of the league except through their subjection to the conquering city, to which they were bound in each case by a separate treaty imposed by the conqueror. Athens took away their fleets, leveled their walls, sometimes remodeled their governments upon a democratic basis, and made them pay tribute. - 184. The League becomes an Athenian Empire. We know of only a few such rebellions; but it is clear that gradually Athens came to treat most of the other cities of the old league much as she did these conquered cities. The confederacy of equal states became an empire, with Athens for its "tyrant city." 1 By 450 B.C. Lesbos, Chios, and Samos were the only states of the league possessing anything like their original independence, and even these had no voice in the imperial management. Besides these, however, now or later, Athens had other independent allies that had never belonged to the Delian Confederacy-like Plataea, Corcyra, Naupactus, and Acarnania, in central Greece, Neapolis and Regium in Italy, and Segesta and other Ionian cities in Sicily. On the whole, despite the strong Greek tendency to city sovereignty, the subject cities seem to have been attached to Athens. Revolts were infrequent, and enemies confessed that the bulk of the people looked gratefully to Athens for protection against oligarchic faction. Athens was the true mother of Ionian democracy. As the Athenian Isocrates said, "Athens was the champion of the masses, the enemy of dynasties, denying the right of the many to be at the mercy of the few." Everywhere throughout the empire, as thousands of inscriptions show, the ruling power became an Assembly and Council like those at Athens; but the arrangement was commonly 1 See Abbott, II. 344-346, for an inscription showing the conditions imposed by Athens upon one community. Some details for other cities are given in the same volume, 371-373. Freeman, Federal Government, I. 23-29, gives a good comparison between the subject cities and the American States or British colonies. brought about without violence. Later, during the Peloponnesian war (§ 211 ff.), most of the cities remained faithful long after they might have revolted with impunity and when rebellion did come it was usually preceded by internal oligarchic revolution. In the next century, too, after a period of Spartan tyranny, many of these same cities again sought protection and democracy in a new Athenian league (§ 229). None the less, it was plain, by 460 B.C., that the attempt at a union of Greek states on the basis of representation and equality had failed. We can see now that the indifference of the Greeks to representation and to any citizenship outside their own city doomed such a plan from the first. The confederation was fated to fall to pieces or to be consolidated into a single imperial state. This last chance to make an Hellenic nation (imperialism) still remained; and Athenian success would no doubt have been happy for Greece and for the world. But three opposing forces proved too strong: the omnipresent tendency to city independence; the bitter hatred of the oligarchic factions in the cities most friendly to Athens and even in Athens itself; and the natural jealousy felt by cities outside the empire, like Corinth and Sparta. The conflict between the imperial Athenian democracy and these forces made the political history of Greece for the rest of the century; and the fall of Athens at its close involved, soon after, the fall of Hellas. 185. The Rift between Athens and Sparta. In 465 B.C. Athens made war upon Thasos, a revolted member of the league. After a two years' siege, the Thasians applied to Sparta for aid. That city purposed secretly to invade Attica, although the two states were still in alliance under the league of 481 B.C. The treacherous project was prevented by a destructive earthquake at Sparta, which was followed at once by a desperate revolt of the Messenian Helots. Instead of attacking Athens, the hard-pressed Spartans called upon her for aid. Ephialtes, leader of the democratic party (§ 200), opposed such a step, but Cimon urged that Athens should not let her yokefellow be destroyed or Greece be lamed. The generous but shortsighted policy of the aristocratic party prevailed, and Cimon led an Athenian army into the Peloponnesus. A little later, however, the Spartans, suspecting the same bad faith of which they knew themselves guilty, dismissed the Athenians insultingly. The anti-Spartan party in Athens was strengthened by this act. Cimon was ostracized, and his party was left utterly helpless for many years. Athens now formally renounced her alliance with Sparta, and entered into treaty with Argos, Sparta's sleepless enemy. Megara, too, joined the Athenian league, to secure protection against Corinth, and so gave Athens command of the passes from the Peloponnesus. 186. Marvelous Activity of Athens: Growth of a Land Empire. A rush of startling events followed. Corinth and Aegina declared war upon Athens. Aegina was blockaded, and reduced after a long siege; Corinth was struck blow after blow, even in the Corinthian gulf; and Athenian fleets ravaged the coasts of Laconia and burned the Spartan dockyards. At the same time, while keeping up her fleet in the Aegean, Athens sent a great armament of two hundred ships (and more, later) to aid Egypt in a revolt against Persia. The expedition was at first brilliantly successful, and Persia seemed on the point of being deprived of all contact with the Mediterranean. Elsewhere also for a time Athens was almost uniformly victorious. A Spartan army crossed the Corinthian gulf and appeared in Boeotia to check Athenian progress there. It won a partial victory at Tanagra, the first real battle between the two great states, -but used it only to secure an undisturbed retreat into the Peloponnesus. The Athenians at once reappeared in the field, crushed the Thebans in a great battle at Coronaea, became masters of all Boeotia, and, expelling the oligarchs, set up democracies in the various towns. Phocis and Locris at the same time allied themselves to Athens, so that she seemed in a fair way to extend her land empire over all central Greece, to which she held the two gates, Thermopylae and the passes of the Isthmus. A little later, part of 1 Such a fleet required forty thousand sailors (two hundred to a ship), and from two thousand to five thousand hoplites. The sailors, however, came largely from the non-citizen class, and some perhaps were even slaves. Thessaly was brought under Athenian influence, and Achaea in the Peloponnesus itself was added to the league. Indeed it is impossible even to mention the multiplied instances of limitless energy and splendid daring on the part of Athens for the few years after 460 B.C., while her empire was at its height. For one instance: just when Athens' hands were fullest in Egypt and in the siege of Aegina, Corinth tried a diversion by invading Megaris. Athens did not recall a man, but, arming the youths and the old men past age of service, repelled the invaders. The Corinthians, stung by shame, made a second, more determined, attempt, and were again repulsed with great slaughter. It was at this time, too, that the city completed her fortifications by building the Long Walls from Athens to Peiraeus a measure which added also a large open space to the city, where the country people might take refuge in case of invasion. 187. Loss of the Land Empire. - But the resources of Athens were severely strained, and a sudden series of stunning blows well-nigh exhausted her. Two hundred and fifty ships and the whole army in Egypt were lost a disaster that would have annihilated almost any other Greek state. Megara, which had itself invited an Athenian garrison, now treacherously massacred it and joined the Peloponnesian league. A Spartan army entered Attica through the recovered passes; and, at the same moment, Euboea — absolutely essential to Athenian safety -burst into revolt. All Boeotia, too, except Plataea, fell away: after an Athenian defeat, the oligarchs won the upper hand in its various cities and joined themselves to Sparta. 188. The Thirty Years' Truce, and Peace with Persia. The activity and address of Pericles (§ 200) saved Attica and Euboea, but the other continental possessions and alliances were for the most part lost, and in 445 B.C. a Thirty Years' Truce was concluded between the contending leagues. A little before this, according to a somewhat vague account, by the Peace of Callias, Persia had recognized the freedom of |