Again, after the reconquest of Samos, we should assume it almost as a matter of certainty, that the Athenians would renew the democratical government which they had set up just before the revolt. Yet, if they did so, it must have been again overthrown, without any attempt to uphold it on the part of Athens. For we hardly hear of Samos again, until twenty-seven years afterwards, towards the latter division of the Peloponnesian war, in 412 B.C., and it then appears with an established oligarchical government of geomori, or landed proprietors, against which the people make a successful rising during the course of that year.[60] As Samos remained, during the interval between 439 B.C. and 412 B.C., unfortified, deprived of its fleet, and enrolled among the tribute-paying allies of Athens,—and as it, nevertheless, either retained or acquired its oligarchical government; so we may conclude that Athens cannot have systematically interfered to democratize by violence the subject-allies, in cases where the natural tendency of parties ran towards oligarchy. The condition of Lesbos at the time of its revolt, hereafter to be related, will be found to confirm this conclusion.[61]
On returning to Athens after the reconquest of Samos, Periklês was chosen to pronounce the funeral oration over the citizens slain in the war, to whom, according to custom, solemn and public obsequies were celebrated in the suburb called Kerameikus. This custom appears to have been introduced shortly after the Persian war,[62] and would doubtless contribute to stimulate the patriotism of the citizens, especially when the speaker elected to deliver it was of the personal dignity as well as the oratorical powers of Periklês. He was twice public funeral orator by the choice of the citizens: once after the Samian success, and a second time in the first year of the Peloponnesian war. His discourse on the first occasion has not reached us,[63] but the second has been fortunately preserved, in substance at least, by Thucydidês, who also briefly describes the funeral ceremony,—doubtless the same on all occasions. The bones of the deceased warriors were exposed in tents three days before the ceremony, in order that the relatives of each might have the opportunity of bringing offerings: they were then placed in coffins of cypress, and carried forth on carts to the public burial-place at the Kerameikus; one coffin for each of the ten tribes, and one empty couch, formally laid out, to represent those warriors whose bones had not been discovered or collected. The female relatives of each followed the carts, with loud wailings, and after them a numerous procession both of citizens and strangers. So soon as the bones had been consigned to the grave, some distinguished citizen, specially chosen for the purpose, mounted an elevated stage, and addressed to the multitude an appropriate discourse. Such was the effect produced by that of Periklês after the Samian expedition, that, when he had concluded, the audience present testified their emotion in the liveliest manner, and the women especially crowned him with garlands, like a victorious athlete.[64] Only Elpinikê, sister of the deceased Kimon, reminded him that the victories of her brother had been more felicitous, as gained over Persians and Phenicians, and not over Greeks and kinsmen. And the contemporary poet Ion, the friend of Kimon, reported what he thought an unseemly boast of Periklês,—to the effect that Agamemnon had spent ten years in taking a foreign city, while he in nine months had reduced the first and most powerful of all the Ionic communities.[65] But if we possessed the actual speech pronounced, we should probably find that he assigned all the honor of the exploit to Athens and her citizens generally, placing their achievement in favorable comparison with that of Agamemnon and his host,—not himself with Agamemnon.
Whatever may be thought of this boast, there can be no doubt that the result of the Samian war not only rescued the Athenian empire from great peril,[66] but rendered it stronger than ever: while the foundation of Amphipolis, which was effected two years afterwards, strengthened it still farther. Nor do we hear, during the ensuing few years, of any farther tendencies to disaffection among its members, until the period immediately before the Peloponnesian war. The feeling common among them towards Athens, seems to have been neither attachment nor hatred, but simple indifference and acquiescence in her supremacy. Such amount of positive discontent as really existed among them, arose, not from actual hardships suffered, but from the general political instinct of the Greek mind,—desire of separate autonomy for each city; which manifested itself in each, through the oligarchical party, whose power was kept down by Athens, and was stimulated by the sentiment communicated from the Grecian communities without the Athenian empire. According to that sentiment, the condition of a subject-ally of Athens was treated as one of degradation and servitude: and in proportion as fear and hatred of Athens became more and more predominant among the allies of Sparta, they gave utterance to the sentiment more and more emphatically, so as to encourage discontent artificially among the subject-allies of the Athenian empire. Possessing complete mastery of the sea, and every sort of superiority requisite for holding empire over islands, Athens had yet no sentiment to appeal to in her subjects, calculated to render her empire popular, except that of common democracy, which seems at first to have acted without any care on her part to encourage it, until the progress of the Peloponnesian war made such encouragement a part of her policy. And had she even tried sincerely to keep up in the allies the feeling of a common interest, and the attachment to a permanent confederacy, the instinct of political separation would probably have baffled all her efforts. But she took no such pains,—with the usual morality that grows up in the minds of the actual possessors of power, she conceived herself entitled to exact obedience as her right; and some of the Athenian speakers in Thucydidês go so far as to disdain all pretence of legitimate power, even such as might fairly be set up, resting the supremacy of Athens on the naked plea of superior force.[67] As the allied cities were mostly under democracies,—through the indirect influence rather than the systematic dictation of Athens,—yet each having its own internal aristocracy in a state of opposition; so the movements for revolt against Athens originated with the aristocracy or with some few citizens apart: while the people, though sharing more or less in the desire for autonomy, had yet either a fear of their own aristocracy or a sympathy with Athens, which made them always backward in revolting, sometimes decidedly opposed to it. Neither Periklês nor Kleon, indeed, lay stress on the attachment of the people as distinguished from that of the Few, in these dependent cities; but the argument is strongly insisted on by Diodorus,[68] in the discussion respecting Mitylênê after its surrender: and as the war advanced, the question of alliance with Athens or Sparta became more and more identified with the internal preponderance of democracy or oligarchy in each.[69] We shall find that in most of those cases of actual revolt where we are informed of the preceding circumstances, the step is adopted or contrived by a small number of oligarchical malcontents, without consulting the general voice; while in those cases where the general assembly is consulted beforehand, there is manifested indeed a preference for autonomy, but nothing like a hatred of Athens or decided inclination to break with her. In the case of Mitylênê,[70] in the fourth year of the war, it was the aristocratical government which revolted, while the people, as soon as they obtained arms, actually declared in favor of Athens: and the secession of Chios, the greatest of all the allies, in the twentieth year of the Peloponnesian war, even after all the hardships which the allies had been called upon to bear in that war, and after the ruinous disasters which Athens had sustained before Syracuse,—was both prepared beforehand and accomplished by secret negotiations of the Chian oligarchy, not only without the concurrence, but against the inclination, of their own people.[71] In like manner, the revolt of Thasos would not have occurred, had not the Thasian democracy been previously subverted by the Athenian Peisander and his oligarchical confederates. So in Akanthus, in Amphipolis, in Mendê, and those other Athenian dependencies which were wrested from Athens by Brasidas, we find the latter secretly introduced by a few conspirators, while the bulk of the citizens do not hail him at once as a deliverer, like men sick of Athenian supremacy: they acquiesce, not without debate, when Brasidas is already in the town, and his demeanor, just as well as conciliating, soon gains their esteem: but neither in Akanthus nor in Amphipolis would he have been admitted by the free decision of the citizens, if they had not been alarmed for the safety of their friends, their properties, and their harvest, still exposed in the lands without the walls.[72] These particular examples warrant us in affirming, that though the oligarchy in the various allied cities desired eagerly to shake off the supremacy of Athens, the people were always backward in following them, sometimes even opposed, and hardly ever willing to make sacrifices for the object. They shared the universal Grecian desire for separate autonomy,[73] felt the Athenian empire as an extraneous pressure which they would have been glad to shake off, whenever the change could be made with safety: but their condition was not one of positive hardship, nor did they overlook the hazardous side of such a change,—partly from the coercive hand of Athens, partly from new enemies against whom Athens had hitherto protected them, and not least, from their own oligarchy. Of course, the different allied cities were not all animated by the same feelings, some being more averse to Athens than others.
The particular modes in which Athenian supremacy was felt as a grievance by the allies appear to have been chiefly three. 1. The annual tribute. 2. The encroachments, exactions, or perhaps plunder, committed by individual Athenians, who would often take advantage of their superior position, either as serving in the naval armaments, as invested with the function of inspectors as placed in garrison, or as carrying on some private speculation. 3. The obligation under which the allies were placed, of bringing a large proportion of their judicial trials to be settled before the dikasteries at Athens.
As to the tribute, I have before remarked that its amount had been but little raised from its first settlement down to the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, at which time it was six hundred talents yearly:[74] it appears to have been reviewed, and the apportionment corrected, in every fifth year, at which period the collecting officers may probably have been changed; but we shall afterwards find it becoming larger and more burdensome. The same gradual increase may probably be affirmed respecting the second head of inconvenience,—vexation caused to the allies by individual Athenians, chiefly officers of armaments, or powerful citizens.[75] Doubtless this was always more or less a real grievance, from the moment when the Athenians became despots in place of chiefs, but it was probably not very serious in extent until after the commencement of the Peloponnesian war, when revolt on the part of the allies became more apprehended, and when garrisons, inspectors, and tribute-gathering ships became more essential in the working of the Athenian empire.
But the third circumstance above noticed—the subjection of the allied cities to the Athenian dikasteries—has been more dwelt upon as a grievance than the second, and seems to have been unduly exaggerated. We can hardly doubt that the beginning of this jurisdiction exercised by the Athenian dikasteries dates with the synod of Delos, at the time of the first formation of the confederacy. It was an indispensable element of that confederacy, that the members should forego their right of private war among each other, and submit their differences to peaceable arbitration,—a covenant introduced even into alliances much less intimate than this was, and absolutely essential to the efficient maintenance of any common action against Persia.[76] Of course, many causes of dispute, public as well as private, must have arisen among these wide-spread islands and seaports of the Ægean, connected with each other by relations of fellow-feeling, of trade, and of common apprehensions. The synod of Delos, composed of the deputies of all, was the natural board of arbitration for such disputes, and a habit must thus have been formed, of recognizing a sort of federal tribunal,—to decide peaceably how far each ally had faithfully discharged its duties, both towards the confederacy collectively, and towards other allies with their individual citizens separately,—as well as to enforce its decisions and punish refractory members, pursuant to the right which Sparta and her confederacy claimed and exercised also.[77] Now from the beginning, the Athenians were the guiding and enforcing presidents of this synod, and when it gradually died away, they were found occupying its place as well as clothed with its functions. It was in this manner that their judicial authority over the allies appears first to have begun, as the confederacy became changed into an Athenian empire,—the judicial functions of the synod being transferred along with the common treasure to Athens, and doubtless much extended. And on the whole, these functions must have been productive of more good than evil to the allies themselves, especially to the weakest and most defenceless among them.
Among the thousand towns which paid tribute to Athens,—taking this numerical statement of Aristophanês, not in its exact meaning, but simply as a great number,—if a small town, or one of its citizens, had cause of complaint against a larger, there was no channel except the synod of Delos, or the Athenian tribunal, through which it could have any reasonable assurance of fair trial or justice. It is not to be supposed that all the private complaints and suits between citizen and citizen, in each respective subject town, were carried up for trial to Athens: yet we do not know distinctly how the line was drawn between matters carried up thither and matters tried at home. The subject cities appear to have been interdicted from the power of capital punishment, which could only be inflicted after previous trial and condemnation at Athens:[78] so that the latter reserved to herself the cognizance of most of the grave crimes,—or what may be called “the higher justice” generally. And the political accusations preferred by citizen against citizen, in any subject city, for alleged treason, corruption, non-fulfilment of public duty, etc., were doubtless carried to Athens for trial,—perhaps the most important part of her jurisdiction.
But the maintenance of this judicial supremacy was not intended by Athens for the substantive object of amending the administration of justice in each separate allied city: it went rather to regulate the relations between city and city,—between citizens of different cities,—between Athenian citizens or officers, and any of these allied cities with which they had relations,—between each city itself, as a dependent government with contending political parties, and the imperial head, Athens. All these were problems which imperial Athens was called on to solve, and the best way of solving them would have been through some common synod emanating from all the allies: putting this aside, we shall find that the solution provided by Athens was perhaps the next best, and we shall be the more induced to think so, when we compare it with the proceedings afterwards adopted by Sparta, when she had put down the Athenian empire. Under Sparta, the general rule was, to place each of the dependent cities under the government of a dekadarchy or oligarchical council of ten among its chief citizens, together with a Spartan harmost, or governor, having a small garrison under his orders. It will be found, when we come to describe the Spartan maritime empire, that these arrangements exposed each dependent city to very great violence and extortion, while, after all, they solved only a part of the problem: they served only to maintain each separate city under the dominion of Sparta, without contributing to regulate the dealings between the citizens of one and those of another, or to bind together the empire as a whole. Now the Athenians did not, as a system, place in their dependent cities, governors analogous to the harmosts, though they did so occasionally under special need; but their fleets and their officers were in frequent relation with these cities; and as the principal officers were noways indisposed to abuse their position, so the facility of complaint, constantly open to the Athenian popular dikastery, served both as redress and guarantee against misrule of this description. It was a guarantee which the allies themselves sensibly felt and valued, as we know from Thucydidês: the chief source from whence they had to apprehend evil was the Athenian officials and principal citizens, who could misemploy the power of Athens for their own private purposes,—but they looked up to the “Athenian Demos as a chastener of such evil-doers and as a harbor of refuge to themselves.”[79] If the popular dikasteries at Athens had not been thus open, the allied cities would have suffered much more severely from the captains and officials of Athens in their individual capacity. And the maintenance of political harmony, between the imperial city and the subject ally, was insured by Athens through the jurisdiction of her dikasteries with much less cost of injustice and violence than by Sparta; for though oligarchical partisans might sometimes be unjustly condemned at Athens, yet such accidental wrong was immensely overpassed by the enormities of the Spartan harmosts and dekadarchies, who put numbers to death without any trial at all.
So again, it is to be recollected that Athenian private citizens, not officially employed, were spread over the whole range of the empire as kleruchs, proprietors, or traders; of course, therefore, disputes would arise between them and the natives of the subject cities, as well as among these latter themselves, in cases where both parties did not belong to the same city. Now in such cases the Spartan imperial authority was so exercised as to afford little or no remedy, since the action of the harmost or the dekadarchy was confined to one separate city; while the Athenian dikasteries, with universal competence and public trial, afforded the only redress which the contingency admitted. If a Thasian citizen believed himself aggrieved by the historian Thucydidês, either as commander of the Athenian fleet off the station, or as proprietor of gold mines in Thrace, he had his remedy against the latter by accusation before the Athenian dikasteries, to which the most powerful Athenian was amenable not less than the meanest Thasian. To a citizen of any allied city, it might be an occasional hardship to be sued before the courts at Athens, but it was also often a valuable privilege to him to be able to sue before those courts others whom else he could not have reached. He had his share both of the benefit and of the hardship. Athens, if she robbed her subject-allies of their independence, at least gave them in exchange the advantage of a central and common judiciary authority; thus enabling each of them to enforce claims of justice against the rest, in a way which would not have been practicable, to the weaker at least, even in a state of general independence.
Now Sparta seems not even to have attempted anything of the kind with regard to her subject-allies, being content to keep them under the rule of a harmost, and a partisan oligarchy; and we read anecdotes which show that no justice could be obtained at Sparta, even for the grossest outrages committed by the harmost, or by private Spartans out of Laconia. The two daughters of a Bœotian named Skedasus, of Leuktra in Bœotia, had been first violated and then slain by two Spartan citizens: the son of a citizen of Oreus, in Eubœa, had been also outraged and killed by the harmost Aristodêmus:[80] in both cases the fathers went to Sparta to lay the enormity before the ephors and other authorities, and in both cases a deaf ear was turned to their complaints. But such crimes, if committed by Athenian citizens or officers, might have been brought to a formal exposure before the public sitting of the dikastery, and there can be no doubt that both would have been severely punished: we shall see hereafter that an enormity of this description, committed by the Athenian general Pachês, at Mitylênê, cost him his life before the Athenian dikasts.[81] Xenophon, in the dark and one-sided representation which he gives of the Athenian democracy, remarks, that if the subject-allies had not been made amenable to justice, at Athens, they would have cared little for the people of Athens, and would have paid court only to those individual Athenians—generals, trierarchs, or envoys—who visited the islands on service; but under the existing system, the subjects were compelled to visit Athens either as plaintiffs or defendants, and were thus under the necessity of paying court to the bulk of the people also,—that is, to those humbler citizens out of whom the dikasteries were formed; they supplicated the dikasts in court for favor or lenient dealing.[82] However true this may be, we must remark that it was a lighter lot to be brought for trial before the dikastery, than to be condemned without redress by the general on service, or to be forced to buy off his condemnation by a bribe; and, moreover, that the dikastery was open not merely to receive accusations against citizens of the allied cities, but also to entertain the complaints which they preferred against others.