any higher aim than that of establishing his own power, and whether they must not be regarded as a sacrifice by which, at the expense of his principles, he purchased that popularity which was the indispensable condition of success in all his undertakings. The condition of the greater part of the states which composed the Athenian confederacy had, as we have seen, undergone a great change in the time of Cimon, and through his management. A very important innovation, which visibly altered the relation before subsisting between Athens and her allies, appears to have been effected even in the lifetime of Aristides. We learn from Plutarch that a proposal was then made, nominally, at least, by the Samians, to transfer the treasury of the confederacy from Delos to Athens. Aristides is said to have admitted the expediency of the change for the interest of Athens, but to have been formed against the administration of Perieles. But his activity only served to hasten his own downfall, and to consummate his adversary's triumph. Pericles far surpassed him in eloquence and address; and he himself is said to have acknowledged this superiority by a lively image in a conversation with the Spartan king, Achidamus. The Spartan asked him whether he or Pericles was the better wrestler. "When I throw Pericles," he answered, "he always persuades the by-standers that he has not been down." But this was probably the slightest of the advantages which Pericles possessed over him and his party. The contest was not one of rhetoric or wit; and what enabled Pericles to overpower all opposition was not so much his intellectual predominance as the accordance of his policy with the spirit and situation of his countrymen. The measures which Thucydides opposed were precisely those which were in their own nature popular and ir-condemned it as unjust.* Perhaps he was resistible. The ground which he took must have appeared to his contemporaries, at the best, as an unseasonable affectation of an over-refined morality, even if they could see in it anything more than a party manœuvre, thinly covered by a show of severe justice and wise economy. When, therefore, the contest was brought to an issue, which rendered it necessary for one of the rivals to go into a temporary exile, the ostracism fell, as it could not fail to do, on Thucydides (B.C. 444). The anecdote above related seems to imply that he retired to Sparta; it appears, indeed, that he was not long after restored to his country, perhaps because he had ccased to be formidable; but his faction was entirely broken up, and the sway of Pericles in the Athenian councils became more absolute than ever, and lasted, with scarcely any interruption, to the end of his life. CHAPTER XVIII. aware that the Samians who made this application did not really express the wishes of their countrymen, who can scarcely have had any motive for desiring what they proposed, and that they were only employed by the party at Athens who wished to carry the measure to take away the appearance of open violence. It is not quite certain, though most probable, that the objections of Aristides were overruled on this occasion, but at least the change was not long deferred. Those introduced by Cimon stripped the weaker states, one after another, of their means of defence; and, when Pericles came to the head of affairs, there probably remained but a few steps more to be taken to convert the confederacy into an empire, over which Athens ruled as a despotic sovereign. It seems to have been he who raised the annual contributions of the allies from 460 talents, the amount at which they had been fixed by Aristides, to 600, and who first accustomed the Athenians to exert a direct and engrossing authority over the states which had been deprived of their political independence, and to interfere FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE THIRTY YEARS' with the concerns of their domestic administra TRUCE TO THE RENEWAL OF HOSTILITIES BE- tion. Besides her financial exactions, there were two ways in which Athens encroached on the rights of her subjects: one affecting their THE Thirty Years' Truce, though concluded forms of government, the other the dispensaupon terms seemingly disadvantageous to Ath-tion of justice. The establishment of a demoens, afforded an interval of repose highly favour-cratical constitution was not an invariable efable to her prosperity, only interrupted by one successful effort. It was during this period that Pericles was enabled to carry out his views into action, with the amplest means that the state could furnish at his command, and with scarcely a breath of opposition to divert him from his purpose. The history of Athens, during the continuance of the Thirty Years' Truce, may be properly comprised in a general survey of his administration. : Pericles, to describe his policy in a few words, had two objects mainly in view throughout his public life to extend and strengthen the Athenian empire, and to raise the confidence and self-esteem of the Athenians themselves to a level with the lofty position which they occupied. Almost all his measures may clearly be referred to one or the other of these ends. There are only a few as to which it may scem doubtful whether they can be traced to fect of their subjection, but it was a consequence which must, in most cases, have flowed from it, even without any interference on the part of the ruling state; and, where an aristocratical party was permitted to prevail, it probably furnished a pretext for stricter inspection and heavier burdens. This, however, was but a slight grievance, in comparison with the regulation by which all trials of capital offences, and all cases involving property exceeding a certain This appears, from Plut., Arist., 25, to have been the fact; but whether the turn given to the conduct of Aristiing the measure in spite of its iniquity, is a sufficient ground des by Theophrastus, who represented him as recommendfor saying, with Wachsmuth, i., 2, p. 75, that he approved of it, may be doubted. He may either have said that it was unjust, but expedient, or that it was expedient, but unjust Still it does not appear what part of the additional 140 talents arose from the commutation of service for money, and whether those who had contributed to the 460 were now at all more heavily burdened than before. low amount, were transferred from the cognizance of the local courts to Athenian tribunals. The advantage which the Athenians derived, as well from the fees of justice as from the influx of strangers at the yearly sessions held for the foreign suiters, was undoubtedly great; but the loss and inconvenience inflicted by the same means on their subjects was still greater. Justice was rendered needlessly expensive, slow, and uncertain. Not only were the most important causes delayed to the season proper for a voyage, but it might happen, through the unavoidable accumulation of business, even where no dishonest artifices were employed, that, after a long stay in a foreign city, the parties were forced to return home, leaving their suit still pending. In the mean while a body of Samians-the more resolute, perhaps, or the more obnoxious of the defeated party-had quitted the island on the approach of the Athenians, and had opened a correspondence with Pissuthnes, the satrap of Sardis, who is even said to have furnished them with gold when hopes were entertained of bribing Pericles. When the Athenian squadron had retired, they concerted a plan with their Persian ally for regaining possession of their country, and seem to have shown great energy and dexterity in carrying it into execution. First of all, having raised seven hundred mercenaries, and given notice to their friends at home, they crossed over to Samos in the night, overpowered and secured the Athenian garrison, and the greater part of their political adversaries, and The authority which Athens assumed over abolished the newly-established form of governher allies, and her interference in their domes- ment. Next, and probably before news of this tic concerns, proved the occasion of a war, revolution had reached Lemnos, they secretly which threatened to put an end to the Thirty conveyed away the hostages who had been deYears' Truce in the sixth or seventh year from posited there, and being thus freed from all reits commencement, but by its issue consolida-straint, openly renounced the Athenian alliance ted the Athenian empire, and raised the reputa- or authority, and bent their thoughts on the tion of Pericles by what he and his contempo- means of maintaining their independence. They raries considered as the most brilliant of his placed their Athenian prisoners in the hands of military triumphs. A quarrel had arisen be- the satrap; the condition, perhaps, on which tween Samos and Miletus, Thucydides says, they obtained a promise that they should be about Priene. But the more especial object of supported by a Phoenician fleet; they also found contention seems to have been the town of means of engaging Byzantium to join in the reAnæa, on the mainland opposite Samos, a place volt, and prepared immediately to renew hosof some note in the early history of the Ionian tilities against Miletus, in the hope, perhaps, of settlers.* A war ensued, in which the Mile- striking a decisive blow before succour should sians were vanquished, and now sought protec- arrive from Athens. Yet these aids, even if tion from Athens, and endeavoured to excite none should fail them, could not inspire a reaher jealousy against their successful rivals. In sonable confidence, so long as Athens was able this application they were seconded by a party to direct her whole strength against them; and in Samos itself, which hoped, with Athenian the general inaction of the other subject states assistance, to overthrow the oligarchical gov- seemed to prove the hopelessness of their unernment which had been hitherto permitted to dertaking. Their only fair prospect of success subsist in the island. They found a favourable and safety depended on the disposition which hearing. Pericles, indeed, was charged with they might find among the enemies of Athens sacrificing the Samians to private feelings, in Greece to take up their cause. The allies which will be hereafter explained; but it was of Sparta, probably at their request, held a conprobably a political motive, more than any per- gress, in which the question seems to have been sonal bias, that induced him to seize the oppor-earnestly discussed. According to the slight tunity thus offered of reducing Samos to a closer dependance on the ruling state. The Samians were ordered to desist from hostilities, and to submit the matter in dispute to an Athenian tribunal; and as they did not immediately comply, Pericles was sent with a squadron of forty galleys to enforce obedience, and to regulate the state of Samos as the interest of Athens might seem to require. On his arrival he established a democratical constitution, and, to secure it against the powerful party which was adverse to this change, he took a hundred hostages-fifty men and fifty boys-whom he lodged in Lemnos, having, it is said, rejected the offer of a large sum of money, with which the oligarchs would have been willing to purchase his protection. Diodorus found an account, which is not improbable, that he exacted a contribution of 80 talents. He then sailed home, leav-is, moreover, so clear from the context that it might have been thought impossible to mistake the meaning of Thuing a small Athenian garrison in Samos.t cydides. * See P 198. Hence, in the Life of Sophocles, the war is called Tapos 'Avalav moλéμw. See Brunck, Sophocles, i., p. xv. Seidler's Dissertation on the Antigone in Hermann's Edition, p. xxiv. Boeckh on the Antigone, in the Berlin Transactions, 1824. That this garrison was left in Samos, not in Lemnos (where the population being friendly, it was not needed), and rhetorical allusion made by Thucydides to the proceedings of this assembly, it was Corinth that determined her confederates to abandon the Samians to the vengeance of their incensed sovereign. The ground on which the historian represents the Corinthians to have acted on this occasion is too consonant to their general policy, and too important to be looked upon as a rhetorical invention. It is, indeed, alleged by a Corinthian orator before an Athenian assembly as a claim upon Athenian gratitude; but it cannot have been feigned, and it implies that the authority which Athens exercised over her allies was generally acknowledged to be legitimate. The Corinthians, it is said, voted against the Samians, when many of the other Peloponnesian states were inclined to send them suc * ἐκκλέψαντες, Thuc., i., 115. The use of this term seems clearly to prove that those who conveyed away the hostages did not at the same time make themselves masters of an Athenian force that had been left to guard them, even if it was possible to reconcile this supposition with the expression of oav zapà oplow. Plutarch (Per., 25) makes Pissuthnes himself carry off the hostages; if so, the pris oners delivered to him must have been taken at Samos. * cours, and at the same time laid down the gen- | put forth more of their strength. A squadron eral principle that every state had a right to of forty galleys, under three eminent commandpunish its offending allies. Whether, in fact, ers, Hagnon, Phormio, and Thucydides,* was the Corintluans apprehended that the lending followed by one of twenty sail under Tlepoleassistance to the revolted Samians might prove mus and Anticles, and this by thirty others from a precedent attended with dangerous conse- Chios and Lesbos. Yet even this overpowerquences to the system which they themselves ing force did not deter the Samians, though observed towards their colonies, or they only the succours expected from Phoenicia did not put the principle forward as a pretext to cover arrive, from venturing on another seafight, the unwillingness which they may have felt on which was soon decided, so as to leave them other accounts to break the truce so early, is a no means of doing more than remain on the dequestion of little importance. But, under all the fensive. They, however, held out nine months, circumstances of the case, to treat the Samians and seem at last to have been reduced to capitas rebels, in an assembly where every one pres-ulate by famine, though Pericles is said to have ent avowedly wished well to their cause, was certainly a large admission in favour of the highest pretensions that Athens had ever maintained as to the extent of her supremacy. These deliberations, if begun, were probably not at an end before Pericles, accompanied by nine colleagues, had crossed the sea with a fleet of sixty sail to suppress the insurrection. They had learned that a fleet was expected to come to the assistance of the Samians from Phoenicia, and some galleys were sent to look out for it, while another small squadron was despatched to bring up the re-enforcements to be furnished by Chios and Lesbos. Though his numbers were reduced by these detachments to forty-four galleys, Pericles did not shrink from engaging with a Samian fleet of seventy, including twenty transports, as it was returning from Miletus, and gained a victory. Shortly after he received an addition to his forces of forty ships from Athens, and five-and-twenty from Chios and Lesbos, which enabled him to land a body of troops sufficient to drive the enemy into the town, and to invest it with a triple line of intrenchments. Yet it appears that, even after the siege was formed, another seafight took place, in which the Samians, who were commanded by the philosopher Melissus,† were victorious. The advantage, however, must have been very slight, or soon followed by a reverse; for we find that, while the hopes of the Samians rested on the Phoenician fleet, and they despatched five galleys to hasten its movements, Pericles thought himself strong enough to take sixty ships and sail along the coast of Caria to meet the expected enemy. The Phoenicians did not come up; but during his absence the besieged drew out their remaining galleys, and surprised the naval encampment of the Athenians, sank their guardships, and defeated the rest, which were brought out in disorder to repel the sudden attack. This success made them masters of the sea, and enabled them to introduce supplies into the town. They retained the ascendant fourteen days; it was, perhaps, nearly so long before the Athenians were able to convey the news to Pericles. On his return, the state of things was reversed, and the Samians once more closely besieged. But the effort they had made seems to have excited some alarm at Athens, and to have induced the Athenians to * Thue. i., 40. + See p. 214 It is on the authority of Aristotle that Plutarch, Per., 26, relates this fact, of which Thucydides does not give the slightest hint. and, but for the extreme brevity of his narrative, he might seem to contradict it. Brandis (Handbuch der Geschichte der Griechisch-Roemischen Philosophie, 1. p. 3971 suggests a doubt whether this Melissus was the philosopher. employed some new kinds of artillery, and to have harassed the besieged by a continual succession of attacks, which may also have served to divert the impatience of his own troops, among whom, if we may believe the statement of a later author, plenty and security seem to have bred an unusual degree of luxury and dissoluteness. The terms which the Samians obtained may be considered as mild, especially if, as Plutarch relates, the two parties had been so far exasperated as mutually to brand their prisoners. They were compelled to dismantle their fortifications, to deliver up their ships, and to pay the cost of the siege by instalments. The submission of Byzantium, which does not seem to have taken an active part in the war, followed close upon the reduction of Samos. Pericles, on his return to Athens, was greeted with extraordinary honours. The whole merit of the success was ascribed to him, and he is said exultingly to have compared the issue of his nine months' siege with the conquest which had cost Agamemnon ten years. The contest had at one time assumed a threatening aspect ; and Thucydides himself seems to intimate that the result might have been very different if the Samians had been better supported. In the funeral obsequies with which the citizens who had fallen before Samos were honoured, according to a usage which had been introduced It is a very doubtful point who this Thucydides was. That he was the historian himself seems highly improbable, not only because he would most likely have given some hint of his presence, but because we might then have expected a somewhat fuller account of the siege. On the other hand, the son of Melesias had been ostracised less than ten years before. Yet it seems easier to suppose that the term of his exile had been abridged, than that the officer mentioned on this occasion was a person otherwise unknown. Invented, according to Ephorus (Plut., Per., 27), by a lame engineer of Clazomenæ, named Artemo, who, from his being carried about in a litter, was distinguished by the epithet lep popnros. But Heraclides disputed the fact on the ground that a person of the same name and epithet was mentioned by Anacreon (compare Athenæus, xii., 46), and was also celebrated for mechanical contrivances. The coincidence would, indeed, be singular, but might be credible, if the two persons belonged to the same family. See the account of the statue of Aphrodite at Samos, quoted from Alexis, a Samian writer, by Athenæus, xiii., p. 572. Plutarch represents the Athenians as the aggressors. They branded their prisoners with the figure of a kind of merchant ship, used at Samos, and called a Samana. The Samiaus branded the Athemans with the figure of an owl. The irritation of the Samtans found vent afterward in the writings of their countryman Duris, who charged the Athenians and Pericles with atrocious inhumanity towards their prisoners. Thuc., i., 117. Diodorus, xii., 28, mentions 200 talents as the sum at which Pericles estimated the expenses of the siege. But this is manifestly much too little, and one might almost suspect that the words, kai xiv, had dropped either out of his text, or out of his head. Compare Isocr. avrid., p. 446, Bekker. ¶ viii., 76 at Athens in the Persian war,* Pericles was chosen to deliver the customary oration. At its close the women who attended the ceremony expressed their sense, either of his eloquence or of his military services, by a shower of headbands and chaplets. Elpinice alone, it is said, was heard reproachingly to contrast the triumph which he had dearly won over a Greek city with those which her brother had achieved over the barbarians. Pericles retorted by a line of Archilochus, which, unless it was a mere personal sarcasm, signified that Cimon's policy was now antiquated.† most enlightened, both of nations and of Indi- The event of the Samian war gave the sanction of success to the claim which Athens advanced of absolute authority over her allies. It established the fact that the name alliance, so far as it signified a relation of equality, or any degree of subordination short of entire subjection to the will of the ruling state, was a mere mockery. The question of right could not, indeed, be so determined. But the aid which Chios and Lesbos - the only members of the confederacy which retained either a show of independence or the means of asserting it-had lent towards the suppression of the Samian revolt, and, still more, the acquiescence of Sparta and her allies, interpreted by the language in which a part of them expressly recognised the title of Athens to the sovereignty which she claimed, might seem to attest the justice of her cause. Nor would it have been difficult to find arguments-had they been wanted-to satisfy the scruples of the Athenians. Though the league over which they presided had been originally formed with the free consent of all parties, it might be speciously contended that none of its members had a right to endanger the safety of the rest by withdrawing from it. Athens had been compelled to repress several attempts which had been made with this object by force; and the resentment and jealousy which she had thus excited constrained her to take up a new position, to treat all her allies as her subjects, and to acknowledge no obligations towards them except the duty of protecting them, which was included in that of maintaining and strength-believe Plutarch, Pericles also expelled the ening her maritime empire. One important con- landowners of Chalcis, who seem to have reclusion which resulted from this view of her turned to their ancient seats after they had situation was, that she owed her confederates been evacuated by the Athenians in the Persian no account of the treasure which she drew from war, and were perhaps permitted to retain posthem; that it might be legitimately applied to session of them, subject to tribute. If Pericles purposes foreign to those for which it had been ejected them when he conquered Eubœa, it at first contributed, and that, even if a part of must have been to make room for Athenian setit was laid out in a manner which could benefit tlers. But the relation which we find after none but the Athenian people, these might be ward subsisting between Chalcis and Athens considered as the savings of its prudence or as does not allow us to consider the former as ar the earnings of its valour, for which it was not Athenian colony ;‡ and we therefore cannot be responsible, and which it might use or enjoy as lieve that the measure spoken of by Plutarch seemed fit to itself. Such, perhaps, was the extended beyond the confiscation of some nature of the arguments by which Pericles si- estates. The submission of Naxos was secured lenced the opposition of Thucydides and his by a colony of 500 Athenians, who were probaparty, when they urged that the transfer of the bly provided for at the expense of the inore obcommon treasure from Delos to Athens could noxious of the islanders. Andros afforded a not affect its character, or discharge the Athe- new home and subsistence for half as many nians from the engagement by which they were Athenian settlers. A thousand were tempted bound to employ it for public ends. The soph-by the offer of land in the territory of the Bisalistry was not too gross to have blinded the Thus the north of Euboea was protected by a colony of 2000 Athenians, who were planted in the new town of Oreus, which rose into the place of the depopulated Histiæa. If we might | tian Thracians.* As many more found room | the ambitious hopes which it suggested or cherin the Thracian Chersonesus, and thus served ished. The Sybarites who survived the deto guard that important conquest, and to pro- struction of their city had taken refuge in their tect the Athenian commerce in that quarter. colony of Laos, and in Scidrus, which had probAmong these settlements there are some which ably also belonged to them, and seem to have deserve more particular notice, either on ac- made no attempt to recover their ancient seats. count of their connexion with subsequent events But the children and grandchildren of these exin this history, or as indications of the large iles appear to have engaged a body of advenviews and aspiring thoughts which now direct-turers from Thessaly* to join them in effecting ed the Athenian counsels. The failure and loss which the Athenians had experienced in their attempt to establish themselves on the Strymon, at the Nine Ways, did not deter them from renewing the enterprise. In the twenty-ninth year after the disaster at Drabescus, B.C. 437, Hagnon, son of Nicias, having collected a sufficient force at Eion, of which the Athenians still retained possession, succeeded in finally dislodging the Edonians from the site of his intended colony, and founded a new city, to which, from its situation-on a spur of Mount Pangæon, commanding an extensive view both towards the coast and into the interior, between two reaches of the Strymon, which he connected together by a long wall carried across the hill at the back of the town-he gave the name of Amphipolis. Hagnon enjoyed the honours of a founder as long as Athens retained any hold on the affection or respect of the colony. But the number of the Athenian settlers, as was to be expected from the perilous nature of the adventure, seems to have been originally small, and never to have formed a considerable part of the population. a settlement on the vacant site of Sybaris, which was thus restored fifty-eight years after its fall. The new colony very soon roused the jealousy of Croton, or was found to encroach upon her interests, and at the end of five or six years the settlers were forced to quit their new home. They did not, however, remain passive under this violence, but sent envoys to Sparta and Athens to solicit aid for the renewal of their attempt. Sparta saw no benefit that she could derive from the undertaking, and declined to take a part in it. But at Athens the proposals of the envoys were seconded by Pericles, and warmly embraced by the people. Ten commissioners were sent out, among whom was a celebrated diviner named Lampon, a man of eminent skill in the interpretation of oracles and the regulation of sacred rites. An oracle was procured exactly suited to the purpose of the leaders of the expedition, and under its guidance a new town was built with geometrical regularity,‡ at a short distance from the site of the old city, and called Thurium, or Thurii, from a fountain which rose there. Two very celebrated persons, Herodotus the historian, and the orator Lysias, were among the settlers. They were both foreigners; for the Athenians had invited adventurers from all parts of Greece, and particularly from Peloponnesus, to share the risks and the advantages of the expedition. The miscellaneous character of the population led to quarrels, which, for a while, gave a violent shock to the peace of the colony. The descendants of the ancient Sybarites put forward ridiculous pretensions of superiority over the new comers. They claimed the exclusive en In the course of an expedition which Pericles conducted in person into the Euxine, at the head of a large and gallant armament, for the purpose of displaying the power of Athens, and strengthening her influence among the cities and nations on those coasts, an opportunity presented itself of gaining possession of Sinope. The city was distracted by a civil war between the partisans and the adversaries of the tyrant Timesilaus; and as Miletus was no longer able to interfere in the affairs of her colony, the friends of liberty applied to Pericles for assist-joyment of the most important offices of the ance. Being unable to remain long enough to state; in the division of the territory they inbring the contest to a close, he left thirteen sisted on being allowed to choose the parcels galleys under the command of Lamachus, a of land which lay nearest the city; and in pubbrave officer, whose name will be made familiar lic sacrifices they would have their kinswomen to us by a long and active career. The tyrant take precedence of the other women. Such and his adherents were expelled, and the suc- were not the terms on which the new citizens cessful party invited a body of 600 Athenians to had accepted their invitation; they were indigshare the freedom of the city and the confisca- nant at the insolence of this aristocracy, which, ted estates of the exiles. It may have been at though entirely dependant on their help, treated the same period that Amisus admitted so great them as an inferior race; their resentment at a number of Athenians among her citizens, that length broke out into a furious attack, by which in the time of Mithridates the whole population the whole of this last remnant of the ill-fated was considered as an Attic race.‡ The fall of people is said to have been exterminated; exSybaris made an opening for an Athenian col-amples of a tragical destiny, which, after reony in the west, which, though not very important in itself, is interesting for the circumstances under which it rose, for the celebrated names which were connected with it, and for *The exact place is not mentioned. Their land lay to the south of the Strymon. This colony was probably connected with the foundation of Amphipolis; perhaps the 'Ayvwvrin of Steph. B. See Dr. Arnold in the Appendix to Thucydides, vol. ii., on the neighbourhood of Amphipolis. Appian, Mithrid., 8, calls it moiV 'ATTIKOU YÉVOUS, and, foid., 83, says that Lucullus heard úr' 'A0ŋvalwv aurous θαλασσοκρατούντων συνωκίσθαι. storing them unexpectedly to their own soil, made them fall there the victims of their arro * Diodor., xii., 10; but xi, 90, he only speaks of a leader named Thessalus. Wesseling prefers the first of these statements, but assigns no reason for his minus commodé, with which he rejects the latter. † B.C. 452. See Wesseling on Diodor., tom. i., p. 484, 53. There were four main streets-the Heraclea, the Aphrodisias, the Olympias, and the Dionysias-crossed at right angles by three called Heroa, Thuria, and Thurina. Singular that none took a name connected with Athens, especially if, as Mueller conjectures (Dor., iv., i., 1), Hippodamus was the architect Is there any mistake as to the last two? |