The Thasians had not originally trusted in their own strength alone for the hope of final success. Early in the dispute they had sent ministers to Lacedæmon, soliciting protection against the oppression of Athens. The pretence was certainly favourable, and the Lacedæmonian government, no longer pressed by domestic troubles, determined to use the opportunity for interfering to check the growing power of the rival commonwealth, so long an object of jealousy, and now become truly formidable. Without a fleet capable of contending with the Athenian, they could not send succour immediately to Thasos: but they were taking measures secretly for a diversion in its favour, by invading Attica, when a sudden and extraordinary calamity, an earthquake which overthrew the city of Sparta, and in its immediate consequences threatened destruction to the commonwealth, compelled them to confine all their attention at home. Nevertheless the siege, carried on with great vigour, and with all the skill of the age under the direction of Cimon, was, during three years, obstinately resisted. Even then the Thasians obtained terms, severe indeed, but by which they obviated the miseries, death often for themselves and slavery for their families, to which Grecian people, less able to defend themselves, were frequently reduced by Grecian arms. Their fortifications however were destroyed; their ships of war were surrendered; they paid immediately a sum of money; they bound themselves to an annual tribute; and they yielded all claim upon the opposite continent, and the valuable mines there.
The sovereignty of the Athenian people over the allied republics would thus gain some present confirmation; but in the principal object their ambition and avarice were, apparently through over-greediness, disappointed. The town of Eion stood at the mouth of the river Strymon. For the new settlement a place called the Nine Ways, a few miles up the river, was chosen; commodious for the double purpose of communicating with the sea, and commanding the neighbouring country. But the Edonian Thracians, in whose territory it was, resenting the encroachment, infested the settlers with irregular but continual hostilities. To put an end to so troublesome a war the whole force of the colony marched against them. As the Greeks advanced, the Edonians retreated; avoiding a general action, while they sent to all the neighbouring Thracian tribes for assistance, as in a common cause. When they were at length assembled in sufficient numbers, having engaged the Greeks far within a wild and difficult country, they attacked, overpowered, and cut in pieces their army, and annihilated the colony.
Cimon, on his return to Athens, did not meet the acclamations to which he had been accustomed. Faction had been busy in his absence. Apparently the fall of the colony of the Nine Ways furnished both instigation and opportunity, perhaps assisted by circumstances of which no information remains. A prosecution was instituted against him, on the pretence, according to the biographers, that he ought to have extended the Athenian dominion by conquest in Macedonia, and that bribes from Alexander, king of that country, had stopped his exertions. The covetous ambition indeed of the Athenian people, inflamed by interested demagogues, was growing boundless. Cimon, indignant at the ungrateful return for a life divided between performing the most important services to his country, and studying how most to gratify the people, would enter little into particulars in refuting a charge, one part of which he considered as attributing to him no crime, the other as incapable of credit, and therefore beneath his regard. He told the assembled people that “they mistook both him and the country which it was said he ought to have conquered. Other generals have cultivated an interest with the Ionians and the Thessalians, whose riches might make an interference in their concerns profitable. For himself, he had never sought any connection with those people; but he confessed he esteemed the Macedonians, who were virtuous and brave, but not rich; nor would he ever prefer riches to those qualities, though he had his satisfaction in having enriched his country with the spoils of its enemies.” The popularity of Cimon was yet great; his principal opponents apparently found it not a time for pushing matters to extremity against him, and such a defence sufficed to procure an honourable acquittal.
[464-462 B.C.]
Meanwhile Lacedæmon had been in the utmost confusion and on the brink of ruin. In the year 464 B.C. the earthquake came suddenly at mid-day, with a violence before unheard of. The youths of the principal families, assembled in the gymnasium at the appointed hour for exercise, were in great numbers crushed by its fall: many of both sexes and of all ages were buried under the ruins of other buildings: the shocks were repeated; the earth opened in several places; vast fragments from the summits of Taygetus were tumbled down its sides: in the end only five houses remained standing in Sparta, and it was computed that twenty thousand lives were lost.
The first strokes of this awful calamity filled all ranks with the same apprehensions. But, in the continuance of it, that wretched multitude, excluded from all participation in the prosperity of their country, began to found hope on its distress: a proposal, obscurely made, was rapidly communicated, and the helots assembled from various parts with one purpose, of putting their severe masters to death, and making the country their own. The ready foresight and prudent exertion of Archidamus, who had succeeded his grandfather Leotychides in the throne of the house of Procles, preserved Lacedæmon. In the confusion of the first alarm, while some were endeavouring to save their most valuable effects from the ruins of the city, others flying various ways for personal safety, Archidamus, collecting what he could of his friends and attendants about him, caused trumpets to sound to arms, as if an enemy were at hand. The Lacedæmonians, universally trained to the strictest military discipline, obeyed the signal; arms were the only necessaries sought; and civil rule, dissipated by the magnitude of the calamity, was, for the existing circumstances, most advantageously supplied by military order. The helots, awed by the very unexpected appearance of a regular army instead of a confused and flying multitude, desisted from their meditated attempt; but, quitting the city, spread themselves over the country, and excited their fellows universally to rebellion.
[462 B.C.]
The greater part of those miserable men, whom the Lacedæmonians held in so cruel a bondage, were descendants of the Messenians, men of the same blood with themselves, Greeks and Dorians. Memory of the wars of their ancestors, of their hero Aristomenes, and of the defence of Ithome, was not obsolete among them. Ithome accordingly they seized and made their principal post; and they so outnumbered the Lacedæmonians that, though deficiently armed, yet, being not without discipline acquired in attendance upon their masters in war, they were capable of being formidable even in the field. Nor was it thus only that the rebellion was distressing.[44] The Lacedæmonians, singularly ready and able in the use of arms, were singularly helpless in almost every other business. Deprived of their slaves they were nearly deprived of the means of subsistence; agriculture stopped, and mechanic arts ceased. Application was therefore made to the neighbouring allies for succour. The zealous friendship of the Æginetans upon the occasion we find afterwards acknowledged by the Lacedæmonian government, and assistance came from as far as Platæa. Thus re-enforced the spirited and well-directed exertions of Archidamus quickly so far reduced the rebellion that the insurgents remaining in arms were blockaded in Ithome. But the extraordinary natural strength of that place, the desperate obstinacy of the defenders, and the deficiency of the assailants in the science of attack, giving reason to apprehend that the business might not be soon accomplished, the Lacedæmonians sent to desire assistance from the Athenians, who were esteemed, beyond the other Greeks, experienced and skilful in the war of sieges.
This measure seems to have been on many accounts imprudent. There was found at Athens a strong disposition to refuse the aid. But Cimon, who, with a universal liberality, always professed particular esteem for the Lacedæmonians, prevailed upon his countrymen to take the generous part; and a considerable body of forces marched under his command into the Peloponnesus. Upon their arrival at the camp of the besiegers an assault upon the place was attempted, but with so little success that recourse was again had to the old method of blockade. It was in the leisure of that inactive and tedious mode of attack that principally arose those heartburnings which first occasioned an avowed national aversion between the Athenians and Lacedæmonians, and led, not indeed immediately, but in a direct line, to the fatal Peloponnesian War. All the prudence and all the authority of Cimon could not prevent the vivacious spirit of the Athenians from exulting, perhaps rather insultingly, in the new pre-eminence of their country; wherever danger called, they would be ostentatiously forward to meet it; and an assumed superiority, without a direct pretension to it, was continually appearing.
The Spartan pride was offended by their arrogance; the Spartan gravity was disturbed by their lively forwardness: it began to be considered that, though Greeks, they were Ionians, whom the Peloponnesians considered as an alien race; and it occurred that if, in the continuance of the siege, any disgust should arise, there was no security that they might not renounce their present engagements, and even connect themselves with the helots; who, as Greeks, had, not less than the Lacedæmonians, a claim to friendship and protection from every other Grecian people. Mistrust thus arose on one side; disgust became quickly manifest on both; and the Lacedæmonians shortly resolved to dismiss the Athenian forces. This however they endeavoured to do, as far as might be, without offence, by declaring that an “assault having been found ineffectual, the assistance of the Athenians was superfluous for the blockade, and the Lacedæmonians would not give their allies unnecessary trouble.” All the other allies were however retained, and the Athenians alone returned home; so exasperated by this invidious distinction that, on their arrival at Athens, the party adverse to Cimon proposing a decree for renouncing the confederacy with Lacedæmon, it was carried. An alliance with Argos, the inveterate enemy of Sparta, immediately followed; and soon after the Thessalians acceded to the new confederacy.