Chapter III—
Athenian Imperialism
Athens's acquisition of the rule over most of the peoples inhabiting the Aegean and the coast of Anatolia in the first half of the fifth century, like Pericles' disposition of this empire, is a controversial subject of study. Much of the reliable evidence derives from Thucydides' account of "the manner in which the Athenian rule was established" (1.97.2ff.), augmented, principally for the period after 450 B.C. , by epigraphic material that is often problematic in its own right. Many inscriptions are mere fragments, the context of which are frequently as uncertain as the date of the decisions they record; and though sometimes the style of the letter-forms suggests an approximate date for one decree or another, even these stylistic criteria can be misleading. Study of the problem is further complicated by the inflammatory nature of the subject. "Athenian imperialism" evokes differing interpretations and competing ideological estimates. It might be another matter had the Athenians not created the first democracy simultaneously with the first Greek empire. But it is easy to idealize Periclean Athens, for reasons that are perfectly understandable, and it is no less difficult to accept the odious implications of Athens's imperial rule. Pericles perceived the contradiction, too, but did not attempt to extenuate it when he remarked, in a speech attributed to him by Thucydides (2.63.2) that the empire was "like a tyranny." To Pericles, like Cimon before him, the empire was Athenian property earned by Athenian enterprise, and its liquidation was neither practical nor safe. Moderns are inclined to be more sentimental and to palliate the unpleasant facts.
A further complication in evaluating "Athenian imperialism" is a corollary of the fact that the city-state was a democracy The nature of Athenian rule was such as to encourage and, if necessary, impose, democratic governments on allied subjects. To moderns, viewing an ancient world in which oligarchy was the usual form of government, Athens's procedure has been taken to be a progressive step in the right direction. That argument is irrefutable in its own terms, but reallocation of power to a wider segment of the population in Athens itself was balanced by the subordination of her allies to the imperial city. The allies, with few exceptions, were required to pay tribute to Athens; their control of their own judicial processes was vitally limited; disputes with Athenians were resolved by Athenian juries; and they endured the abuse by Athenians of special privileges in their own lands. In general, they were regarded as city-states of inferior status, which, if they wished to succeed with the Athenians, were required to behave like sycophants. Any view proposing that "popularity" or its opposite can be inferred simply from narrow ideological considerations is superficial.[1]
Our purpose in this chapter, however, is neither to be moralistic nor to assume the role of judge. Our aim is to chart, and, when feasible, to explain, the development of the Athenian empire. Inevitably, our progress will be snail-like; we are compelled at almost every stage of our reconstruction to take issue with what must be called the prevailing view.[2] Polemic, unfortunately, is unavoidable, and sometimes the questions addressed become technical. But the orthodox view has by now evolved into a seamless and internally consistent set of interlocking arguments, which must be tested in detail as well as considered as a whole. In our opinion, the conventional view represents a substantial departure in emphasis from the main lines of the ancient tradition, while its inferential structure proceeds for the most part from the re-
[1] For the debate on this question initiated by G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, "The Character of the Athenian Empire," Historia 3 (1954–55), 1–41, see D. W. Bradeen, "The Popularity of the Athenian Empire," Historia 9 (1960), 257–69; T. J. Quinn, "Thucydides and the Unpopularity of the Athenian Empire," Historia 13 (1964), 257–66; C. W. Fornara, "IG i 39.52–57 and the 'Popularity' of the Athenian Empire," CSCA 10 (1977), 39–55. See also pp. 111ff. below.
[2] As all students of the subject are aware, the work of the editors of ATL (vols. 1: 1939, 2: 1949, 3: 1950, 4: 1953) represents a watershed in our study of the history of the Athenian empire. Their brilliant achievement became immediately authoritative, though certain modifications to their view have been introduced in the subsequent literature, notably by Russell Meiggs in AE and Meiggs and D. M. Lewis in ML. The work of Harold Mattingly (see Appendix 10 and below) in opposition to the "orthodox view" deserves special mention here.
quirements of a hypothesis rather than from the implications of the various pieces of our evidence.
The "orthodox" view of the development of the Delian League into an empire holds that the vital change from allied harmony to imperial subjugation occurred in the middle of the fifth century, the critical factor being the conclusion of peace with Persia in 449/8 (often dated to 450/49)[3] —the "Peace of Callias." Formal recognition of the end of a state of war between the Athenian alliance and Persia, it is supposed, eliminated the rationale for the Delian League and raised the question of whether the alliance should be abandoned.[4] At this time, accordingly, a series of measures tightened Athenian control over the subject-allies, and Pericles is squarely given responsibility for the harsher rule.[5] Several public documents possessed of stern imperialistic tone, formerly regarded as post-Periclean, now redated, are understood to bear Pericles' impress.[6] The transition to empire, again according to this view, entailed consequences of great advantage to the city of Athens. Thus the allied treasury, which had been brought from the island of Delos to Athens in 454,[7] became, after the Peace of Callias and because of it, the source of revenue for Athens' astonishing building program, which resulted in the construction of the Propylaea and the Parthenon.[8]
[3] The editors of ATL (3.275ff., following Wade-Gery, HSCP Suppl. 1 [1940], 121–56 = Essays, pp. 201–32 [esp. 226ff.]) press 450/49 as the date for the Peace of Callias, and this date has been supported by Meiggs, AE, pp. 125ff. Badian, JHS 107 (1987), 38–39, returns the peace to its traditional setting, 449/8 (Diod. 12.4 = Fornara 95G).
[4] Fornara 95M. See, e.g., Meiggs, AE, p. 152. Indeed, some infer that no tribute was collected in the immediately succeeding year (449/8; but see n. 3 above), e.g., Wade-Gery, BSA 33 (1932–33), 112; B. D. Meritt, Documents on Athenian Tribute (Cambridge, Mass., 1937), pp. 65, 69; ATL, 1.138, 175, 3.39–52, 278–79. Against this view, see S. Dow, AJA 45 (1941), 642; A. W. Gomme, CR 54 (1940), 65–67; W. K. Pritchett, "The Height of the Lapis Primus," Historia 13 (1964), 129–34; id., "The Top of the Lapis Primus," GRBS 7 (1966), 123–29; id., "The Location of the Lapis Primus," GRBS 8 (1967), 113–19 (cf. B. D. Meritt, "The Second Athenian Tribute Assessment Period," GRBS 8 [1967], 121–32); and cf. Sealey, History, 282–87.
[5] Meiggs, AE , pp. 156–57.
[6] Namely, e.g., the Coinage Decree (IG i 1453 = ML 45 = Fornara 97); the Cleinias Decree (IG i 34 = ML 46 = Fornara 98); the Colophon treaty (IG i 37 = ML 47 = Fornara 99); the foundation of the Athenian colony at Brea (IG i 46 = ML 49 = Fornara 100); the regulations for Eretria (IG i 39 = Fornara 102); and for Chalcis (IG i 40 = ML 52 = Fornara 103). Cf. ATL, passim, Meiggs, AE, pp. 152ff. See also pp. 97ff. below and Appendix 10.
[7] For the standard date, see ATL, 3.262–64; Meiggs, AE , p. 108; Fornara 85. W. K. Pritchett, "The Transfer of the Delian Treasury," Historia 18 (1969), 17–21 (cf. Meiggs, AE, pp. 420–21), and N. D. Robertson, "The True Nature of the Delian League," AJAH 5 (1980), 124–25 n. 93, propose an earlier date.
[8] For the date, see ML 59, 60 = Fornara 120, 118B. See, in general, G. Zinserling, "Das Akropolisbauprogramm des Perikles: Politische Voraussetzungen und ideologischerKontext," in E. Kluwe, ed., Kultur und Fortschritt in der Blützeit der griechischen Polis (Berlin, 1985), and W. Ameling, "Plutarch, Pericles 12–14," Historia 34 (1985), 47–63. For the use of this money for payments to the people, see ch. 2, pp. 73f.
The decision to move the treasury, it is held, marks the transformation of Athens in the early forties from idealistic hegemon to predatory ruler, while the amalgamation of the allied treasure and Athenian revenues created a stockpile of money that enabled Pericles to embark on war in 431 in expectation of a successful outcome.[9]
We begin with the conception—standard, we think, though more often latent than explicit—that the empire developed "gradually," an assumption that envisages a process roughly comparable to the progress of a play, with a beginning, a middle and an end. The beginning was the league, Pericles enters in the second act, and Cleon ends the tragedy. The operative assumption, in other words, is that the league's "development" into an "empire" resulted from natural centripetal processes over an extended period of time. Athens, first among equals, gradually gained overwhelming power out of her need to exert an executive authority that tightened increasingly because of the recalcitrance of undisciplined and fractious allies.[10] This view takes its departure from Thucydides' explanation of the alteration in the balance of power between Athens and her allies. Having stated (1.98.4) that Naxos was the first allied city to be enslaved contrary to established principle (
), and that other allies thereafter suffered the same fate, Thucydides adds by way of explanation (1.99) that the main causes of subjugation were nonpayment of tribute, failure to provide ships for the campaigns, and defection from expeditions in the field.
For the Athenians were very severe and exacting, and made themselves offensive by displaying the screw of necessity to men who were not used to and in fact not disposed for any continuous labor. In some other respects the Athenians were not the old popular rulers they had been at first; and if they had more than their fair share of service, it was correspondingly easy for them to reduce any that tried to leave the confederacy. (trans. Crawley)
However, the "orthodox view" interpolates at least three conclusory judgments into 1.99 that run counter to the meaning of this important piece of Thucydidean analysis. The first is that the process was gradual—yet Naxos was subjugated less than ten years after Athens acquired the hegemony. The second is that Athens acted legitimately, in a man-
[9] See ATL, 3.263–64, and pp. 93ff. below.
[10] Cf. ATL, 3, pp. 225ff., 244ff., 275ff., and Meiggs, AE, pp. 42ff., 68ff., 152ff.
ner that was "formally justified"[11] —yet Thucydides informs us that the reduction of an allied city was
The question of whether the Athenians did or did not have the "right" to compel their allies to perform as the Athenians wished is usually regarded in isolation from the context in which it is placed by Thucydides. Obviously, depending on one's notion of the intent and prior understanding of the initial "contract" made in 478/7,[13] one can side with the Athenians or with the allies as one prefers; a good logician, a Thucydides, for example, could provide compelling speeches outlining the case on either side. The relevant observation, however, is that Thucydides has linked allied recalcitrance with the causes of revolts, and these, in turn, with their suppression
Thucydides in fact conveys a somewhat different impression. In the context of the enslavement of the first allied city (1.99), speaking of the violation of "established principle," he informs us that the Athenians were hard taskmasters, who used failure to meet their requirements as a pretext to reduce their allies to dependent subjects. The difference
[11] Meiggs, AE, p. 46; cf. ATL, 3.244, Hammond, Studies, pp. 337–38.
[12] Cf. Gomme, HCT, 1.282 (ad loc.). The plain meaning of this perfect participle cannot be evaded by special arguments designed to obscure it as, e.g., by the editors of ATL, 3.156–57, 228.
[13] Fundamental are ATL, 3.187ff., Hammond, Studies, pp. 311ff., and Meiggs, AE, pp. 42ff.; for more recent bibliography, see P. J. Rhodes, The Athenian Empire, G&R Survey No. 17 (Oxford, 1985), 5–11.
from what is usually alleged is subtle but real. Thucydides presumes the active potency of Athens in acquiring an empire; adherents of the conventional view presume that the Athenians were compelled to act in subservience to a higher cause (which did not fade away until the Peace of Callias). In fact, that higher cause was really the self-interest of the Athenians. In 1.95.2, when the Greeks, especially the Ionians and those newly liberated from the Persian king, complain of Pausanias's violent behavior and request that the Athenians become their leaders, Thucydides significantly adds that the Athenians intended to use the opportunity to enhance their own best interests:
Our best account of the foundation of the Delian League is also our earliest, for Thucydides describes the event in 1.96–97.1:
After taking the hegemony in the manner just related over allies who desired it because of their hatred of Pausanias, the Athenians made an assessment of those cities that were required to provide ships. Their professed purpose [proschema ] was to avenge themselves for what they had suffered by ravaging the land of the king. The treasurers of the Hellenes [Hellenotamiai ] were first established at that time as an Athenian magistracy to receive the tribute [phoros ]. For the payment of monies was given that name. The first tribute assessed was four hundred sixty talents. Delos was their treasury and the revenues accrued in the temple. [97.1] Though at first the Athenians commanded allies who were autonomous and who made decisions that arose from common meetings, they accomplished the following things by wars and the management of affairs.
To this picture our other sources (e.g., Diod. 11.46.6–47, Plut. Arist. 23–25.1 and Cim. 6.2–3) add little further detail; Aristotle, Ath. Pol. 23.5, provides the date, the archonship of Timosthenes, 478/7, as well as the information that the alliance was an epimachia (all members possessed "the same friends and enemies") and that pieces of red-hot iron were sunk into the sea as a formality of the oath of alliance.
The information presented by our sources makes it apparent that the announced purpose of the league was retaliative and punitive.[14] Such
[14] R. Sealey, "The Origin of the Delian League," in Ehrenberg Studies, 233–55, W. K. Pritchett, The Greek State at War (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1971), 1.61–62 (cf. Aesch. Persae 751f.); opposed by Meiggs, AE, pp. 462–64; cf. K. Raaflaub, "Beute, Vergeltung, Freiheit? Zur Zielsetzung des delisch-attischen Seebundes," Chiron 9 (1979), 1–22.
intentions harmonize with ancient value systems and are consistent with the historical situation prevailing in 478/7. We are also entitled to presume that the allies were induced to wage this war in the expectation of booty: vengeance carried recompense. Lastly, the league was implicitly or explicitly one of self-defense, ensuring the autonomy of the allies in the face of a Persian threat. The special conditions out of which this alliance developed also permit reliable negative conclusions. It is clear, for example, that the offensive thus initiated could not have contemplated as a fixed objective or end point the defeat of the rival power or the establishment of peaceful relations with it.[15] Persia, except at the fringes, was unassailable, and the majesty of Persia could be expected to renounce its enmity only on formal capitulation of the Greeks. To be sure, a radical change in the strategic situation developed around the time the battle of the Eurymedon was fought. But this startling alteration in the balance of power in the Aegean could not have been anticipated so early as 478/7. It would go considerably beyond the evidence, therefore, to assume that the allies contemplated anything more than limited objectives and perpetual enmity when the league was formed.
The editors of ATL (3.226f.), on the other hand, have expressed a substantially different view:
But although this [spoiling of the king's land] was the immediate programme, it was not the end; the Confederacy was to be permanent. The allies knew that the war with Persia would someday come to an end; their statesmen were farsighted enough, in 478/7, to realize that the end of the war would not bring them safety for ever. Greek resources must continue to be integrated; when the Athenian power was weakened and the Confederacy shattered, early in the Dekelean war, this was the prelude to the reincorporation of the Asiatic Greeks in the Persian satrapies. The clarity of vision which the exalted days of 479 and 478 brought to the allies was soon blurred by the strains of campaigning; only Athens remembered the bright prospects of 478/7. And Athens, it could be charged, had most to gain.
What was to be the Confederacy's permanent function when the war was over? To answer this question we naturally turn to the Congress Decree (D12), to the plan which Perikles offered for the consideration of Greece just after peace had been made with Persia. As Plutarch [Per. 17.1] reports the proposals, the states were to discuss (1) the Hellenic sanctuaries destroyed by the barbarians, (2) the sacrifices owed to the gods on behalf of Hellas, and (3) the policing of the seas, security and peace for travelers in normal times.
Any relationship the first paragraph quoted above may share with Thucydides 1.99 ends with the semicolon dividing its leading sentence.
[15] See Appendix 7.
The editors of ATL have injected a principle into the "Covenant," the permanency of the organization, which allows for the elaboration of a series of connecting ideas that, granting the principle, might appear to be valid. The fatal objection is that the principle has been misconceived. A facilitating condition (the framework of the league) has been misidentified as a defining cause, as if the foundation of an alliance were the primary object of the allies. But the allies swore a solemn oath to combat the Persians (as they then supposed) in perpetuity; they did not swear to pay tribute to the Athenians in perpetuity whether or not it was necessary to fight the Persians. The editors of ATL have driven a wedge to sunder the interlocking parts of one unitary idea—namely, "a perpetual alliance against the Medes"—by insisting that the "perpetual alliance" should be regarded independently and as logically prior to its predicate—"to fight the Mede"—as if the purpose of the allies were primarily to set up an organization and secondarily to use it against an enemy. Consideration of this idea should be enough to ensure its rejection. Perpetuity of the league was contemplated because the state of war initially was regarded as indefinite and without end, and the oath of permanency reflected precisely this view of the circumstances. Naturally, if and when circumstances altered, the conditions under which the league operated were open to reappraisal, regardless of the red-hot irons sunk into the sea (cf. Hdt. 1.165). It should be apparent, therefore, that it misstates the historical circumstances and the ostensible intentions of the participants to allege (with the editors of ATL ) that the alliance was forged to secure the Peace of Callias, much less to fulfill the grand objective of raising up sanctuaries, performing sacrifices, and maintaining the freedom of the seas under the auspices of a permanent bureaucracy staffed by Athenians. The chief difficulty with the explanatory hypothesis adumbrated by the editors of ATL, apart from the absence of evidence to support it,[16] is that the end simply does not justify the means. The allies in 478/7 contemplated another set of goals when they banded together; to explain the antecedents of Pericles' Congress Decree by an extrapolation of the terms of that decree is a little like imputing to Solon the idea of Ephialtes' reform. It is not self-evident that the concluding event in a lengthy and unpredictable historical sequence provides a proper explanation for the initiation of that sequence, and even ordinary observation of human affairs suggests the contrary.
[16] Was the "model" for this conception perhaps the establishment of the United Nations after World War II?
Let us return to Thucydides. The reader will recall that in describing the Athenians' purpose in establishing the league, Thucydides implies a divergence between their real intentions and what they formally announced—"their pretext [proschema ] was to retaliate for their sufferings by ravaging the land of the king" (1.96.1). Nothing can be done with the word proschema except to translate it as "pretext" or an equivalent word. That is its conventional meaning (when its other sense, "ornament," is inapplicable) and it is precisely so used by Thucydides in the other two passages in which it occurs (3.82.4, 5.30.2). Gomme offers "announced intention"; Meiggs, "the declared purpose."[17] These renderings (though somewhat charitable) will suit provided we understand that the "alleged program" was regarded by Thucydides as somehow spurious. Curiously enough, Herodotus uses a similar word in almost the identical context. In 8.3.2 Herodotus characterizes the Athenian acquisition of hegemony as follows: "For when the Athenians, after repelling the Persian, made it a contest [not in Greece but] in his own territory, they deprived the Lacedaemonians of the hegemony by alleging [proischomenoi ] the hybris of Pausanias as their pretext [prophasis ]." This language dovetails with that of Thucydides. Both writers imply that Athens acquired leadership of the league for purposes at variance with their pretensions in 478/7.
The fundamental incompatibility of our best ancient sources with the assessments of some modern scholars could not, therefore, be clearer. On the other hand, the apparent unanimity of Herodotus and Thucydides proves nothing more than that conventional opinion was cynical in 431 or thereabouts, and we might be hasty in assuming that this opinion necessarily represents the actual situation prevailing in 478/7. These judgments are retrospective, indicating that Herodotus and Thucydides had concluded from Athens's subsequent actions that the "purpose" of the league was a sham. We do not know the basis of Herodotus's judgment; Thucydides, on the other hand, makes it abundantly clear that an epochal change occurred in the period stretching from the Naxian rebellion to the battle of the Eurymedon River. For the Naxian revolt is mentioned in 1.98.4; the (explanatory) excursus on Athenian sharp practice follows in 99; 100.1 contains the informa-
[17] Gomme, HCT, ad loc., Meiggs, AE, p. 44; ATL, 3.226 translates "programme." See H. R. Rawlings III, "Thucydides on the Purpose of the Delian League," Phoenix 31 (1977), 1–8. A. French, "Athenian Ambitions and the Delian League," Phoenix 33 (1979), 134–41, exonerates Athens by denying a distinction between the "pretext" and the Athenians' real purpose. See below.
tion about Cimon's grand victory at the Eurymedon; 100.2 specifies the revolt of the Thasians "in a quarrel about the possession of the marketplaces on the Thracian coast [opposite Thasos] and the mines the Thasians controlled."
Thucydides is terse, but informative. First Naxos, then the Eurymedon, then Thasos, the last instance supplying a peculiarly ugly and obvious example of Athenian imperialism.[18] The function served by the presence of the battle of the Eurymedon in this series is virtually self-explanatory. This great victory, though anticipated by the secession of the Naxians, was the pivot for the abrupt transition from "league" to "empire."
Eduard Meyer, in a brilliant piece of source-criticism, distinguished the traditions, developed by the fourth century, that erroneously combined Cimon's exploit at the Eurymedon with the later Cyprian campaign of 450/49, where another double battle by land and sea was fought and won by Cimon's troops, after his death on campaign (Thuc. 1.112.4)[19] The fact that two epochal events were later telescoped in the popular mind is readily explicable. Cimon's great victory at the Eurymedon not only shared common characteristics with the later battle but attained similar objects. The Eurymedon campaign, like the Cyprian campaign, which resulted in the Peace of Callias, secured the removal of the Persian navy from the Aegean and eliminated pressure from the east on the allied city-states. By his first victory on land and sea, Cimon cleared the seas; after the second, Callias (in 449/8) ratified the peace and secured this object de iure.
The confusion in the tradition of Cimon's campaign at the Eurymedon with the subsequent action at Cyprus (and the ensuing peace) is highly significant. Though it should not be inferred that a formal peace resulted from Cimon's victory at the Eurymedon,[20] the factually
[18] Modern apologists of the empire seek special reasons or extenuations for Athenian intrusion into the affairs of Thasos in 465 (e.g., Meiggs, AE, pp. 83–85, 570–72). G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, Origins, p. 43, in speaking of this episode, "wonders whether Athenian intervention in 465 may not have been invited by one or more of the emporia in question, including Neapolis, which perhaps regarded Athenian control as less burdensome than Thasian." Does the fact that some Athenians invited the Spartans to Athens before the battle of Tanagra imply that it would have been proper for the Lacedaemonians to march on the city? Any action involving a shift in authority will be conducive to some interests as it will be destructive of others; and it is a novel argument that the significance of the reduction of one city-state by another lies in the possible views of those who became in turn the subjects of both.
[19] Meyer, Forsch., 2.1–25; cf. Fornara 95.
[20] See Appendix 7.
erroneous fourth-century assumption is true to the realities of the situation after the battle was won. This victory marked an epoch such that it was legitimate for contemporaries as well as posterity to regard the Persian menace in the Aegean as ended once and for all,[21] and to consider that the league, having vindicated itself superbly, was now redundant. Even prescient statesmen could no more foresee what might occur during, say, the Decelean War, than modern diplomats could have predicted the aftermath of the First World War. Cimon did in fact sweep the Aegean clear of the Persian navy as far as Pamphylia, and a de facto state of peace (i.e., a peace of inanition) resulted from his success.[22] Hence the inclusion of a reference to this battle by Thucydides in 1.100.1; as Meyer correctly observed, "this event was well-known, a comprehensive narration of the war was not the task of the writer, who intended to present briefly the epochal events in the development of the power of Athens. Thus a brief reference to the brilliant deed of arms sufficed; indeed, the dry chronicle-like style had all the greater effect in regard to this tremendous success."[23]
The "brilliant deed" that secured the Aegean is firmly linked by Thucydides with the context of the first allied rebellion and the unwillingness of the allies to continue with the operation, just as it becomes the antecedent of the war with Thasos.[24] It is illuminating that although Thucydides fails to specify the exact reasons prompting the Naxian revolt, he implies by his general characterization of allied apathy and Athenian vigor in 1.99 that it was reluctance
[21] See Meiggs, AE, pp. 76ff., for a general discussion.
[22] Plut. Cim. 13.4–5. Thus one of the "goals" of the Congress Decree was in fact accomplished, unexpected though it must have been by the allies when they joined the league in 478/7.
[23] Meyer, Forsch. 2.1. Meyer's interest, however, is in justifying the appearance of this reference in Thucydides' text; he does not pursue the inference we derive from the structure in which it is set.
aggrandizement. If Thucydides has organized this sequence with care, and if he has limited himself to epochal events marking "in what way the role of the Athenians was established" (1.97.2), he leaves no doubt of the critical importance of the series Naxos-Eurymedon-Thasos.[25] Indeed, that is precisely the view our historian attributes to the Athenians themselves in the speech they delivered at Sparta before the outbreak of war in 431 (1.75.2–4):
For we did not use force in acquiring [the hegemony]. But you [Lacedaemonians] did not wish to remain by our side for what was left to accomplish against the barbarian, and the allies approached us and by their own pleading caused us to become hegemon. Because of that very fact we were compelled at first to advance our rule to its present extent, most of all, because of fear, then also because of honor and, lastly, also because of self-interest. And it did not seem to be safe any longer to endanger ourselves by letting it go: we had become hated by most of our allies, some of them by that time having rebelled and been subjected, while you were no longer friendly, but objects of suspicion and dislike. In these circumstances, the defectors would have come over to you.
The correlation is almost exact: the "secret promise" of aid to the Thasians (1.101.3)—the time of "suspicion"—was allegedly made by the Lacedaemonians c. 465; "open enmity" between Athens and Sparta—the time of "grievance"—flared in 462 (1.102.3).[26]
Thucydides' case for the rapidity of the transformation of Athens from hegemon to imperial mistress is unambiguous, self-consistent and supported by what must have been the crucial element determining the psychology of the allies—namely, Cimon's victory at the Eurymedon.[27] An alliance formed for the sake of vengeance, in the expectation of booty, and in the further hope of gaining security in the Aegean had gained its object. From this point, the sole party benefiting from the institution of tribute payment and the development of an invincible fleet was, of course, the former "hegemon" of the league. Thus the centrality claimed by some for the Peace of Callias in the evolution of Athens into an imperial power is late by almost twenty years and is, in fact, irrelevant to the "allied question." This does not imply that the peace itself was unimportant, though in this regard it is an anticlimax. On the contrary, the formal cessation of hostilities with Persia was vital.
[25] Indeed, Pritchett, Historia 18 (1969), 17–21, even places the removal of the Delian treasury to Athens in this period.
[26] See ch. 4, pp. 121ff.
[27] For the use of compulsion and extortion against Phaselis just before the Eurymedon was fought, see Plut. Cimon 12.3–4.
It secured Pericles' flank from Persian interference with Athens's subjects at a time when his chief object was the maintenance of Athenian rule with a view to the reduction of Greece.[28]
In 451 Athens and Sparta arranged a five-year peace, assisted thereto by Cimon, now home from ostracism.[29] Never more than during the preceding decade, when Cimon had been away, did the Athenians give further proof of their adventurous character, fearlessness, and militancy.[30] It might have seemed enough, for any city-state, however powerful and ambitious, to wage full-scale war on a single front. But the Athenians, though they committed themselves to an adventurous struggle with Persia in Cyprus, Phoenicia and, above all, Egypt, in the year 459, also found the prospect of engaging with the Peloponnesians irresistible, fighting battles in Halieis, Aegina, and Megara in the same year.[31] The great Egyptian campaign ended disastrously in 454, having been continued for six years at immense cost.[32] The lure of Egypt was no doubt strong. That great country had worked powerfully on the imaginations of Greeks—poets, historians, mercenaries, traders—as the symbol of immeasurable antiquity and fabulous wealth. It was also an unwilling subject of the Persian kings, since the time of Cambyses, whose contempt for the Egyptians and whose desecration of their religious shrines (Hdt. 3.16, 27–30) was never forgotten. When, therefore, the Libyan Inaros attempted to wrest Egypt away from Artaxerxes and sought Athenian assistance (Thuc. 1.104.1), the Athenians succumbed to the temptation. The strategic conception underlying this Athenian effort, which included allied contingents, is only in appearance a continuation of the goals of the "Covenant" of 478/7, for Athenia aims now advanced beyond vengeance, retaliation, and self-defense; a proper parallel is the Sicilian Expedition of 415, except that the temerity displayed by the Athenians in the earlier expedition exceeds the later by a degree of magnitude. Nothing less than the independence of what the Greeks must have considered the greatest appan-
[28] See ch. 4, pp. 137f.
[29] See ch. 4, pp. 138f; Fornara 76.
[30] Thucydides' frequent allusions to this trait of Athenian character (e.g., 1.70) are probably based on the reputation the Athenians won from their activities during this decade (as well as from their intrepid behavior during the preceding years), which by 431 had hardened into a stereotype. Myronides (see Ar. Lysistr. 801, Eccl. 303, with Busolt, 3.267 n. 2) was an exemplar of this generation.
[31] IG i 1147 = ML 33 = Fornara 78; cf. Meiggs, AE, pp. 92ff.
[32] Cf. Ctesias, FGrHist 688 F 14 (36); Justin 3.6.6–7. See Meiggs, AE, pp. 103–8, 473–76, who defends Thucydides' account of the disaster, which has often been minimized, e.g., by ATL, 3.262f., and Gomme, HCT, 1.321–22; cf. J. M. Libourel, "The Athenian Disaster in Egypt," AJP 92 (1971), 605–15.
age of the Persian empire was the hope; and with that independence secured, needless to state, Athenian power derived from alliance with the liberators would increase exponentially closer to home.[33] The Athenians played for the highest stakes yet seen in the fearful game of Greek warfare. Even if it should prove hopeless, the demonstration of Athenian ability to harass Persian territory might at last result in the peace treaty desired since c. 462.[34]
Simultaneously with this stupendous operation, the Athenians launched a general Greek war, braving the Dorians in their own stronghold.[35] In part they were encouraged to make the effort because the Lacedaemonians were occupied with the helot revolt; their audacity, even so, leaves one amazed. That they were able to seduce the Megarians into alliance, conquer Dorian Aegina, and even reduce Boeotia is as striking as the effrontery they displayed by sailing round the Peloponnesus in 456/5 and setting fire to the Spartan dockyards.[36] All of these actions betray the development of a new strategy or, rather, the application of "imperial policy" to city-states in Greece. Renewal of the old war with Aegina must not be regarded in isolation, as if it were one of those limited and local outbreaks that characterize the history of Greece from archaic times, for it presupposed an ambitious and premeditated strategy. The Megarians withdrew from the Peloponnesian League and formed an alliance with Athens c. 460 (Thuc. 1.103.4); the Athenians immediately proceeded to construct long walls from Megara to Nisaea, its southern port, and to Pegae, its port on the Corinthian Gulf. Megara would become another "land island" guaranteed access to the sea with fortifications that might render it impervious to attack. By this means the Athenians could control the Isthmus of Corinth. It is equally significant that the next action was a descent on Halieis, situated on the southwestern tip of the Argolid; taking this movement in conjunction with the immediately subsequent raid on Kekryphaleia, an island between Aegina and Epidaurus, it becomes apparent that the motives of the Athenians (now in alliance with Argos, the enemy of Sparta [1.102.3], were to neutralize the Argolid, maintain their foothold in the Isthmus, and, as the event proved, compel Aegina to become a tributary member of the Athenian empire. It is curious that debate about the Athenians' acquisition of their "imperial psychol-
[33] Cf. Meiggs, AE, pp. 93–94.
[34] See Appendix 7.
[35] See Meiggs, AE, pp. 95ff.
[36] Thuc. 1.103ff.; Fornara 84, and ch. 4, pp. 137f. On the date, see Badian, ECM 22, n.s., 7 (1988), 319, with n. 46.
ogy" continues when we can observe the envelopment of a Greek city-state on the mainland in the toils of the tributary apparatus of the empire.[37] Meanwhile the Athenians were erecting the Long Walls from Athens to its coastline for purposes that are self-evident.[38]
Two observations seem appropriate. Athens had become predatory in Greece itself, openly challenging the Peloponnesian League and intending to apply the same principles by which she had imposed her rule in the Aegean to enemies closer at hand. Secondly, the indispensable precondition for such a policy was the firmly settled decision to maintain strict control over subject allies. The Long Walls at Athens (and those at Megara) illustrate the conjuncture of two hitherto independent policies brought into alignment: the preservation of the empire and the contemplation of continuous warfare with the Peloponnesian League. For without the empire, the Long Walls would have been useless; in the absence of a militant policy in Greece itself, they would have been unnecessary.
That the peace of 451 arranged by Cimon between Athens and the Peloponnesians implies the renunciation of Athenian militancy can be rejected out of hand. The leopard does not change his spots and, if later in 447, when Athens discovered the impracticality of controlling either Megara or Boeotia, Pericles decided to proceed more cautiously, that development is irrelevant to the situation as it appeared in 451. Some modern scholars (like the ancients) seem almost to suppose that a return from ostracism by Cimon implies the automatic reemergence in Athens of the political power of the victim and of the advent of a new psychology in the city,[39] but it is more pertinent for us to remember that in the ten years of Cimon's absence, nothing had occurred to strengthen his following.[40] The democratization of the polis had proceeded even to the point of chauvinism in the year following Cimon's return, when the citizenship law was passed (451/50); because of this
[37] Aegina's assessment was 30 talents, the highest of any single city-state (ATL, 3.20, 270, and Meiggs, AE, p. 98).
[38] See ch. 4, pp. 132, 138; Fornara 79.
[39] See ch. 1, p. 29. For the citizenship law of 451/50, see ch. 2, pp. 74–75, and Fornara 86.
[40] The Egyptian catastrophe cannot be counted as a political gain for Cimon's adherents unless it also be supposed that the conservatives became isolationist; as for the peace with Sparta, there is a world of difference between cessation of hostilities and rapprochement; nothing suggests that the Athenians viewed Sparta with a more tolerant eye because the First Peloponnesian War had turned into a disappointment. If Cimon was useful in 451, it does not also follow that his policies commanded more respect than a decade before.
measure and a variety of others, Pericles' position had been proportionately strengthened. That the Athenians desired respite in 451, while still in control of Megara and Boeotia, does indeed suggest that Cimon served a useful purpose on his return. Similarly, a lull in hostilities at home was as highly desirable as was the return of the famous general if further hostilities against Persia were intended. Both sides of this equation deserve equal consideration: peace in Greece in 451 allowed Athens to proceed against Persia in the hope (as we infer) of extracting a concession from Artaxerxes. That concession—recognition of the status quo—was mandatory if Athens were to maintain her empire and pursue her militant foreign policy closer in Greece. Precisely this object was gained by the Peace of Callias. Persia was formally removed as a menace to stability in the Aegean; Athens could concentrate her attention on the home front, dealing with revolts on the part of the allies without fear of Persian intervention. That ideas of a wholly different nature—for example, of disbanding the "league"—entered the minds of the Athenian leadership at that time is belied both by the political situation in Greece and by the antecedent hardening of Athens's rule since the battle of the Eurymedon. Pericles' "Congress Decree" was peddled for home consumption.[41]
Since the importance of the Peace of Callias appears to have been overstated as a cause of Athens's attainment of an "imperial psychology," the possibility becomes real that comparable exaggeration invests the claim that the conclusion of the Peace in 449/8 unlocked the allied treasury for the first time and thus inspired the wholehearted reorganization of Athenian finances. It is certainly true that the Athenian building program commenced a year later;[42] and it is possible that Pericles' introduction of jury pay, certainly a drain on the treasury presupposing allied subvention, began around this time.[43] The difficulty is the special emphasis placed on the peace of 449/8. One cannot but be struck by the fact that the omnibus legislation supposedly triggered by the Peace of Callias was preceded by a full five years by the transfer of
[41] See p. 87 above. On the historicity of this decree, see R. J. Seager, "The Congress Decree: Some Doubts and a Hypothesis" Historia 18 (1969), 129–41; A. B. Bosworth, "The Congress Decree: Another Hypothesis," Historia 20 (1971), 600–616; G. T. Griffith, "A Note on Plutarch Per. 17," Historia 27 (1978), 218–19; J. Walsh, "The Authenticity of the Peace of Callias and the Congress Decree," Chiron 11 (1981), 31ff.; B. R. MacDonald, "The Authenticity of the Congress Decree," Historia 31 (1982), 120–23.
[42] See n. 8 above.
[43] See ch. 2, pp. 71–74.
the allied treasury from Delos to Athens in 454. This action, it would appear, anticipated the state of mind generated, allegedly, in 449/8. Five years may seem "close enough" when we view the whole synoptically. Yet the fact remains that the transfer of the treasury, an imperialist measure par excellence, according even to the received view, was passed a little too soon. As Gomme wrote, taking issue with Thucydides for his omission of this event and others, Thucydides says nothing about the transfer of the allied treasury to Athens "and the consequent institution of the quota of 1/60 . . . of every state's phoros . . . measure which more clearly than any other marked the change from the simple leadership, hegemonia, to the rule, arche, of Athens over the members of the League."[44]
The decision to transfer the treasure from Delos to Athens and to dedicate a quota of the tribute payment to Athena has been explained in various ways.[45] It need not be argued that this measure must have been unpopular with the subject-allies (cf. Plut. Arist. 25.3),[46] who until now had had at least the meagre satisfaction of watching the money they were compelled to pay, in effect, to Athens accumulate on Apollo's island in a shrine central to the common Ionian heritage. Nor could observers in Greece, whether hostile or neutral, have adopted a favorable view of the transaction. It is reasonable to suppose, therefore, that the measure came late, at a time when the transfer formalized an already existing situation—not, in other words, as a wantonly provocative act in anticipation of some further intensification of Athenian control.
Now though the transfer is ignored by Thucydides, presumably for the reason just given, more was evidently made of it by Ephorus, for Diodorus (who followed Ephorus) alludes to the removal of the treasury from Delos on each occasion that he makes reference to the treasure (12.38.2, 41.1, 54.3, 13.21.3).[47] Plutarch as well refers to Delos, not to the Peace of Callias (Per. 12, that well-known passage in which he describes the opposition of Thucydides son of Melesias to Pericles' building program).[48]
[44] Gomme, HCT , 1.370.
[45] E. M. Walker, CAH, 5.84–85, regarded the move as a defensive measure (cf. Plut. Per. 12.1). Rhodes, "Athenian Empire," p. 23, considers it a consequence of the Egyptian disaster, though see Beloch, 2.2.204. De Ste. Croix, Origins, p. 312, combines both notions. See also n. 7 above.
[46] H. Nesselhauf, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der delisch-attischen Symmachie, Klio Supplement 30 (1933), pp. 11–13 (cf. ATL, 3.249–50), considers the transfer a cause of allied disaffection after 454.
[47] Cf. also Nepos Arist. 3.1; Justin 3.6.4; Aristodemus 7.
[48] See Meiggs, AE, pp. 132–33, and pp. 29 above and 96 below.
The Ephoran tradition, which in all probability underlies Plutarch Per. 12, thus connected the transfer of the treasury with the use of the money for public buildings. The inference was reasonable enough—a comprehensible amplification of the material provided by Thucydides in 2.13. Therefore, if (as is generally done) we ourselves telescope the building program (the Parthenon was begun in 447/6)[49] with the Peace of Callias, we become guilty of an arbitrary correction of the ancient tradition. If Athens transferred the treasury from Delos to the acropolis in 454, it must have been in 454, not in 449/8, that Athens laid claim to the treasure as her own (as is signified by the quota paid Athena), and any further decisions made by the Athenians as to its more precise use were mere consequences of that initial decision; they cannot have been radical departures in their own right.
One irony of imputing central importance to the Peace of Callias is that the consequences of the peace, no less than the peace itself, have left only the slightest trace of themselves (if even that) in the historical tradition. Though we normally assume that a given event is significant because of its measurable impact on the historical record, in this instance the effects are inferred and blandly retrojected into a historical lacuna. One piece of evidence there is, indeed, that can (inferentially) be associated with the Peace of Callias, though even here an unjustifiable chronological liberty is required to make the hypothesis work. The evidence is the Strasbourg Papyrus (Anonymus Argentinensis ).[50] It is a fragment of a commentary on Demosthenes 22.13, and what is preserved, with a minimum of uncontroversial supplements, may be reproduced and translated as follows:[51]
[49] IG i 436–50, with SEG 10.246–56; cf. ML 59 = Fornara 120 and n. 8 above.
[50] Fornara 94, where alternative restorations are provided. Cf. ATL, 2. D13, p. 61, H. T. Wade-Gery and B. D. Meritt, Hesperia 26 (1957), 164–88.
[51] Cf. Fornara 94A; the text is that of U. Wilcken, "Der Anonymus Argentinensis," Hermes 42 (1907), 414–15. Italicized words in the translation indicate that enough traces exist on the papyrus to make the reading plausible, but not certain. Whether the sum of 5,000 talents is modified in any way in the missing portion of the papyrus is unknown.
Translation:
3 [Constructed the Propylai]a and the Parthenon." After . . . years
[—————] they began construction and mad—
5 [e——In (the archonship of) Eu]thydemos Pericles's motion . . .
[and the People decreed that] the talents stored in the public treasury
[———] five thousand collected according to Arist[ei]—
[des' assessment] for/to the city. After that [—4—]
[————] the boule (shall see to it that account) of the old trie—
10 [remes ———is] rendered and construct new ones
The background of this controversial fragment is as follows. Demosthenes, in this portion of his speech "Against Androtion" (22.12f.), praises the Athenians of yore for having built the Propylaea and the Parthenon from the spoils of the barbarians, making the observation that they owed everything they possessed to the naval power based on their trireme policy. The ancient sholiast of commentator, within a space of eleven lines of this papyrus, so poorly preserved that its first editor, Ulrich Wilcken, declined even to restore it, apparently devoted himself to the explanation of two rubrics, (1) "the Propylai]a and the Parthenon" and (2) Athenian trireme policy. The latter rubric, however it was expressed, commenced in line 8 or 9 (if not before) of the papyrus.[52] The assumption is therefore cogent that lines 3–9 (at most) provided information about the Periclean buildings, while what followed explained Athenian practice with regard to the maintenance of the fleet.
The preserved portion of lines 3–8 gives the date in which the buildings were begun.[53] Line 6 contains a reference to a decree of Pericles dated in the archonship of [Eu]thydemos. Euthydemos was archon in 431/30. His name was apparently cited in connection with a reference to 5,000 talents, collected in reserve as tribute accumulated "in accordance" with the assessment of Aristeides.[54] It would appear, therefore, that the commentator (1) gave the date of the construction of the Propylaea and the Parthenon; (2) referred to a fund of 5,000 talents mentioned in a decree of 431 passed by Pericles; (3) gave information about trireme policy.
[52] This is certain because the phrase "of the old tri[remes]" (the new rubric) occurs in lines 9–10 while in line 10 there is an indisputable reference to "shipbuilding" and new (triremes).
[53] The sum of years is not preserved but since the next line contains the words "began construction," the inference is safe.
According to Wilcken, the commentator here refers to Thucydides 2.24.1, a passage in which a decree is noted setting aside 1,000 talents as a special reserve, leaving the rest (5,000 talents, as we know from Thuc. 2.13) for use in the war if it should prove necessary. Wilcken's view, however, has been rejected by many scholars, including Beloch, the editors of ATL, and, most recently, Russell Meiggs,[55] who contends that the decree of Pericles in 431
would seem to be completely irrelevant to a commentary on Demosthenes' speech against Androtion, and the note which includes a reference to the League reserves seems to arise from Demosthenes' reference to the buildings of the Acropolis. The most reasonable inference would seem to be that the commentator has made the same mistake as Diodorus, naming the archon of 450–449 Euthydemos instead of Euthynos. We should therefore place the Congress Decree and its sequel, the decision to use League funds on Athenian buildings, after the Peace of Callias which we have dated to 450,[56] and before the change of archons in midsummer 449.
Although one does not willingly disagree with Meiggs, the relationship between what is preserved of the commentary and what appears in Thucydides 2.24 is too close to be accidental. The essential matter in Demosthenes 22.13 was trireme policy, the public buildings having been adduced as a singular example of its success. The scholiast dates the buildings and relates something now lost to us about 5,000 talents in a context devoted to the subject of triremes and dated to 431, the archonship of Euthydemos. Thucydides 2.24 speaks of a financial measure passed in that year setting aside 1,000 talents (from a total of 6,000: 2.13) as a reserve fund, which also ensured the selection of 100 triremes to be held on reserve: "And together with the money they made a reserve of 100 triremes, reserving those which would be the very best[57] in each year, not one of which they were to use for any other purpose than for the same danger to which they would apply the money (the reserve of 1,000 talents) if it became necessary."
On the basis of these correspondences, it is impossible to subscribe to the view that the scholiast wrote Euthydemos when he should have written Euthynos—a name, incidentally, attested only for the archon of 427/6—or that he quoted from a suppositious decree of 450/49 (a year
[55] Beloch, 2.2.388, ATL, 3.281, and Meiggs, AE, p. 155, the source of the quotation given immediately below. Doubts have been expressed by Badian, JHS 107 (1987), 19.
[56] See n. 3 above.
[57] See n. 54 above.
earlier than the Peace of Callias) in order to explain how the Propylaea and the Parthenon were financed. The essential matter in Demosthenes 22.13 was trireme policy; resort by the commentator to Thucydides 2.24, which underscores the significance attached to the vessels in a decree passed in 431, in combination with 2.13, which mentions the Athenian building program and identifies the total fund of 6,000 talents, would not have been a major enterprise for the scholiast, though it is perhaps more likely that this work of combination had already been done for him by his (Atthidographic) source. We conclude, therefore, that the alleged decree of the alleged Euthynos is imaginary.[58]
Our review of the insubstantial nature of some of the chief consequences inferred from the conclusion of peace with Persia in 449/8 may help to explain why an event regarded as epochal by some modern scholars was ignored by Thucydides in his study of the development of the Athenian empire. So far as the subject-allies were concerned, the peace ratified a fait accompli. Even in the heated debate between Thucydides son of Melesias and Pericles over the use of the allied treasury for public building at Athens (Plut. Per. 12, after Ephorus), the Peace of Callias is never mentioned, though it was certainly known to Ephorus.[59] Instead, the issue was associated with the transfer of 454 without reference to the allegedly decisive event that occurred in 449/8. As Meiggs writes:
In Plutarch's version there is no hint of a peace with Persia; the natural inference from the speeches of both sides is that the allies still think they are paying tribute for operations against Persia and that a state of war still exists. If peace had been made, it should have been at the centre of the argument on both sides and some clear hint should have survived even in a short summary.[60]
The attention devoted to this chapter of Plutarch is somewhat curious in view of the virtual unanimity which rules that the speeches preserved by the Greek historians (not to say Plutarch) are essentially fic-
[58] For Euthynos, see H. Mattingly, Historia 30 (1981), 113–17, esp. 117, and id., "The Athenian Coinage Decree and the Assertion of Empire," in I. Carradice, ed., Coinage and Administration in the Athenian and Persian Empires (Oxford, 1987), pp. 68–70. R. Sealey, "P. Strassburg 84 Verso," Hermes 86 (1958), 440–46, and "A Stop in the Strassburg Papyrus" JHS 85 (1965), 161–62, associates this commentary with the year 431. Gomme, HCT , 2.28–33, is indecisive; so also De Ste. Croix, Origins, pp. 310–11. See Appendix 8 for the Callias Decrees and their connection with this matter.
[59] Mention of the peace in Diod. 12.4.4–6 (Fornara 95G) is sufficient evidence; cf. Meiggs, AE, p. 129, and Appendix 7.
[60] Meiggs, AE, p. 133.
tional.[61] Somehow, with equal unanimity, modern scholars here detect "authenticity" in the Plutarchean debate[62] and subject it, therefore, to close analysis.[63] Since, however, the ultimate source of this account probably is Ephorus and certainly is a fourth-century historian who invented the speeches[64] (whatever the normal practice of Greek historians when they wrote contemporary history) so as to make them correspond with what he thought to be the historical reality, the most that should be concluded from the debate Plutarch provides is that the Peace of Callias did not figure in later reconstructions as the pivotal issue. The telling consideration, as it was remembered, was the transfer of 454. The omission of the peace in such reconstructions permits, therefore, merely a negative conclusion, though one perfectly consistent with the analysis presented above—namely, that we impose a purely modern view on recalcitrant sources if we insist that the Peace of Callias was fundamental to the development of the empire.
What, then, of other imperialistic measures allegedly taken by Pericles in consequence of the peace? Certainly there is no disputing that several decrees associated with Pericles' regime, especially the Cleinias Decree and the so-called Coinage Decree, betray a harshly imperialistic tone. But the conviction that the Cleinias Decree[65] (for instance) represents an alteration in policy rather than a modification or improvement in the method of tribute collection seems gratuitous.[66] The Hellenotamiae had been collecting tribute since 478/7. Whatever may have been their methods, they presumably underwent alteration between 478/7 and 454. Why not thereafter? In case of disputes, the payment of tribute money was laden with danger to the payer, the collector, and the final recipients. Knowledge of the bureaucracies of the nineteenth
[61] See, in general, Forara, Nature of History, pp. 142–68, who opposes this view.
[62] "This vivid passage has generally been considered to be an authentic echo of a real scene," Meiggs, AE, p. 133; see also D. Stockton, "The Peace of Callias," Historia 8 (1959), 69–70, and Badian, JHS 107 (1987), 19.
[63] See Badian, JHS 107 (1987), 19, for an example.
[64] The organization of Plut. Per. 12 makes it clear that Plutarch's source is a writer who presented two set speeches, one against the building program, the other a defense by Pericles. That structure guarantees that our source is a traditional historian. Coincidences in the speech with the data preserved in Diodorus and Aristodemus (see p. 92 above) make Ephorus the obvious candidate. The mise en scène (it should not be necessary to add) excludes memoire literature.
[65] The Cleinias Decree: IG i 34 = ML 46 = Fornara 98.
[66] Though Meiggs, AE, p. 165, also emphasizes the procedural aspect, he speaks as well of the "tone and temper" of the decree (p. 167), connecting these qualities with the allegedly contemporaneous Coinage Decree. In ML, p. 120, we read of its "strongly imperial flavor." The impression conveyed is of a change in policy.
and twentieth centuries should suffice to persuade us that alteration in procedure predictably followed every major defalcation. That the Cleinias Decree addresses the problem of the responsible management of money is explicable with or without a Peace of Callias. If we possessed the entire record of the administrative measures taken by the Athenians from 478/7 to c. 447, where many scholars currently date the Cleinias Decree, we would in all probability observe a consistent increase in the restrictions on all parties; the preservation of one decree within that matrix should not lead us to infer the advent of a new policy.
A more interesting question arises in respect to the "Coinage Decree."[67] This decree required that Athenian coins, weights, and measures be employed exclusively by all members of the Athenian empire. Foreign currencies were to be brought to Athens, melted down and converted, at a fee, into Athenian "owls." Any persons failing to comply would lose their citizen-rights and suffer the confiscation of their property. Every city was ordered to set up a copy of the decree in the agora; if any was unwilling, the Athenians would do it for them.
Though the Athenian copy is lost to us, fragments of the decree have been found in such places as Aphytis, Cos, and Syphnos, and they have been pieced together so as to provide a composite (but incomplete) text. Until 1938 it was confidently assumed that the measure belonged to the period 430–414. A parody of the decree appears in Aristophanes' Birds (produced in 414); and the tenor and tone of the measure, harshly imperialistic, seemed appropriate to Cleon's time or later, when the Athenians conquered the island of Melos and attempted the Sicilian Expedition.[68] But 1938 witnessed the discovery of a new fragment[69] on the island of Cos with Attic lettering, and among the letters is a sigma written with 3 bars (
), not the 4 bars (
) we usually associate with Athenian decrees inscribed in the last half of the fifth century. A scholarly about-face promptly followed, although some voiced their doubts about dating the decree much earlier.[70] Arguments theretofore cogent were obviously not invalidated. Yet a three-bar sigma seemed to
[67] IG i 1453 = ML 45 = Fornara 97.
[68] See ML, p. 114.
[69] M. Segre, "La legge ateniese sull'unificazione della moneta," Clara Rhodos 9 (1938), 151–78. Segre incorrectly identified the marble as Pentelic; see A. Georgiades and W. K. Pritchett, "The Koan Fragment of the Monetary Decree," BCH 89 (1965), 400–440.
[70] E. Cavaignac, "Le Décret dit de Kléarchos," Rev. Num. 13 (1953), 1–7; H. Mattingly, "The Athenian Coinage Decree," Historia 10 (1961), 148–69; W. K. Pritchett, "The Three-barred Sigma at Kos," BCH 87 (1963), 20–23.
mandate an earlier period, with the result that a new occasion for the decree was found in the context of the Peace of Callias. Thus the question turns on the relative weight we are willing to assign to categorically different types of evidence—general historical considerations, literary allusions, and stylistic criteria—when they come into conflict.
The well-known and sometimes lively debate about "three-bar sigma" hinges on the recognition that all of the letters of the Greek alphabet, but especially alpha, beta, nu, rho, sigma, and phi, show clearly marked stages of development into maturity.[71] Thus we can generally infer from their shapes the relative date of many inscriptions, especially when all or most of the letters are equally primitive or developed. The problem arises when a letter that looks like an early form appears in an inscription otherwise presenting more developed letters. To what extent is the apparent "anomaly" decisive? At one time, indeed, it was considered appropriate methodologically to assume that the latest date known for the appearance of a key archaic letter—one of those already listed—was the lower limit for undated documents also containing it. And though the application of this principle, which assumes the superior evidential value of form to substance, has been abandoned in the case of most of these letters, the shape of sigma continues to be regarded as an invariable indication of date. (In the case of the other letters the gradations are subtle; the presence or absence of a stroke on sigma is indisputably clear.) Since no inscription dated with absolute certainty after 445 displays the three-bar sigma, the ruling view insists that c. 445 must be the lower terminus for its use in any undated document. But though physical laws are framed to avoid anomaly, artistic technique follows less ironclad rules. It may be that when the inflexible application of this "rule" results in an assault on historical probability and countervailing evidence, it is better to accept anomaly.[72]
One is apt, therefore, to feel led about by the nose when one considers the ease with which such a crucial inscription as the Coinage Decree has been updated because of the three-bar sigma, especially when the new date serves in turn as corroborative testimony for a hypothesis about the far-reaching importance of the Peace of Callias.[73] Surely, even
[71] The doctrine is set forth by B. D. Meritt and H. T. Wade-Gery, "The Dating of Documents to the Mid-Fifth Century," JHS 82 (1962), 67–74, and 83 (1963), 100–117 (against Mattingly, Historia 10 [1961], 148–88), and R. Meiggs, "The Dating of Fifth-Century Attic Inscriptions," JHS 86 (1966), 86–98. See H. Mattingly's review of IG i in AJP 105 (1984), 340 (for four-bar sigma in the early forties).
[72] See Appendix 10.
[73] See, e.g., Meiggs, AE, pp. 165ff.
were the current dogma always applicable, it is an illicit extension to infer that masons on the island of Cos were equally in tune with the Attic mode, just as it is gratuitous to infer that the mason might have been an Athenian.[74] On the other hand, the lettering of the other fragments seems appropriate to the twenties;[75] yet they too should show signs of archaism if the decree were early. Thus the stylistic evidence, taken as a whole, is inconclusive.
Other considerations combine to make an early date unlikely.[76] The most important, to which we have already alluded, is a parody of the decree by Aristophanes that appears in the Birds, produced in 414. The "decree-monger" of the play speaks in verses 1040f. of "using the same weights and measures and decrees"—a clear echo of a phrase in section 12 of our decree, a portion especially noteworthy to the Athenian audience because it was part of an addition made to the bouleutic oath:[77]
An addition shall be made to the oath of the boule by the secretary of the boule, in future, as follows: "If someone coins money of silver in the cities and does not use Athenian coins or weights or measures, but uses instead foreign coin and measures and weights, I shall exact vengeance and penalize him according to the former decree that Clearchus moved."
Allusions of this kind are naturally understood to imply close temporal relation to their objects; it is not credible that Aristophanes, whose genius was as topical as the genre of which he was the master, alluded here to a stale phrase embedded in the bouleutic oath for thirty-five years.[78] Something about this measure, its passage or its ineffectuality, made a stir still perceptible in 414.
[74] The marble is not Pentelic (see n. 69 above). Attempts have been made (e.g., by Meiggs, AE, p. 170) to place an Athenian mason on Cos at the appropriate moment, as part of an Athenian policy of imposing her own masons on disaffected cities. Pritchett suggests, BCH 87 (1963), 20–23, that an older Athenian mason who happened to be at Cos cut the letter in the old-fashioned way. For the Coan fragment, see further, Georgiades and Pritchett, BCH 89 (1965), 400–440.
[75] F. Hiller, IG i , p. 295; SEG 3.713; D. M. Robinson, "A New Fragment of the Athenian Decree on Coinage," AJP 56 (1935), 149–54. Cf. Mattingly, Historia 10 (1961), 148ff., JHS 101 (1981), 75–86, and Historia 33 (1984), 498–99.
[76] See Cavaignac, Rev. Num. 13 (1953), 6–7; H. Schaefer, "Beiträge zur Geschichte der attischen Symmachie," Hermes 74 (1939), 253–57; Mattingly, Historia 10 (1961), 148, with n. 3.
[77] See Rhodes, Boule, pp. 194–99, for its reconstruction.
[78] Aristophanes' unexpected exchange of the word "decrees" for "coins" is significant in itself, for it is humorous only if we assume it to be a play on the demand contained in this very decree that all cities of the empire set up a copy. The double joke presupposes its recent enactment.
The numismatic evidence, though necessarily ambiguous because it is scarce as well as difficult to date sequentially, also implies a later, rather than an earlier, date for the decree.[79] Evidence of breaks in the minting of non-Attic coinages cannot be adduced for the early forties;[80] city-states like Samos and the Thracian and Maroneian towns are believed to have minted continuously during this period; and if it be urged that Samos was still autonomous in the early forties, the Thracians clearly were not.[81] Also negative to the current view is the (very slim) evidence from foreign weights and measures, for as Mattingly has shown, accommodation of Thasian measures to the Attic system appears not to begin until the twenties.[82]
The negative evidence is significant. If the Athenians had passed this measure in the early forties, an entirely different pattern must have emerged.[83] In the forties, Athens held the power to impose its will across the board and to exert it for a continuous period of time—more than thirty years. There can be no mistaking the seriousness of Athenian intentions: a sentence in section 8 of the decree specifically provides against its abrogation, while the presence of the fragments in allied cities attests its wholesale introduction. Yet if the decree was passed as early as now is generally supposed, the only conclusion open to us is that, inexplicably, it failed to be enforced. If, on the other hand, the decree was passed in the twenties or thereafter, its ephemeral character is understandable, for by 414 the Athenians were in no position to compel their allies to obey an unpopular measure.
[79] Cf. the contributions in Carradice, ed., Coinage and Administration, especially those of M. J. Price, pp. 43–51, D. M. Lewis, pp. 53–63, and H. Mattingly, pp. 65–71; see also the assessment of Mattingly, JHS 101 (1981), pp. 78–85.
[80] ML, p. 115; see E. S. G. Robinson, Museum Notes 9 (1960), 3, who writes that "the measure as a whole never came near permanent success"; C. G. Starr, Athenian Coinage, 480–449B.C. (Oxford, 1970), p. 69 n. 19, maintains that "local mints had largely resumed coining by the 430s, and some may never have halted operations," and Price, in Carradice, ed., Coinage and Administration, esp. p. 47. Cf. Meiggs, AE, pp. 600–601, with bibliography, and Mattingly, JHS 101 (1981), 78–86.
[81] See E. S. G. Robinson, "The Athenian Currency Decree and the Coinage of the Allies," Hesperia Suppl. 8 (1949), 324–40; J. P. Barron, The Silver Coins of Samos (London, 1966), 50–93; P. Gardner, "Coinage of the Athenian Empire," JHS 33 (1913), 147–88. ML, pp. 115–17, provides brief discussion. Breaks in the coinage of Ainos, Abdera, and Knidos have apparently been detected (Meiggs, AE, p. 601), but the chronology is quite uncertain.
[82] Mattingly, JHS 101 (1981), 85f., and in Carradice, ed., Coinage and Administration, p. 65, with n. 2, where he emphasizes that the evidence is most "limited."
[83] Surely its omission by Pseudo-Xenophon, when it would have been so relevant to his discussion, is a case in point.
To speak of the "imperialistic tone" of the Coinage Decree as being more suitable to the time of Cleon will not be persuasive to those who have assimilated this decree into what they conclude was the "temper" of the era of the peace—notwithstanding that, except for the Cleinias Decree, itself of uncertain date,[84] there is nothing to tell us about the psychology of the period, though it is certainly clear that the importance of the Peace of Callias was not exactly trumpeted by contemporaries. Even so, it seems undeniable that the heady days of Athenian imperialism under Cleon and his successors, when the Athenians acquired the frame of mind that proved to be the ruin of Melos, suit perfectly the spirit of this peremptory and unnecessarily intrusive decree.
When we take together, then, the negative numismatic evidence, which seems corroborated by the apparent alteration in Thasian measures in the twenties, with the allusion in Aristophanes to a topical and strident analogue of the decree, the argument from letter-forms, in this case already tenuous because the fragment is Coan, may legitimately be resisted. The conclusion based on the association of this decree with the advent of the Peace of Callias appears no more substantial than the current interpretation and restoration of the Strasbourg Papyrus. The inclination to impute "imperialistic decrees" to Pericles on the basis of a hazardous theory about the momentous effect of the Peace of Callias can only be deprecated. Reverberations of the peace have been amplified in the modern literature well beyond what the testimonia suggest or allow.
The preceding arguments, though negative in the sense that they attempt to clear away the odd pieces of furniture arranged around the Peace of Callias and to detach that peace from our conception of the manner in which the Athenian empire developed from the league of 478/7, if they seem reasonable, will adjust and correct our perspective about that momentous development. The conceptual error has been to consider the date 478/7 as the start of a new epoch—thereby encouraging the biological analogy holding that all things have a tender beginning (i.e., 478/7), grow to maturity (i.e., 450) and then old age (i.e., 425), instead of recognizing that the acquisition of hegemony was itself part of a larger sequence in which Athenian behavior had already become pronouncedly aggressive. The "new" era properly began in
[84] The "close connection" with the Cleinias Decree is stressed by Meiggs (among others) in AE , pp. 165ff. For the date of the Cleinas Decree, see Appendix 10.
508/7, when the Athenians acquired their democracy and began the process of expanding their power.
When isagoria[85] was established in consequence of the liberation from the tyranny, the Athenians became, as Herodotus judged (5.78), a people like unto no other. In speaking of their actions immediately subsequent to the reforms of Cleisthenes, Herodotus emphasizes their metamorphosis. He asserts that
freedom is an excellent thing; since even the Athenians, who, while they continued under the rule of the tyrants, were not a whit more valiant than any of their neighbors, no sooner shook off the yoke than they became decidedly the first of all. These things show that, while undergoing oppression, they let themselves be beaten, since then they worked for a master; but so soon as they got their freedom, each man was eager to do the best he could for himself. (trans. Rawlinson)
The facts more than bear out the truth of Herodotus's appraisal. The Athenians, having already expelled Cleomenes, the king of Sparta, from Attica, then defeated the armies of Boeotia and Chalcis in 506 in two battles on the same day (Hdt. 5.74ff.). What is more astonishing and relevant, they expelled the aristocrats of the land, the Hippobotai, from Chalcis, and in contravention of established principles of warfare (we are reminded of the phrase used by Thucydides to characterize the Athenian reduction of Naxos,
[85] For this word, see Fornara, Philologus 114 (1970), 178–79, and, most recently, M. H. Hansen, "Was Athens a Democracy," Hist. Fil. Medd. 59 (1989), 24–25.
[86] See pp. 79ff. above.
[87] See Fornara, CSCA 10 (1977), 45ff.
[88] Schol. Pindar Nem. 2.19; IG i 1 = ML 14 = Fornara 44.
[89] See ch. 4, pp. 118ff.
with great success in the Persian War, they persisted in the face of Spartan objections in erecting defensive walls just after Xerxes' departure.[90] The next step was to impose the hegemony over the allies.
Let us now pass on to the immediately subsequent events. First we must ask what the Athenians actually accomplished with the potent force raised in order to pay back the barbarian by ravaging his territory. It is virtually impossible to read Thucydides 1.98–101 and not observe that the pattern already set by Athens continued egocentric and aggressive. Thucydides does little more than list the conquests of Eion, Skyros, Karystos, the revolt of Naxos, the battle of the Eurymedon River, the dispute with Thasos leading to its conquest, and the dispatch of 10,000 settlers to Ennea Hodoi in Thrace.[91] The attempted colonization of Ennea Hodoi was clearly a part of the same expansionist drive that before the establishment of the league had placed cleruchies on Chalcis and Salamis and, after it, had led to the enslavement of the people of Skyros and Karystos, whose lands also were given over to Athenian colonists. At Naxos, too, the Athenians perhaps established a cleruchy.[92]
Clearly, the focus of the actions under review here is not Delos but the Athenian prytaneion. Athens's stipulated goal, payment in kind to the barbarian, is implied almost by way of exception in Thucydides' list with his mention of the battle of the Eurymedon. Those who emphasize Athens's promotion of Hellenic interests at the head of the Delian Confederacy and explain her subversion of Naxos and Thasos as the principled reduction of "rebellious" allies stemming from Athens's wish to keep the alliance against the Mede intact surely must note that most of the action is on the wrong side of the Aegean. Thucydides' belief that the war against the Mede was a proschema for Athenian aggrandizement not only makes far better sense but serves also as the signpost vital for our proper appreciation of his purposes in writing the particular account of the Pentacontaetia that he has given us. Our tendency to concentrate upon the league and its "development" has diverted our attention from the larger issue that is Thucydides' proper theme: the utilization by Athens of an instrument of rule in order to become, in respect of power, the equal of the Peloponnesians. It would appear that
[90] See ch. 4, pp. 118ff.
[91] Fornara 62.
[92] Plut. Per. 11.5; Diod. 11.88.3; Paus. 1.27.5. Meiggs, AE , pp. 121ff., 530, argues for a date c. 450 for the cleruchies at Naxos and Karystos.
Thucydides' term, arche, used in 1.97.2, when he states that he will demonstrate how the "empire" arose, has been understood too precisely, as if he were speaking of the structure of what we call "the Athenian empire," much as we speak of the Roman or the British empire, thinking primarily of their institutional frameworks. Consequently, Thucydides' account, which actually is concerned with the development of Athenian power by way of the city's control over others, is studied with the wrong lens, as if his intention were merely to detail the transformation of the Delian League, and to trace the decline of the allies from partners to subjects. Hence the frequent charge that Thucydides' account stands incohesive and incomplete. To take one example, consider Gomme's accusation that Thucydides has failed to mention, though he should have included it, how Athens "strengthened her empire and how she managed its affairs";[93] specifically, that Thucydides ignores the transfer of the allied treasury from Delos to Athens in 454. The unspoken premise is that the Athenian empire developed by way of organizational changes effected in a league of which Athens originally claimed only the "simple leadership." But the transfer of the treasury, however significant in itself, attests to the fact that by 455 the league had atrophied and its "charter" was not even worth lip-service.
If Gomme had considered the possibility of writing a section in his Commentary on "Details in Thucydides' Excursus that should have been omitted," as well as the one about the omissions, he would have perceived that by his lights Thucydides acted arbitrarily in both respects. What is the precise relevance of the Athenian conquest and assimilation of Scyros and Karystos to the Athenian metamorphosis from "simple leader" of the confederacy to its imperial master? And how, again, is it affected by the grandiose failure of the Athenians in their attempt to settle Ennea Hodoi?[94] Thucydides' sketch of Athenian imperialism, his narrative of the steps by which Athens achieved control of the Aegean, is only partially a history of the Delian League; and though we may well wish that Thucydides had provided us with such a history, to Thucydides the crucial matter was to provide us with an analysis of, among other things, Athens's swift destruction of the league. But he does mention other things as well, equally relevant to his theme, such as the
[93] Gomme, HCT, 1.370
[94] Meyer, 3.492–94, rightly emphasized that Thrace was a logical target needing to be cleared of Persian garrisons, but the colonization of Ennea Hodoi transcends that strategy. For the successful resistance of Maskames at Doriskos, see Hdt. 7.106.
cleruchies, the battle of the Eurymedon, and, interestingly enough, those undertakings of Athens, also a measure of her power, that ended in failure—the disaster at Ennea Hodoi and the Egyptian Expedition.
If the reader will grant that the transformation of the alliance into a coercive instrument benefiting Athens came early, the rapidity postulated is nevertheless startling, and may require special explanation in order to render it psychologically comprehensible. The Athenians, if militant, were a people with a conscience: how could they have justified the naked egotism implicit in our reconstruction? The answer, paradoxically, lies in a bias against Asiatic Greeks, Ionians included, for the inference is compelling that the Athenians regarded even the Ionians, qua Asiatics, as a debased branch of the species. The situation, like many in the real world, is not without its internal contradictions. The Athenians were, of course, Ionians themselves. However, unlike the rest, who were, according to the received view, not indigenous to Attica, the Athenians believed themselves to be autochthonous. They had never migrated; above all, they had defeated the Persians twice in war, in 490[95] and in 480–79. But as to the Asiatics, Ionians included, it appears that the Athenians acquired the ruling prejudice of the Dorians who inhabited the harsh and poor Balkan peninsula,[96] and they worked out the contradiction by believing that they were superior to their Asiatic kindred.
That the Asiatic Greek was subject to denigration even early in the fifth century is as certain as these things can be. The Greek value-system placed stress on moderation, love of liberty, manliness, lack of ostentation, and a whole train of associated qualities that were, or seemed, the polar opposites of those for which the Ionians (as, for simplicity, we
[95] Consider the words of Herodotus in 6.112.3. Of Marathon he writes that "the Athenians were the first of all Hellenes of whom we know to have made a charge against [this] enemy, and were the first to endure to look upon Median dress and the men clothed in it." Herodotus, though Dorian and proud of it, was hardly an enemy of the Athenian branch of the Ionian race. His use of the word "Hellenes" in this passage is intriguing. On Herodotus's attitude to the Ionians, cf. D. Gillis, Collaboration with the Persians, Historia Einz. 34 (1979), 1ff., and see below.
[96] Though Ed. Meyer was rather inclined to gloss over this inherently ugly attitude, his perception of its existence is revealed in the following words: "Streng hielt man auf ehrbare Sitten, auf straffe Zucht der Jugend; man forderte die Hingabe jedes Bürgers an den Staat; man hatte zwar die neuen Formen der Dichtung und Kunst aufgenommen, aber von der radicalen Strömung und den weichlichen Formen, die aus Ionien kamen, wollte man nichts wissen" (Meyer, 3.477). On Ionian music, see Plato Rep. 399a–e. J. Adam, The Republic of Plato (Cambridge, 1963), ad loc., unjustifiably extenuates and delimits Plato's criticism.
shall denote the entire group) had become notorious before the end of the sixth century. They were famous for their luxury; they became symbols of the moral disaster and civic turmoil it could work. Both Callinus and Archilochus—who not so incidentally bragged of throwing away his shield—sang or warned of the fall of Magnesia as a result of the pursuit of pleasure (Athenaeus 525c). These memorable lines we owe to Xenophanes (DK 21 B 3) who, proving the exception to the rule, left Ionia to avoid enslavement: "They [the Colophonians] learned idle luxuries from the Lydians and, so long as they were free from hateful tyranny, they advanced into the agora dressed in purple robes, a thousand at a time, boastful men, reveling in their lovely locks, drenched with the odor of prepared unguents." This passage manages allusively to condemn the Colophonians for a whole group of connected vices: Lydianization, dandification, arrogance, and even the approaching descent into tyranny. But there are a number of other examples. In a fine verse, 1103, Theognis speaks of the destruction of Magnesia, Colophon, and Smyrna because of hybris. Enough remains to infer safely that, for all their great achievements, the Asiatic Greeks were chiefly conspicuous as the exemplars of the life of pleasure and effeminacy, an image confirmed by climatological theories and further reinforced by their reduction to slavery, as the Greeks put it, by Croesus, Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes.[97] It is consequently to the point that the Athenians abandoned Ionian dress sometime after 500 by putting away their linen chitons and the golden grasshoppers with which the eudaimones adorned their hair (Thuc. 1.6.3). Thucydides perhaps implies that they wished to emulate the Spartans. A trend of this kind, in any case, does not come about by accident, and whether it be viewed as Dorianizing or as anti-Ionian, it is the same at bottom and attests to the repudiation by the Athenians of their Ionian kin.
We are entitled to believe, therefore, that the very bad reputation of the Ionians reflected in fifth century and later literature carried down
[97] There is a note of contempt in Aesch. Persae 771, referring to the subjugation of Ionia; H. D. Broadhead, The Persae of Aeschylus (Cambridge, 1960), ad loc., evaluates it incorrectly; Hdt. 6.32 deserves quotation here: "And now the generals made good all the threats wherewith they had menaced the Ionians before the battle. For no sooner did they get possession of the towns than they chose out all of the best favoured boys and made them eunuchs, while the most beautiful of the girls they tore from their homes and sent as presents to the king, at the same time burning the cities themselves, with their temples. Thus were the Ionians for the third time reduced to slavery; once by the Lydians, and a second, and now a third time, by the Persians" (trans. Rawlinson); cf. Aesch. Pers. 900f.
from the sixth century and was not simply a prejudice of recent origin. The emphasis is on Ionian hedonism and its attendant vices—weakness of will, an unmanly nature, and, most important, lack of devotion to freedom. Thus, though Herodotus's unconcealed contempt for the Ionians may well proceed from his own status as a Dorian and have been heightened by their ignominious subjection to Athens, his insistence on this aspect of their character undoubtedly reflects his belief that they were running true to form. Fifth-century conditions alone will not explain why Herodotus (4.142) makes the Scythians say of the Ionians (the dramatic date is 512) that "if viewed as free men, they were the basest and most unmanly of all mankind, while, if considered as slaves, they were creatures who loved their masters and were beyond all others least likely to escape." An even more suggestive passage, too long to quote in its entirety, is provided by Herodotus in 6.11–12. Just before the battle of Lade, the Ionians prove incapable of obeying the orders of Dionysius of Phocea, even though they have been persuaded that their only salvation lies in the adoption of discipline—talaiporein, Thucydides would say. But the Ionians give it up, Herodotus imputing the following sentiments to them:
Fools and distracted that we were to put ourselves into the hands of this Phocean braggart, who furnishes but three ships to the fleet. He, now that he has got us, plagues us in the most desperate fashion; many of us, in consequence, have fallen sick already—many more expect to follow. We had better suffer anything rather than these hardships; even the slavery with which we are threatened, however harsh, can be no worse than our present thraldom. Come, let us refuse him obedience. (trans. Rawlinson)
The passage is so apt that if one did not know better, one could almost believe that it was drafted in order to illustrate Thucydides 1.99. Thucydides himself, however, provides his own commentary in book 6 in the speeches he attributes to Hermocrates and Euphemus at Camerina in 415/14. Hermocrates excoriated the Ionians for their willingness to exchange one master, Persia, for another even worse (6.76.4); Euphemus, the Athenian ambassador, willingly conceded the point. We have, he says (6.82.4), done nothing unfair in building our empire; "they, our kinsfolk, came against their mother country, that is to say, against us, together with the Mede, and instead of having the courage to revolt and sacrifice their property as we did when we abandoned our city, chose to be slaves themselves, and to try to make us so" (trans. Crawley).
However refined and subtle Thucydides' rhetorical purposes, no doubt should exist that both speakers are manipulating, not inventing, what was a stock allusion prevalent even in 479. The contrast, indeed, could not have been more striking. The hardy and relatively poor men of Greece had conquered Xerxes, Ionian contingents and all. The Ionians, notorious for their luxury, seemed inured to servitude. In such circumstances, the Athenians' intolerant exercise of power becomes comprehensible. In the cliché, the Athenians forced the Ionians to be free; from their point of view, the Ionians were a pusillanimous group needing to be ridden hard. Any lapses in contributions or in military service required strict accounting, while defection from the league could be regarded as a typically irresponsible act deserving correction even in the face of "established usage." It may be, too, that Athens, as the metropolis of the Ionians, felt that she merited a freer hand to chastise these wayward children, who, left to their own devices, would probably revert to Medism as the easier course. Nothing, of course, is black and white; the Athenians' prejudice need neither have been extreme nor the Ionians unduly caricatured for them to be put at a distinct disadvantage, initially autonomous though they were, in their relations with the Athenians just after 478/7. Just as the Athenians believed in their own greatness, so also would they have been persuaded of the political inferiority of the Greeks with whom they forged alliance. In the circumstances, by an almost chemical reaction, the aggressive tendencies of the Athenians became more pronounced. Invested with the authority to tax these allies, and possessing superior military power, they quickly exploited a people not even theoretically their equals.
The rapidity of this development, therefore, becomes psychologically explicable when we consider the history and reputation of the Ionians, on the one hand, and, on the other, the heady self-confidence and pride of the Athenians, who had beaten the Persians at Marathon and endured to watch their city become ashes without losing heart before the conflict at Salamis. One is reminded of the arrogance of the French revolutionaries when they encountered the representatives of the old aristocracy as they conquered them, one by one, in Europe before and during the Napoleonic Wars. Hence the early foundation and solidification of the "rule" or "empire" by Cimon in his several capacities as general, administrator, and leader of the demos. After his rejection in 462, opinion in Athens about the arche and its propriety remained unaltered, though peace with Persia was another matter en-
tirely. Thus the Athenians made an effort late in the sixties (which we may associate with Ephialtes) to formalize the arrangement Cimon had already secured for the Aegean by attempting to negotiate with Artaxerxes,[98] a hope that proved unavailing until 449/8. When Pericles took up the reins of power after the passing of Ephialtes, apart from the question of peace with Persia, on which (we suppose) the democratic faction and Cimonid supporters were split, his chief theoretical difference from Cimon in foreign policy centered on Sparta and his presumed unflagging hostility to that power.[99] As to the empire itself, Pericles was Cimon's heir. The conclusion of peace with Persia simply freed him from constraint in what would become the next step in his plan of containing Sparta by a web of alliances from Phocis to Acarnania to Italy and Sicily—always keeping open the possibility of war with the Peloponnesians.
The older view of Pericles, therefore, which contrasted his policies with those of the succeeding "demagogues," most notably Cleon, is preferable to the opinion that he was the radical founder of a new imperialism and not the continuator of Cimonian rule.[100] We may surmise that their goals would not often have diverged in respect to imperial affairs. Defections, for instance, would be repressed with comparable vigor; it was a matter of public policy on which all Athenians united. Both leaders, Cimon and Pericles, unquestionably were quite as much the agents of the popular will in imperial affairs as they were its creators. If anyone lived in Athens who wished to renounce the empire, his name escapes us; the expression of such a view, whether guided by moral principle or political ideology, would have been taken by the citizenry as a mark of insanity.[101] "Periclean imperialism" connotes refinements in administration, whereby it was regularized and tightened, particularly in regard to judicial practice, [102] and a shift in attitude about the utilization of the "allied treasury"—with the exception of one other very important change indeed.
[98] See Appendix 7.
[99] See ch. 1, pp. 28f., and ch. 4, pp. 128ff.
[100] The "older view" may be found in Walker and Adcock, CAH, 5.106–10, 202–4; cf. Hignett, HAC, pp. 252 ff.; for a partial return to it, see F. J. Frost, Historia 13 (1964), 392–99.
[101] No "class" or political faction at Athens repudiated the empire. Thucydides son of Melesias, of course, repudiated the peace. See ch. 1, pp. 29f., with nn. 64ff.
[102] See Fornara, "The Phaselis Decree," CQ 29 (1979), 49–52, against G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, "Notes on Jurisdiction in the Athenian Empire," CQ 55 (1961), 94–112, 268–80. Cf. Meiggs, AE, pp. 220–33.
It is reasonable to suppose that Athens began the practice of installing democracies in subject states sometime after the departure of Cimon in 461. Cimon's political and social position makes unlikely the assumption that he actively promoted the expansion of democracy in the Aegean.[103] It is a fair inference for the same reason, that Pericles interfered whenever opportunity allowed, whether because of the outbreak of factional disputes (Ps.-Xen. 3.10) or on the occasion of the reduction of a rebellious government.[104] The practice arguably reflects Pericles' ideological commitment and the negative attitude towards more restrictive governments the possession of such a commitment implies. But motives of political expediency cannot be discounted, especially as time progressed, when governments of other types would have been readier to rebel.[105] The innovation had serious consequences, for ideological discord was introduced into communities comparatively free from such evils until that time.[106] For to observe that the city-states of the region were inevitably less politicized than the Athenians is not to idealize the Aegean landscape. The Athenians, after all, formed the vanguard of the new democratic movement. Being less advanced, and isolated from the ideological struggle Athens was waging with the Dorian aristocracies or oligarchies, Athens's subjects found themselves embroiled, suddenly and without preparation, in an internal social struggle. Unless we regard civil war as a justifiable means to a goal desired by a faction, the effect of this policy can only be lamented. Furthermore, the polarization of the people of the empire only complicated Athenian relations with the Spartans, who now began to appear to some members of the local propertied classes as potential champions, just as the Peloponnesians came to view them as possible allies to whom aid might be rendered with profit (Thuc. 1.40.5).
It was perhaps partly to contain this explosive situation that the allies were deprived of their jurisdiction over certain kinds of legal disputes.[107] Athens became the final court of appeal for trials involving the punishment of exile or death. (It was easier to stipulate the penalty than to categorize the relevant charges.) But the consequence was to strip
[103] Ps.-Xen. 3.11 refers to Athenian support of the "best" people on three occasions before c. 445, when they were aided in Boeotia, Miletos, and Sparta itself. See G. W. Bowersock, HSCP 71 (1966), 35–38.
[104] E.g., Erythrai, IG i 14 = ML 40 = Fornara 71.
[105] Cf. De Ste. Croix, Historia 3 (1954–55), 1–41.
[106] See H.-J. Gehrke, Stasis (Munich, 1985), pp. 268ff.
[107] IG i 40 = ML 52 = Fornara 103; see Meiggs, AE, pp. 224ff., Fornara, "IG i 39.52–57 and the 'Popularity' of the Athenian Empire," CSCA 10 (1977), 39–55.
the "allies" of their local autonomy, for to deprive these city-states of their legal jurisdiction over their own citizenry was to destroy their ultimate control over local affairs, making the Athenians the dispensers of punishment and favor. Nor is it tenable to suppose that Pericles was merely adopting an intrinsically appropriate means of ensuring fair play to proponents of Athens in the "allied" states. For the system applied in the very democracies the Athenians helped establish.[108] And this suggests that the motive of Athenian intervention was a consequence, not of condign assistance, but of the desire to rule actively. It is a sign of the arrogation of authority characteristic of all large bureaucracies, especially those with a reason to believe in their superiority. Such a spirit as this, certainly, is in keeping with the temper of Periclean Athens. If anything characterizes the Athenian attitude towards their "allies" from the fifties on, it is that they considered themselves superior beings ruling over natural subjects.
Whatever the reasons for removing the allied treasury to Athens in 454, for example, appropriation of the tribute money formalized the Athenians' "imperial" view of themselves and perception of the inferiority of their subjects. Dedication of a quota to the city's tutelary deity and the erection of a monumental block of marble on which to inscribe the names of tribute payers rather reminds one of oriental practice; in fact, it is precisely the kind of action we normally associate with the arrogance of despotism, whether Persian or Egyptian. The first tribute-quota stele attests to an extraordinary degree of pride, just as the size of the block[109] indicates vaulting self-assurance. Pericles' resolve to spend this treasure on Athenian citizens not only in return for public service but for the beautification of the imperial city was the next logical step. Most interesting, however, is the fact that Pericles' proposal to construct public buildings with these funds developed into a heated issue. It follows that this aspect of Athenian autocracy was resented even in Athens. Thucydides son of Melesias presumably felt that the treasure was allied money over which Athens had no exclusive moral claim, which should be kept apart in anticipation of the hour in which it would be needed once more against the Persians. The mere fact that Thucydides dared to provoke a conflict armed only with a moral principle with which to counter a policy in every respect bound to attract the Athenians tells us much. We are reminded of Cimon's expedition in
[108] See, e.g., IG i 40 = ML 52 = Fornara 103 (the Chalcis Decree).
[109] The dimensions of the lapis primus were 3.663 m × 1.109 m × 0.385 m (ML, p. 84); for photographs and diagrams, see ATL, 1.4ff.
aid of the Spartans. If there is a correlation between quixotic politics and personal integrity, Pericles' opponents, though perhaps old-fashioned, were as principled as they were myopic.
The same prideful spirit shines in other measures adopted by the Athenians under Pericles' leadership, and they are the more noteworthy because of their purely symbolic meaning. Perhaps the most remarkable was the procedure followed at the Dionysia. Every year, at this festival, the Athenians would fill their theatre and watch the porters carry in, talent by talent, the tribute received for the year. This display was censured even by Ioscrates (8.82), who cites it as a cause of Athenian unpopularity. The truth of his observation is not to be denied.
In truth, the Athenian empire evokes conflicting emotions in the heart, as well it should, for they reciprocate to the contradictions inherent in the "imperial democracy" that glorified self-rule but owed its material greatness to the subjection of others. We admire the dynamism and ability of the Athenians but deplore the hybris that, as Herodotus all but says, was the inevitable defect of the virtues raising them on high.