part 2, chapter 11, section 5.

ALSO IN _J. P. Mahaffy, Problems in Greek History page 96._

_Plutarch, Themistocles._

See, also, below: B. C. 466-454.

ATHENS: B. C. 470-466. Continued war against the Persians. Cimon's victories at the Eurymedon. Revolt and subjugation of Naxos.

"Under the guidance of Athens, the war against the Persians was continued. Cimon [Kimon] sailed with a fleet to the coast of Thrace, and laid siege to Eion on the Strymon [B. C. 470]. The Persian garrison made a gallant defence; and finally Boges, the governor, rather than surrender, cast all his gold and silver into the river; and, having raised a huge pile of wood, slew his wives, children and slaves, and laid their bodies on it; then setting fire to it, he flung himself into the flames: the garrison surrendered at discretion. Doriscus was attacked in vain, but all the other Persian garrisons in Europe were reduced. Cimon then, as executor of an Amphictyonic decree, turned his arms against the piratic Dolopians of the Isle of Scyros, whom he expelled, and filled the island with Athenian colonists. On this occasion he sought and found (as was supposed) the bones of the hero Theseus, who had died in this island 800 years before; and he brought them in his own trireme to Athens,--an act which gained him great favour with the people. By this time, some of the confederates were grown weary of war, and began to murmur at the toils and expense to which it put them. The people of Naxos were the first who positively refused to contribute any longer; but the Athenians, who had tasted of the sweets of command, would not now permit the exercise of free will to their allies. Cimon appeared (Ol. 78,3) [B. C. 466] with a large fleet before Naxos; the Naxians defended themselves with vigour, but were at length forced to submit; and the Athenians had the hardihood to reduce them to the condition of subjects to Athens--an example which they soon followed in other cases. ... After the reduction of Naxos, Cimon sailed over to the coast of Asia, and learning that the Persian generals had assembled a large fleet and army in Pamphylia, he collected a fleet of 200 triremes at Cnidos, with which he proceeded to the coast of that country, and laid siege to the city of Phaselis, which, though Greek, obeyed the Persian monarch. Having reduced it to submission, he resolved to proceed and attack the Persian fleet and army, which he learned were lying at the river Eurymedon. On his arrival, the Persian fleet, of 350 triremes, fearing at first to fight till 80 Phoenician vessels, which they were expecting, should come up, kept in the river; but finding that the Greeks were preparing to attack, they put out to sea and engaged them. The action did not continue long: the Barbarians fled to the land; 200 ships fell into the hands of the victors, and several were destroyed. Without a moment's delay, Cimon disembarked his men, and led them against the land forces: the resistance of the Persians was obstinate for some time, but at last they turned and fled, leaving their camp a prey to the conquerors; and Cimon had thus the rare glory of having gained two important victories in the one day. Hearing then that the 80 Phoenician vessels were at Hydros, in the Isle of Cyprus, he immediately sailed thither and took or destroyed the whole of them. The victory on the Eurymedon may be regarded as the termination of the conflict between Greece and Persia. The year after it (Ol. 78,4) [B. C. 465], Xerxes was assassinated, and the usual confusion took place in the court of Susa."

_T. Keightley, History of Greece, part 1, chapter 13._

ALSO IN _W. W. Lloyd, The Age of Pericles, chapter 27 (volume 1)._

See also PERSIA: B. C. 486-405.

{158}

ATHENS: B. C. 466-454. Leadership in the Delian confederacy changed to sovereignty. Revolt and subjugation of Thasos. Help to Sparta and its ungracious requital. Fall and exile of Cimon. Rise of Pericles and the democratic anti-Spartan policy. Removal of the federal treasury from Delos. Building the Long Walls.

"It was now evident to the whole body of the allies of Athens that by joining the league they had provided themselves with a mistress rather than a leader. ... Two years after the reduction of Naxos another powerful island-state broke out into rebellion against the supremacy of Athens. The people of Thasos had from very early times possessed territory on the mainland of Thrace opposite to their island. By holding this coast-slip they engrossed the trade of the Valley of the Strymon, and held the rich gold mines of Mount Pangaeus. But the Athenians, after the capture of Eïon, set themselves to develop that port as the commercial centre of Thrace. ... A spot called 'The Nine Ways,' ... where that great river first begins to broaden out into its estuary, but can still be spanned by a bridge, was the chosen site of a fortress to secure the hold of Athens on the land. But the native Thracian tribes banded themselves together, and fell upon the invaders with such desperation that ... the Athenian armies were defeated. ... It was probably the discouragement which this defeat caused at Athens that emboldened Thasos to declare her secession from the Confederacy of Delos. She wished to save her Thracian trade, before Athens could make another attempt to divert it from her. The Thasians did not rely on their own resources alone; they enlisted the Thracians and Macedonians of the mainland, and sent to Sparta to endeavour to induce the ephors to declare war on Athens." The Spartans were well disposed to take up the cause of the Thasians; but at that moment they were overwhelmed by the calamity of the frightful Earthquake of 464, instantly followed by the rising of the Helots and the third Messenian war (See MESSENIAN WAR, THE THIRD). "The island-state was therefore left to its own resources; and these were so considerable that she held out against the force of the Athenian confederacy for two whole years. ... She was obliged at last to surrender to Cimon [B. C. 463], whose army had long been lying before her walls. Like Naxos, she was punished for her defection by the loss of her war-fleet and her fortifications, and the imposition of a fine of many talents. Still more galling must have been the loss of her trade with Thrace, which now passed entirely into Athenian hands. ... The Spartans were still engaged in a desperate struggle with their revolted subjects when the siege of Thasos came to an end. Cimon, who was now at the height of his reputation and power, saw with distress the troubles of the city he so much admired. He set himself to persuade the Athenians that they ought to forego old grudges, and save from destruction the state which had shared with them the glory of the Persian war. ... His pleading was bitterly opposed by the anti-Spartan party at Athens, headed by two statesmen, Ephialtes and Pericles, who had already come into notice as antagonists of Cimon. But the more generous and unwise policy prevailed, and 4,000 hoplites were sent to the aid of Sparta [B. C. 462]. This army was pursued by misfortune; it was so unsuccessful in attacking Ithome that the Spartans attributed its failure to ill will rather than ill luck. They, therefore, began to treat their allies with marked discourtesy, and at last sent them home without a word of thanks, merely stating that their services could be of no further use [See MESSENIAN WAR, THE THIRD]. This rudeness and ingratitude fully justified the anti-Spartan party at Athens. ... Cimon was now no longer able to deal with the policy of the state as he chose, and the conduct of affairs began to pass into the hands of men whose foreign and domestic policy were alike opposed to all his views. Ephialtes and Pericles proceeded to form alliances abroad with all the states which were ill disposed toward Sparta, and at home to commence a revision of the constitution. They were determined to carry out to its furthest logical development the democratic tendency which Cleisthenes had introduced into the Athenian polity. Of Ephialtes, the son of Sophonides, comparatively little is known. But Pericles ... was the son of Xanthippus, the accuser of Miltiades in 489, B. C., and the victor of Mycale and Sestos; while, on his mother's side, he came of the blood of the Alcmaeonidae. Pericles was staid, self-contained, and haughty--a strange chief for the popular party. But his relationship to Cleisthenes, and the enmity which existed between his house and that of Cimon, urged him to espouse the cause of democracy. ... While Cimon had Greece in his mind, Pericles could only think of Athens, and the temper of the times was favourable to the narrower policy. ... The first aim which Pericles and Ephialtes set before themselves was the cutting down of the power of the Areopagus [See above: B. C. 477-462]. That body had since the Persian war become the stronghold of the Conservative and philo-Laconian party. ... Ephialtes took the lead in the attack on the Areopagus. He chose a moment when Cimon was away at sea, bent on assisting a rebellion against the Great King which had broken out in Egypt. After a violent struggle, he succeeded in carrying a law which deprived the Areopagus of its ancient censorial power, and reduced it to a mere court to try homicides. ... When Cimon came home from Egypt he was wildly enraged. ... Recourse was had to the test of ostracism. It decided against Cimon, who therefore went into banishment [B. C. 459]. But this wrong against the greatest general of Athens was, not long after, avenged by an over-zealous and unscrupulous friend. Ephialtes was slain by assassins in his own house. ... The immediate result of this murder was to leave Pericles in sole and undivided command of the democratic party. The foreign policy of Pericles soon began to involve Athens in troubles at home. He concluded alliances with Argos and Thessaly, both states at variance with Sparta, and thereby made a collision with the Lacedæmonian confederacy inevitable. He gave still more direct offence to Corinth, one of the most powerful members of that confederacy, by concluding a close alliance with Megara. ... In Boeotia, too, he stirred up enmity, by giving an active support to the democratic party in that country. These provocations made a war inevitable. In 458 B. C. the storm burst. ... At the moment of the outbreak of the first important naval war which she had to wage with a Greek enemy since the formation of her empire, Athens took two important steps. The first was destined to guard against the risk of misfortunes by sea; it consisted in the transference from Delos to Athens [dated by different authorities between 461 and 454 B. C.] of the central treasury of the confederacy. ... {159} It was not long before the Athenians came to regard the treasury as their own, and to draw upon it for purely Attic needs, which had no connection with the welfare of the other confederates. ... The second important event of the year 458 B. C. was the commencement of the famous 'Long Walls' of Athens [See LONG WALLS]. ... When they were finished Athens, Peiræus, and Phalerum, formed the angles of a vast fortified triangle, while the space between them, a considerable expanse of open country, could be utilized as a place of refuge for the population of Attica, and even for their flocks and herds."

_C. W. C. Oman, History of Greece, chapters 23-24._

ALSO IN _E. Abbott, Pericles and the Golden Age of Athens, chapters 5-6._

_C. Thirlwall, History of Greece, chapter 17 (volume 3)._

_Plutarch, Cimon; Pericles._

ATHENS: B. C. 460-449. Disastrous expedition to Egypt. Attacks on the Peloponnesian Coast. Recall of Cimon. His last enterprise against the Persians. The disputed Peace of Cimon or Callias. Five years truce with Sparta.

"Inarus, king of some of the Libyan tribes on the western border of Egypt, had excited an insurrection there against the Persians [about 460 B. C.], and his authority was acknowledged throughout the greater part of the country. Artaxerxes sent his brother Achæmenes with a great army to quell this rebellion. An Athenian armament of 200 galleys was lying at the time off Cyprus, and Inarus sent to obtain its assistance. The Athenian commanders, whether following their own discretion, or after orders received from home, quitted Cyprus, and having joined with the insurgents, enabled them to defeat Achæmenes, who fell in the battle by the hand of Inarus. They then sailed up the Nile to Memphis, where a body of Persians, and some Egyptians, who still adhered to their cause were in possession of one quarter of the city, called White Castle. The rest was subject to Inarus, and there the Athenians stationed themselves, and besieged the Persians. ... Artaxerxes sent a Persian, named Megabazus, to Sparta, with a sum of money, to be employed in bribing the principal Spartans to use their influence, so as to engage their countrymen in an expedition against Attica. Megabazus did not find the leading Spartans unwilling to receive his money; but they seem to have been unable to render him the service for which it was offered. Ithome still held out: and Sparta had probably not yet sufficiently either recovered her strength or restored internal tranquility, to venture on the proposed invasion. Some rumours of this negotiation may have reached Athens, and have quickened the energy with which Pericles now urged the completion of the long walls. ... But among his opponents there was a faction who viewed the progress of this great work in a different light from Cimon, and saw in it, not the means of securing the independence of Athens, but a bulwark of the hated commonalty. They too would have gladly seen an invading army in Attica, which might assist them in destroying the work and its authors." This party was accused of sympathy with the Spartan expedition which came to the help of Doris against the Phocians in 457 B. C., and which defeated the Athenians at Tanagra (See GREECE: B. C. 458-456). In 455, "the Spartans were reminded that they were also liable to be attacked at home. An Athenian armament of 50 galleys, and, if we may trust Diadorus, with 4,000 heavy armed troops on board, sailed round Peloponnesus under Tolmides, burnt the Spartan arsenal at Gythium, took a town named Chalcis belonging to the Corinthians, and defeated the Sicyonians, who attempted to oppose the landing of the troops. But the most important advantage gained in the expedition was the capture of Naupactus, which belonged to the Ozolian Locrians, and now fell into the hands of the Athenians at a very seasonable juncture. The third Messenian war had just come to a close. The brave defenders of Ithome had obtained honourable terms. ... The besieged were permitted to quit Peloponnesus with their families, on condition of being detained in slavery if they ever returned. Tolmides now settled the homeless wanderers in Naupactus. ... But these successes were counterbalanced by a reverse which befell the arms of Athens this same year in another quarter. After the defeat of Achæmens, Artaxerxes, disappointed in his hopes of assistance from Sparta, ... raised a great army, which he placed under the command of an abler general, Megabyzus, son of Zopyrus. Megabyzus defeated the insurgents and their allies, and forced the Greeks to evacuate Memphis, and to take refuge in an island of the Nile, named Prosopitis, which contained a town called Byblus, where he besieged them for 18 months. At length he resorted to the contrivance of turning the stream. ... The Greek galleys were all left aground, and were fired by the Athenians themselves, that they might not fall into the enemy's hands. The Persians then marched into the island over the dry bed of the river: the Egyptians in dismay abandoned their allies, who were overpowered by numbers and almost all destroyed. ... Inarus himself was betrayed into the hands of the Persians and put to death. ... Egypt ... was again reduced under the Persian yoke, except a part of the Delta, where another pretender, named Amyrtæus, who assumed the title of king ... maintained himself for several years against the power of the Persian monarchy. But the misfortune of the Athenians did not end with the destruction of the great fleet and army which had been first employed in the war. They had sent a squadron of 50 galleys to the relief of their countrymen, which, arriving before the news of the recent disaster had reached them, entered the Mendesian branch of the Nile. They were here surprised by a combined attack of the Persian land force and a Phoenician fleet, and but few escaped to bear the mournful tidings to Athens. Yet even after this calamity we find the Athenians, not suing for peace, but bent on extending their power, and annoying their enemies." Early in 454 they sent an expedition into Thessaly, to restore a ruler named Orestes, who had been driven out. "But the superiority of the Thessalians in cavalry checked all their operations in the field; they failed in an attempt upon Pharsalus, and were at length forced to retire without having accomplished any of their ends. It was perhaps to soothe the public disappointment that Pericles shortly afterwards embarked at Pegæ with 1,000 men, and, coasting the south side of the Corinthian gulf made a descent on the territory of Sicyon, and routed the Sicyon force sent to oppose his landing. {160} He then ... laid siege to the town of Œniadæ. ... This attempt, however, proved unsuccessful; and the general result of the campaign seems not to have been on the whole advantageous or encouraging. ... It seems to have been not long after the events which have been just related that Cimon was recalled from his exile; and the decree for that purpose was moved by Pericles himself;--a fact which seems to intimate that some change had taken place in the relations or the temper of parties at Athens. ... The three years next following Cimon's return, as we have fixed its date [B. C. 454 or 453], passed, happily for his contemporaries, without affording any matter for the historian; and this pause was followed by a five years' truce [with Sparta], in the course of which Cimon embarked in his last expedition, and died near the scene of his ancient glory. The pretender Amyrtæus had solicited succour from the Athenians. ... Cimon was appointed to the command of a fleet of 200 galleys, with which he sailed to Cyprus, and sent a squadron of 60 to the assistance of Amyrtæus, while he himself with the rest laid siege to Citium. Here he was carried off by illness, or the consequences of a wound; and the armament was soon after compelled, by want of provisions, to raise the siege. But Cymon's spirit still animated his countrymen, who, when they had sailed away with his remains, fell in with a great fleet of Phoenician and Cilician galleys, near the Cyprian Salamis, and, having completely defeated them, followed up their naval victory with another which they gained on shore, either over the troops which had landed from the enemy's ships, or over a land force by which they were supported. After this they were joined by the squadron which had been sent to Egypt, and which returned, it would appear, without having achieved any material object, and all sailed home (B. C. 449). In after-times Cimon's military renown was enhanced by the report of a peace [sometimes called the Peace of Cimon, and sometimes the Peace of Callias], which his victories had compelled the Persian king to conclude on terms most humiliating to the monarchy. Within less than a century after his death it was, if not commonly believed, confidently asserted, that by this treaty, negotiated, as it was supposed, by Callias, son of Hipponicus, the Persians had agreed to abandon at least the military occupation of Asia Minor, to the distance of three days journey on foot, or one on horseback, from the coast, or, according to another account, the whole peninsula west of the Halys, and to abstain from passing the mouth of the Bosphorus and the Chelidonian islands, on the coast of Lycia, or the town of Phaselis, into the Western Sea. The mere silence of Thucydides on so important a transaction would be enough to render the whole account extremely suspicious."

_C. Thirlwall, History of Greece, chapter 17 (volume 3)._

Mr. Grote accepts the Peace of Cimon as an historical fact; Professor Curtius rejects it.

_G. Grote, History of Greece, part 2, chapter 45 (volume 5)._

_E. Curtius, History of Greece, book 3, chapter 2 (volume 2)._

ATHENS: B. C. 458-456. War for Megara with Corinth and Ægina. Victories of Myronides. Siege and conquest of Ægina. Collision with the Spartans in Bœotia. Defeat at Tanagra. Overthrow of the Thebans. Recovered Ascendency.

See GREECE: B. C. 458-456.

ATHENS: B. C. 449-445. Hostile revolution in Bœotia. Defeat at Coroneia. Revolt of Eubœa and Megara. The thirty years' truce. Territorial losses. Spartan recognition of the Delian Confederacy.

See GREECE: B. C. 449-445.

ATHENS: B. C. 445-431. Supremacy of Pericles and the popular arts by which he attained it. The splendor of Athens and grandeur of the Athenian Empire under his rule.

"The conclusion of peace left the Athenians to their confederacy and their internal politics. ... After the death of Cimon the oligarchical party at Athens had been led by Thucydides, the son of Melesias, a man of high character and a kinsman of Cimon. ... Hitherto the members had sat here or there in the assembly as they pleased; now they were combined into a single body, and sat in a special place. Such a consolidation was doubtless needed if the party was to hold its own against Pericles, who was rapidly carrying all before him. For years past he had provided a subsistence for many of the poorer citizens by means of his numerous colonies--no fewer than 5,000 Athenians must have been sent out to the 'cleruchies' in the interval between 453 B. C. and 444 B. C. The new system of juries [See DICASTERIA] had also been established on the fall of the Areopagus, and the jurymen were paid--a second source of income to the poor. Such measures were beyond anything that the private liberality of Cimon--splendid as it was--could achieve; and on Cimon's death no other aristocrat came forward to aid his party with his purse. Pericles did not stop here. Since the cessation of the war with Persia there had been fewer drafts on the public purse, and the contributions of the allies were accumulating in the public treasury. A scrupulous man would have regarded the surplus as the money of the allies. ... Pericles took another view. He plainly told the Athenians that so long as the city fulfilled the contract made with the allied cities, and kept Persian vessels from their shores, the surplus was at the disposal of Athens. Acting on this principle, he devoted a part of it to the embellishment of the city. With the aid of Pheidias, the sculptor, and Ictinus, the architect, a new temple began to rise on the Acropolis in honour of Athena--the celebrated Parthenon or 'Virgin's Chamber' [See PARTHENON]. ... Other public buildings were also begun about this time. Athens was in fact a vast workshop, in which employment was found for a great number of citizens. Nor was this all. ... For eight months of the year 60 ships were kept at sea with crews on board, in order that there might be an ample supply of practical seamen. ... Thus by direct or indirect means Pericles made the state the paymaster of a vast number of citizens, and the state was practically himself, with these paid citizens at his back. At the same time the public festivals of the city were enlarged and adorned with new splendour. ... That all might attend the theatre in which the plays were acted, Pericles provided that every citizen should receive from the state a sum sufficient to pay the charge demanded from the spectators by the lessee [See DIOBOLY]. We may look on these measures as the arts of a demagogue. ... Or we may say that Pericles was able to gratify his passion for art at the expense of the Athenians and their allies. {161} Neither of these views is altogether untenable; and both are far from including the whole truth. Pericles ... was, if we please to say it, a demagogue and a connoisseur. But he was something more. Looking at the whole evidence before us with impartial eyes, we cannot refuse to acknowledge that he cherished aspirations worthy of a great statesman. He sincerely desired that every Athenian should owe to his city the blessing of an education in all that was beautiful, and the opportunity of a happy and useful life. ... The oligarchs determined to pull down Pericles, if it were possible. ... They proposed, in the winter of 445 B. C., that there should be an ostracism in the city. The people agreed, and the usual arrangements were made. But when the day came for decision, in the spring of 444 B. C., the sentence fell, not on Pericles, but on Thucydides. The sentence left no doubt about the feeling of the Athenian people, and it was accepted as final. Thucydides disappeared from Athens, and for the next fifteen years Pericles was master of the city. ... While Athens was active, organizing her confederacy and securing her communication with the north, the Peloponnesians had allowed the years to pass in apathy and inattention. At length they awoke to a sense of the situation. It was clear that Athens had abandoned all idea of war with Persia, and that the confederacy of Delos was transformed into an Athenian empire, of whose forces the great city was absolutely mistress. And meanwhile in visible greatness Athens had become far the first city in Greece."

_E. Abbott, Pericles, chapters 10-11_.

"A rapid glance will suffice to show the eminence which Athens had attained over the other states of Greece. She was the head of the Ionian League--the mistress of the Grecian seas; with Sparta, the sole rival that could cope with her armies and arrest her ambition, she had obtained a peace; Corinth was Humbled--Ægina ruined--Megara had shrunk into her dependency and garrison. The states of Bœotia had received their very constitution from the hands of an Athenian general--the democracies planted by Athens served to make liberty itself subservient to her will, and involved in her safety. She had remedied the sterility of her own soil by securing the rich pastures of the neighbouring Eubœa. She had added the gold of Thasos to the silver of Laurion, and established a footing in Thessaly which was at once a fortress against the Asiatic arms and a mart for Asiatic commerce. The fairest lands of the opposite coast--the most powerful islands of the Grecian seas--contributed to her treasury, or were almost legally subjected to her revenge. ... In all Greece, Myronides was perhaps the ablest general--Pericles ... was undoubtedly the most highly educated, cautious and commanding statesman. ... In actual possession of the tribute of her allies, Athens acquired a new right to its collection and its management, and while she devoted some of the treasures to the maintenance of her strength, she began early to uphold the prerogative of appropriating a part to the enhancement of her splendour. ... It was now [about B. C. 444] resolved to make Athens also the seat and centre of the judicial authority. The subject-allies were compelled, if not on minor, at least on all important cases, resort to Athenian courts of law for justice. And thus Athens became, as it were, the metropolis of the allies. ... Before the Persian war, and even scarcely before the time of Cimon, Athens cannot be said to have eclipsed her neighbours in the arts and sciences. She became the centre and capital of the most polished communities of Greece, and she drew into a focus all the Grecian intellect; she obtained from her dependents the wealth to administer the arts, which universal traffic and intercourse taught her to appreciate; and thus the Odeon, and the Parthenon, and the Propylæa arose. During the same administration, the fortifications were completed, and a third wall, parallel and near to that uniting Piræus with Athens, consummated the works of Themistocles and Cimon, and preserved the communication between the two-fold city, even should the outer walls fall into the hands of an enemy."

_E. G. Bulwer-Lytton, Athens: Its Rise and Fall, book 4,