The absurd exaggeration of Isokratês, that the treaty bound the Persian kings not to come westward of the river Halys, has also been very properly censured. He makes this statement in two different orations (Areopagatic. p. 150; Panathenaic. p. 462).
But though Dahlmann succeeds in discrediting the orators, he tries in vain to show that the treaty is in itself improbable, or inconsistent with any known historical facts. A large portion of his dissertation is employed in this part of the case, and I think quite unsuccessfully. The fact that the Persian satraps are seen at various periods after the treaty lending aid—underhand, yet without taking much pains to disguise it—to Athenian revolted subjects, does not prove that no treaty had been concluded. These satraps would, doubtless, be very glad to infringe the treaty, whenever they thought they could do so with advantage: if any misfortune had happened to Athens from the hands of the Peloponnesians,—for example, if the Athenians had been unwise enough to march their aggregate land-force out of the city to repel the invading Peloponnesians from Attica, and had been totally defeated,—the Persians would, doubtless, have tried to regain Ionia forthwith. So the Lacedæmonians, at a time when they were actually in alliance with Athens, listened to the persuasions of the revolted Thasians, and promised secretly to invade Attica, in order to aid their revolt (Thucyd. i, 103). Because a treaty is very imperfectly observed,—or rather because the parties, without coming to open war, avail themselves of opportunities to evade it and encroach upon its prescriptions,—we are not entitled to deny that it has ever been made (Dahlmann, p. 116).
It seems to me that the objections which have been taken by Dahlmann and others against the historical reality of this treaty, tell for the most part only against the exaggerated importance assigned to it by subsequent orators.
[648] Plutarch, Periklês, c. 21-28.
[649] Plutarch, Aristeidês. c. 25.
[650] Thucyd. i, 112; compare Philochor. Fragm. 88, ed. Didot.
[651] Thucyd. i, 19. Λακεδαιμόνιοι, οὐχ ὑποτελεῖς ἔχοντες φόρου τοὺς ξυμμάχους, κατ’ ὀλιγαρχίαν δὲ σφίσιν αὐτοῖς μόνον ἐπιτηδείως ὅπως πολιτεύσουσι θεραπεύοντες—the same also i, 76-144.
[652] Aristotel. Politic. v, 2, 6. Καὶ ἐν Θήβαις μετὰ τὴν ἐν Οἰνοφύτοις μάχην, κακῶς πολιτευομένων, ἡ δημοκρατία διεφθάρη.
[653] Plutarch, Periklês, c. 18; also, his comparison between Periklês and Fabius Maximus, c. 3.
Kleinias, father of the celebrated Alkibiadês, was slain in this battle: he had served, thirty-three years before, at the sea-fight of Artemisium: he cannot therefore be numbered among the youthful warriors, though a person of the first rank (Plutarch, Alkibiad. c. 1).