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

The Thasians had not originally trusted in their own strength alone for the hope of final success. Early in the dispute they had sent ministers to Lacedæmon, soliciting protection against the oppression of Athens. The pretence was certainly favourable, and the Lacedæmonian government, no longer pressed by domestic troubles, determined to use the opportunity for interfering to check the growing power of the rival commonwealth, so long an object of jealousy, and now become truly formidable. Without a fleet capable of contending with the Athenian, they could not send succour immediately to Thasos: but they were taking measures secretly for a diversion in its favour, by invading Attica, when a sudden and extraordinary calamity, an earthquake which overthrew the city of Sparta, and in its immediate consequences threatened destruction to the commonwealth, compelled them to confine all their attention at home. Nevertheless the siege, carried on with great vigour, and with all the skill of the age under the direction of Cimon, was, during three years, obstinately resisted. Even then the Thasians obtained terms, severe indeed, but by which they obviated the miseries, death often for themselves and slavery for their families, to which Grecian people, less able to defend themselves, were frequently reduced by Grecian arms. Their fortifications however were destroyed; their ships of war were surrendered; they paid immediately a sum of money; they bound themselves to an annual tribute; and they yielded all claim upon the opposite continent, and the valuable mines there.

The sovereignty of the Athenian people over the allied republics would thus gain some present confirmation; but in the principal object their ambition and avarice were, apparently through over-greediness, disappointed. The town of Eion stood at the mouth of the river Strymon. For the new settlement a place called the Nine Ways, a few miles up the river, was chosen; commodious for the double purpose of communicating with the sea, and commanding the neighbouring country. But the Edonian Thracians, in whose territory it was, resenting the encroachment, infested the settlers with irregular but continual hostilities. To put an end to so troublesome a war the whole force of the colony marched against them. As the Greeks advanced, the Edonians retreated; avoiding a general action, while they sent to all the neighbouring Thracian tribes for assistance, as in a common cause. When they were at length assembled in sufficient numbers, having engaged the Greeks far within a wild and difficult country, they attacked, overpowered, and cut in pieces their army, and annihilated the colony.

Cimon, on his return to Athens, did not meet the acclamations to which he had been accustomed. Faction had been busy in his absence. Apparently the fall of the colony of the Nine Ways furnished both instigation and opportunity, perhaps assisted by circumstances of which no information remains. A prosecution was instituted against him, on the pretence, according to the biographers, that he ought to have extended the Athenian dominion by conquest in Macedonia, and that bribes from Alexander, king of that country, had stopped his exertions. The covetous ambition indeed of the Athenian people, inflamed by interested demagogues, was growing boundless. Cimon, indignant at the ungrateful return for a life divided between performing the most important services to his country, and studying how most to gratify the people, would enter little into particulars in refuting a charge, one part of which he considered as attributing to him no crime, the other as incapable of credit, and therefore beneath his regard. He told the assembled people that “they mistook both him and the country which it was said he ought to have conquered. Other generals have cultivated an interest with the Ionians and the Thessalians, whose riches might make an interference in their concerns profitable. For himself, he had never sought any connection with those people; but he confessed he esteemed the Macedonians, who were virtuous and brave, but not rich; nor would he ever prefer riches to those qualities, though he had his satisfaction in having enriched his country with the spoils of its enemies.” The popularity of Cimon was yet great; his principal opponents apparently found it not a time for pushing matters to extremity against him, and such a defence sufficed to procure an honourable acquittal.