Had the Athenians succeeded in Thessaly, they would have acquired to their alliance nearly the whole of extra-Peloponnesian Greece. But even without Thessaly their power was prodigious, and had now attained a maximum height from which it never varied except to decline. As a counter-balancing loss against so many successes, we have to reckon their ruinous defeat in Egypt, after a war of six years against the Persians (460-455 B.C.). At first they had gained brilliant advantages, in conjunction with the insurgent prince Inarus; expelling the Persians from all Memphis except that strongest part called the White Fortress. And such was the alarm of the Persian king Artaxerxes at the presence of the Athenians in Egypt, that he sent Megabazus with a large sum of money to Sparta, in order to induce the Lacedæmonians to invade Attica. This envoy however failed, and an augmented Persian force, being sent to Egypt under Megabyzus, son of Zopyrus, drove the Athenians and their allies, after an obstinate struggle, out of Memphis into the island of the Nile called Prosopitis. Here they were blocked up for eighteen months, until at length Megabyzus turned the arm of the river, laid the channel dry, and stormed the island by land. A very few Athenians escaped by land to Cyrene: the rest were either slain or made captive, and Inarus himself was crucified. And the calamity of Athens was farther aggravated by the arrival of fifty fresh Athenian ships, which, coming after the defeat, but without being aware of it, sailed into the Mendesian branch of the Nile, and thus fell unawares into the power of the Persians and Phœnicians, very few either of the ships or men escaping. The whole of Egypt became again subject to the Persians, except Amyrtæus, who contrived by retiring into the inaccessible fens still to maintain his independence. One of the largest armaments ever sent forth by Athens and her confederacy was thus utterly ruined.
It was about the time of the destruction of the Athenian army in Egypt, and of the circumnavigation of Peloponnesus by Tolmides, that the internal war, carried on by the Lacedæmonians against the helots or Messenians at Ithome, ended. These besieged men, no longer able to stand out against a protracted blockade, were forced to abandon this last fortress of ancient Messenian independence, stipulating for a safe retreat from the Peloponnesus with their wives and families; with the proviso that if any one of them ever returned to Peloponnesus, he should become the slave of the first person who seized him. They were established by Tolmides at Naupactus (recently taken by the Athenians from the Ozolian Locrians), where they will be found rendering good service to Athens in the following wars.
THE FIVE-YEARS’ TRUCE
[455-448 B.C.]
After the victory of Tanagra, the Lacedæmonians made no further expeditions out of Peloponnesus for several succeeding years, not even to prevent Bœotia and Phocis from being absorbed into the Athenian alliance. The reason of this remissness lay, partly, in their general character; partly, in the continuance of the siege of Ithome, which occupied them at home; but still more perhaps, in the fact that the Athenians, masters of the Megarid, were in occupation of the road over the high lands of Geranea, and could therefore obstruct the march of any army out from Peloponnesus. Even after the surrender of Ithome, the Lacedæmonians remained inactive for three years, after which time a formal truce was concluded with Athens by the Peloponnesians generally, for five years longer. This truce was concluded in a great degree through the influence of Cimon, who was eager to resume effective operations against the Persians; while it was not less suitable to the political interest of Pericles that his most distinguished rival should be absent on foreign service, so as not to interfere with his influence at home. Accordingly Cimon, having equipped a fleet of two hundred triremes from Athens and her confederates, set sail for Cyprus, from whence he despatched sixty ships to Egypt, at the request of the insurgent prince Amyrtæus, who was still maintaining himself against the Persians amidst the fens—while with the remaining armament he laid siege to Citium. In the prosecution of this siege, he died either of disease or of a wound. The armament, under his successor Anaxicrates, became so embarrassed for want of provisions that they abandoned the undertaking altogether, and went to fight the Phœnician and Cilician fleet near Salamis in Cyprus. They were here victorious, first on sea and afterwards on land, though probably not on the same day, as at the Eurymedon; after which they returned home, followed by the sixty ships which had gone to Egypt for the purpose of aiding Amyrtæus.
From this time forward no further operations were undertaken by Athens and her confederacy against the Persians. And it appears that a convention was concluded between them, whereby the Great King on his part promised two things: To leave free, undisturbed, and untaxed, the Asiatic maritime Greeks, not sending troops within a given distance of the coast: To refrain from sending any ships of war either westward of Phaselis (others place the boundary at the Chelidonean islands, rather more to the westward) or within the Cyanean rocks at the confluence of the Thracian Bosporus with the Euxine. On their side the Athenians agreed to leave him in undisturbed possession of Cyprus and Egypt. This was called the Peace of Callias.
We may believe in the reality of this treaty between Athens and Persia, improperly called the Cimonian Treaty: improperly, since not only was it concluded after the death of Cimon, but the Athenian victories by which it was immediately brought on, were gained after his death. Nay more—the probability is, that if Cimon had lived, it would not have been concluded at all. For his interest as well as his glory led him to prosecute the war against Persia, since he was no match for his rival Pericles either as a statesman or as an orator, and could only maintain his popularity by the same means whereby he had earned it—victories and plunder at the cost of the Persians. His death ensured more complete ascendency to Pericles whose policy and character were of a cast altogether opposite.
THE CONFEDERACY BECOMES AN EMPIRE
Athens was now at peace both abroad and at home, under the administration of Pericles, with a great empire, a great fleet, and a great accumulated treasure. The common fund collected from the contributions of the confederates, and originally deposited at Delos, had before this time been transferred to the Acropolis at Athens. At what precise time such transfer took place, we cannot state: nor are we enabled to assign the successive stages whereby the confederacy, chiefly with the free will of its own members, became transformed from a body of armed and active warriors under the guidance of Athens, into disarmed and passive tribute-payers defended by the military force of Athens: from allies free, meeting at Delos, and self-determining into subjects isolated, sending their annual tribute, and awaiting Athenian orders. But it would appear that the change had been made before this time. Some of the more resolute of the allies had tried to secede, but Athens had coerced them by force, and reduced them to the condition of tribute-payers without ships or defence; and Chios, Lesbos, and Samos were now the only allies free and armed on the original footing. Every successive change of an armed ally into a tributary, every subjugation of a seceder, tended of course to cut down the numbers, and enfeeble the authority of the Delian synod; and, what was still worse, it materially altered the reciprocal relation and feelings both of Athens and her allies—exalting the former into something like a despot, and degrading the latter into mere passive subjects.
Of course the palpable manifestation of the change must have been the transfer of the confederate fund from Delos to Athens. The only circumstance which we know respecting this transfer is, that it was proposed by the Samians—the second power in the confederacy, inferior only to Athens, and least of all likely to favour any job or sinister purpose of the Athenians.