![The Historians' History of the World 03 [Greece to the Peloponnesian War] - Читать Любимую Русскую Полную Книгу 👉 Read-E-Book.com](/uploads/posts/books/4/4/2/4/the-historians-history-of-the-world-03-greece-to-the-peloponnesian-war-download.jpg)
The Historians' History of the World 03 [Greece to the Peloponnesian War]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1905
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: История
Электронная книга - «The Historians' History of the World 03 [Greece to the Peloponnesian War]». Краткое содержание книги:
Respecting this first assessment, we scarcely know more than one single fact—the aggregate in money was four hundred and sixty talents [equal to about £106,000 or $530,000].
Of the items composing such aggregate, of the individual cities which paid it, of the distribution of obligations to furnish ships and money, we are entirely ignorant: the little information which we possess on these points relates to a period considerably later, shortly before the Peloponnesian War, under the uncontrolled empire then exercised by Athens. Thucydides, in his brief sketch, makes us clearly understand the difference between presiding Athens, with her autonomous and regularly assembled allies in 476 B.C., and imperial Athens, with her subject allies in 432 B.C.; the Greek word equivalent to ally left either of these epithets to be understood, by an ambiguity exceedingly convenient to the powerful states,—and he indicates the general causes of the change: but he gives us few particulars as to the modifying circumstances, and none at all as to the first start. He tells us only that the Athenians appointed a peculiar board of officers, called the hellenotamiæ, to receive and administer the common fund,—that Delos was constituted the general treasury, where the money was to be kept,—and that the payment thus levied was called the phorus; a name which appears then to have been first put into circulation, though afterwards usual, and to have conveyed at first no degrading import, though it afterwards became so odious as to be exchanged for a more innocent synonym.
The public import of the name hellenotamiæ, coined for the occasion, the selection of Delos as a centre, and the provision for regular meetings of the members, demonstrate the patriotic and fraternal purpose which the league was destined to serve. In truth, the protection of the Ægean Sea against foreign maritime force and lawless piracy, as well as that of the Hellespont and Bosporus against the transit of a Persian force, was a purpose essentially public, for which all the parties interested were bound in equity to provide by way of common contribution: any island or seaport which might refrain from contributing, was a gainer at the cost of others: and we cannot doubt that the general feeling of this common danger as well as equitable obligation, at a moment when the fear of Persia was yet serious, was the real cause which brought together so many contributing members, and enabled the forward parties to shame into concurrence such as were more backward.
How it was that the confederacy came to be turned afterwards to the purposes of Athenian ambition, we shall see at the proper time: but in its origin it was an equal alliance, in so far as alliance between the strong and the weak can ever be equal, not an Athenian empire: nay, it was an alliance in which every individual member was more exposed, more defenceless, and more essentially benefited in the way of protection, than Athens.
We have here in truth one of the few moments in Grecian history wherein a purpose at once common, equal, useful, and innocent, brought together spontaneously many fragments of this disunited race, and overlaid for a time that exclusive bent towards petty and isolated autonomy which ultimately made slaves of them all. It was a proceeding equitable and prudent, in principle as well as in detail; promising at the time the most beneficent consequences, not merely protection against the Persians, but a standing police of the Ægean Sea, regulated by a common superintending authority. And if such promise was not realised, we shall find that the inherent defects of the allies, indisposing them to the hearty appreciation and steady performance of their duties as equal confederates, are at least as much chargeable with the failure as the ambition of Athens. We may add that, in selecting Delos as a centre, the Ionic allies were conciliated by a renovation of the solemnities which their fathers, in the days of former freedom, had crowded to witness in that sacred island.
[477-470 B.C.]
At the time when this alliance was formed, the Persians still held not only the important posts of Eion on the Strymon and Doriscus in Thrace, but also several other posts in that country, which are not specified to us. We may thus understand why the Greek cities on and near the Chalcidic peninsula,—Argilus, Stagiras, Acanthus, Scolus, Olynthus, Spartolus, etc.,—which we know to have joined under the first assessment of Aristides, were not less anxious to seek protection in the bosom of the new confederacy, than the Dorian islands of Rhodes and Cos, the Ionic islands of Samos and Chios, the Æolic Lesbos and Tenedos, or continental towns such as Miletus and Byzantium: by all of whom adhesion to this alliance must have been contemplated, in 477 or 476 B.C., as the sole condition of emancipation from Persia. Nothing more was required for the success of a foreign enemy against Greece generally than complete autonomy of every Grecian city, small as well as great—such as the Persian monarch prescribed and tried to enforce ninety years afterwards, through the Lacedæmonian Antalcidas, in the pacification which bears the name of the latter. Some sort of union, organised and obligatory upon each city, was indispensable to the safety of all. Nor was it by any means certain, at the time when the confederacy of Delos was first formed, that, even with that aid, the Asiatic enemy would be effectually kept out; especially as the Persians were strong, not merely from their own force, but also from the aid of internal parties in many of the Grecian states—traitors within, as well as exiles without.
THE TREASON OF PAUSANIAS
Among these, the first in rank as well as the most formidable, was the Spartan Pausanias. Summoned home from Byzantium to Sparta, in order that the loud complaints against him might be examined, he had been acquitted of the charges of wrong and oppression against individuals; yet the presumptions of medism, or treacherous correspondence with the Persians, appeared so strong that, though not found guilty, he was still not reappointed to the command. Such treatment seems to have only emboldened him in the prosecution of his designs against Greece, and he came out with this view to Byzantium in a trireme belonging to Hermione, under pretence of aiding as a volunteer without any formal authority in the war. He there resumed his negotiations with Artabazus: his great station and celebrity still gave him a strong hold on men’s opinions, and he appears to have established a sort of mastery in Byzantium, from whence the Athenians, already recognised heads of the confederacy, were constrained to expel him by force: and we may be very sure that the terror excited by his presence as well as by his known designs tended materially to accelerate the organisation of the confederacy under Athens. He then retired to Colonæ in the Troad, where he continued for some time in the farther prosecution of his schemes, trying to form a Persian party, despatching emissaries to distribute Persian gold among various cities of Greece, and probably employing the name of Sparta to impede the formation of the new confederacy: until at length the Spartan authorities, apprised of his proceedings, sent a herald out to him, with peremptory orders that he should come home immediately along with the herald: if he disobeyed, “the Spartans would declare war against him,” or constitute him a public enemy.