B.C. 476.]

MARITIME EMPIRE OF ATHENS.

457

ing incident. Shortly after the allies had retaken Eïon on the Strymon from the Persians,* they turned their arms against certain of the old semi-barbarous peoples, who formed piratical communities in the Egæan, such as the Dryopes of Carystus in Euboea, and the Dolopes and Pelasgians of Scyros. The latter is one of those rocky islands, possessed of excellent harbours, which seem made for the home of the corsair. Its position near the centre of the Ægæan gave it importance, and an old tradition marked it as the burial-place of Theseus. An oracle had directed the Athenians to bring back the bones of their hero (B.c. 476); but it was not till the piratical inhabitants were expelled by Cimon, that the search could be made. It was, of course, successful. The remains were brought to Athens, and carried in solemn procession to the Theseum, the earliest and still the most perfect of the splendid Doric monuments which adorn the ruins of Athens (B.c. 469). In that procession, the Athenians must have felt that they were celebrating their own triumph, as the leaders of maritime Greece.

But about two years later the sore first broke out in the revolt of Naxos, the largest of the Cyclades. The Athenians made no hesitation about subduing a rebellious confederate by force of arms. The conquered state was stripped of its navy, and its fortifications were razed to the ground;-an example to all the allies who should henceforth attempt to recover their independence (B.C. 467-466).

The strength added to Athens by this conquest may have had an important influence on the success of Cimon in the battles of the Eurymedon (B.c. 466).† Next year the large island of Thasos, close to the coast of Thrace, revolted from the alliance, on account of a quarrel with the Athenian settlers at Eïon on the Strymon about the Thracian gold-mines‡ (B.c. 465). Thasos was only conquered after a prolonged blockade (B.c. 463), in the course of which the Athenians made their first unsuccessful attempt to form the settlement of Ennea-Hodoi (the Nine Ways) on the Strymon, which became afterwards so famous under the name of Amphipolis. The siege of Thasos had all but precipitated the inevitable collision between Athens and Sparta. The Thasians had secretly applied for aid to the Lacedæmonians, who were only

*See chap. xiii., p. 451.

+ Ibid.

The most productive were those at Scapté Hylé (the Wood of the Diggings), in which the historian Thucydides possessed property.

kept back from a treacherous invasion of Attica by a terrible calamity at home.

Sparta had naturally taken the lead in the settlement of continental Greece after the Persian War. Her zeal against the Medizing states in general was mitigated by the prudent moderation of Themistocles. But in the case of Thebes, the policy of strengthening the rival of Athens led Sparta to restore her supremacy over the cities of Boeotia, always excepting Thespiæ and Platea. In the Peloponnesus, Sparta was engaged in wars with the Arcadians and Eleians, and the latter people formed a confederacy, with its capital at Elis. The rapid growth of Athens, and the effect produced on the Greek mind by the misconduct of Pausanias and Leotychides, had already detracted much from the Spartan ascendancy, when the city was almost destroyed by a terrible earthquake, in which many of the citizens perished (B.c. 464). The Helots, already excited by the instigations of Pausanias, seized the opportunity to revolt, and the earthquake was represented as the judgment of Poseidon for the sacrilege committed in dragging certain Helots from his sanctuary at Tænarus. Sparta was only saved from surprise by the young king Archidamus; and the insurgents held the field for some time before they were shut up in the fortress of Ithome in Messenia. In this stronghold, the same which had been held by Aristodemus,* they maintained themselves for the ten years of the Third Messenian War (B.c. 464–454). The Lacedæmonians, who were proverbial for their want of skill in sieges, called in the aid of their allies, and among the rest, 4000 Athenians marched to their help under Cimon, who had some difficulty in prevailing on the Athenians to send the required aid. "Do not," said he, "suffer Hellas to be lamed of one leg, or our city to draw without her yoke-fellow.” Soon, however, there sprung up a distrust-due to continued illsuccess, and perhaps to the Lacedæmonians' conciousness of their meditated treachery in the affair of Thasos,—and the Athenian auxiliaries were unceremoniously dismissed (B.c. 461).

The effect was as marked on the internal politics of Athens, as on her foreign relations. Up to this period Cimon had maintained his political ascendancy against Pericles and the still more advanced democratic leader, Ephialtes; but the failure of his Laconizing policy brought himself and his party into utter discredit, and he was banished by a vote of ostracism. Pericles and Ephialtes now proceeded to complete the democratic constitution *See chap xii., p. 336.

B.C. 461.]

THE ATHENIAN DICASTERIES.

459

of Cleisthenes by transferring judicial functions to the people, in addition to the political power which they already possessed. The Senate of the Areopagus was stripped both of its censorial and judicial attributes, except in cases of homicide; and the senate of the five hundred, as well as the Archons, were restricted almost entirely to administrative duties. The decision of judicial questions was transferred to the Dicasteries. From the whole body of full citizens, 6000 were chosen every year by lot to serve the office of Dicasts, or jurymen, and they received pay during their attendance at the courts. They were subdivided by lots into ten sections of 500 each,* among which the several courts and causes were distributed. Referring to special works on Athenian antiquities for the details of the institution, we need only say that it popularized the administration of justice in perfect accordance with the whole spirit of the Athenian polity. Mr. Grote has well summed up the character of the Dicasteries as "nothing but jury-trial applied on a scale broad, systematic, unaided, and uncontrolled beyond all other historical experience, and therefore exhibiting, in exaggerated proportions, both the excellences and the defects characteristic of the jury system, as compared with decision by trained and professional judges. All the encomiums which it is customary to pronounce upon jury-trial will be found predicable of the Athenian dicasteries in a still greater degree: all the reproaches, which can be addressed on good ground to the dicasteries, will apply to modern juries also, though in a less degree." Their large numbers secured them against intimidation, and against corruption, the prevailing vice of individual Greek judges, and secured the application to the question in hand of the average intelligence of the whole body of citizens. On the other hand they were liable to err from the absence of professional knowledge directed by the calmness of a judicial mind, and they were subject to be misled both by prevailing prejudices and passions, and by the rhetoric of advocates. Modern experience, however, proves that twelve men, even under the presidence and direction of a judge not inclined to favour a popular sentiment, are quite as capable as five hundred of strokes of wild justice or passionate injustice; and the artifices of rival advocates would make the less

*The supernumerary 1000 were reserved to fill up accidental vacancies.

Grote: History of Greece, vol. v., pp. 517, 518. The whole account in that 46th chapter, of the changes at Athens under Pericles, deserves the most attentive perusal, not only of the classical student, but of every politician-nay of every educated citizen of a free state.

impression on dicasts whose naturally keen intellect was sharpened by constant attendance in the courts. Mr. Grote has triumphantly refuted the calumny which depicts the dicasts as delighting, with a sort of wanton levity, in hunting down an unhappy defendant; and has shown that they are most truly represented, even by their satirist, Aristophanes, as "obeying the appeals to their pity as well as those to their anger-as being yielding and impressionable when their feelings are approached on either side, and unable, when they hear the exculpatory appeal of the accused, to maintain the anger which had been raised by the speech of the accuser." One effect of the new judicial system is undeniable; it gave a most powerful stimulus to thought and speech, and aided that intellectual development which is the most striking character of the age of Pericles. So violent was the resistance of the aristocratic party to these changes, that they procured the assassination of Ephialtes, thereby probably only strengthening the hands of Pericles, who now began to exercise the vast power which went on increasing till his death.

The insult put by Sparta upon Athens broke the last link of the alliance between the two states. Not only was that alliance renounced by a formal vote of the Athenian people, but they formed a new league with her constant rival, Argos, a state which had regained much of its old power while the Spartans were occupied with the Messenian War. Another alliance with Megara, then at war with Cornith, gave Athens a footing upon the Isthmus. To protect this new ally against the land forces of the Peloponnesians, and to place her in direct communication with their own maritime power, the Athenians devised that new and ingenious species of fortification called "Long Walls." They connected Megara with her port, Nisæa, by a pair of parallel walls extending for the whole distance of about a mile. It was about two years later that the Athenians began their own celebrated "Long Walls," which completed the scheme begun by Themistocles in the fortification of the Piræus. A wall about four miles and a half long united the Piræus with Athens, and with another, about four miles long, to Phalerum, enclosed the whole space between Athens and her two ports in one vast fortified enceinte (B.c. 457-6). These steps were not taken without opposition. The Spartans were occupied with the siege of Ithome; but Cornith and Epidaurus leagued with other Peloponnesian states to avenge the intrusion of Athens into Megara, and the Æginetans made a last effort to dispute her dominion of the sea.

B.C. 457.]

WARS WITH CORINTH AND ÆGINA.

461

A great sea-fight off Ægina, between the Athenians and the allies, resulted in the destruction of the navy of the Æginetans, and the siege of their city by land and sea; while an attack of the Corinthians upon Megara was repulsed, and the whole detachment were cut to pieces in their retreat (B.c. 457). Athens now only needed to become the protectress of the Baotian towns, as she was already of Platæa, in order to stand at the head of a great continental league. To guard, it would seem, against this danger, the Spartans marched an army into Boeotia on another pretext. They were in secret communication with the oligarchical party in Athens, who vehemently opposed the building of the Long Walls, and by whose aid they hoped both to frustrate that work, and even to overthrow the democracy. The Athenians promptly met the danger by a march to Tanagra, on the Boeotian frontier, with the whole force that they could muster (their main army being occupied in the siege of Ægina), aided by some Argive infantry and Thessalian cavalry. A hard-won victory gained for the Lacedæmonians no other advantage than a safe retreat; while the defeat of the Athenians was compensated by the reconciliation of her two great statesmen. The exiled Cimon presented himself on the field of battle; and, when not permitted to take his place in the ranks, urged his friends to fight with desperate courage. Struck with this generous devotion, Pericles himself proposed his rival's recall; and the two chiefs entered into a compact which secured to the state the military services of Cimon, while the internal administration was left to Pericles. The first effect of this reconciliation was seen in an ample revenge for the defeat of Tanagra. Only two months after that battle, the Athenians marched into Boeotia, and defeated the whole body of the allies of Thebes at Enophyta. The Boeotian towns were not only released from the supremacy of Thebes, but their governments were made democratic under the protection of Athens. The Phoecians and Locrians joined her alliance, and she found herself at the head of a confederacy extending from the Isthmus of Corinth to Thermopylæ. About the same time the Long Walls were completed, and the surrender of Ægina reduced this ancient enemy to the condition of a tributary ally of Athens, her fortifications being razed, and her ships surrendered. To the mastery of the Egean Sea was now added that of the coasts of Greece. The Athenian admiral, Tolmides, sailed round Peloponnesus, burned the Lacedæmonian harbours of Methone and Gythium, and took from the Ozolian Locrians the important port of Naupactus, at the mouth of the Gulf of Corinth.