Appendix 7—
The "First" Peace of Callias

It seems self-evident that the wholly disparate nature of the combatants, the Greek allies and the Persian empire, made "peace" on any terms an inconceivable goal for the Greeks during the first years of the Delian League. The only terms acceptable to Persia were earth and water, while the Greeks, whatever their optimism, well understood the impossibility of extorting peace by conquest. Thus, when the defensive war against Persia was concluded in 479, it was open to the Greeks to walk away from the war, to hope that it would not be renewed, and to prepare for the next onslaught if it were. Peace, however, was a prospect beyond contemplation. Similarly, when Sparta initially attempted to lead a war of liberation and then left it to the Athenians to wage a "retaliative" offensive, some eventual formal end to hostilities with Persia was contrary to natural expectation. In the beginning, at least, the only question beyond vengeance faced by the allies was how deeply they might penetrate Asia Minor or wrest away those Greek and mixed-Greek city-states on the coast.^[1] At some point, no doubt, the extraordinary success of the allies brought an alteration of perspective. That point would have been reached when the Athenians (for it makes no sense to speak of "the allies" in this connection) discovered that they had much more to gain than to lose by ending hostilities, if that could be managed. This discovery presupposes two developments: the consolidation of an imperial framework valuable enough to protect by inducing Persia to rec-

[1] Cf. Aesch. Pers. 904–7, to be understood with Aeschylus's preceding list.

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ognize the status quo, and a display of power potent enough to encourage the Great King to consider the proposition of making peace. Such a display was provided at the Eurymedon, and since that battle was contemporaneous with the Athenians' decision to apply force against the allies in order to keep the league intact, both conditions were met. The historical moment, though it seems early, was not inappropriate to an Athenian desire to "end the war." Something is to be said, therefore, in favor of the case, recently argued by Ernst Badian, that a conclusion of peace was reached after the Eurymedon, negotiated by the same figure, Callias, who concluded the peace of 449/8.^[2]

However, evidence sufficient to establish the existence of a Peace of Callias earlier than, and confirmed by, the Peace of 449/8, cannot be coaxed out of the ancient tradition. It is quite true that a consensus held in the fourth century that a peace with Persia, formal or de facto,^[3] followed the battle of the Eurymedon, but in view of the objections raised against that belief in the same century and, especially, of Ephorus's dating of the Peace of Callias to 449/8, this uncertainty is plausibly explained by an oral tradition allocating credit to Cimon, who certainly deserved it, for making the Aegean into an Athenian lake; the later peace was then associated with the earlier accomplishment at the Eurymedon. This battle was truly epoch-making, and the splendor of the success made it easy enough for the Athenians to telescope the great event with the actual formalization of 449/8, since Cimon was associated with the latter event as well. For Cimon was involved (or virtually involved) in a similar contest with the Persians in the same geographical area in 450, and this military action formed the prelude to the peace.^[4] That the "doublet" generated real confusion resulting in the assimilation of the later battle to the earlier has been amply demonstrated by Eduard Meyer.^[5] Thus the mythopoeia of the fourth-century tradition in Plato, Isocrates, and others^[6] is neither problematical nor

[2] E. Badian, "The Peace of Callias," JHS 107 (1987), 1–39; for the bibliography on the subject, see K. Meister, Die Ungeschichtlichkeit des Kalliasfriedens und deren Folgen, Palingenesia 18 (Wiesbaden, 1982), pp. 124–30.

[3] Badian's objection, JHS 107 (1987), 7, to this concept is not clear to us. A cessation of actual hostilities between Eurymedon and c. 460 that involved no "understanding" might legitimately be so conceived.

[4] On the Cyprian campaign, see Meiggs, AE, pp. 124–28. Cf. Badian's objections to Meiggs's chronology (450/49), JHS 107 (1987), 38–39. The chronological debate is immaterial to our present point, but see above, ch. 3, n. 3.

[5] Meyer, Forsch., 2.1–25.

[6] Plato Menex. 242a10; cf. Plut. Cim. 13.4–5, Isocrates 4.118–20, 7.80, and cita-tions/translations at Fornara 95. For discussion, see Badian, JHS 107 (1987), and see below.

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necessitates a reason to infer, uneconomically, that the peace actually was duplicated.

What is needed to prove the conclusion of a peace both after Eurymedon and in 449/8 is a tradition to that effect known to a fourth-century source. Badian argues that the desired evidence can be deduced by combination of the Suda, s.v.

, and Aristodemus, FGrHist 104 F 13.^[7] On this view, the testimony of each, taken together, allows the inference that Ephorus referred to both treaties in his history. For the Suda apparently refers to the confirmation by Callias with Artaxerxes of boundaries fixed by treaty in the time of Cimon. He is called general and reference is made to his "nickname," Lakkoploutos. Aristodemus, almost certainly an epitomator of Ephorus,^[8] refers to Callias as general and repeats the name Lakkoploutos in his brief discussion of the peace of 449/8 concluded with Artaxerxes. These coincidences led Badian to suppose that Aristodemus and the Suda reflect a common source, which can only be Ephorus. If so, Ephorus referred to the conclusion of two peaces made by Callias, one in the time of Cimon, the other just after his death.

It is necessary to consider the testimony in the Suda closely. The text reads as follows:

. Before we attempt to extract conclusions from this sentence, it must be observed first that it is so compressed as to render its meaning problematical. Badian, indeed, fully recognizes that "we cannot be sure what this is intended to mean." "It may be taken to say that Callias fought as general against Artaxerxes and thus secured the boundaries fixed in Cimon's day", though he prefers to render it: "Callias, . . . while general, secured towards Artaxerxes the boundaries fixed in the treaty of Cimon's day." However, regularly takes a dative, and word placement of with the name Artaxerxes immediately following makes the first of the two possibilities distinctly preferable. The difference would not be material were it not also for the peculiarity of the phrase . Not even tragic diction would happily invent this phrase to mean "the boundaries (arising) from the peace." The second meaning, moreover, is assuredly not what the Suda

[7] Badian, JHS 107 (1987), 15ff.

[8] F. Jacoby, FGrHist II c, p. 320; cf. Badian, JHS 107 (1987), 16, where the following quotations from Badian are to be found.

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intended, as we learn from the use in the Suda of the same noun, s.v.

, to refer to "boundaries." In this notice, the Suda, after mention of the Eurymedon, continues: —"he is the one who fixed the boundaries for the barbarians." Now since cannot legitimately be translated as "the boundaries arising from the peace in the time of Cimon," we may conclude that the Suda, s.v. , misleads by compression, the writer having intended to write something to the effect that "Callias confirmed by treaty the boundaries fixed in the time of Cimon." For, needless to state, the presence of similar language in both notices together with the absence of a reference to spondai, a peace, in the article on Cimon strongly supports the assumption that the spondai in the problematical Suda, s.v. , were meant to refer to the peace of 449/8. Now this piece of information (Cimon's "boundaries") fits the standard view promulgated in the fourth century already mentioned above, and by itself, therefore, it is incapable of supporting Badian's hypothesis. Indeed, it is difficult to conceive of a situation in which the Suda, which apparently knows nothing of spondai when reporting on Cimon, would have preserved a recollection of that peace when speaking of yet another peace actually concluded by Callias in the article under his name. The preservation of such a detail s.v. in what was an afterthought would presuppose the existence of a tradition in which the association of Cimon with his alleged spondai must have been well-ventilated, but the opposite is true—see, for example, Plut. Per. 9.5.

On the other hand, Badian's revaluation of Herodotus 7.151 makes it plausible to suppose that the idea of peace was entertained not long after the accession of Artaxerxes to the Persian throne, though a different context (from that adopted by Badian) for the diplomatic exchange may profitably be suggested. Herodotus 7.151 may be translated as follows:

Some Greeks say that the following report also accords with [the tradition that the Argives avoided service in 480 because a herald from Xerxes reminded them of their common origin through Perseus.] This story involves events of a much later time. It happened that Athenian envoys, namely Callias, son of Hipponicus, and those who had traveled up-country with him, were in Susa on some other business, and the Argives, having at the same time also sent messengers to Susa, asked Artaxerxes, son of Xerxes, whether the treaty of friendship they had made with Xerxes remained in effect for them, or whether they were considered by him to be enemies. King Artaxerxes said that the treaty of friendship was most firmly in place and that he considered no city more friendly than Argos.

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Artaxerxes secured power in 465/4 at earliest.^[9] Badian postulates the arrival of the Argive embassy late in 464—as soon, in other words, as humanly possible. He explains the singular rapidity of this sequence by "taking the Argives' apparent eagerness and anxiety into account."^[10] These emotions, however, are a modern assumption; there is no substantive reason to assume haste—a year or more will square with the evidence more realistically. Argos stood in no danger that Persia was in a position to alleviate. On the other hand, the vital fact is that Herodotus states that the Argives and the Athenians were in Susa together: he neither implies nor disavows the possibility that the embassies were simultaneously dispatched from Greece (though their simultaneous arrival suggests a common embassy). If the embassies arrived together, and set forth together, this makes it likely that the renewal of friendship by the Argives partly served as a vehicle for the introduction of the Athenians to an audience with the Great King. The relevant fact for the chronology is the alliance formed between Argos and Athens c. 462, when Cimon's government was overturned. The consideration now becomes significant that as far as we know hostilities of a notable kind did not take place between the victory at the Eurymedon and the renewal of fighting at Cyprus and Egypt c. 460. If Badian is right that "an Athenian embassy had no business at Susa at all . . . as long as a state of war existed, except by special arrangement, to try to end that state of war,"^[11] it is almost certain that the Athenians pushed the notion of peace, assisted thereto by the Argives, after the disavowal of Cimon, and that the date of the embassy fell in the late sixties. We may infer, therefore, that a breakdown in negotiations (if the Great King allowed them to proceed that far) pressed by the new Athenian government spurred the renewal of hostilities, the stick instead of the carrot, the end in view being to compel Persia to the bargaining-table, as eventually occurred in 449/8. Thus we are able to comprehend the turn in foreign policy taken by the Athenians after the Great King's rejection of a peace sought by the Athenians to confirm the status quo.

[9] Badian, JHS 107 (1987), 3.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

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