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VI. Athenian Imperialism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2016

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Extract

Thucydides had an obsessive interest in the nature of Athenian imperialism, and returns to the subject again and again. He would have his readers believe that the Athenians saw nothing wrong in exercising the power which nature had given them, and that, since it is natural to prefer freedom to subjection, the members of the Delian League all resented their inferior position. Within individual states Thucydides clearly preferred the restraints of law and morality to uninhibited self-seeking (2.53, 3.82-3, cf. Pericles ap. 2.37.3); yet Athens’ building up of her empire could be regarded as uninhibited self-seeking on a large scale; but Thucydides was a patriotic Athenian (e.g. 1.10.2) and an admirer of Pericles (esp. 2.65.5–13), and represents Pericles as one of the men who saw nothing wrong in Athens’ imperial stance (1.144, 2.13.2, 36.2–3, 62.2, 63–4). This, perhaps, was Thucydides’ dilemma: at a time when up-to-date and ‘emancipated’ men were claiming that one should despise conventional restraints and live in accordance with nature, he was aware both that Athens on the level of state activity had achieved unprecedented success by behaving in this way and that on the level of individual activity within the state life is better for everyone if the conventional restraints are upheld.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Surveys in the Classics , Volume 17: The Athenian Empire , 1985 , pp. 36 - 45
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

1. See Dover, K. J., Thucydides (G&R New Surveys 7 (1973)), pp. 35—44 Google Scholar. Books have been devoted to the subject by de Romilly, J., Thucydides and Athenian Imperialism (Engl. trans. Oxford, 1963)Google Scholar; Woodhead, A. G., Thucydides on the Nature of Power (Martin Classical Lectures, 24. Cambridge, Mass., 1970)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. De Ste Croix, pp. 16-25, writes of the ‘“moral bleakness” of Thucydides in regard to international affairs’, and believes that in this field Thucydides simply accepted that there were no restraints.

2. E.g. Grote, G., History of Greece, vi. 9-10, 182-4 (12-vol. edition, London, 1869/84)Google Scholar = v. 149-51, 319-21 (10-vol. edition, 1888); Popper, K. R., The Open Society and its Enemies, i. 157-8 (London, 1945)Google Scholar = i. 180 (51966).

3. Historia 3 (1954-5), 1-41. Later contributions to the debate include Bradeen, D. W., Historia 9 (1960), 257-69Google Scholar; Quinn, T. J., Historia 13 (1964), 257-66Google Scholar; de Romilly, J., BICS 13 (1966), 1-12Google Scholar; Meiggs, pp. 375-96; de Ste Croix, pp. 34-49.

4. Cf. de Ste Croix, pp. 7-16, maintaining that the authenticity which Thucydides claims for his speeches is that of their essential point only. For other views see Dover, op. cit., 21-7; and a symposium edited by Stadter, P. A., The Speeches in Thucydides (Chapel Hill, 1973)Google Scholar.

5. Cleon is supported by the emphasis on the whole city in Antiph. 5. Caed. Her. 76-9.

6. Phrynichus is proved right by the results of an attempt to pursue this policy (8.64): cf. p. 34, above.

7. Many recent scholars have gone to the other extreme, and have argued that the desire for democracy or oligarchy was never fundamental in archaic and classical Greece: e.g. Sealey, B. R. I., in the articles collected in his Essays in Greek Politics (New York, 1967)Google Scholar; most drastically, Ruschenbusch, E., Untersuchungen zu Staat und Politik in Griechenland vom 7. – 4. Jh. v. Chr., and Athenische Innenpolitik im 5. Jahrhundert v. Chr.: Ideologie oder Pragmatismus? (Bamberg, 1978/9Google Scholar: reviews in English of the first by Lewis, D. M., CR2 30 (1980), 77-8Google Scholar; of the second by Westlake, H. D., JHS 101 (1981), 195-6)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Constitutional considerations are represented as important in Thuc. 5.29.1, 31.6.

8. The point is made for Samos by Legon, R. P., Historia 21 (1972), 145-58Google Scholar; and acknowledged by de Ste Croix, p. 40.

9. This is stressed by de Romilly, , BICS 13 (1966), 1-12Google Scholar; Westlake, H. D., CQ2 29 (1979), 9–44 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and the smallness of most Greek cities is emphasized by Ruschenbusch, Untersuchungen, and ZPE 53 (1983), 125-43, 144-8. The most that any member paid in annual tribute before the Peloponnesian War was 30 talents (Thasos, Aegina), but the Athenian eisphora of 428 raised 200 talents (p. 35 n. 3).

10. Cf. pp. 24-5, above.

11. There is a discussion of Aristophanes and the empire by Forrest, W. G., The Ancient Historian and his Materials ... C. E. Stevens (Farnborough, 1975), pp. 17–29 Google Scholar; the view of Babylonians as a defence of the allies, still found in Murray, G. G. A., Aristophanes: A Study (Oxford, 1933), pp. 25-7Google Scholar, was demolished by Norwood, G., CP 25 (1930), 1-10Google Scholar.

12. The date of this work continues to be disputed, with preferences ranging from the 440s (e.g. Bowersock, G. W., HSCP 71 (1966), 33–55 Google Scholar, revised Loeb ed. of Xenophon, Scripta Minora (1968)) to the years after 410 ( Fontana, M. J., L‘Athenaion Politela del V secolo a.C. (Palermo, 1968))Google Scholar, but it is best placed between 431 and 424 (e.g. Forrest, W. G., Klio 52 (1970), 107-16CrossRefGoogle Scholar; de Ste Croix, pp. 307-10).

13. The parallel between Thucydides and tragedy was drawn by Finley, J. H. jr., HSCP 49 (1938), 23–68 Google Scholar, 50 (1939), 35-84= Three Essays on Thucydides (Loeb Cl. Monographs, 1. Cambridge, Mass., 1967), pp. 1-117; cf. also Macleod, C.W., Collected Essays (Oxford, 1983), pp. 140-58Google Scholar. The intellectual history of Athens in the late fifth century is studied by Lévy, E., Athènes devant la défaite de 404: Histoire d’une crise idéologique (B.E.F.A.R. 225, Paris, 1976)Google Scholar.

14. Meiggs, pp. 205-72; Schuller, W., Die Herrschaft der Athener im Ersten Attischen Seebund (Berlin and New York, 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Finley, M. I., Imperialism in the Ancient World (ed. Garnsey, P. D. A. and Whittaker, C. R., Cambridge, 1978), pp. 103-26Google Scholar with 306-10 = Economy and Society in Ancient Greece (London, 1981), pp. 41-61 with 255-8.

15. Rebellious states were apt to have their city walls demolished and their fleets confiscated: e.g. Thasos, p. 22; Samos, p. 27; Mytilene, p. 30, cf. the unwilling member Aegina, p. 23.

16. Cf. p. 24, above.

17. Cf. pp. 22-3, above.

18. Cf. P. J. Rhodes, C.A.H., v2, ch. iv, forthcoming.

19. E.g. Erythrae and Miletus, p. 24; Samos, p. 27; Mytilene, p. 30. Similarly the oligarchs of 411 proposed to set up oligarchies: p. 34.

20. Individual arrangements with Erythrae, Miletus, and Chalcis, p. 24; though probably there was not a general regulation as early as the settlement with Chalcis in 446/5 (p.24 with 28 n. 13), the literary texts cited make it likely that there was a general regulation later.

21. See Hopper, R. J., JHS 63 (1943), 35–51 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; de Ste Croix, G. E. M., CQ2 11 (1961), 94-112, 268-80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Seager, R. J., Historia 15 (1966), 509-10Google Scholar; Meiggs, pp. 220-33; P. Gauthier, Symbola (Annales de l’Est, Mém. 42. Nancy, 1972: review by Lewis, D. M., CR2 25 (1975), 262-3)Google Scholar; Fornara, C.W., CQ2 29 (1979), 49–52 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The beginning of the passage cited from Thucydides refers to dikai apo symbolen, lawsuits between citizens of different states tried in accordance with an agreement between those states: IG i3 10, an Athenian decree of the 460s or 450s, gives citizens of Phaselis and advantageous standing in Athens for the trial of such cases.

22. Cf. p. 24, above.

23. There is a survey of Athens’ imperial officials by Baker, J. M., Historia 25 (1976), 257-87Google Scholar.

24. Cf. p. 25, above.

25. Stressed by Finley (n. 14, above), pp. 111-4 = 47-51.

26. Cf. pp. 12, 22, above.

27. On land owned outside Athens see Gauthier, P., Problèmes de la terre en Grèce ancienne (ed. Finley, M. I.. Civilizations et Sociétés, 33. Paris and The Hague, 1973), pp. 163-78Google Scholar.

28. Cf. p. 27 with 29 n. 32, above.

29. Cook, J. M., PCPS2 7 (1961), 9–18 Google Scholar, The Greeks in Ionia and the East (Ancient Peoples and Places, 31. London, 1962), pp. 121-3; impoverishment blamed on Ionian Revolt, Meiggs, pp. 269-71; impoverishment doubted, Boardman, J., Ant. J. 39 (1959), 204 Google Scholar, 208, CR2 14 (1964), 82-3, de Ste Croix, pp. 312-3.

30. As is Smart, J. D., Phoenix 31 (1977), 253-7CrossRefGoogle Scholar (helped in this interpretation by Mattingly’s low dates for imperial decrees: cf. pp. 15-17, above). De Ste Croix, pp. 45-9, argues that because of Athens’ exceptional need for imported corn her imperialism was not prompted by greed; Pečírka, J. argues in Klio 57 (1975), 307-11CrossRefGoogle Scholar, that Athens’ fifth-century prosperity was dependent on her being the capital of the empire, and in Eirene 19 (1982), 117-25, that Athens needed the empire to maintain the standard of living of her citizens; de Ste Croix in The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World (London, 1981), p. 290 with 604-5 n. 27, claims that ‘the leading Athenians profited most’ from the empire, and cites Thuc. 8.48.6 (where Phrynichus ascribes that belief to the allies).

31. But see the doubts expressed by Andrewes (p. 29 n. 22, above).

32. See de Romilly, , Thucydides and Athenian Imperialism (n. 1, above), pp. 65–82 Google Scholar; Adkins, A. W. H., Moral Values and Political Behaviour in Ancient Greece (London, 1972), pp. 133-9Google Scholar.

33. See also Thuc. 5.1,32.1; Diod. Sic. 12.58.5-6,73.1,77.1; P1. Nic. 3.5-4.1 (Nicias’ display, probably on the completion of the new temple of Apollo in 417: Courby, F., BCH 45 (1921), 174–241)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34. Barren, J. P., JHS 84 (1964), 35–48, 103 (1983), 1-12CrossRefGoogle Scholar, discussing horoi (markers) whose texts, inscribed in Athenian lettering, may be seen at Hill, Meiggs, Andrewes (p. 3 with 4 n. 18, above), B 96; some are translated in The Athenian Empire (LACTOR l)3, p. 145. See also, on the whole of this paragraph, Meiggs, pp. 291-305. Fehr, B., Hephaistos 1 (1979), 71–91 Google Scholar, 2 (1980), 113-25, 3 (1981), 55-93, discusses the significance for the Delian League of Phidias’ chryselephantine statue of Athena (the best precedent for such a statue was a sixth-century statue of Apollo on Delos) and of the appearance of Sun and Moon on the statue base and on the east pediment of the Parthenon (he guesses at an attempt to impose a uniform and reliable calendar for League activities), and looks for reflections of the new Athenian democracy in the sculptures of the Parthenon.

35. The bracketed words are a conjectural reconstruction of a passage which was subsequently deleted.

36. The most recent book on the Second League, Cargill, J. L., The Second Athenian League: Empire or Free Alliance? (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1981)Google Scholar, presents a more favourable picture of it than is given here.

37. Fourth-century judgements on the Athenian empire are reviewed by Meiggs, pp. 397-403.