[590] Thucyd. ii, 13.
[591] Thucyd. i, 108; Plutarch, Periklês, c. 20.
[592] Xenophon, Hellenic, v, 1, 31.
[593] Mr. Fynes Clinton (Fasti Hellenic. ad ann. 476 B. C.) places the conquest of Skyros by Kimon in the year 476 B. C. He says, after citing a passage from Thucyd. i, 98, and from Plutarch, Theseus, c. 36, as well as a proposed correction of Bentley, which he justly rejects: “The island was actually conquered in the year of the archon Phædon, B. C. 476. This we know from Thucyd. i, 98, and Diodor. xi, 41-48, combined. Plutarch named the archon Phædon, with reference to the conquest of the island: then, by a negligence not unusual with him, connected the oracle with that fact, as a contemporary transaction: although in truth the oracle was not procured till six or seven years afterwards.”
Plutarch has many sins to answer for against chronological exactness; but the charge here made against him is undeserved. He states that the oracle was given in (476 B. C.) the year of the archon Phædon; and that the body of Theseus was brought back to Athens in (469 B. C.) the year of the archon Aphepsion. There is nothing to contradict either statement; nor do the passages of Thucydidês and Diodorus, which Mr. Clinton adduces, prove that which he asserts. The two passages of Diodorus have, indeed, no bearing upon the event: and in so far as Diodorus is in this case an authority at all, he goes against Mr. Clinton, for he states Skyros to have been conquered in 470 B. C. (Diodor. xi, 60). Thucydidês only tells us that the operations against Eion, Skyros, and Karystus, took place in the order here indicated, and at some periods between 476 and 466 B. C.; but he does not enable us to determine positively the date of either. Upon what authority Mr. Clinton states, that “the oracle was not procured till six or seven years afterwards,” (i. e., after the conquest,) I do not know: the account of Plutarch goes rather to show that it was procured six or seven years before the conquest: and this may stand good until some better testimony is produced to contradict it. As our information now stands, we have no testimony as to the year of the conquest except that of Diodorus, who assigns it to 470 B. C., but as he assigns both the conquest of Eion and the expeditions of Kimon against Karia and Pamphylia with the victories of the Eurymedon, all to the same year, we cannot much trust his authority. Nevertheless, I incline to believe him as to the date of the conquest of Skyros: because it seems to me very probable that this conquest took place in the year immediately before that in which the body of Theseus was brought to Athens, which latter event may be referred with great confidence to 469 B. C., in consequence of the interesting anecdote related by Plutarch about the first prize gained by the poet Sophoklês.
Mr. Clinton has given in his Appendix (Nos. vi-viii, pp. 248-253) two Dissertations respecting the chronology of the period from the Persian war down to the close of the Peloponnesian war. He has rendered much service by correcting the mistake of Dodwell, Wesseling, and Mitford (founded upon an inaccurate construction of a passage in Isokratês) in supposing, after the Persian invasion of Greece, a Spartan hegemony, lasting ten years, prior to the commencement of the Athenian hegemony. He has shown that the latter must be reckoned as commencing in 477, or 476 B. C., immediately after the mutiny of the allies against Pausanias,—whose command, however, need not be peremptorily restricted to one year, as Mr. Clinton (p. 252) and Dodwell maintain: for the words of Thucydidês, ἐν τῇδε τῇ ἡγεμονίᾳ, imply nothing as to annual duration, and designate merely “the hegemony which preceded that of Athens.”
But the refutation of this mistake does not enable us to establish any good positive chronology for the period between 477 and 466 B. C. It will not do to construe Πρῶτον μὲν (Thuc. i, 98) in reference to the Athenian conquest of Eion, as if it must necessarily mean “the year after” 477 B. C. If we could imagine that Thucydidês had told us all the military operations between 477-466 B. C., we should be compelled to admit plenty of that “interval of inaction” against which Mr. Clinton so strongly protests (p. 252). Unhappily, Thucydidês has told us but a small portion of the events which really happened.
Mr. Clinton compares the various periods of duration assigned by ancient authors to that which is improperly called the Athenian “empire,”—between 477-405 B. C. (pp. 248, 249.) I confess that I rather agree with Dr. Gillies, who admits the discrepancy between these authors broadly and undisguisedly, than with Mr. Clinton, who seeks to bring them into comparative agreement. His explanation is only successful in regard to one of them,—Demosthenês; whose two statements (forty-five years in one place and seventy-three years in another) are shown to be consistent with each other as well as chronologically just. But surely it is not reasonable to correct the text of the orator Lykurgus from ἐννενήκοντα to ἑβδομήκοντα, and then to say, that “Lykurgus may be added to the number of those who describe the period as seventy years,” (p. 250.) Neither are we to bring Andokidês into harmony with others, by supposing that “his calculation ascends to the battle of Marathon, from the date of which (B. C. 490) to the battle of Ægos Potami, are just eighty-five years.” (Ibid.) Nor ought we to justify a computation by Demosthenês, of sixty-five years, by saying, “that it terminates at the Athenian defeat in Sicily,” (p. 249).
The truth is, that there is more or less chronological inaccuracy in all these passages, except those of Demosthenês,—and historical inaccuracy in all of them, not even excepting those. It is not true that the Athenians ἦρξαν τῆς θαλάσσης—ἦρξαν τῶν Ἑλλήνων—προστάται ἦσαν τῶν Ἑλλήνων—for seventy-three years. The historical language of Demosthenês, Plato, Lysias, Isokratês, Andokidês, Lykurgus, requires to be carefully examined before we rely upon it.
[594] Plutarch (Kimon, c. 8; Theseus, c. 36). ἐστὶ δὲ φύξιον οἰκέταις καὶ πᾶσι τοῖς ταπεινοτέροις καὶ δεδιόσι κρείττονας, ὡς καὶ τοῦ Θησέως προστατικοῦ τινος καὶ βοηθητικοῦ γενομένου καὶ προσδεχομένου φιλανθρώπως τὰς τῶν ταπεινοτέρων δεήσεις.