I. THE RISE OF ATHENS
“THE period which intervened between the birth of Pericles and the death of Aristotle,” wrote Shelley,1 “is undoubtedly, whether considered in itself or with reference to the effect which it has produced upon the subsequent destinies of civilized man, the most memorable in the history of the world.” Athens dominated this period because she had won the allegiance—and the contributions—of most Aegean cities by her leadership in saving Greece; and because, when the war was over, Ionia was impoverished and Sparta was disordered by demobilization, earthquake, and insurrection, while the fleet that Themistocles had created now rivaled with the conquests of commerce its victories at Artemisium and Salamis.
Not that the war was quite over: intermittently the struggle between Greece and Persia continued from the conquest of Ionia by Cyrus to the overthrow of Darius III by Alexander. The Persians were expelled from Ionia in 479, from the Black Sea in 478, from Thrace in 475; and in 468 a Greek fleet under Cimon of Athens decisively defeated the Persians on land and sea at the mouth of the Eurymedon.* The Greek cities of Asia and the Aegean, for their protection against Persia, now (477) organized under Athenian leadership the Delian Confederacy, and contributed to a common fund in the temple of Apollo on Delos. Since Athens donated ships instead of money, it soon exercised, through its sea power, an effective control over its allies; and rapidly the Confederacy of equals was transformed into an Athenian Empire.
In this policy of imperial aggrandizement all the major statesmen of Athens—even the virtuous Aristides and later the impeccable Pericles—joined with the unscrupulous Themistocles. No other man had deserved so well of Athens as Themistocles, and no one was more resolved than he to be repaid for it. When the Greek leaders met to give first and second awards to those men who had most ably defended Greece in the war, each of them voted for himself first, and for Themistocles second. It was he who set the course of Greek history by persuading Athens that the road to supremacy lay not on land but on the sea, and not by war so much as by trade. He negotiated with Persia, and sought to end the strife between the old and the young empire in order that unimpeded commerce with Asia might bring prosperity to Athens. Under his prodding the men, even the women and children, of Athens raised a wall around the city, and another around the ports at the Piraeus and Munychia; under his lead, carried forward by Pericles, great quays, warehouses, and exchanges were erected at the Piraeus, providing every convenience for maritime trade. He knew that these policies would arouse the jealousy of Sparta, and might lead to war between the rival states; but he was stirred on by his vision of Athens’ development, and his confidence in the Athenian fleet.
His aims were as magnificent as his means were venal. He used the navy to force tribute from the Cyclades, on the ground that they had yielded too quickly to the Persians, and had lent Xerxes their troops; and he appears to have accepted bribes to let some cities off.2 For like considerations he arranged the recall of exiles, sometimes keeping the money, says Timocreon, though he had failed to obtain the recall.3 When Aristides was placed in charge of the public revenue he found that his predecessors had embezzled public funds, and not least lavishly Themistocles.4 Toward 471 the Athenians, fearing his unmoral intellect, passed a vote of ostracism upon him, and he sought a new home in Argos. Shortly thereafter the Spartans found documents apparently implicating Themistocles, in the secret correspondence of their regent Pausanias, whom they had starved to death for entering into traitorous negotiations with Persia. Happy to destroy her ablest enemy, Sparta revealed these papers to Athens, which at once sent out an order for Themistocles’ arrest. He fled to Corcyra, was denied refuge there, found brief asylum in Epirus, and thence sailed secretly to Asia, where he claimed from Xerxes’ successor some reward for restraining the Greek pursuit of the Persian fleet after Salamis. Lured by Themistocles’ promise to help him subjugate Greece,5 Artaxerxes I received him into his counsels, and assigned the revenues of several cities for his maintenance. Before Themistocles could carry out the schemes that never let him rest he died at Magnesia in 449 B.C., at the age of sixty-five, admired and disliked by all the Mediterranean world.
After the passing of Themistocles and Aristides the leadership of the democratic faction at Athens descended to Ephialtes, and that of the oligarchic or conservative faction to Cimon, son of Miltiades. Cimon had most of the virtues that Themistocles lacked, but none of the subtlety that ability must depend upon for political success. Unhappy amid the intrigues of the city, he secured command of the fleet, and consolidated the liberties of Greece by his victory at the Eurymedon. Returning to Athens in glory, he at once lost his popularity by advising a reconciliation with Sparta. He won the Assembly’s reluctant consent to lead an Athenian force to the aid of the Spartans against their revolted Helots at Ithome; but the Spartans suspected the Athenians even when bringing gifts, and so clearly distrusted Cimon’s soldiers that these returned to Athens in anger, and Cimon was disgraced. In 461 he was ostracized at the instigation of Pericles, and the oligarchic party was so demoralized by his fall that for two generations the government remained in the hands of the democrats. Four years later Pericles, repentant (or, rumor said, enamored of Cimon’s sister Elpinice), secured his recall, and Cimon died with honors in a naval campaign in Cyprus.
The leader of the democratic party at this time was a man of whom we know strangely little, and yet his activity was a turning point in the history of Athens. Ephialtes was poor but incorruptible, and did not long survive the animosities of Athenian politics. The popular faction had been strengthened by the war, for in that crisis all class divisions among freemen had for a moment been forgotten, and the saving victory at Salamis had been won not by the army—which was dominated by the aristocrats—but by the navy, which was manned by the poorer citizens and controlled by the mercantile middle class. The oligarchic party sought to maintain its privileges by making the conservative Areopagus the supreme authority in the state. Ephialtes replied by a bitter attack upon this ancient senate.* He impeached several of its members for malfeasance, had some of them put to death,7 and persuaded the Assembly to vote the almost complete abolition of the powers that the Areopagus still retained. The conservative Aristotle later approved this radical policy, on the ground that “the transfer to the commons of the judicial functions that had belonged to the Senate appears to have been an advantage, for corruption finds an easier material in a small number than in a large one.”8 But the conservatives of the time did not see the issue so calmly. Ephialtes, having been found unpurchasable, was assassinated in 461 by an agent of the oligarchy,9 and the perilous task of leading the democratic party passed down to the aristocratic Pericles.