It was from these considerations that the Spartans were induced to submit to that loss of command which the misconduct of Pausanias had brought upon them. Their acquiescence facilitated the immense change about to take place in Grecian politics. According to the tendencies in progress prior to the Persian invasion, Sparta had become gradually more and more the president of something like a Panhellenic union, comprising the greater part of the Grecian states. Such at least was the point towards which things seemed to be tending; and if many separate states stood aloof from this union, none of them at least sought to form any counter-union, if we except the obsolete and impotent pretensions of Argos.
But the sympathies of the Peloponnesians still clung to Sparta, while those of the Ionian Greeks had turned to Athens: and thus not only the short-lived symptoms of an established Panhellenic union, but even all tendencies towards it from this time disappear. There now stands out a manifest schism, with two pronounced parties, towards one of which nearly all the constituent atoms of the Grecian world gravitate: the maritime states, newly enfranchised from Persia, towards Athens—the land-states, which had formed most part of the confederate army at Platæa, towards Sparta. Along with this national schism and called into action by it, appears the internal political schism in each separate city between oligarchy and democracy. Of course, the germ of these parties had already previously existed in the separate states, but the energetic democracy of Athens, and the pronounced tendency of Sparta to rest upon the native oligarchies in each separate city as her chief support, now began to bestow, on the conflict of internal political parties, an Hellenic importance, and an aggravated bitterness, which had never before belonged to it.
THE CONFEDERACY OF DELOS
[478-476 B.C.]
The general conditions of the confederacy of Delos were regulated in a common synod of the members appointed to meet periodically for deliberative purposes, in the temple of Apollo and Artemis at Delos—of old, the venerated spot for the religious festivals of the Ionic cities, and at the same time a convenient centre for the members. A definite obligation, either in equipped ships of war or in money, was imposed upon every separate city; and the Athenians, as leaders, determined in which form contribution should be made by each: their assessment must of course have been reviewed by the synod, nor had they at this time power to enforce any regulation not approved by that body. It had been the good fortune of Athens to profit by the genius of Themistocles on two recent critical occasions (the battle of Salamis and the rebuilding of her walls), where sagacity, craft, and decision were required in extraordinary measure, and where pecuniary probity was of less necessity: it was no less her good fortune now—in the delicate business of assessing a new tax and determining how much each state should bear, without precedents to guide them, when unimpeachable honesty in the assessor was the first of all qualities—not to have Themistocles; but to employ in his stead the well-known, we might almost say the ostentatious probity of Aristides. This must be accounted good fortune, since at the moment when Aristides was sent out, the Athenians could not have anticipated that any such duty would devolve upon him. His assessment not only found favour at the time of its original proposition, when it must have been freely canvassed by the assembled allies, but also maintained its place in general esteem, after Athens had degenerated into an unpopular empire.
Respecting this first assessment, we scarcely know more than one single fact—the aggregate in money was four hundred and sixty talents [equal to about £106,000 or $530,000].
Of the items composing such aggregate, of the individual cities which paid it, of the distribution of obligations to furnish ships and money, we are entirely ignorant: the little information which we possess on these points relates to a period considerably later, shortly before the Peloponnesian War, under the uncontrolled empire then exercised by Athens. Thucydides, in his brief sketch, makes us clearly understand the difference between presiding Athens, with her autonomous and regularly assembled allies in 476 B.C., and imperial Athens, with her subject allies in 432 B.C.; the Greek word equivalent to ally left either of these epithets to be understood, by an ambiguity exceedingly convenient to the powerful states,—and he indicates the general causes of the change: but he gives us few particulars as to the modifying circumstances, and none at all as to the first start. He tells us only that the Athenians appointed a peculiar board of officers, called the hellenotamiæ, to receive and administer the common fund,—that Delos was constituted the general treasury, where the money was to be kept,—and that the payment thus levied was called the phorus; a name which appears then to have been first put into circulation, though afterwards usual, and to have conveyed at first no degrading import, though it afterwards became so odious as to be exchanged for a more innocent synonym.
The public import of the name hellenotamiæ, coined for the occasion, the selection of Delos as a centre, and the provision for regular meetings of the members, demonstrate the patriotic and fraternal purpose which the league was destined to serve. In truth, the protection of the Ægean Sea against foreign maritime force and lawless piracy, as well as that of the Hellespont and Bosporus against the transit of a Persian force, was a purpose essentially public, for which all the parties interested were bound in equity to provide by way of common contribution: any island or seaport which might refrain from contributing, was a gainer at the cost of others: and we cannot doubt that the general feeling of this common danger as well as equitable obligation, at a moment when the fear of Persia was yet serious, was the real cause which brought together so many contributing members, and enabled the forward parties to shame into concurrence such as were more backward.