[532] Herodot. vi, 72; Diodor. xi, 48; Pausanias, iii, 7, 8: compare Plutarch, De Herodoti Malign. c. 21, p. 859.
Leotychidês died, according to Diodorus, in 476 B. C.: he had commanded at Mykalê in 479 B. C. The expedition into Thessaly must therefore have been in one of the two intermediate years, if the chronology of Diodorus were, in this case, thoroughly trustworthy. But Mr. Clinton (Fasti Hellenici, Appendix, ch. iii, p. 210) has shown that Diodorus is contradicted by Plutarch, about the date of the accession of Archidamus,—and by others, about the date of the revolt at Sparta. Mr. Clinton places the accession of Archidamus and the banishment of Leotychidês (of course, therefore, the expedition into Thessaly) in 469 B. C. I incline to believe that the expedition of Leotychidês against the Thessalian Aleuadæ took place in the year or in the second year following the battle of Platæa, because they had been the ardent and hearty allies of Mardonius in Bœotia, and because the war would seem not to have been completed without putting them down and making the opposite party in Thessaly predominant.
Considering how imperfectly we know the Lacedæmonian chronology of this date, it is very possible that some confusion may have arisen in the case of Leotychidês, from the difference between the date of his banishment and that of his death. King Pleistoanax afterwards, having been banished for the same offence as that committed by Leotychidês, and having lived many years in banishment, was afterwards restored: and the years which he had passed in banishment were counted as a part of his reign (Fast. Hellen. l. c. p. 211). The date of Archidamus may, perhaps, have been reckoned in one account from the banishment of Leotychidês,—in another, from his death; the rather, as Archidamus must have been very young, since he reigned forty-two years even after 469 B. C. And the date which Diodorus has given as that of the death of Leotychidês, may really be only the date of his banishment, in which he lived until 469 B. C.
[533] Thucyd. i, 18.
[534] Thucyd. i, 18. Καὶ μεγάλου κινδύνου ἐπικρεμασθέντος οἵ τε Λακεδαιμόνιοι τῶν ξυμπολεμησάντων Ἑλλήνων ἡγήσαντο δυνάμει προὔχοντες, καὶ οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι, διανοηθέντες ἐκλιπεῖν τὴν πόλιν καὶ ἀνασκευασάμενοι, ἐς τὰς ναῦς ἐμβάντες ναυτικοὶ ἐγένοντο. Κοινῇ δὲ ἀπωσάμενοι τὸν βάρβαρον, ὕστερον οὐ πολλῷ διεκρίθησαν πρός τε Ἀθηναίους καὶ Λακεδαιμονίους, οἵ τε ἀποστάντες βασιλέως Ἕλληνες καὶ οἱ ξυμπολεμήσαντες. Δυνάμει γὰρ ταῦτα μέγιστα διεφάνη· ἴσχυον γὰρ οἱ μὲν κατὰ γῆν, οἱ δὲ ναυσί. Καὶ ὀλίγον μὲν χρόνον συνέμεινεν ἡ ὁμαιχμία, ἔπειτα δὲ διενεχθέντες οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι καὶ οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι ἐπολέμησαν μετὰ τῶν ξυμμάχων πρὸς ἀλλήλους· καὶ τῶν ἄλλων Ἑλλήνων εἴτινές που διασταῖεν, πρὸς τούτους ἤδη ἐχώρουν. Ὥστε ἀπὸ τῶν Μηδικῶν ἐς τόνδε ἀεὶ τὸν πόλεμον, etc.
This is a clear and concise statement of the great revolution in Grecian affairs, comparing the period before and after the Persian war. Thucydidês goes on to trace briefly the consequences of this bisection of the Grecian world into two great leagues,—the growing improvement in military skill, and the increasing stretch of military effort on both sides from the Persian invasion down to the Peloponnesian war;—he remarks also, upon the difference between Sparta and Athens in their way of dealing with their allies respectively. He then states the striking fact, that the military force put forth separately by Athens and her allies on the one side, and by Sparta and her allies on the other, during the Peloponnesian war, were each of them greater than the entire force which had been employed by both together in the most powerful juncture of their confederacy against the Persian invaders,—Καὶ ἐγένετο αὐτοῖς ἐς τόνδε τὸν πόλεμον ἡ ἰδία παρασκευὴ μείζων ἢ ὡς τὰ κράτιστά ποτε μετὰ ἀκραιφνοῦς τῆς ξυμμαχίας ἤνθησαν (i, 19).
I notice this last passage especially (construing it as the Scholiast seems to do), not less because it conveys an interesting comparison, than because it has been understood by Dr. Arnold, Göller, and other commentators, in a sense which seems to me erroneous. They interpret thus: αὐτοῖς to mean the Athenians only, and not the Lacedæmonians,—ἡ ἰδία παρασκευὴ to denote the forces equipped by Athens herself, apart from her allies,—and ἀκραιφνοῦς ξυμμαχίας to refer “to the Athenian alliance only, at a period a little before the conclusion of the thirty years’ treaty, when the Athenians were masters not only of the islands, and the Asiatic Greek colonies, but had also united to their confederacy Bœotia and Achaia on the continent of Greece itself.” (Dr. Arnold’s note.) Now so far, as the words go, the meaning assigned by Dr. Arnold might be admissible; but if we trace the thread of ideas in Thucydidês, we shall see that the comparison, as these commentators conceive it, between Athens alone and Athens aided by her allies—between the Athenian empire as it stood during the Peloponnesian war, and the same empire as it had stood before the thirty years’ truce—is quite foreign to his thoughts. Nor had Thucydidês said one word to inform the reader, that the Athenian empire at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war had diminished in magnitude, and thus was no longer ἀκραιφνής: without which previous notification, the comparison supposed by Dr. Arnold could not be clearly understood. I conceive that there are two periods, and two sets of circumstances, which, throughout all this passage, Thucydidês means to contrast: first, confederate Greece at the time of the Persian war; next, bisected Greece in a state of war, under the double headship of Sparta and Athens. Αὐτοῖς refers as much to Sparta as to Athens—ἀκραιφνοῦς τῆς ξυμμαχίας means what had been before expressed by ὁμαιχμία—and ποτε set against τόνδε τὸν πόλεμον, is equivalent to the expression which had before been used—ἀπὸ τῶν Μηδικῶν ἐς τόνδε ἀεὶ τὸν πόλεμον.
[535] Thucyd. v, 18; Plutarch, Aristeidês, c. 24. Plutarch states that the allies expressly asked the Athenians to send Aristeidês for the purpose of assessing the tribute. This is not at all probable: Aristeidês, as commander of the Athenian contingent under Pausanias, was at Byzantium when the mutiny of the Ionians against Pausanias occurred, and was the person to whom they applied for protection. As such, he was the natural person to undertake such duties as devolved upon Athens, without any necessity of supposing that he was specially asked for to perform it.
Plutarch farther states that a certain contribution had been levied from the Greeks towards the war, even during the headship of Sparta. This statement also is highly improbable. The headship of Sparta covers only one single campaign, in which Pausanias had the command: the Ionic Greeks sent their ships to the fleet, which would be held sufficient, and there was no time for measuring commutations into money.
Pausanias states, but I think quite erroneously, that the name of Aristeidês was robbed of its due honor because he was the first person who ἔταξε φοροὺς τοῖς Ἕλλησι (Pausan. viii, 52, 2). Neither the assessment nor the name of Aristeidês was otherwise than popular.