The Historians' History of the World 03

Athens was now at peace both abroad and at home, under the administration of Pericles, with a great empire, a great fleet, and a great accumulated treasure. The common fund collected from the contributions of the confederates, and originally deposited at Delos, had before this time been transferred to the Acropolis at Athens. At what precise time such transfer took place, we cannot state: nor are we enabled to assign the successive stages whereby the confederacy, chiefly with the free will of its own members, became transformed from a body of armed and active warriors under the guidance of Athens, into disarmed and passive tribute-payers defended by the military force of Athens: from allies free, meeting at Delos, and self-determining into subjects isolated, sending their annual tribute, and awaiting Athenian orders. But it would appear that the change had been made before this time. Some of the more resolute of the allies had tried to secede, but Athens had coerced them by force, and reduced them to the condition of tribute-payers without ships or defence; and Chios, Lesbos, and Samos were now the only allies free and armed on the original footing. Every successive change of an armed ally into a tributary, every subjugation of a seceder, tended of course to cut down the numbers, and enfeeble the authority of the Delian synod; and, what was still worse, it materially altered the reciprocal relation and feelings both of Athens and her allies—exalting the former into something like a despot, and degrading the latter into mere passive subjects.

Of course the palpable manifestation of the change must have been the transfer of the confederate fund from Delos to Athens. The only circumstance which we know respecting this transfer is, that it was proposed by the Samians—the second power in the confederacy, inferior only to Athens, and least of all likely to favour any job or sinister purpose of the Athenians.

Such transition, arising spontaneously out of the character and circumstances of the confederates themselves, was thus materially forwarded by the acquisitions of Athens extraneous to the confederacy. She was now not merely the first maritime state in Greece, but perhaps equal to Sparta even in land-power, possessing in her alliance Megara, Bœotia, Phocis, Locris, together with Achaia and Trœzen in the Peloponnesus. Large as this aggregate already was, both at sea and on land, yet the magnitude of the annual tribute, and still more the character of the Athenians themselves, superior to all Greeks in that combination of energy and discipline which is the grand cause of progress, threatened still further increase. Occupying the Megarian harbour of Pegæ, the Athenians had full means of naval action on both sides of the Corinthian isthmus: but what was of still greater importance to them, by their possession of the Megarid and of the high lands of Geranea, they could restrain any land-force from marching out of the Peloponnesus, and were thus (considering besides their mastery at sea) completely unassailable in Attica. Ever since the repulse of Xerxes, Athens had been advancing in an uninterrupted course of power and prosperity at home, as well as of victory and ascendency abroad—to which there was no exception except the ruinous enterprise in Egypt.

[448-446 B.C.]