PART II.
CONTINUATION OF HISTORICAL GREECE.
CHAPTER XLVII.
FROM THE THIRTY YEARS’ TRUCE, FOURTEEN YEARS BEFORE THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR, DOWN TO THE BLOCKADE OF POTIDÆA, IN THE YEAR BEFORE THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR.
The judicial alterations effected at Athens by Periklês and Ephialtês, described in the preceding chapter, gave to a large proportion of the citizens direct jury functions and an active interest in the constitution, such as they had never before enjoyed; the change being at once a mark of previous growth of democratical sentiment during the past, and a cause of its farther development during the future. The Athenian people were at this time ready for personal exertion in all directions: military service on land or sea was not less conformable to their dispositions than attendance in the ekklesia or in the dikastery at home. The naval service especially was prosecuted with a degree of assiduity which brought about continual improvement in skill and efficiency, and the poorer citizens, of whom it chiefly consisted, were more exact in obedience and discipline than any of the more opulent persons from whom the infantry or the cavalry were drawn.[1] The maritime multitude, in addition to self-confidence and courage, acquired by this laborious training an increased skill, which placed the Athenian navy every year more and more above the rest of Greece: and the perfection of this force became the more indispensable as the Athenian empire was now again confined to the sea and seaport towns; the reverses immediately preceding the thirty years truce having broken up all Athenian land ascendency over Megara, Bœotia, and the other continental territories adjoining to Attica.
The maritime confederacy,—originally commenced at Delos, under the headship of Athens, but with a common synod and deliberative voice on the part of each member,—had now become transformed into a confirmed empire on the part of Athens, over the remaining states as foreign dependencies; all of them rendering tribute except Chios, Samos, and Lesbos. These three still remained on their original footing of autonomous allies, retaining their armed force, ships, and fortifications, with the obligation of furnishing military and naval aid when required, but not of paying tribute: the discontinuance of the deliberative synod, however, had deprived them of their original security against the encroachments of Athens. I have already stated generally the steps, we do not know them in detail, whereby this important change was brought about, gradually and without any violent revolution,—for even the transfer of the common treasure from Delos to Athens, which was the most palpable symbol and evidence of the change, was not an act of Athenian violence, since it was adopted on the proposition of the Samians. The change resulted in fact almost inevitably from the circumstances of the case, and from the eager activity of the Athenians contrasted with the backwardness and aversion to personal service on the part of the allies. We must recollect that the confederacy, even in its original structure, was contracted for permanent objects, and was permanently binding by the vote of its majority, like the Spartan confederacy, upon every individual member:[2] it was destined to keep out the Persian fleet, and to maintain the police of the Ægean. Consistently with these objects, no individual member could be allowed to secede from the confederacy, and thus to acquire the benefit of protection at the cost of the remainder: so that when Naxos and other members actually did secede, the step was taken as a revolt, and Athens only did her duty as president of the confederacy in reducing them. By every such reduction, as well as by that exchange of personal service for money-payment, which most of the allies voluntarily sought, the power of Athens increased, until at length she found herself with an irresistible navy in the midst of disarmed tributaries, none of whom could escape from her constraining power,—and mistress of the sea, the use of which was indispensable to them. The synod of Delos, even if it had not before become partially deserted, must have ceased at the time when the treasure was removed to Athens,—probably about 460 B.C., or shortly afterwards.
The relations between Athens and her allies were thus materially changed by proceedings which gradually evolved themselves and followed one upon the other without any preconcerted plan: she became an imperial or despot city, governing an aggregate of dependent subjects, all without their own active concurrence, and in many cases doubtless contrary to their own sense of political right. It was not likely that they should conspire unanimously to break up the confederacy, and discontinue the collection of contribution from each of the members: nor would it have been at all desirable that they should do so: for while Greece generally would have been a great loser by such a proceeding, the allies themselves would have been the greatest losers of all, inasmuch as they would have been exposed without defence to the Persian and Phenician fleets. But the Athenians committed the capital fault of taking the whole alliance into their own hands, and treating the allies purely as subjects, without seeking to attach them by any form of political incorporation or collective meeting and discussion,—without taking any pains to maintain community of feeling with the idea of a joint interest,—without admitting any control, real or even pretended, over themselves as managers. Had they attempted to do this, it might have proved difficult to accomplish,—so powerful was the force of geographical dissemination, the tendency to isolated civic life, and the repugnance to any permanent extramural obligations, in every Grecian community: but they do not appear to have ever made the attempt. Finding Athens exalted by circumstances to empire, and the allies degraded into subjects, the Athenian statesmen grasped at the exaltation as a matter of pride as well as profit:[3] nor did even Periklês, the most prudent and far-sighted of them, betray any consciousness that an empire without the cement of some all-pervading interest or attachment, must have a natural tendency to become more and more burdensome and odious, and ultimately to crumble in pieces. Such was the course of events which, if the judicious counsels of Periklês had been followed, might have been postponed but could not have been averted.
Instead of trying to cherish or restore the feelings of equal alliance, Periklês formally disclaimed it. He maintained that Athens owed to her subject allies no account of the money received from them, so long as she performed her contract by keeping away the Persian enemy, and maintaining the safety of the Ægean waters.[4] This was, as he represented, the obligation which Athens had undertaken; and, provided it were faithfully discharged, the allies had no right to ask questions or institute control. That it was faithfully discharged no one could deny: no ship of war except that of Athens and her allies was ever seen between the eastern and western shores of the Ægean. An Athenian fleet of sixty triremes was kept on duty in these waters, chiefly manned by Athenian citizens, and beneficial as well from the protection afforded to commerce as for keeping the seaman in constant pay and training.[5] And such was the effective superintendence maintained, that in the disastrous period preceding the thirty years’ truce, when Athens lost Megara and Bœotia, and with difficulty recovered Eubœa, none of her numerous maritime subjects took the opportunity to revolt.
The total of these distinct tributary cities is said to have amounted to one thousand, according to a verse of Aristophanês,[6] which cannot be under the truth, though it may well be, and probably is, greatly above the truth. The total annual tribute collected at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, and probably also for the years preceding it, is given by Thucydidês at about six hundred talents; of the sums paid by particular states, however, we have little or no information.[7] It was placed under the superintendence of the Hellenotamiæ; originally officers of the confederacy, but now removed from Delos to Athens, and acting altogether as an Athenian treasury-board. The sum total of the Athenian revenue,[8] from all sources, including this tribute, at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, is stated by Xenophon at one thousand talents: customs, harbor, and market dues, receipts from the silver-mines at Laurium, rents of public property, fines from judicial sentences, a tax per head upon slaves, the annual payment made by each metic, etc., may have made up a larger sum than four hundred talents; which sum, added to the six hundred talents from tribute, would make the total named by Xenophon. But a verse of Aristophanês,[9] during the ninth year of the Peloponnesian war, B.C. 422, gives the general total of that time as “nearly two thousand talents:” this is in all probability much above the truth, though we may well imagine that the amount of tribute-money levied upon the allies may have been augmented during the interval: I think that the alleged duplication of the tribute by Alkibiadês, which Thucydidês nowhere notices, is not borne out by any good evidence, nor can I believe that it ever reached the sum of twelve hundred talents.[10] Whatever may have been the actual magnitude of the Athenian budget, however, prior to the Peloponnesian war, we know that during the larger part of the administration of Periklês, the revenue, including tribute, was so managed as to leave a large annual surplus; insomuch that a treasure of coined money was accumulated in the acropolis during the years preceding the Peloponnesian war,—which treasure, when at its maximum, reached the great sum of nine thousand seven hundred talents (equal to two million two hundred and thirty thousand pounds), and was still at six thousand talents, after a serious drain for various purposes, at the moment when that war began.[11] This system of public economy, constantly laying by a considerable sum year after year,—in which Athens stood alone, since none of the Peloponnesian states had any public reserve whatever,[12]—goes far of itself to vindicate Periklês from the charge of having wasted the public money in mischievous distributions for the purpose of obtaining popularity; and also to exonerate the Athenian Demos from that reproach of a greedy appetite for living by the public purse which it is common to ascribe to them. After the death of Kimon, no farther expeditions were undertaken against the Persians, and even for some years before his death, not much appears to have been done: so that the tribute-money remained unexpended, though it was the duty of Athens to hold it in reserve against future attack, which might at any time be renewed.
Though we do not know the exact amount of the other sources of Athenian revenue, however, we know that the tribute received from the allies was by far the largest item in it.[13] And altogether the exercise of empire abroad became a prominent feature in Athenian life, and a necessity to Athenian sentiment, not less than democracy at home. Athens was no longer, as she had been once, a single city, with Attica for her territory: she was a capital or imperial city,—a despot city, was the expression used by her enemies, and even sometimes by her own citizens,[14]—with many dependencies attached to her, and bound to follow her orders. Such was the manner in which not merely Periklês and the other leading statesmen, but even the humblest Athenian citizen, conceived the dignity of Athens; and the sentiment was one which carried with it both personal pride and stimulus to active patriotism. To establish Athenian interests among the dependent territories, was one important object in the eyes of Periklês, and while he discountenanced all distant[15] and rash enterprises, such as invasions of Egypt or Cyprus, he planted out many kleruchies and colonies of Athenian citizens, intermingled with allies, on islands, and parts of the coast. He conducted one thousand citizens to the Thracian Chersonese, five hundred to Naxos, and two hundred and fifty to Andros. In the Chersonese, he farther repelled the barbarous Thracian invaders from without, and even undertook the labor of carrying a wall of defence across the isthmus, which connected the peninsula with Thrace; since the barbarous Thracian tribes, though expelled some time before by Kimon,[16] had still continued to renew their incursions from time to time. Ever since the occupation of the elder Miltiadês, about eighty years before, there had been in this peninsula many Athenian proprietors, apparently intermingled with half-civilized Thracians: the settlers now acquired both greater numerical strength and better protection, though it does not appear that the cross-wall was permanently maintained. The maritime expeditions of Periklês even extended into the Euxine sea, as far as the important Greek city of Sinôpê, then governed by a despot named Timesilaus, against whom a large proportion of the citizens were in active discontent. He left Lamachus with thirteen Athenian triremes to assist in expelling the despot, who was driven into exile along with his friends and party: the properties of these exiles were confiscated, and assigned to the maintenance of six hundred Athenian citizens, admitted to equal fellowship and residence with the Sinôpeans. We may presume that on this occasion Sinôpê became a member of the Athenian tributary alliance, if it had not been so before: but we do not know whether Kotyôra and Trapezus, dependencies of Sinôpê, farther eastward, which the ten thousand Greeks found on their retreat fifty years afterwards, existed in the time of Periklês or not. Moreover, the numerous and well-equipped Athenian fleet, under the command of Periklês, produced an imposing effect upon the barbarous princes and tribes along the coast,[17] contributing certainly to the security of Grecian trade, and probably to the acquisition of new dependent allies.