We have now passed that short, but bitter and sanguinary interval, occupied by the Thirty, which succeeded so immediately upon the extinction of the empire and independence of Athens as to leave no opportunity for pause or reflection. A few words respecting the rise and fall of that empire are now required, summing up as it were the political moral of the events recorded in my last two volumes, between 477 and 405 B.C.
I related, in the forty-fifth chapter, the steps by which Athens first acquired her empire, raised it to its maximum, including both maritime and inland dominion, then lost the inland portion of it; which loss was ratified by the Thirty Years Truce concluded with Sparta and the Peloponnesian confederacy in 445 B.C. Her maritime empire was based upon the confederacy of Delos, formed by the islands in the Ægean and the towns on the seaboard immediately after the battles of Platæa and Mykalê, for the purpose not merely of expelling the Persians from the Ægean, but of keeping them away permanently. To the accomplishment of this important object, Sparta was altogether inadequate; nor would it ever have been accomplished, if Athens had not displayed a combination of military energy, naval discipline, power of organization, and honorable devotion to a great Pan-Hellenic purpose, such as had never been witnessed in Grecian history.
The confederacy of Delos was formed by the free and spontaneous association of many different towns, all alike independent; towns which met in synod and deliberated by equal vote, took by their majority resolutions binding upon all, and chose Athens as their chief to enforce these resolutions, as well as to superintend generally the war against the common enemy. But it was, from the beginning, a compact which permanently bound each individual state to the remainder. None had liberty either to recede, or to withhold the contingent imposed by authority of the common synod, or to take any separate step inconsistent with its obligations to the confederacy. No union less stringent than this could have prevented the renewal of Persian ascendency in the Ægean. Seceding or disobedient states were thus treated as guilty of treason or revolt, which it was the duty of Athens, as chief, to repress. Her first repressions, against Naxos and other states, were undertaken in prosecution of this duty, in which if she had been wanting, the confederacy would have fallen to pieces, and the common enemy would have reappeared.
Now the only way by which the confederacy was saved from falling to pieces, was by being transformed into an Athenian empire. Such transformation, as Thucydidês plainly intimates,[454] did not arise from the ambition or deep-laid projects of Athens, but from the reluctance of the larger confederates to discharge the obligations imposed by the common synod, and from the unwarlike character of the confederates generally, which made them desirous to commute military service for money-payment, while Athens on her part was not less anxious to perform the service and obtain the money. By gradual and unforeseen stages, Athens thus passed from consulate to empire: in such manner that no one could point out the precise moment of time when the confederacy of Delos ceased, and when the empire began. Even the transfer of the common fund from Delos to Athens, which was the palpable manifestation of a change already realized, was not an act of high-handed injustice in the Athenians, but warranted by prudential views of the existing state of affairs, and even proposed by a leading member of the confederacy.[455]
But the Athenian empire came to include (between 460-446 B.C.) other cities, not parties to the confederacy of Delos. Athens had conquered her ancient enemy the island of Ægina, and had acquired supremacy over Megara, Bœotia, Phocis, and Lokris, and Achaia in Peloponnesus. The Megarians joined her to escape the oppression of their neighbor Corinth: her influence over Bœotia was acquired by allying herself with a democratical party in the Bœotian cities, against Sparta, who had been actively interfering to sustain the opposite party and to renovate the ascendency of Thebes. Athens was, for the time, successful in all these enterprises; but if we follow the details, we shall not find her more open to reproach on the score of aggressive tendencies than Sparta or Corinth. Her empire was now at its maximum; and had she been able to maintain it,—or even to keep possession of the Megarid separately, which gave her the means of barring out all invasions from Peloponnesus,—the future course of Grecian history would have been materially altered. But her empire on land did not rest upon the same footing as her empire at sea. The exiles in Megara and Bœotia, etc., and the anti-Athenian party generally in those places,—combined with the rashness of her general Tolmidês at Korôneia,—deprived her of all her land-dependencies near home, and even threatened her with the loss of Eubœa. The peace concluded in 445 B.C. left her with all her maritime and insular empire, including Eubœa, but with nothing more; while by the loss of Megara she was now open to invasion from Peloponnesus.
On this footing she remained at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war fourteen years afterwards. I have shown that that war did not arise, as has been so often asserted, from aggressive or ambitious schemes on the part of Athens, but that, on the contrary, the aggression was all on the side of her enemies; who were full of hopes that they could put her down with little delay; while she was not merely conservative and defensive, but even discouraged by the certainty of destructive invasion, and only dissuaded from concessions, alike imprudent and inglorious, by the extraordinary influence and resolute wisdom of Periklês. That great man comprehended well both the conditions and the limits of Athenian empire. Athens was now understood, especially since the revolt and reconquest of the powerful island of Samos in 440 B.C., by her subjects and enemies as well as by her own citizens, to be mistress of the sea. It was the care of Periklês to keep that belief within definite boundaries, and to prevent all waste of the force of the city in making new or distant acquisitions which could not be permanently maintained. But it was also his care to enforce upon his countrymen the lesson of maintaining their existing empire unimpaired, and shrinking from no effort requisite for that end. Though their whole empire was now staked upon the chances of a perilous war, he did not hesitate to promise them success, provided that they adhered to this conservative policy.
Following the events of the war, we shall find that Athens did adhere to it for the first seven years; years of suffering and trial, from the destructive annual invasion, the yet more destructive pestilence, and the revolt of Mitylênê, but years which still left her empire unimpaired, and the promises of Periklês in fair chance of being realized. In the seventh year of the war occurred the unexpected victory at Sphakteria and the capture of the Lacedæmonian prisoners. This placed in the hands of the Athenians a capital advantage, imparting to them prodigious confidence of future success, while their enemies were in a proportional degree disheartened. It was in this temper that they first departed from the conservative precept of Periklês, and attempted to recover (in 424 B.C.) both Megara and Bœotia. Had the great statesman been alive,[456] he might have turned this moment of superiority to better account, and might perhaps have contrived even to get possession of Megara—a point of unspeakable importance to Athens, since it protected her against invasion—in exchange for the Spartan captives. But the general feeling of confidence which then animated all parties at Athens, determined them in 424 B.C. to grasp at this and much more by force. They tried to reconquer both Megara and Bœotia: in the former they failed, though succeeding so far as to capture Nisæa; in the latter they not only failed, but suffered the disastrous defeat of Delium.
It was in the autumn of that same year 424 B.C., too, that Brasidas broke into their empire in Thrace, and robbed them of Akanthus, Stageira, and some other towns, including their most precious possession, Amphipolis. Again, it seems that the Athenians, partly from the discouragement caused by the disaster at Delium, partly from the ascendency of Nikias and the peace party, departed from the conservative policy of Periklês; not by ambitious over-action, but by inaction, omitting to do all that might have been done to arrest the progress of Brasidas. We must, however, never forget that their capital loss, Amphipolis, was owing altogether to the improvidence of their officers, and could not have been obviated even by Periklês.
But though that great man could not have prevented the loss, he would assuredly have deemed no efforts too great to recover it; and in this respect his policy was espoused by Kleon, in opposition to Nikias and the peace party. The latter thought it wise to make the truce for a year; which so utterly failed of its effect, that Nikias was obliged, even in the midst of it, to conduct an armament to Pallênê in order to preserve the empire against yet farther losses. Still, Nikias and his friends would hear of nothing but peace; and after the expedition of Kleon against Amphipolis in the ensuing year, which failed partly through his military incapacity, partly through the want of hearty concurrence in his political opponents, they concluded what is called the Peace of Nikias in the ensuing spring. In this, too, their calculations are not less signally falsified than in the previous truce: they stipulate that Amphipolis shall be restored, but it is as far from being restored as ever. To make the error still graver and more irreparable, Nikias, with the concurrence of Alkibiadês contracts the alliance with Sparta a few months after the peace, and gives up the captives, the possession of whom being the only hold which Athens as yet had upon the Spartans.