The Historians' History of the World 03 [Greece to the Peloponnesian War]

It has already been mentioned that the first aggregate assessment of tribute, proposed by Aristides, and adopted by the synod at Delos, was four hundred and sixty talents in money (about £92,000, or $460,000). At that time many of the confederates paid their quota, not in money but in ships; but this practice gradually diminished, as the commutations above alluded to, of money in place of ships, were multiplied, while the aggregate tribute, of course, became larger. It was no more than six hundred talents at the commencement of the Peloponnesian War, forty-six years after the first formation of the confederacy; from whence we may infer that it was never at all increased upon individual members during the interval. For the difference between four hundred and sixty talents and six hundred admits of being fully explained by the numerous commutations of service for money, as well as by the acquisitions of new members, which doubtless Athens had more or less the opportunity of making. It is not to be imagined that the confederacy had attained its maximum number, at the date of the first assessment of tribute: there must have been various cities, like Sinope and Ægina, subsequently added.

Without some such preliminary statements as those just given, respecting the new state of Greece between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars, beginning with the Athenian hegemony, or headship, and ending with the Athenian empire, the reader would hardly understand the bearing of those particular events which our authorities enable us to recount; events unhappily few in number, though the period must have been full of action, and not well authenticated as to dates.

[470-468 B.C.]

The first known enterprise of the Athenians in their new capacity,—whether the first absolutely or not, we cannot determine,—between 476 B.C. and 466 B.C., was the conquest of the important post of Eion, on the Strymon, where the Persian governor, Boges, starved out after a desperate resistance, destroyed himself rather than capitulate, together with his family and precious effects, as has already been stated. The next events named are their enterprises against the Dolopes and Pelasgi in the island of Scyros, seemingly about 470 B.C., and the Dryopes in the town and district of Carystus, in Eubœa. To the latter, who were of a different kindred from the inhabitants of Chalcis and Eretria, and received no aid from them, they granted a capitulation: the former were more rigorously dealt with, and expelled from their island. Scyros was barren, and had little to recommend it, except a good maritime position and an excellent harbour; while its inhabitants, seemingly akin to the Pelasgian residents in Lemnos, prior to the Athenian occupation of that spot, were alike piratical and cruel. Some Thessalian traders, recently plundered and imprisoned by them, had raised a complaint against them before the Amphictyonic synod, which condemned the island to make restitution: the mass of the islanders threw the burden upon those who had committed the crime; and these men, in order to evade payment, invoked Cimon with the Athenian armament who conquered the island, expelled the inhabitants, and peopled it with Athenian settlers.

Such clearance was a beneficial act, suitable to the new character of Athens as guardian of the Ægean Sea against piracy: but it seems also connected with Athenian plans. The island lay very convenient for the communication with Lemnos, which the Athenians had doubtless reoccupied after the expulsion of the Persians, and became, as well as Lemnos, a recognised adjunct, or outlying portion, of Attica: moreover, there were old legends which connected the Athenians with it, as the tomb of their hero Theseus, whose name, as the mythical champion of democracy, was in peculiar favour at the period immediately following the return from Salamis. It was in the year 476 B.C., that the oracle had directed them to bring home the bones of Theseus from Scyros, and to prepare for that hero a splendid entombment and edifice in their new city: they had tried to effect this, but the unsocial manners of the Dolopians had prevented a search, and it was only after Cimon had taken the island that he found, or pretended to find, the body. It was brought to Athens in the year 469 B.C., and after being welcomed by the people in solemn and joyous procession, as if the hero himself had come back, was deposited in the interior of the city; the monument called the Theseum, with its sacred precinct being built on the spot, and invested with the privilege of a sanctuary for men of poor condition who might feel ground for dreading the oppressions of the powerful, as well as for slaves in case of cruel usage. Such were the protective functions of the mythical hero of democracy, whose installation is interesting as marking the growing intensity of democratical feeling in Athens since the Persian War.