between 477 and 466 B.C.
But after a few years several of the confederates becoming weary of personal military service, prevailed upon the Athenians to provide ships and men in their place, and imposed upon themselves in exchange a money payment of suitable amount. This commutation, at first probably introduced to meet some special case of inconvenience, was found so suitable to the taste of all parties that it gradually spread through the larger portion of the confederacy. To unwarlike allies, hating labour and privation, it was a welcome relief, while to the Athenians, full of ardour and patient of labour, as well as discipline, for the aggrandisement of their country, it afforded constant pay for a fleet more numerous than they could otherwise have kept afloat. It is plain from the statement of Thucydides that this altered practice was introduced from the petition of the confederates themselves, not from any pressure or stratagem on the part of Athens. But though such was its real source, it did not the less fatally degrade the allies in reference to Athens, and extinguish the original feeling of equal rights and partnership in the confederacy, with communion of danger as well as of glory, which had once bound them together.
The Athenians came to consider themselves as military chiefs and soldiers, with a body of tribute-paying subjects, whom they were entitled to hold in dominion, and restrict, both as to foreign policy and internal government, to such extent as they thought expedient, but whom they were also bound to protect against foreign enemies. The military force of these subject-states was thus in a great degree transferred to Athens, by their own act, just as that of so many of the native princes in India was made over to the English.
Under such circumstances several of the confederate states grew tired even of paying their tribute, and averse to continuance as members. They made successive attempts to secede, but Athens, acting seemingly in conjunction with the synod, repressed their attempts one after the other, conquering, fining, and disarming the revolters; which was the more easily done, since in most cases their naval force had been in great part handed over to her. As these events took place, not all at once, but successively in different years, the number of mere tribute-paying allies as well as of subdued revolters continually increasing, so there was never any one moment of conspicuous change in the character of the confederacy: the allies slid unconsciously into subjects, while Athens, without any predetermined plan, passed from a chief into a despot. By strictly enforcing the obligations of the pact upon unwilling members, and by employing coercion against revolters, she had become unpopular in the same proportion as she acquired new power, and that, too, without any guilt of her own. In this position, even if she had been inclined to relax her hold upon the tributary subjects, considerations of her own safety would have deterred her from doing so; for there was reason to apprehend that they might place their strength at the disposal of her enemies. It is very certain that she never was so inclined; it would have required a more self-denying public morality than has ever been practised by any state, either ancient or modern, even to conceive the idea of relinquishing voluntarily an immense ascendency as well as a lucrative revenue: least of all was such an idea likely to be conceived by Athenian citizens, whose ambition increased with their power, and among whom the love of Athenian ascendency was both passion and patriotism. But though the Athenians were both disposed and qualified to push all the advantages offered, and even to look out for new, we must not forget that the foundations of their empire were laid in the most honourable causes: voluntary invitation, efforts both unwearied and successful against a common enemy, unpopularity incurred in discharge of an imperative duty, and inability to break up the confederacy without endangering themselves as well as laying open the Ægean Sea to the Persians.
There were two causes, besides that which has just been adverted to, for the unpopularity of imperial Athens. First, the existence of the confederacy, imposing permanent obligations, was in conflict with the general instinct of the Greek mind, tending towards separate political autonomy of each city, as well as with the particular turn of the Ionic mind, incapable of that steady personal effort which was requisite for maintaining the synod of Delos, on its first large and equal basis. Next,—and this is the great cause of all,—Athens, having defeated the Persians, and thrust them to a distance, began to employ the force and the tribute of her subject-allies in warfare against Greeks, wherein these allies had nothing to gain from success, everything to apprehend from defeat, and a banner to fight for, offensive to Hellenic sympathies. On this head, the subject-allies had great reason to complain throughout the prolonged wars of Greek against Greek for the purpose of sustaining Athenian predominance: but on the point of practical grievances or oppression they had little ground for discontent and little feeling of actual discontent. Among the general body of citizens in the subject-allied cities, the feeling towards Athens was rather indifference than hatred: the movement of revolt against her proceeded from small parties of leading men, acting apart from the citizens, and generally with collateral views of ambition for themselves; and the positive hatred towards her was felt chiefly by those who were not her subjects.
It is probable that the same indisposition to personal effort, which prompted the confederates of Delos to tender money payment as a substitute for military service, also induced them to neglect attendance at the synod. But we do not know the steps whereby this assembly, at first an effective reality, gradually dwindled into a mere form and vanished. Nothing, however, can more forcibly illustrate the difference of character between the maritime allies of Athens, and the Peloponnesian allies of Sparta, than the fact that, while the former shrank from personal service, and thought it an advantage to tax themselves in place of it, the latter were “ready enough with their bodies,” but uncomplying and impracticable as to contributions. The contempt felt by these Dorian landsmen for the military efficiency of the Ionians recurs frequently, and appears even to have exceeded what the reality justified: but when we turn to the conduct of the latter twenty years earlier, at the battle of Lade, in the very crisis of the Ionic revolt from Persia, we detect the same want of energy, the same incapacity of personal effort and labour, as that which broke up the confederacy of Delos with all its beneficial promise. To appreciate fully the indefatigable activity and daring, together with the patient endurance of laborious maritime training, which characterised the Athenians of that day, we have only to contrast them with these confederates, so remarkably destitute of both. Amidst such glaring inequalities of merit, capacity, and power, to maintain a confederacy of equal members was impossible: it was in the nature of things that the confederacy should either break up, or be transmuted into an Athenian empire.
It has already been mentioned that the first aggregate assessment of tribute, proposed by Aristides, and adopted by the synod at Delos, was four hundred and sixty talents in money (about £92,000, or $460,000). At that time many of the confederates paid their quota, not in money but in ships; but this practice gradually diminished, as the commutations above alluded to, of money in place of ships, were multiplied, while the aggregate tribute, of course, became larger. It was no more than six hundred talents at the commencement of the Peloponnesian War, forty-six years after the first formation of the confederacy; from whence we may infer that it was never at all increased upon individual members during the interval. For the difference between four hundred and sixty talents and six hundred admits of being fully explained by the numerous commutations of service for money, as well as by the acquisitions of new members, which doubtless Athens had more or less the opportunity of making. It is not to be imagined that the confederacy had attained its maximum number, at the date of the first assessment of tribute: there must have been various cities, like Sinope and Ægina, subsequently added.
Without some such preliminary statements as those just given, respecting the new state of Greece between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars, beginning with the Athenian hegemony, or headship, and ending with the Athenian empire, the reader would hardly understand the bearing of those particular events which our authorities enable us to recount; events unhappily few in number, though the period must have been full of action, and not well authenticated as to dates.
[470-468 B.C.]
The first known enterprise of the Athenians in their new capacity,—whether the first absolutely or not, we cannot determine,—between 476 B.C. and 466 B.C., was the conquest of the important post of Eion, on the Strymon, where the Persian governor, Boges, starved out after a desperate resistance, destroyed himself rather than capitulate, together with his family and precious effects, as has already been stated. The next events named are their enterprises against the Dolopes and Pelasgi in the island of Scyros, seemingly about 470 B.C., and the Dryopes in the town and district of Carystus, in Eubœa. To the latter, who were of a different kindred from the inhabitants of Chalcis and Eretria, and received no aid from them, they granted a capitulation: the former were more rigorously dealt with, and expelled from their island. Scyros was barren, and had little to recommend it, except a good maritime position and an excellent harbour; while its inhabitants, seemingly akin to the Pelasgian residents in Lemnos, prior to the Athenian occupation of that spot, were alike piratical and cruel. Some Thessalian traders, recently plundered and imprisoned by them, had raised a complaint against them before the Amphictyonic synod, which condemned the island to make restitution: the mass of the islanders threw the burden upon those who had committed the crime; and these men, in order to evade payment, invoked Cimon with the Athenian armament who conquered the island, expelled the inhabitants, and peopled it with Athenian settlers.
Such clearance was a beneficial act, suitable to the new character of Athens as guardian of the Ægean Sea against piracy: but it seems also connected with Athenian plans. The island lay very convenient for the communication with Lemnos, which the Athenians had doubtless reoccupied after the expulsion of the Persians, and became, as well as Lemnos, a recognised adjunct, or outlying portion, of Attica: moreover, there were old legends which connected the Athenians with it, as the tomb of their hero Theseus, whose name, as the mythical champion of democracy, was in peculiar favour at the period immediately following the return from Salamis. It was in the year 476 B.C., that the oracle had directed them to bring home the bones of Theseus from Scyros, and to prepare for that hero a splendid entombment and edifice in their new city: they had tried to effect this, but the unsocial manners of the Dolopians had prevented a search, and it was only after Cimon had taken the island that he found, or pretended to find, the body. It was brought to Athens in the year 469 B.C., and after being welcomed by the people in solemn and joyous procession, as if the hero himself had come back, was deposited in the interior of the city; the monument called the Theseum, with its sacred precinct being built on the spot, and invested with the privilege of a sanctuary for men of poor condition who might feel ground for dreading the oppressions of the powerful, as well as for slaves in case of cruel usage. Such were the protective functions of the mythical hero of democracy, whose installation is interesting as marking the growing intensity of democratical feeling in Athens since the Persian War.
THE VICTORIES OF CIMON
[468-465 B.C.]
It was about two years or more after this incident, that the first breach of union in the confederacy of Delos took place. The important island of Naxos, the largest of the Cyclades,—an island which thirty years before had boasted a large marine force and eight thousand hoplites,—revolted; on what special ground we do not know: but probably the greater islands fancied themselves better able to dispense with the protection of the confederacy than the smaller—at the same time they were more jealous of Athens. After a siege of unknown duration by Athens and the confederate force, it was forced to surrender, and reduced to the condition of a tributary subject; its armed ships being doubtless taken away, and its fortifications razed: whether any fine or ulterior penalty was levied, we have no information.
Greek Helmet and Weapons
(In the British Museum)
Though we know no particulars respecting operations against Persia, since the attack on Eion, such operations must have been going on; but the expedition under Cimon, undertaken not long after the Naxian revolt, was attended with memorable results. That commander, having under him two hundred triremes from Athens, and one hundred from the various confederates, was despatched to attack the Persians on the southwestern and southern coast of Asia Minor. He attacked and drove out several of their garrisons from various Grecian settlements, both in Caria and Lycia: among others, the important trading city of Phaselis, though at first resisting, and even standing a siege, was prevailed upon by the friendly suggestions of the Chians in Cimon’s armament to pay a contribution of ten talents and join in the expedition. From the length of time occupied in these various undertakings, the Persian satraps had been enabled to assemble a powerful force, both fleet and army, near the mouth of the river Eurymedon, in Pamphylia, under the command of Tithraustes and Pherendates, both of the regal blood. The fleet, chiefly Phœnician, seems to have consisted of two hundred ships, but a further reinforcement of eighty Phœnician ships was expected, and was actually near at hand, and the commanders were unwilling to hazard a battle before its arrival. Cimon, anxious for the same reason to hasten on the combat, attacked them vigorously: partly from their inferiority of numbers, partly from discouragement at the absence of the reinforcement, they seem to have made no strenuous resistance. They were put to flight and driven ashore, so speedily, and with so little loss to the Greeks, that Cimon was enabled to disembark his men forthwith, and attack the land-force which was drawn up on shore to protect them.
The battle on land was long and gallantly contested, but Cimon at length gained a complete victory, dispersed the army with the capture of many prisoners, and either took or destroyed the entire fleet. As soon as his victory and his prisoners were secured, he sailed to Cyprus for the purpose of intercepting the reinforcement of eighty Phœnician ships in their way, and was fortunate enough to attack them while yet they were ignorant of the victories of the Eurymedon. These ships too were all destroyed, though most of the crews appear to have escaped ashore on the island. Two great victories, one at sea and the other on land, gained on the same day by the same armament, counted with reason among the most glorious of all Grecian exploits, and were extolled as such in the inscription on the commemorative offering to Apollo, set up out of the tithe of the spoils. The number of prisoners, as well as the booty taken by the victors, was immense.
A victory thus remarkable, which thrust back the Persians to the region eastward of Phaselis, doubtless fortified materially the position of the Athenian confederacy against them; but it tended not less to exalt the reputation of Athens, and even to popularise her with the confederates generally, from the large amount of plunder divisible among them. Probably this increased power and popularity stood her in stead throughout her approaching contest with Thasos, and at the same time it explains the increasing fear and dislike of the Peloponnesians.[c]
Athens, become, within a very few years, from the capital of a small province, in fact though not yet in avowed pretension, the head of an empire, exhibited a new and singular phenomenon in politics, a sovereign people; a people, not, as in many other Grecian democracies, sovereign merely of that state which themselves, maintained by slaves, composed, but supreme over other people in subordinate republics, acknowledging a degree of subjection, yet claiming to be free. Under this extraordinary political constitution philosophy and the arts were beginning to make Athens their principal resort. Migrating from Egypt and the east, they had long been fostered on the western coast of Asia. In Greece itself they had owed some temporary encouragement principally to those called tyrants; the Pisistratidæ at Athens, and Periander at Corinth. But their efforts were desultory and comparatively feeble till the communication with the Asian Greeks, checked and interrupted by their subjection to Persia, was restored, and Athens, chief of the glorious confederacy by whose arms the deliverance had been effected, began to draw everything toward itself as a common centre, the capital of an empire. Already science and fine taste were so far perfected that Æschylus had exhibited tragedy in its utmost dignity, and Sophocles and Euripides were giving it the highest polish, when Cimon returned in triumph to his country.
MITFORD’S VIEW OF THE PERIOD
It was the peculiar felicity of Athens in this period that, of the constellation of great men which arose there, each was singularly fitted for the situation in which the circumstances of the time required him to act; and none filled his place more advantageously than Cimon. But the fate of all those great men, and the resources employed, mostly in vain, to avert it, sufficiently mark, in this splendid era, a defective constitution, and law and justice ill assured. Aristides, we are told, though it is not undisputed, had founded his security upon extreme poverty: Cimon endeavoured to establish himself by a splendid, and almost unbounded, yet politic liberality. To ward against envy, and to secure his party with that tremendous tyrant, as the comic poet not inaptly calls the sovereign people, he made a parade of throwing down the fences of his gardens and orchards in the neighbourhood of Athens, and permitted all to partake of their produce; a table was daily spread at his house for the poorer citizens, but more particularly for those of his own ward, whom he invited from the agora, the courts of justice, or the general assembly; a bounty which both enabled and disposed them to give their time at his call whenever his interest required their support. In going about the city he was commonly attended by a large retinue, handsomely clothed; and if he met an elderly citizen ill clad, he directed one of his attendants to change cloaks with him. To the indigent of higher rank he was equally attentive, lending or giving money, as he found their circumstances required, and always managing his bounty with the utmost care that the object of it should not be put to shame.[42]
His conduct, in short, was a continual preparation for an election; not, as in England, to decide whether the candidate should or should not be a member of the legislature; but whether he should be head of the commonwealth or an exile.[43] In his youth he had affected a roughness of manners, and a contempt for the elegances generally reckoned becoming his rank, and which his fortune enabled him to command. In his riper years he discovered that virtue and grossness have no natural connection: he became himself a model of politeness, patronised every liberal art, and studied to procure elegant as well as useful indulgences for the people. By him were raised the first of those edifices which, for want of a more proper name, we call porticos, under whose magnificent shelter, in their torrid climate, it became the delight of the Athenians to assemble, and pass their leisure in promiscuous conversation. The widely celebrated groves of Academia acknowledged him as the founder of their fame. In the wood, before rude and without water, he formed commodious and elegant walks, and adorned them with running fountains. Nor was the planting of the agora, or great market-place of Athens, with that beautiful tree, the oriental plane, forgotten as a benefit from Cimon; while, ages after him, his trees flourished, affording an agreeable and salutary shade to those who exposed their wares there, and to those who came to purchase them. Much, if not the whole of these things, we are given to understand, was done at his private expense; but our information upon the subject is inaccurate. Those stores, with which his victories had enriched the treasury, probably furnished the sums employed upon some of the public works executed under his direction, as, more especially, the completion of the fortification of the citadel, whose principal defence hitherto, on the southern side, had been the precipitous form of the rock.
While with this splendid and princely liberality Cimon endeavoured to confirm his own interest, he was attentive to promote the general welfare, and to render permanent the superiority of Athens among the Grecian republics. The citizens of the allied states grew daily more impatient of the requisitions regularly made to take their turn of service on shipboard, and longed for uninterrupted enjoyment of their homes, in that security against foreign enemies which their past labours had, they thought, now sufficiently established. But that the common interest still required the maintenance of a fleet was a proposition that could not be denied, while the Persian empire existed, or while the Grecian seas offered temptation for piracy. Cimon therefore proposed that any commonwealth of the confederacy might compound for the personal service of its citizens, by furnishing ships, and paying a sum of money to the common treasury: the Athenians would then undertake the manning of the fleet. The proposal was at the moment popular; most of the allies acceded to it, unaware or heedless of the consequences; for, while they were thus depriving themselves of all maritime force, making that of Athens irresistible, they gave that ambitious republic claims upon them, uncertain in their nature, and which, as they might be made, could now also be enforced, at its pleasure.
[465-463 B.C.]
Having thus at the same time strengthened itself and reduced to impotence many of the allied states, the Athenian government became less scrupulous of using force against any of the rest which might dispute its sovereign authority. The reduction of Eion, by the confederate arms under Cimon, had led to new information of the value of the adjacent country; where some mines of gold and silver, and a lucrative commerce with the surrounding Thracian hordes, excited avidity. But the people of the neighbouring island of Thasos, very anciently possessed of that commerce, and of the more accessible mines, insisted that these, when recovered from the common enemy by the arms of that confederacy of which they were members, should revert entire to them. The Athenians, asserting the right of conquest, on the contrary, claimed the principal share as their own. The Thasians, irritated, renounced the confederacy. Cimon then was commanded to lead the confederate armament against them. They venturing an action at sea, were defeated; and Cimon, debarking his forces on the island, became quickly master of everything but the principal town, to which he laid siege. The Athenians then hastened to appropriate that inviting territory on the continent, which was their principal object, by sending thither a colony of no less than ten thousand men, partly Athenian citizens, partly from the allied commonwealths.
The Thasians had not originally trusted in their own strength alone for the hope of final success. Early in the dispute they had sent ministers to Lacedæmon, soliciting protection against the oppression of Athens. The pretence was certainly favourable, and the Lacedæmonian government, no longer pressed by domestic troubles, determined to use the opportunity for interfering to check the growing power of the rival commonwealth, so long an object of jealousy, and now become truly formidable. Without a fleet capable of contending with the Athenian, they could not send succour immediately to Thasos: but they were taking measures secretly for a diversion in its favour, by invading Attica, when a sudden and extraordinary calamity, an earthquake which overthrew the city of Sparta, and in its immediate consequences threatened destruction to the commonwealth, compelled them to confine all their attention at home. Nevertheless the siege, carried on with great vigour, and with all the skill of the age under the direction of Cimon, was, during three years, obstinately resisted. Even then the Thasians obtained terms, severe indeed, but by which they obviated the miseries, death often for themselves and slavery for their families, to which Grecian people, less able to defend themselves, were frequently reduced by Grecian arms. Their fortifications however were destroyed; their ships of war were surrendered; they paid immediately a sum of money; they bound themselves to an annual tribute; and they yielded all claim upon the opposite continent, and the valuable mines there.
The sovereignty of the Athenian people over the allied republics would thus gain some present confirmation; but in the principal object their ambition and avarice were, apparently through over-greediness, disappointed. The town of Eion stood at the mouth of the river Strymon. For the new settlement a place called the Nine Ways, a few miles up the river, was chosen; commodious for the double purpose of communicating with the sea, and commanding the neighbouring country. But the Edonian Thracians, in whose territory it was, resenting the encroachment, infested the settlers with irregular but continual hostilities. To put an end to so troublesome a war the whole force of the colony marched against them. As the Greeks advanced, the Edonians retreated; avoiding a general action, while they sent to all the neighbouring Thracian tribes for assistance, as in a common cause. When they were at length assembled in sufficient numbers, having engaged the Greeks far within a wild and difficult country, they attacked, overpowered, and cut in pieces their army, and annihilated the colony.
Cimon, on his return to Athens, did not meet the acclamations to which he had been accustomed. Faction had been busy in his absence. Apparently the fall of the colony of the Nine Ways furnished both instigation and opportunity, perhaps assisted by circumstances of which no information remains. A prosecution was instituted against him, on the pretence, according to the biographers, that he ought to have extended the Athenian dominion by conquest in Macedonia, and that bribes from Alexander, king of that country, had stopped his exertions. The covetous ambition indeed of the Athenian people, inflamed by interested demagogues, was growing boundless. Cimon, indignant at the ungrateful return for a life divided between performing the most important services to his country, and studying how most to gratify the people, would enter little into particulars in refuting a charge, one part of which he considered as attributing to him no crime, the other as incapable of credit, and therefore beneath his regard. He told the assembled people that “they mistook both him and the country which it was said he ought to have conquered. Other generals have cultivated an interest with the Ionians and the Thessalians, whose riches might make an interference in their concerns profitable. For himself, he had never sought any connection with those people; but he confessed he esteemed the Macedonians, who were virtuous and brave, but not rich; nor would he ever prefer riches to those qualities, though he had his satisfaction in having enriched his country with the spoils of its enemies.” The popularity of Cimon was yet great; his principal opponents apparently found it not a time for pushing matters to extremity against him, and such a defence sufficed to procure an honourable acquittal.
[464-462 B.C.]
Meanwhile Lacedæmon had been in the utmost confusion and on the brink of ruin. In the year 464 B.C. the earthquake came suddenly at mid-day, with a violence before unheard of. The youths of the principal families, assembled in the gymnasium at the appointed hour for exercise, were in great numbers crushed by its fall: many of both sexes and of all ages were buried under the ruins of other buildings: the shocks were repeated; the earth opened in several places; vast fragments from the summits of Taygetus were tumbled down its sides: in the end only five houses remained standing in Sparta, and it was computed that twenty thousand lives were lost.
The first strokes of this awful calamity filled all ranks with the same apprehensions. But, in the continuance of it, that wretched multitude, excluded from all participation in the prosperity of their country, began to found hope on its distress: a proposal, obscurely made, was rapidly communicated, and the helots assembled from various parts with one purpose, of putting their severe masters to death, and making the country their own. The ready foresight and prudent exertion of Archidamus, who had succeeded his grandfather Leotychides in the throne of the house of Procles, preserved Lacedæmon. In the confusion of the first alarm, while some were endeavouring to save their most valuable effects from the ruins of the city, others flying various ways for personal safety, Archidamus, collecting what he could of his friends and attendants about him, caused trumpets to sound to arms, as if an enemy were at hand. The Lacedæmonians, universally trained to the strictest military discipline, obeyed the signal; arms were the only necessaries sought; and civil rule, dissipated by the magnitude of the calamity, was, for the existing circumstances, most advantageously supplied by military order. The helots, awed by the very unexpected appearance of a regular army instead of a confused and flying multitude, desisted from their meditated attempt; but, quitting the city, spread themselves over the country, and excited their fellows universally to rebellion.
[462 B.C.]
The greater part of those miserable men, whom the Lacedæmonians held in so cruel a bondage, were descendants of the Messenians, men of the same blood with themselves, Greeks and Dorians. Memory of the wars of their ancestors, of their hero Aristomenes, and of the defence of Ithome, was not obsolete among them. Ithome accordingly they seized and made their principal post; and they so outnumbered the Lacedæmonians that, though deficiently armed, yet, being not without discipline acquired in attendance upon their masters in war, they were capable of being formidable even in the field. Nor was it thus only that the rebellion was distressing.[44] The Lacedæmonians, singularly ready and able in the use of arms, were singularly helpless in almost every other business. Deprived of their slaves they were nearly deprived of the means of subsistence; agriculture stopped, and mechanic arts ceased. Application was therefore made to the neighbouring allies for succour. The zealous friendship of the Æginetans upon the occasion we find afterwards acknowledged by the Lacedæmonian government, and assistance came from as far as Platæa. Thus re-enforced the spirited and well-directed exertions of Archidamus quickly so far reduced the rebellion that the insurgents remaining in arms were blockaded in Ithome. But the extraordinary natural strength of that place, the desperate obstinacy of the defenders, and the deficiency of the assailants in the science of attack, giving reason to apprehend that the business might not be soon accomplished, the Lacedæmonians sent to desire assistance from the Athenians, who were esteemed, beyond the other Greeks, experienced and skilful in the war of sieges.
This measure seems to have been on many accounts imprudent. There was found at Athens a strong disposition to refuse the aid. But Cimon, who, with a universal liberality, always professed particular esteem for the Lacedæmonians, prevailed upon his countrymen to take the generous part; and a considerable body of forces marched under his command into the Peloponnesus. Upon their arrival at the camp of the besiegers an assault upon the place was attempted, but with so little success that recourse was again had to the old method of blockade. It was in the leisure of that inactive and tedious mode of attack that principally arose those heartburnings which first occasioned an avowed national aversion between the Athenians and Lacedæmonians, and led, not indeed immediately, but in a direct line, to the fatal Peloponnesian War. All the prudence and all the authority of Cimon could not prevent the vivacious spirit of the Athenians from exulting, perhaps rather insultingly, in the new pre-eminence of their country; wherever danger called, they would be ostentatiously forward to meet it; and an assumed superiority, without a direct pretension to it, was continually appearing.
The Spartan pride was offended by their arrogance; the Spartan gravity was disturbed by their lively forwardness: it began to be considered that, though Greeks, they were Ionians, whom the Peloponnesians considered as an alien race; and it occurred that if, in the continuance of the siege, any disgust should arise, there was no security that they might not renounce their present engagements, and even connect themselves with the helots; who, as Greeks, had, not less than the Lacedæmonians, a claim to friendship and protection from every other Grecian people. Mistrust thus arose on one side; disgust became quickly manifest on both; and the Lacedæmonians shortly resolved to dismiss the Athenian forces. This however they endeavoured to do, as far as might be, without offence, by declaring that an “assault having been found ineffectual, the assistance of the Athenians was superfluous for the blockade, and the Lacedæmonians would not give their allies unnecessary trouble.” All the other allies were however retained, and the Athenians alone returned home; so exasperated by this invidious distinction that, on their arrival at Athens, the party adverse to Cimon proposing a decree for renouncing the confederacy with Lacedæmon, it was carried. An alliance with Argos, the inveterate enemy of Sparta, immediately followed; and soon after the Thessalians acceded to the new confederacy.
While Lacedæmon was engaged with this dangerous insurrection, a petty war arose in the Peloponnesus, affording one of the most remarkable, among the many strong instances on record, of the miseries to which the greater part of Greece was perpetually liable from the defects of its political system. Argos, the capital of Argolis, and formerly of the Peloponnesus under the early kings of the Danaan race, or perhaps before them, lost its preeminence, as we have already seen, during the reigns of the Persidæan and Pelopidæan princes, under whom Mycenæ became the first city of Greece. On the return of the Heraclidæ, Temenus fixed his residence at Argos, which thus regained its superiority. But, as the oppressions, arising from a defective political system, occasioned very generally through Greece the desire, so the troubles of the Argive government gave the means for the inferior towns to become independent republics. Like the rest, or perhaps more than the rest, generally oppressive, that government was certainly often ill-conducted and weak; and Lacedæmon, its perpetual enemy, fomented the rebellious disposition of its dependencies. During the ancient wars of Sparta and Messenia, the Argives had expelled the people of their towns of Asine and Nauplia, and forced them to seek foreign settlements; a resource sufficiently marking a government both weak and oppressive. Mycenæ was now a much smaller town than Argos; but its people, encouraged by Lacedæmon, formed lofty pretensions. The far-famed temple of Juno, the tutelar deity of the country, situated about five miles from Argos, and little more than one from Mycenæ, was considered by the Argives as theirs; and, from the time, it was supposed, of the Heraclidæ, the priestess had been appointed and the sacred ceremonies administered under the protection of their government. Nevertheless the Mycenæans now claimed the right to this superintendency. The games of Nemea, from their institution, or, as it was called, their restoration, had been under the direction of the Argives; but the Mycenæan government claimed also the prior right to preside there. These however were but branches of a much more important claim; for they wanted only power, or sufficient assistance from Sparta, to assert a right of sovereignty over Argos itself and all Argolis; and they were continually urging another pretension, not the less invidious to Argos because better founded, a pretension to merit with all the Greek nation for having joined the confederacy against Persia, while the Argives allied themselves with the common enemy of Greece. The favourable opportunity afforded by the helot rebellion was eagerly seized by the Argives for ridding themselves of such troublesome and dangerous neighbours, whom they considered as rebellious subjects. Laying siege to Mycenæ they took the place, reduced the surviving people to slavery, and dedicating a tenth of the spoil to the gods destroyed the town, which was never rebuilt.
At Athens, after the banishment of Themistocles, Cimon remained long in possession of a popularity which nothing could resist; and his abilities, his successes, and his moderation, his connection with the aristocratical interest, and his favour with the people, seemed altogether likely to insure, if anything could insure, permanency and quiet to his administration. But in Athens, as in every free government, there would always be a party adverse to the party in the direction of public affairs: matters had been for some time ripening for a change; and the renunciation of the Lacedæmonian alliance was the triumph of the opposition.[d]
FOOTNOTES
[42] Plutarch says that “Cimon’s house was a kind of common hall for all the people; the first fruits of his lands were theirs; whatever the seasons produced of excellent and agreeable, they freely gathered; nor were strangers in the least debarred from them: so that he in some measure revived the community of goods, which prevailed in the reign of Saturn, and which the poets tell so much of.”
[43] Gorgias the Leontine gave him this character: “He got riches to use them, and used them so as to be honoured on their account.”
[44] [This war has been called the Third Messenian War.]
Temple of Erechtheus
