Who are the persons designated by the expression οἱ ἐκπλέοντες, appears to be specified more particularly a little farther on (i, 18); it means the generals, the officers, the envoys, etc. sent forth by Athens.
[76] See the expression in Thucydidês (v, 27) describing the conditions required when Argos was about to extend her alliances in Peloponnesus. The conditions were two. 1. That the city should be autonomous. 2. Next, that it should be willing to submit its quarrels to equitable arbitration,—ἥτις αὐτόνομός τέ ἐστι, καὶ δίκας ἴσας καὶ ὁμοίας δίδωσι.
In the oration against the Athenians, delivered by the Syracusan Hermokratês at Kamarina, Athens is accused of having enslaved her allies partly on the ground that they neglected to perform their military obligations, partly because they made war upon each other (Thucyd. vi, 76), partly also on other specious pretences. How far this charge against Athens is borne out by the fact, we can hardly say; in all those particular examples which Thucydidês mentions of subjugation of allies by Athens, there is a cause perfectly definite and sufficient,—not a mere pretence devised by Athenian ambition.
[77] According to the principle laid down by the Corinthians shortly before the Peloponnesian war,—τοὺς προσήκοντας ξυμμάχους αὐτόν τινα κολάζειν (Thucyd. i, 40-43).
The Lacedæmonians, on preferring their accusation of treason against Themistoklês, demanded that he should be tried at Sparta, before the common Hellenic synod which held its sitting there, and of which Athens was then a member: that is, the Spartan confederacy, or alliance,—ἐπὶ τοῦ κοινοῦ συνεδρίου τῶν Ἑλλήνων (Diodor. xi, 55).
[78] Antipho, De Cæde Herôdis, c. 7, p. 135. ὃ οὐδὲ πόλει ἔξεστιν, ἄνευ Ἀθηναίων οὐδένα θανάτῳ ζημιῶσαι.
[79] Thucyd. viii, 48. Τούς τε καλοὺς κἀγαθοὺς ὀνομαζομένους οὐκ ἐλάσσω αὐτοὺς (that is, the subject-allies) νομίζειν σφίσι πράγματα παρέξειν τοῦ δήμου, ποριστὰς ὄντας καὶ ἐσηγητὰς τῶν κακῶν τῷ δήμῳ, ἐξ ὧν τὰ πλείω αὐτοὺς ὠφελεῖσθαι· καὶ τὸ μὲν ἐπ᾽ ἐκείνοις εἶναι καὶ ἄκριτοι ἂν καὶ βιαιότερον ἀποθνήσκειν, τὸν δὲ δῆμον σφῶν τε καταφυγὴν εἶναι καὶ ἐκείνων σωφρονιστήν. Καὶ ταῦτα παρ᾽ αὐτῶν τῶν ἔργων ἐπισταμένας τὰς πόλεις σαφῶς αὐτὸς εἰδέναι, ὅτι οὕτω νομίζουσιν. This is introduced as the deliberate judgment of the Athenian commander Phrynichus, whom Thucydidês greatly commends for his sagacity, and with whom he seems in this case to have concurred.
Xenophon (Rep. Ath. i. 14, 15) affirms that the Athenian officers on service passed many unjust sentences upon the oligarchical party in the allied cities,—fines, sentences of banishment, capital punishments; and that the Athenian people, though they had a strong public interest in the prosperity of the allies, in order that their tribute might be larger, nevertheless thought it better that any individual citizen of Athens should pocket what he could out of the plunder of the allies, and leave to the latter nothing more than was absolutely necessary for them to live and work, without any superfluity, such as might tempt them to revolt.
That the Athenian officers on service may have succeeded too often in unjust peculation at the cost of the allies, is probable enough: but that the Athenian people were pleased to see their own individual citizens so enriching themselves is certainly not true. The large jurisdiction of the dikasteries was intended, among other effects, to open to the allies a legal redress against such misconduct on the part of the Athenian officers: and the passage above cited from Thucydidês proves that it really produced such an effect.
[80] Plutarch, Pelopidas, c. 20; Plutarch, Amator. Narrat. c. 3, p. 773.