HELLAS:NET - History

By the middle of the fifth century many Greeks realised that they had a lot in common. 'Shared blood, shared language, shared religion, and shared customs' like Herodotus wrote. The common feeling had become even stronger by the defeat of a common enemy, Persia. Still, the Greeks never managed to translate this emotional bond into a physical one. The history of the classical Poleis is a history of failure to achieve unity: Sparta would not, and Athens could not realise it. The cities valued their individual independency too high to be prepared to subordinate themselves to a system in which their vote would be one among many.

Sparta was the most obvious leader of Hellas after the defeat of the Persian empire, as it had lead the coalition against it. However, it was very reluctant to accept this position because of its domestic problems. The Messenian helots formed a constant threat to their Spartan masters, whose own numbers were constantly on the decline. Furthermore formed the allies of Sparta a problem. The main goal of the Peloponessian League had been to form an unity against Argos, but now this city formed no threat any longer might the Arcadian members of the League have felt that it lacked any justification.

Another reason was the effect of the Athenian democracy which had proven to be military capable and politically attractive at the same time. Besides the traditional oligarchy and tyranny was there now a new form of government. The presence of Themistocles, who was banished from Athens, in the Peloponesse only increased the sympathy for democracy in several Peloponessian cities. These problems, and the fact that Sparta had very little experience with naval warfare, ruled her out as a permanent leader of Hellas. Sparta voluntarily returned to its state of isolationism.

Corinth on the other hand did have experience with naval warfare and an overseas empire, but it was located so close to Sparta that this city would not allow it to become the leader of the nation. It also lacked an army like Sparta and Athens had: one which is famed all throughout the known world. Thebes, Argos and Thessaly disqualified themselves as serious candidates as they either remained neutral, or had chosen the side of the enemy during the Persian wars.

The only serious candidate left was Athens. She had no domestic problems like Sparta, and had positive things to offer in her culture and politics unlike Corinth. Thanks to Pisistratus Athens had become the cultural centre of Hellas, and during the Persian wars it had been a magnet to intellectuals from the colonies in Asia Minor. Athens also had the history worthy a leader, and had performed noble service to Hellas by sacrificing her physical city to the Persians. Above all did it have a magnificent fleet and much experience with an overseas empire.

New goals for the Delian League.

The Delian League was formed in 478 to offer protection to the more uncomfortably placed cities against the Persians and pirates, but with the end of the Persian wars after the peace of Callias in 449 it seemed to have lost any justification. Despite that, it continued to offer protection, but the character of the League changed together with the relationship between Hellas and Persia. Athens started to use, 'dominate' might have been a better word, the League more and more for its own purposes. The Athenian leader Cimon for example justified the conquest of the island Scyros by discovering there the bones of Theseus, the mythical founder of Athens. In the eyes of the Athenians they had all the right to dominate the League as it was largely Ionic, and Athens had been the mothercity of all Ionic colonies in Asia Minor during the colonisation in the dark ages of Hellas according the Athenian citizens.

The end of the first Peloponessian war gave Athens space for new expansion, but the general attitude was more one of consolidation after the enormous exertions because of the war at two fronts (Hellas and the Egyptian revolt) during the fifties. This policy was mostly the work of Pericles. The only exception was the founding of Amphipolis in 437, which was of strategic and economic importance as it was situated at the border of Thrace and Macedon, and formed a port of export for the Macedonian wood that was needed to maintain the Athenian fleet. Soon the pressure on the partners of Athens increased. A result of this was that one of the mightiest allies, the island of Samos, attempted to leave the alliance in 440. To set an example for the rest of the League attacked Athens this island and destroyed it completely. The tone for the rest of the history of the Delian League was set: total domination by Athens.

The Delian League was formed to oppose the Persian threat, but became more and more used for Athenian imperialism.

Reign of terror in the Delian League.

Athens had many ways to oppress, control, or interfere. The first one was an economic one. The height of the tribute was determined by the council of 500 and the ten strategos of Athens. These tributes were reviewed every 4 year, and if a member of the alliance felt that the tribute was too high then he could complain at the Athenian court. Although the tributes got more imperialistic after the peace of Callias, they were generally not seen as absurdly high, the only drastic raise of the taxes took place in 425 to correct the inflation, and because of the atmosphere of war in that year. Still, since Athens started to dominate the alliance the tributes were more or less seen by the other members as taxes, and this feeling of unrest only increased after the treasury of the League moved from the central island Delos to Athens.

Another tactic was a military one. Athens maintained a good grip on its allies by starting settlements, the so-called cleruchies, at strategic points. The cleruchies could not only be found in Hellas, but in the whole of the Mediterranean, and even in the Black sea where they maintained a good relationship with Cimmerians as Athens got more and more dependent on their import of grain from this tribe. These administrative and military garrisons were by no means all of them present by invitation. And the greatest weapon of all was of course the Athenian fleet, which had non-stop 60 ships in the Aegean.

The third form was a judicial one. Serious cases in allied cities could be moved to the Athenian people's court when Athens interests were involved. Literary sources say that the popular lawcourts were used for the prosecution of anti-Athenian elements. The cases were so concentrated in Athens that after a while no allied city had the permission to sentence somebody to death without the approval of Athens. Another shortcoming was that Athenian law never developed a separate category of offences to protect oppressed provinces from their governors.

The next form was a religious one. We already saw that Cimon claimed that he had found Theseus' bones on Scyros, in an attempt to justify its coercion. Furthermore the image of Athens as universal benefactor of mankind was propagated by means of the myth of Demeter and her gift of corn to man. This cult was focused on the village Eleusis, which was in the territory of Athens. Finally did the Athenians claim land of their allies as it had once belonged to the goddess Athena herself, who was the patroness of Athens. This brings us to the next form of oppression...

Fifth, territorial. Athenian landowners (or cleruchs) could be settled on expropriated allied land. The settlement of these cleruchies was normally to prevent a revolt, or to punish the people who had revolted. It were mostly people from the lower classes (thetes) who volunteered for these cleruchies, which are different from colonies as the inhabitants remained a citizen of Athens. This way they did not only profit from more work and new opportunities, but hopefully they would gain enough wealth to become a member of the class of hoplites. These settlements did not only bring benefits to the lower classes. Wealthy Athenian aristocrats owned holdings of land in allied territory, in defiance of the local rules about land-tenure.

The sixth form was one of social oppression. In 451 a new law was installed which restricted the citizenship to persons of descent on both sides. The citizenship, and its profits, were increasingly worth having as the century went on. Grants of privilege were later made to isolated communities but they were too few and too late to close the psychological cap between rulers and ruled.

The last form is one of a political nature. Athens generally supported democrats against oligarchs, but every now and then she also supported oligarchs, as long as the money continued to flow into the Athenian treasury and the other government was in favour of Athens. For the rest Athens installed a proxenus in every allied Polis. A proxenos was a person who was a host in his own Polis, and served the interests of citizens in another Polis. For Athens such a proxenos was a very valuable source of information.

Growing aversion against Athens.

In these days Athens was in the hands of Pericles, who got his power thanks to several reorganisations in the political structure which were carried out in the middle of that century. He wanted to transform Athens into a worthy capitol of the alliance, and started the construction of a lot of buildings in the city, but most of all on the Acropolis. All these buildings were financed with cash from the treasury of the Delian League. His reasoning was that the city and the Acropolis had been destroyed by the Persians, so it was no more than fair that they were rebuilt with money that was reserved for anti-Persian goals. On top of that, he said, it was Athens who prevented the Greek world from any other invasions. Still, the allies did not approve with this of course, and once again grew the opposition. Thucydides became the leader of this opposition, but when he was banned in 443 from Athens by ostracism became Pericles the absolute leader of Athens. 'In name Athens is a democracy, but in fact it is ruled by its most important citizen' was Thucydides' response.

Athens was less hated as we might expect after reading the several ways which it used to oppress its allies. The response of the allies was normally socially determined. The upper classes often felt more damaged in their desire for independency than the lower classes, as the last ones often profited in judicial, social and economical ways from the Athenian interference. Athens on its turn did not attempt to install democracy in the allied Poleis. Its policy was one to let the ruling upper classes pay for the continuation of their preferred position, while it made sure that they would not oppress the lower classes. The local oligarchs were nevertheless always a source of unrest, but as long as the Athenian navy ruled they waves they could only count on empty promises from Sparta and Persia.

We see that the goodwill of the rest of Hellas inclined to the Spartan side, when it agreed to liberate Hellas of the Athenian domination. The tight methods for control enumerated above show that there were indeed grounds for resentment of Athenian power.