The Historians' History of the World 03

To establish Athenian interests in the dependent territories, was one important object in the eyes of Pericles, and while he discountenanced all distant and rash enterprises, such as invasion of Egypt or Cyprus, he planted out many cleruchies and colonies of Athenian citizens intermingled with allies, on islands and parts of the coast. He conducted one thousand citizens to the Thracian Chersonese, five hundred to Naxos, and two hundred and fifty to Andros. In the Chersonese, he further repelled the barbarous Thracian invaders from without, and even undertook the labour of carrying a wall of defence across the isthmus, which connected the peninsula with Thrace; since the barbarous Thracian tribes, though expelled some time before by Cimon, had still continued to renew their incursions from time to time. Ever since the occupation of the elder Miltiades, about eighty years before, there had been in this peninsula many Athenian proprietors, apparently intermingled with half-civilised Thracians: the settlers now acquired both greater numerical strength and better protection, though it does not appear that the cross-wall was permanently maintained. The maritime expeditions of Pericles even extended into the Euxine Sea, as far as the important Greek city of Sinope, then governed by a despot named Timesileus, against whom a large proportion of the citizens were in active discontent.

Lamachus was left with thirteen Athenian triremes to assist in expelling the despot, who was driven into exile with his friends: the properties of these exiles were confiscated, and assigned to the maintenance of six hundred Athenian citizens, admitted to equal fellowship and residence with the Sinopians. We may presume that on this occasion Sinope became a member of the Athenian tributary alliance, if it had not been so before: but we do not know whether Cotyora and Trapezus, dependencies of Sinope further eastward, which the ten thousand Greeks found on their retreat fifty years afterwards, existed in the time of Pericles or not. Moreover, the numerous and well-equipped Athenian fleet, under the command of Pericles, produced an imposing effect upon the barbarous princes and tribes along the coast, contributing certainly to the security of Grecian trade, and probably to the acquisition of new dependent allies.

It was by successive proceedings of this sort that many detachments of Athenian citizens became settled in various portions of the maritime empire of the city—some rich, investing their property in the islands as more secure (from the incontestable superiority of Athens at sea) even than Attica, which since the loss of the Megarid could not be guarded against a Peloponnesian land invasion—others poor, and hiring themselves out as labourers. The islands of Lemnos, Imbros, and Scyros, as well as the territory of Histiæa, on the north of Eubœa, were completely occupied by Athenian proprietors and citizens: other places were partially so occupied. And it was doubtless advantageous to the islanders to associate themselves with Athenians in trading enterprises, since they thereby obtained a better chance of the protection of the Athenian fleet. It seems that Athens passed regulations occasionally for the commerce of her dependent allies, as we see by the fact that, shortly before the Peloponnesian War, she excluded the Megarians from all their ports. The commercial relations between Piræus and the Ægean reached their maximum during the interval immediately preceding the Peloponnesian War. Nor were these relations confined to the country east and north of Attica: they reached also the western regions. The most important settlements founded by Athens during this period were, Amphipolis in Thrace and Thurii in Italy. Amphipolis was planted by a colony of Athenians and other Greeks, under the conduct of the Athenian Agnon, in 437 B.C. It was situated near the river Strymon in Thrace, on the eastern bank, and at the spot where the Strymon resumes its river-course after emerging from the lake above.

The colony of Thurii on the coast of the Gulf of Tarentum in Italy, near the site and on the territory of the ancient Sybaris, was founded by Athens about seven years earlier than Amphipolis, not long after the conclusion of the Thirty Years’ Truce with Sparta, 443 B.C.