It was by successive proceedings of this sort that many detachments of Athenian citizens became settled in various portions of the maritime empire of the city,—some rich, investing their property in the islands as more secure—from the incontestable superiority of Athens at sea—even than Attica, which, since the loss of the Megarid, could not be guarded against a Peloponnesian land invasion,[18]—others poor, and hiring themselves out as laborers.[19] The islands of Lemnos, Imbros, and Skyros, as well as the territory of Estiæa, on the north of Eubœa, were completely occupied by Athenian proprietors and citizens,—other places partially so occupied. And it was doubtless advantageous to the islanders to associate themselves with Athenians in trading enterprises, since they thereby obtained a better chance of the protection of the Athenian fleet. It seems that Athens passed regulations occasionally for the commerce of her dependent allies, as we see by the fact, that shortly before the Peloponnesian war, she excluded the Megarians from all their ports. The commercial relations between Peiræus and the Ægean reached their maximum during the interval immediately preceding the Peloponnesian war: nor were these relations confined to the country east and north of Attica: they reached also the western regions. The most important settlements founded by Athens during this period were Amphipolis in Thrace, and Thurii in Italy.
Amphipolis was planted by a colony of Athenians and other Greeks, under the conduct of the Athenian Agnon, in 437 B.C. It was situated near the river Strymon, in Thrace, on the eastern bank, and at the spot where the Strymon resumes its river-course after emerging from the lake above. It was originally a township or settlement of the Edonian Thracians, called Ennea Hodoi, or Nine Ways,—in a situation doubly valuable, both as being close upon the bridge over the Strymon, and as a convenient centre for the ship-timber and gold and silver mines of the neighboring region,—and distant about three English miles from the Athenian settlement of Eion at the mouth of the river. The previous unsuccessful attempts to form establishments at Ennea Hodoi have already been noticed,—first, that of Histiæus the Milesian, followed up by his brother Aristagoras (about 497-496 B.C.), next, that of the Athenians about 465 B.C., under Leagrus and others,—on both these occasions the intruding settlers had been defeated and expelled by the native Thracian tribes, though on the second occasion the number sent by Athens was not less than ten thousand.[20] So serious a loss deterred the Athenians for a long time from any repetition of the attempt: though it is highly probable that individual citizens from Eion and from Thasus connected themselves with powerful Thracian families, and became in this manner actively engaged in mining, to their own great profit,—as well as to the profit of the city collectively, since the property of the kleruchs, or Athenian citizens occupying colonial lands, bore its share in case of direct taxes being imposed on Athenian property generally. Among such fortunate adventurers we may number the historian Thucydidês himself; seemingly descended from Athenian parents intermarrying with Thracians, and himself married to a wife either Thracian or belonging to a family of Athenian colonists in that region, through whom he became possessed of a large property in the mines, as well as of great influence in the districts around.[21] This was one of the various ways in which the collective power of Athens enabled her chief citizens to enrich themselves individually.
The colony under Agnon, despatched from Athens in the year 437 B.C., appears to have been both numerous and well sustained, inasmuch as it conquered and maintained the valuable position of Ennea Hodoi in spite of those formidable Edonian neighbors who had baffled the two preceding attempts. Its name of Ennea Hodoi was exchanged for that of Amphipolis,—the hill on which the new town was situated being bounded on three sides by the river. The settlers seem to have been of mixed extraction, comprising no large proportion of Athenians: some were of Chalkidic race, others came from Argilus, a Grecian city colonized from Andros, which possessed the territory on the western bank of the Strymon, immediately opposite to Amphipolis,[22] and which was included among the subject allies of Athens. Amphipolis, connected with the sea by the Strymon and the port of Eion, became the most important of all the Athenian dependencies in reference to Thrace and Macedonia.
The colony of Thurii on the coast of the gulf of Tarentum in Italy, near the site and on the territory of the ancient Sybaris, was founded by Athens about seven years earlier than Amphipolis, not long after the conclusion of the thirty years’ truce with Sparta, B.C. 443. Since the destruction of the old Sybaris by the Krotoniates, in 509 B.C., its territory had for the most part remained unappropriated: the descendants of the former inhabitants, dispersed at Laus and in other portions of the territory, were not strong enough to establish any new city; nor did it suit the views of the Krotoniates themselves to do so. After an interval of more than sixty years, however, during which one unsuccessful attempt at occupation had been made by some Thessalian settlers, these Sybarites at length prevailed upon the Athenians to undertake and protect the recolonization; the proposition having been made in vain to the Spartans. Lampon and Xenokritus, the former a prophet and interpreter of oracles, were sent by Periklês with ten ships as chiefs of the new colony of Thurii, founded under the auspices of Athens. The settlers were collected from all parts of Greece, and included Dorians, Ionians, islanders, Bœotians, as well as Athenians. But the descendants of the ancient Sybarites procured themselves to be treated as privileged citizens, and monopolized for themselves the possession of political powers, as well as the most valuable lands in the immediate vicinity of the walls; while their wives also assumed an offensive preëminence over the other women of the city in the public religious processions. Such spirit of privilege and monopoly appears to have been a frequent manifestation among the ancient colonies, and often fatal either to their tranquillity or to their growth; sometimes to both. In the case of Thurii, founded under the auspices of the democratical Athens, it was not likely to have any lasting success: and we find that after no very long period, the majority of the colonists rose in insurrection against the privileged Sybarites, either slew or expelled them, and divided the entire territory of the city, upon equal principles, among the colonists of every different race. This revolution enabled them to make peace with the Krotoniates, who had probably been unfriendly so long as their ancient enemies, the Sybarites, were masters of the city, and likely to turn its powers to the purpose of avenging their conquered ancestors. And the city from this time forward, democratically governed, appears to have flourished steadily and without internal dissension for thirty years, until the ruinous disasters of the Athenians before Syracuse occasioned the overthrow of the Athenian party at Thurii. How miscellaneous the population of Thurii was, we may judge from the denominations of the ten tribes,—such was the number of tribes established, after the model of Athens,—Arkas, Achaïs, Eleia, Bœotia, Amphiktyonis, Doris, Ias, Athenaïs, Euboïs, Nesiôtis. From this mixture of race they could not agree in recognizing or honoring an Athenian œkist, or indeed any œkist except Apollo.[23] The Spartan general, Kleandridas, banished a few years before for having suffered himself to be bribed by Athens along with king Pleistoanax, removed to Thurii, and was appointed general of the citizens in their war against Tarentum. That war was ultimately adjusted by the joint foundation of the new city of Herakleia, half-way between the two,—in the fertile territory called Siritis.[24]
The most interesting circumstance respecting Thurii is, that the rhetor Lysias, and the historian Herodotus, were both domiciliated there as citizens. The city was connected with Athens, yet seemingly only by a feeble tie; nor was it numbered among the tributary subject allies.[25] From the circumstance that so large a proportion of the settlers at Thurii were not native Athenians, we may infer that there were not many of the latter at that time who were willing to put themselves so far out of connection with Athens,—even though tempted by the prospect of lots of land in a fertile and promising territory. And Periklês was probably anxious that those poor citizens for whom emigration was desirable should become kleruchs in some of the islands or ports of the Ægean, where they would serve—like the colonies of Rome—as a sort of garrison for the insurance of the Athenian empire.[26]
The fourteen years between the thirty years’ truce and the breaking out of the Peloponnesian war, are a period of full maritime empire on the part of Athens,—partially indeed resisted, but never with success. They are a period of peace with all cities extraneous to her own empire; and of splendid decorations to the city itself, from the genius of Pheidias and others, in sculpture as well as in architecture. Since the death of Kimon, Periklês had become more and more the first citizen in the commonwealth: his qualities told for more the longer they were known, and even the disastrous reverses which preceded the thirty years’ truce had not overthrown him, since he had protested against that expedition of Tolmidês into Bœotia out of which they first arose. But if the personal influence of Periklês had increased, the party opposed to him seems also to have become stronger and better organized than it had been before; and to have acquired a leader in many respects more effective than Kimon,—Thucydidês, son of Melêsias. The new chief was a near relative of Kimon, but of a character and talents more analogous to that of Periklês: a statesman and orator rather than a general, though competent to both functions if occasion demanded, as every leading man in those days was required to be. Under Thucydidês, the political and parliamentary opposition against Periklês assumed a constant character and an organization such as Kimon, with his exclusively military aptitudes, had never been able to establish. The aristocratical party in the commonwealth,—the “honorable and respectable” citizens, as we find them styled, adopting their own nomenclature,—now imposed upon themselves the obligation of undeviating regularity in their attendance on the public assembly, sitting together in a particular section, so as to be conspicuously parted from the Demos. In this manner, their applause and dissent, their mutual encouragement to each other, their distribution of parts to different speakers, was made more conducive to the party purposes than it had been before, when these distinguished persons had been intermingled with the mass of citizens.[27] Thucydidês himself was eminent as a speaker, inferior only to Periklês,—perhaps hardly inferior even to him. We are told that in reply to a question put to him by Archidamus, whether Periklês or he were the better wrestler, Thucydidês replied: “Even when I throw him, he denies that he has fallen, gains his point, and talks over those who have actually seen him fall.”[28]
Such an opposition made to Periklês, in all the full license which a democratical constitution permitted, must have been both efficient and embarrassing; but the pointed severance of the aristocratical chiefs, which Thucydidês, son of Melêsias, introduced, contributed probably at once to rally the democratical majority round Periklês, and to exasperate the bitterness of party-conflict.[29] As far as we can make out the grounds of the opposition, it turned partly upon the pacific policy of Periklês towards the Persians, partly upon his expenditure for home ornament. Thucydidês contended that Athens was disgraced in the eyes of the Greeks, by having drawn the confederate treasure from Delos to her own acropolis, under pretence of greater security, and then employing it, not in prosecuting war against the Persians,[30] but in beautifying Athens by new temples and costly statues. To this Periklês replied, that Athens had undertaken the obligation, in consideration of the tribute-money, to protect her allies and keep off from them every foreign enemy,—that she had accomplished this object completely at the present, and retained a reserve sufficient to guarantee the like security for the future;—that, under such circumstances, she owed no account to her allies of the expenditure of the surplus, but was at liberty to expend it for purposes useful and honorable to the city. In this point of view it was an object of great public importance to render Athens imposing in the eyes both of the allies and of Hellas generally, by improved fortifications,—by accumulated ornaments, sculptural and architectural,—and by religious festivals,—frequent, splendid, musical, and poetical.
Such was the answer made by Periklês in defence of his policy against the opposition headed by Thucydidês. And as far as we can make out the ground taken by both parties, the answer was perfectly satisfactory. For when we look at the very large sum which Periklês continually kept in reserve in the treasury, no one could reasonably complain that his expenditure for ornamental purposes was carried so far as to encroach upon the exigences of defence. What Thucydidês and his partisans appear to have urged, was, that this common fund should still continue to be spent in aggressive warfare against the Persian king, in Egypt and elsewhere,—conformably to the projects pursued by Kimon during his life.[31] But Periklês was right in contending that such outlay would have been simply wasteful; of no use either to Athens or her allies, though risking all the chances of distant defeat, such as had been experienced a few years before in Egypt. The Persian force was already kept away, both from the waters of the Ægean and the coast of Asia, either by the stipulations of the treaty of Kallias, or—if that treaty be supposed apocryphal—by a conduct practically the same as those stipulations would have enforced. The allies, indeed, might have had some ground of complaint against Periklês, either for not reducing the amount of tribute required from them, seeing that it was more than sufficient for the legitimate purposes of the confederacy, or for not having collected their positive sentiment as to the disposal of it. But we do not find that this was the argument adopted by Thucydidês and his party, nor was it calculated to find favor either with aristocrats or democrats, in the Athenian assembly.
Admitting the injustice of Athens—an injustice common to both the parties in that city, not less to Kimon than to Periklês—in acting as despot instead of chief, and in discontinuing all appeal to the active and hearty concurrence of her numerous allies, we shall find that the schemes of Periklês were at the same time eminently Pan-Hellenic. In strengthening and ornamenting Athens, in developing the full activity of her citizens, in providing temples, religious offerings, works of art, solemn festivals, all of surpassing attraction,—he intended to exalt her into something greater than an imperial city with numerous dependent allies. He wished to make her the centre of Grecian feeling, the stimulus of Grecian intellect, and the type of strong democratical patriotism combined with full liberty of individual taste and aspiration. He wished not merely to retain the adherence of the subject states, but to attract the admiration and spontaneous deference of independent neighbors, so as to procure for Athens a moral ascendency much beyond the range of her direct power. And he succeeded in elevating the city to a visible grandeur,[32] which made her appear even much stronger than she really was,—and which had the farther effect of softening to the minds of the subjects the humiliating sense of obedience; while it served as a normal school, open to strangers from all quarters, of energetic action even under full license of criticism,—of elegant pursuits economically followed,—and of a love for knowledge without enervation of character. Such were the views of Periklês in regard to his country, during the years which preceded the Peloponnesian war, as we find them recorded in his celebrated Funeral Oration, pronounced in the first year of that war,—an exposition forever memorable of the sentiment and purpose of Athenian democracy, as conceived by its ablest president.
So bitter, however, was the opposition made by Thucydidês and his party to this projected expenditure,—so violent and pointed did the scission of aristocrats and democrats become,—that the dispute came after no long time to that ultimate appeal which the Athenian constitution provided for the case of two opposite and nearly equal party-leaders,—a vote of ostracism. Of the particular details which preceded this ostracism, we are not informed; but we see clearly that the general position was such as the ostracism was intended to meet. Probably the vote was proposed by the party of Thucydidês, in order to procure the banishment of Periklês, the more powerful person of the two, and the most likely to excite popular jealousy. The challenge was accepted by Periklês and his friends, and the result of the voting was such that an adequate legal majority condemned Thucydidês to ostracism.[33] And it seems that the majority must have been very decisive, for the party of Thucydidês was completely broken by it: and we hear of no other single individual equally formidable as a leader of opposition, throughout all the remaining life of Periklês.