These passages, strange to say, are considered by Manso and Dahlmann as showing that the Grecian cities on the Asiatic coast, though subject to the Athenian empire, continued, nevertheless, to pay their tribute regularly to Susa. To me, the passages appear to disprove this very supposition: they show that it was essential for the satrap to detach these cities from the Athenian empire, as a means of procuring tribute from them to Persia: that the Athenian empire, while it lasted, prevented him from getting any tribute from the cities subject to it. Manso and Dahlmann have overlooked the important meaning of the adverb of time νεωστὶ—“lately.” By that word, Thucydidês expressly intimates that the court of Susa had only recently demanded from Tissaphernes and Pharnabazus, tribute from the maritime Greeks within their satrapies: and he implies that until recently no such demand had been made upon them. The court of Susa, apprized, doubtless, by Grecian exiles and agents, of the embarrassments into which Athens had fallen, conceived this a suitable moment for exacting tributes; to which, doubtless, it always considered itself entitled, though the power of Athens had compelled it to forego them. Accordingly, the demand was now for the first time sent down to Tissaphernes, and he “became a debtor for them” to the court (ἐπωφείλησε), until he could collect them: which he could not at first do, even then, embarrassed as Athens was,—and which, à fortiori, he could not have done before, when Athens was in full power.
We learn from these passages two valuable facts. 1. That the maritime Asiatic cities belonging to the Athenian empire paid no tribute to Susa, from the date of the full organization of the Athenian confederacy down to a period after the Athenian defeat in Sicily. 2. That, nevertheless, these cities always continued, throughout this period, to stand rated in the Persian king’s books each for its appropriate tribute,—the court of Susa waiting for a convenient moment to occur, when it should be able to enforce its demands, from misfortune accruing to Athens.
This state of relations, between the Asiatic Greeks and the Persian court under the Athenian empire, authenticated by Thucydidês, enables us to explain a passage of Herodotus, on which also both Manso and Dahlmann have dwelt (p. 94) with rather more apparent plausibility, as proving their view of the case. Herodotus, after describing the rearrangement and remeasurement of the territories of the Ionic cities by the satrap Artaphernes (about 493 B. C., after the suppression of the Ionic revolt), proceeds to state that he assessed the tribute of each with reference to this new measurement, and that the assessment remained unchanged until his own (Herodotus’s) time,—καὶ τὰς χώρας σφέων μετρήσας κατὰ παρασάγγας ... φόρους ἔταξε ἑκάστοισι, οἳ κατὰ χώρην διατελέουσι ἔχοντες ἐκ τούτου τοῦ χρόνου αἰεὶ ἔτι καὶ ἐς ἐμὲ, ὡς ἐτάχθησαν ἐξ Ἀρταφέρνεος· ἐτάχθησαν δὲ σχεδὸν κατὰ τὰ αὐτὰ τὰ καὶ πρότερον εἶχον (vi, 42). Now Dahlmann and Manso contend that Herodotus here affirms the tribute of the Ionic cities to Persia to have been continuously and regularly paid, down to his own time. But in my judgment this is a mistake: Herodotus speaks, not about the payment, but about the assessment: and these were two very different things, as Thucydidês clearly intimates in the passage which I have cited above. The assessment of all the Ionic cities in the Persian king’s books remained unaltered all through the Athenian empire; but the payment was not enforced until immediately before 412 B. C., when the Athenians were supposed to be too weak to hinder it. It is evident by the account of the general Persian revenues, throughout all the satrapies, which we find in the third book of Herodotus, that he had access to official accounts of the Persian finances, or at least to Greek secretaries who knew those accounts. He would be told, that these assessments remained unchanged from the time of Artaphernes downward: whether they were realized or not was another question, which the “books” would probably not answer, and which he might or might not know.
The passages above cited from Thucydidês appear to me to afford positive proof that the Greek cities on the Asiatic coast—not those in the interior, as we may see by the case of Magnesia given to Themistoklês—paid no tribute to Persia during the continuance of the Athenian empire. But if there were no such positive proof, I should still maintain the same opinion. For if these Greeks went on paying tribute, what is meant by the phrases, of their having “revolted from Persia,” of their “having been liberated from the king,” (οἱ ἀποστάντες βασιλέως Ἕλληνες—οἱ ἀπὸ Ἰωνίας καὶ Ἑλλησπόντου ἤδη ἀφεστηκότες ἀπὸ βασιλέως—ὅσοι ἀπὸ βασιλέως νεωστὶ ἠλευθέρωντο, Thucyd. i, 18, 89, 95)?
So much respecting the payment of tribute. As to the other point,—that between 477 and 412 B. C., no Persian ships were tolerated along the coast of Ionia, which coast, though claimed by the Persian king, was not recognized by the Greeks as belonging to him,—proof will be found in Thucyd. viii, 56: compare Diodor. iv, 26.
[646] Herodot. vi, 151. Diodorus also states that this peace was concluded by Kallias the Athenian (xii, 4).
[647] I conclude, on the whole, in favor of this treaty as an historical fact,—though sensible that some of the arguments urged against it are not without force. Mr. Mitford and Dr. Thirlwall (ch. xvii, p. 474), as well as Manso and Dahlmann, not to mention others, have impugned the reality of the treaty: and the last-mentioned author, particularly, has examined the case at length and set forth all the grounds of objection; urging, among some which are really serious, others which appear to me weak and untenable (Manso, Sparta, vol. iii, Beylage x, p. 471; Dahlmann, Forschungen auf dem Gebiete der Geschichte, vol. i, Ueber den Kimonischen Frieden, pp. 1-148). Boëckh admits the treaty as an historical fact.
If we deny altogether the historical reality of the treaty, we must adopt some such hypothesis as that of Dahlmann (p. 40): “The distinct mention and averment of such a peace as having been formally concluded, appears to have first arisen among the schools of the rhetors at Athens, shortly after the peace of Antalkidas, and as an oratorical antithesis to oppose to that peace.”
To which we must add the supposition, that some persons must have taken the trouble to cause this fabricated peace to be engraved on a pillar, and placed, either in the Metrôon or somewhere else in Athens, among the records of Athenian glories. For that it was so engraved on a column is certain (Theopompus ap. Harpokration. Ἀττικοῖς γράμμασι). The suspicion started by Theopompus (and founded on the fact that the peace was engraved, not in ancient Attic, but in Ionic letters—the latter sort having been only legalized in Athens after the archonship of Eukleides), that this treaty was a subsequent invention and not an historical reality, does not weigh with me very much. Assuming the peace to be real, it would naturally be drawn up and engraved in the character habitually used among the Ionic cities of Asia Minor, since they were the parties most specially interested in it: or it might even have been reëngraved, seeing that nearly a century must have elapsed between the conclusion of the treaty and the time when Theopompus saw the pillar. I confess that the hypothesis of Dahlmann appears to me more improbable than the historical reality of the treaty. I think it more likely that there was a treaty, and that the orators talked exaggerated and false matters respecting it,—rather than that they fabricated the treaty from the beginning with a deliberate purpose, and with the false name of an envoy conjoined.
Dahlmann exposes justly and forcibly—an easy task, indeed—the loose, inconsistent, and vainglorious statements of the orators respecting this treaty. The chronological error by which it was asserted to have been made shortly after the victories of the Eurymedon—and was thus connected with the name of Kimon—is one of the circumstances which have most tended to discredit the attesting witnesses: but we must not forget that Ephorus (assuming that Diodorus in this case copies Ephorus, which is highly probable—xii, 3, 4) did not fall into this mistake, but placed the treaty in its right chronological place, after the Athenian expedition under Kimon against Cyprus and Egypt in 450-449 B. C. Kimon died before the great results of this expedition were consummated, as we know from Thucydidês: on this point Diodorus speaks equivocally, but rather giving it to be understood that Kimon lived to complete the whole, and then died of sickness.