In Athens there had been no opposition to participation in the Delian League and to continued war against Persia. Themistocles, his political opponents Aristides and Xanthippus, and the rising young politician Cimon all played a leading role in the foundation and early growth of an active policy in the Aegean. If Themistocles was the father of the naval policy, it was Aristides who won over the allegiance of the allies and presided over the formation of the league and the assessment of the tribute, Xanthippus who took command of the first campaigns in the Hellespont, and Cimon who vigorously led the subsequent expeditions.
Like the Spartans, the Athenians could choose from three courses of action: they might refuse to involve themselves in any further action after Plataea and Mycale; they could try to exploit their new power and prestige to dominate all the Greek lands; or they might seek hegemony in the Aegean, leaving the mainland and the west to others. The first option had no supporters, but there was significant disagreement over the other two. The situation in Greece after the Persian War bears some resemblance to the condition of the victorious alliance after the Second World War. In each instance necessity had thrown together two states burdened with mutual suspicion. Differing opinions on war aims, strategy, and tactics had appeared during the war, but as long as there was a common enemy, these differences were muted. In each state some thought the differences transitory and hoped for a solution through mutual trust and accommodation. In each state others considered the differences impossible of settlement and conflict inevitable. They sought, if not to bring on war immediately, at least to achieve the best possible strategic position for the inevitable clash. In the more recent experience, the “cold warriors” won in both Russia and the United States; in Greece, “peaceful coexistence” was victorious in both Athens and Sparta.
Themistocles was the leader of the faction favoring an aggressive Athenian policy. He tricked Sparta into permitting Athens to build defensive walls and fortify the Piraeus. He continued to sponsor a program of shipbuilding and encouraged the immigration of foreign craftsmen to provide the necessary skilled labor.1 He was the leading advocate and exemplar of a hard policy toward the allies. Even before Mycale he had ruthlessly extorted money from the islanders of the Aegean. By threat of force he obtained contributions from Carystus and Paros as well as other islands.2 The plucky citizens of Andros resisted Themistocles’ bullying. To his assertion that they must pay because Athens was aided by the two great gods Persuasion and Necessity, the Andrians replied that they too had powerful indigenous gods—Poverty and Helplessness: “Possessed by these gods, we Andrians will not pay, for the power of Athens can never be stronger than our inability.”3 If we interpret the lyrics of Timocreon correctly, Themistocles’ exactions were felt as far as Rhodes, where he interfered in the internal politics of the island as well.4
It is possible that Themistocles, who certainly had personal connections in western Greece, Italy, and Sicily, had plans for extending Athenian influence to those regions,5 and that he conceived a plan to make Athens not just the greatest, but the only, naval power in Greece by a single treacherous stroke.6 The authority for both these conjectures is suspect, but there is little doubt that Themistocles’ aim was unchallenged supremacy for Athens over all the Greeks, a policy hostile toward Sparta. We have seen that the arrogance of his reply to the Spartans’ objection to the fortification of Athens and the Piraeus embittered the Spartans and that his success in frustrating Sparta’s attempt to drive Medizing states from the amphictyony further enraged them. The continued supremacy of Themistocles would ultimately mean war with Sparta.
Whatever the differences among other Athenian politicians, there was general agreement in opposing Themistocles. It might be expected that Aristides and Xanthippus, old enemies of Themistocles who had suffered ostracism at his hands, might resume their rivalry after the end of the emergency, but they were joined by other powerful noblemen. Cimon, the son of that Miltiades who had been heavily fined by an Athenian court and had died in prison, leaving his children burdened with the unpaid debt, joined in the coalition with the same Xanthippus who had been his father’s prosecutor.7 He had married off his sister Elpinice to Callias, the son of Hipponicus, the richest man in Athens, and brought him into the coalition.8 He himself married Isodice, an Alcmaeonid, and it was Leobotes, son of Alcmaeon, who brought the charge that sent Themistocles into exile.9 This union of Philaids with Alcmaeonids and Kerykes, which united old enemies among the richest and most influential families, has led some scholars to believe that the social question was paramount in Athenian politics at this time. They see Themistocles as the champion of democracy and his downfall as the product of a conservative coalition.10 The facts do not seem to warrant such a conclusion. The Alcmaeonid Cleisthenes founded the Athenian democracy, and the Alcmaeonid Pericles fostered its development; there is no reason to think that the intervening Alcmaeonids opposed it. Aristides was certainly no enemy of a democratic Athens.11 Whatever his private feelings, Cimon worked within the framework of the Athenian democracy, thrived as a popularly elected leader, and opposed no democratic proposals until Ephialtes’ attack on the Areopagus in 462. It is plain that an attempt to check or reverse the development of democracy in Athens was not the major aim of the coalition against Themistocles.
Equally unpersuasive is the associated charge that the social consequences of Themistocles’ naval policy produced opposition. Later critics might charge that by turning the Athenians toward the sea, “he increased the authority of the demos as opposed to the nobles and filled them with presumption, since power now had come to sailors and boatswains and pilots,”12 but we have seen that his opponents supported the naval policy. Even before the Battle of Salamis, when Themistocles was trying to persuade the Athenians to abandon Attica and fight the Persians on the sea, Cimon led a band of his friends up to the Acropolis and dedicated his horse’s bridle to Athena as a symbol of his support of the naval policy.13
It is clear that the major issue dividing the coalition from Themistocles was the policy of Athens toward Sparta. It must have been apparent to all his opponents that the safe and expedient course was to maintain friendly relations with the Spartans and to encourage their acquiescence to the emergence of Athens as the hegemonal power in the Aegean and the leader of the war against Persia.
For this policy Cimon was the natural leader. Young and vigorous, a brilliant campaigner on land and sea, wealthy and of noble stock, he would in any case have been a natural candidate for high position in the state. His patriotism and devotion to an ambitious foreign policy in the Aegean were beyond question. His gentle and pleasant demeanor, as well as his generosity, endeared him to the people. But what especially made him influential was his special relationship with Sparta. In manner, speech, and training he resembled a Spartan more than an Athenian; he named one of his sons Lacedaemonius; he was the Spartan proxenus, their formal representative, in Athens. Small wonder that the Spartans, in spite of his youth, supported him as the leading opponent of Themistocles.
Plutarch is certainly right when he reports that the Athenians were happy to see the favor the Spartans showed Cimon, for they received considerable benefit from the friendly relations he maintained.14 Athens was left in peace as her fleet went about the business of converting the Delian League into an Athenian empire. At the same time the steady and reliable policy of Cimon enabled the conservative party at Sparta to control their more ambitious opponents. The victory of Cimon and the defeat of Themistocles meant that, for the time being at least, Athens was content with a division of Greece into two spheres of influence. Like the enemies of Athens at Sparta, the enemies of Sparta at Athens had been neither destroyed nor convinced. As long as nothing disturbed the supremacy of Cimon in Athens and the peace party at Sparta, they could only wait.
If we are right in thinking that Themistocles was ostracized in 473, then Cimon’s supremacy met with no serious challenge for about a decade. At the end of that time a new generation of politicians emerged to challenge his leadership and his policies. The first hints of trouble appeared during the Thasian campaign. After the Thasians had been beaten by Cimon at sea, they were forced to undergo a siege. Perhaps they were encouraged to hold out by the destruction of the Athenian colonists who had recently been sent to Ennea Hodoi on the Thracian mainland. In any case, they appealed to Sparta for help and were not refused, for the Spartans promised to relieve the pressure by invading Attica.15 A great earthquake at Sparta prevented the promise from being kept, and the secret agreement did not come to light for some years at least, but as Grote pointed out, the promise itself was very significant. “It marks the growing fear and hatred on the part of Sparta and the Peloponnesians towards Athens, merely on general grounds of the magnitude of her power, and without any special provocation…. The first intent of unprovoked and even treacherous hostility—the germ of the future Peloponnesian War—is conceived and reduced to an engagement by Sparta.”16 Ten years after its defeat by Hetoemaridas in the councils of Sparta, the war party was still strong enough to elect a majority in the ephorate willing to provoke a war with Athens. Had the secret agreement become public, it would have caused great difficulties for Cimon and his policy of friendship with Sparta, but his enemies were deprived of so useful a weapon.
When the attack came, it was on much weaker grounds than Spartan perfidy. In 463, in the third year of the siege, the Thasians surrendered on terms very favorable to Athens. Cimon must have been at the height of his popularity, yet his opponents took the opportunity to attack him on his return from Thasos. They charged that he had accepted bribes from King Alexander of Macedon not to invade that country, when he could have done so successfully.17 We may dismiss the charge of bribery, as the Athenian jury did. Cimon’s wealth and incorruptability were too well known for anyone to believe he would sacrifice his city’s interest for money. The trial provided a forum for a debate on foreign policy. Cimon could be accused of lack of vigor in his pursuit of Athens’ imperial interests in the northern Aegean, and at the same time, his Spartan policy could be attacked by implication. Cimon’s defense shows that he clearly understood the intentions of his accusers. “I am not a proxenus,” he said, “of rich Ionians and Thessalians, as some others are so that they may be courted and paid; I am proxenus of the Lacedaemonians and imitate and love their thrift and self-control, which I honor above any wealth, glorifying my city with wealth won from her enemies.”18 He successfully defended his policy of an aggressive war against Persia accompanied by friendship with Sparta and hurled the challenge back into the teeth of his accusers.
Among those accusers was Pericles, son of Xanthippus, a young man not much over thirty just making his debut as an important figure in Athenian politics. As the son of Xanthippus and Agariste, the niece of Cleisthenes, he was born into the aristocratic coalition that had opposed Themistocles and put Cimon into the position of leadership he still held in 463.19 At first glance it might seem surprising to find him among the accusers of Cimon, but the situation had changed significantly since the leading men of Athens had combined to defeat Themistocles. For one thing, the object of the coalition had been accomplished. Themistocles had been gone from Athens for a decade and from Greece since 471. For another, relations between Athens and Sparta seemed to be going well, and the Spartan peace party appeared to be firmly in control. In the absence of an emergency, there was no reason why the great families of Athens should not return to their political rivalries, which went back at least to the beginning of the sixth century. If family rivalries meant anything at all, then Pericles was the obvious choice to oppose Cimon. His father, Xanthippus, had brought about the condemnation of Cimon’s father and compelled Cimon to begin his career burdened by a heavy debt. Perhaps Cimon did not bear a grudge.20 If not, he was an unusually forgiving man. More important, Pericles appears not to have forgotten the old rivalry. Tacitus was very shrewd when he said that it is human nature to hate those we have wronged. Pericles’ election by the people to the role of accuser may have been prompted by the public recollection of his father’s success in a similar role against Miltiades.
We would be mistaken, however, in thinking that Pericles’ acceptance of the responsibility and his enthusiasm for it21 resulted only from the old family feud22 or from mere political opportunism. These certainly played a part in influencing his behavior. A man of his heritage, natural talents, and training could not fail to seek a career in politics and to aim for the highest position in the state. Cimon, the old family enemy, barred the way and seemed to have unquestioned command of the field, so long as the political game were played according to the rules developed since the Persian War. The growth of popular government represented by the reforms of the 480’s and the domination of Themistocles posed the gravest threat to the political position of the old families. Hipparchus, Megacles, Xanthippus, and Aristides had all been ostracized, leaving Themistocles, a man of doubtful lineage and demagogic tendencies, in sole command. The Persian War had come just in time to submerge factional strife in the fervor of national defense. Their services in the war raised the prestige and influence of the restored nobles. At its close they were determined not to lose the support of the people and to unite so that Themistocles could not pick them off one by one, as he had in the decade before the war. The result was the political coalition we have described above and the “Areopagite constitution,” that Aristotle believes reigned at Athens from 479 to 462.23
Some modern scholars have doubted that there was such an “Areopagite constitution.”24 They point to Aristotle’s failure to mention any constitutional changes in detail. He says merely, “The council of the Areopagus again grew strong after the Persian War, gaining their hegemony not by a formal decree, but because they were responsible for the Battle of Salamis.”25 When Ephialtes later attacked the Areopagus, he simply took away the additional powers (epitheta) by which it had become the guardian of the state.26 The vagueness of these statements has produced suspicion, but there is little cause for it. The historian of Rome would find it difficult to point to specific measures by which the potentially democratic constitution established by the Hortensian Law of 287 became the narrow oligarchy that the Gracchi tried to destroy in 133. The upper classes, by means of the prestige gained in wars of survival, had merely accumulated unofficial powers, epitheta, one might say, by which they dominated the state. When the Gracchi attacked these usurped powers, the senate had no constitutional right to complain and was compelled to resort to violence. The “Areopagite constitution” had only seventeen years in which to establish itself before a split in the aristocracy brought it under attack, so no revolution was necessary to bring it down. Since Cimon was the unchallenged leader of the state by 463, motives of political ambition surely required that Pericles try to change the rules of the political game.
This was no simple task, for in spite of a reputation for Spartan dullness, Cimon was a shrewd and able man well deserving Plutarch’s accolade: “It is agreed that he was not inferior in daring to Miltiades nor in intelligence to Themistocles and more just than either.”27 The traditional political system, where the scions of noble families vied with each other for eminence and the honors of state, had been overthrown by the genius and daring of Cleisthenes. Great nobles had counted on their clients, peasants awed by the wealth, religious influence, and military power of the local nobility, to win elections. The reforms of Cleisthenes had reduced the importance of local influence and aristocratic control of religious shrines.28 Cleisthenes, moreover, had taken advantage of a new political factor that came to be more and more decisive: the demos, particularly those in and around the city of Athens. These people, in effect, became a part of Cleisthenes’ clientele; joined with the traditional supporters of the Alcmaeonidae, they were enough to guarantee a reliable majority for Cleisthenes in the ecclesia. The tool of ostracism, which also depended on a reliable majority in the ecclesia and in the actual vote, protected Cleisthenes from hostile faction leaders and the new constitutions from subversion.29
Themistocles had used his talents to gain control of the Cleisthenic political machinery. His naval policy won the devotion of the demos, and his use of ostracism removed all his enemies from the scene. The rule of Themistocles might have lasted a very long time, and the power of the noble families, whose leaders languished in exile, might have been permanently damaged were it not for the Persian War, whose political consequences we have already noted. Now Cimon devised a plan whereby an aristocrat might adapt himself to the new political conditions. He began with the inestimable advantage of a well-deserved reputation for heroism in the late war. To this he added an attractive appearance and a gentle and artless manner, both of which had great popular appeal.30 His foreign policy of aggressive naval warfare against Persia was popular as a continuation of Themistocles’ policy. The final ingredient in Cimon’s recipe for political hegemony was money, in great amounts but judiciously employed. Cimon had acquired a good deal of money in the form of booty from his successful campaigns. Plutarch’s description of how he spent it deserves quotation:
He took away the fences from his fields, that strangers and needy citizens might have it in their power to take fearlessly of the fruits of the land; and every day he gave a dinner at his house, simple it is true, but sufficient for many, to which any poor man who wished came in, and so received a maintenance which caused him no effort and left him free to devote himself solely to public affairs. But Aristotle says (Ath. Pol. 27. 3) that it was not for all Athenians, but only for his own demesmen, the Laciadae, that he provided a free dinner. He was constantly attended by young comrades in fine attire, each one of whom, whenever an elderly citizen in needy array came up, was ready to exchange raiment with him. The practice made a deep impression. These same followers also carried with them a generous sum of money, and going up to poor men of finer quality in the market place, they would quietly thrust small change into their hands.31
It is of no great importance whether Plutarch or Aristotle is right as to the recipients of Cimon’s bounty; the general picture is clear enough. He had found a way to build and maintain a clientele among the demos to rival that of Themistocles and men like him. Like the Irish political bosses of Boston and New York at the turn of the century, he won a loyal following among the poor voters by taking care of their personal needs and seeing to it that they voted when they were needed. Another imperfect but revealing analogy is with the Tory democracy of Disraeli, who hoped to maintain the rule of the upper classes by voluntarily attending to the most grievous needs of the people.
Pericles was ill equipped to beat Cimon at his own game. He had no military reputation to match Cimon’s; his personal appearance was far less pleasing, for he had an oddly shaped head that excited the ridicule of the comic poets.32 His manner was unfortunate for a politician who hoped to win the masses away from their favorite. The contemporary poet Ion compared the presumptuous and arrogant manner of Pericles, his pride and disdain for others, with the tactful and easy manners of Cimon. Even if we disregard the poetic fancies of Ion, we must recognize that Pericles’ austere and remote personality was a political liability.33 Although wealthy, he could not compete with the riches of Cimon. For all these reasons he faced a gigantic task when he entered the lists against Cimon. Probably he did not expect to win, but wanted only to bring himself to public attention as a rising young member of the opposition. Since many of his father’s supporters must have continued to support Cimon’s foreign policy, the major subject of debate, it behooved Pericles to control the fury of his attack. At the trial he got up to speak only once and even then like a man who was merely fulfilling an obligation. Stesimbrotus attributes this mildness to the intervention of Cimon’s sister Elpinice.34 We may attribute it less romantically to prudence.
We have little reason, in fact, to believe that Pericles opposed Cimon’s foreign policy. We know that it had been the policy of Xanthippus as well, and we hear of no Periclean statements or actions hostile to Sparta until well after the war with Sparta had begun. It is worth noticing that the man who later opposed Cimon’s appeal to help the Spartans when they were endangered by a helot rebellion was Ephialtes.35 No mention whatever is made of Pericles, and it is hard to believe that any recollection of his opposition would be omitted by later historians aware of his subsequent leadership of wars with Sparta. In 463 the basis of Pericles’ opposition to Cimon, if it was anything more than personal ambition, was domestic and not foreign policy.
The first events in which Pericles is definitely concerned are constitutional and legislative reforms to make the state more democratic. He was associated with Ephialtes in the attacks on the Areopagus that stripped it of its newly usurped powers, perhaps of some of its older ones as well.36 He is specifically named as the first to introduce pay for jurymen,37 and Plutarch charges him with the introduction of the theoric fund as well as the jury pay and other public largesses.38 It is usual to suppose that the opening of the archonship to member of the zeugite class and the re-establishment of the thirty so-called local justices (dikastai kata demons,) both usually taken to be democratic reforms, were Periclean.39 To be sure, Pericles is not named as their author, and it is well to remember that the Pericles of the 450’s is not the same man who dominated Athens after the ostracism of Thucydides, son of Melesias, in 443; it is not safe to suppose that everything that happened in Athens between the death of Ephialtes and the death of Pericles is the latter’s doing. The fact remains that there is plenty of evidence that Pericles entered Athenian politics as a member of a democratic faction and as the champion of a democratic program.40
It is the all but unanimous judgment of antiquity that Pericles was a champion of democracy. Plato, the enemy of Athenian democracy, considered him a typical demagogue and corrupter of the people. Aristotle says that when Pericles began his career the constitution became more democratic; because of the changes he and Ephialtes introduced, “the many became bolder and took the state more into their own hands.”41 The question arises chiefly because of the famous dictum of Thucydides that Athens in the time of Pericles “was in name a democracy, but in fact it was the rule of the first man.”42 Plutarch was troubled by it and set himself to resolve the apparent contradiction. He finally decided that Pericles was forced into his early democratic phase by the impossibility of defeating Cimon in any other way, but that after the ostracism of 443 had cleared the field of all rivals, he was able to employ the “aristocratic and royal statesmanship” of his later career.43
Some modern scholars have followed Plutarch’s interpretation with only minor modifications, seeing 443 as the year in which the character of Periclean rule changed.44 At least one has solved the problem by suggesting that Pericles never really was a democrat at all.45 Perhaps the opposite solution is more persuasive. Thucydides’ judgment on the Periclean constitution does not seem to accord with the facts he offers. Nobody denies that all questions of policy and all elections were decided in the ecclesia in 430 just as they had been in 450. Public officials underwent preliminary examinations and final audits; panels of citizens elected by lot had final jurisdiction in all matters. Each year Pericles had to stand for election to his office, and at each assembly he needed to win a majority of the voters to his policy. In 430 he was removed from office and fined by an angry citizenry. Even more telling is the fact that they sent a peace mission to Sparta, in utter contradiction of his policy, while he was still in office. It is hard to deny that
if democracy means and is government by the citizens, if the ekklesia decided policy by vote, if free elections persisted at their constitutional intervals, if Perikles was at all times responsible to the sovereign demos, and if an unoppressed political opposition survived, as it surely did, —if all this is so, then Athens was as democratic, not only in theory but in day-to-day practice, as government can conceivably be.46
Finally we have the evidence of Pericles’ funeral oration. If any speech reported by Thucydides may be considered a close facsimile of what was actually said, it is this one. It is generally agreed to be the finest and most moving encomium of the democratic way of life ever spoken. It is altogether perverse to deny that the man who delivered it after a life in the service of Athens was a sincere believer in democracy. The allegation that he became a democrat out of political necessity need not detain us long. It is a commonplace employed whenever an aristocrat takes his place at the head of a popular movement; it was said of Cleisthenes in antiquity and of Franklin D. Roosevelt in recent times. In all three cases it is in conflict with the evidence.
All this is not to say that the young Pericles of the late 460’s was a dreamy idealist unaware of the political significance of what he was doing. On the contrary, he must have known full well the nature of the revolution he was bringing about. We have seen that the rules of the political game made it impossible for him to win. He changed those rules to such good effect that he was ultimately able to dominate Athenian politics as no man had done before and none was to do again. The key to his success was surely the device that his ancient enemies castigated most vehemently: his use of state funds to pay Athenian citizens to perform their civic functions. This was attractive on theoretical grounds, for it made it possible for the Athenian democracy to fulfill its potentiality by allowing all its citizens to perform the duties and achieve the honors of citizenship (μετέχειν κρίσεως καὶ ἀρχῆς) as Aristotle put it, to hold office and to serve on juries, to rule and to judge.47 It was no less attractive on practical grounds, for it undercut a major base of Cimon’s strength. No more need the poor seek the charity of Cimon and his political supporters; no more need they feel grateful for his largesse and express their gratitude at the elections and in the ecclesia. Now they could obtain a public support that was more regular, came to them of right and not by charity, and left them free to express the monumental ingratitude that democratic politicians must always expect.
The enemies of Pericles might argue that he had merely “offered the people what was their own,”48 but the people were nonetheless grateful and gave him their support. The ultimate effect was to destroy the revised system of patronage introduced by Cimon once and for all. As the New Deal of Roosevelt put an end to the fiefdom of the great cities, by taking patronage of the poor out of the hands of the local bosses and putting it under the control of the central government, so did the reforms of Pericles put an end to the clientage of the poor Athenian. Henceforth the opponents of Pericles must fight him on the new ground that he himself had chosen.
This domestic revolution was not easy to accomplish and might not have come about had it not been for developments abroad.49 After the failure of their attack on Cimon’s probity, the democrats changed their tactics. They now began a series of attacks on the very center of conservatism and the bulwark of aristocracy, the Areopagus. Ephialtes and Pericles took the lead in charging individual members of the council with mismanagement of the administration.50 This was a useful softening-up tactic, but it probably would not have brought full success had not fortune intervened. In the summer of 464, Sparta suffered a terrible earthquake, which was soon followed by an uprising of the helots.51 The effects of the disaster were not easily overcome, and by 462 the helots, who had taken refuge on Mt. Ithome, were still a threat. The Spartans appealed for help to their allies, among them the Athenians, who were particularly wanted for their reputed skill at siege operations. This, of course, led to a debate in Athens.
Ephialtes led the opposition to the Spartan request for help, urging the Athenians “not to help or restore a city that was a rival to Athens but to let the pride of Sparta lie low and be trampled underfoot.”52 The violence of the language is evidence of the hatred toward Sparta felt by Ephialtes and by at least some part of his faction. No doubt part of it derived from the traditional Themistoclean foreign policy, which sought to make Athens the sole leader of the Hellenes; another part of that hatred must have come from Sparta’s consistent support of Cimon, the rival of Ephialtes. But the success of that support was even more detestable because Cimon was the great foe of the democratic constitutional reforms favored by the democrats. He tried to revive the powers that Pericles and Ephialtes had stripped from the Areopagus, and he was probably the first to use a return to the Cleisthenic constitution as a reactionary political slogan.53 His enemies saw a close connection between his admiration for Sparta and his hostility to popular government, and they made good use of the people’s dislike of Sparta, as well as Cimon’s outspoken preference for Spartan character and manners.
In spite of the clamor and demagogy of his opponents, Cimon was still powerful enough to carry the day. He persuaded the Athenians to send him at the head of four thousand hoplites to help the Spartans, employing the effective exhortation “not to leave Hellas lame nor see their city deprived of its yokefellow.”54 It is more than likely that if the expedition had gone well and Cimon had returned from a successful campaign with the thanks of a grateful and friendly Sparta, the democratic tide might have been stemmed and even pushed back even then. Events, however, took a different turn.
The Athenians had not been on the scene long before the Spartans sharply changed their policy. For no apparent reason they singled out the Athenians among their allies and sent them home on the grounds that they no longer needed them. Thucydides tells us that the real reason for the Spartans’ action was their fear of “the boldness and revolutionary spirit of the Athenians”; since they were Ionians and not Dorians, “if they remained they might be persuaded by the men on Ithome to change sides.”55 We need not doubt the accuracy of Thucydides’ judgment. Even under the command of Cimon, four thousand Athenian hoplites, raised in the free air of democracy and proud of the power and glory of that democracy, must have seemed dangerous indeed to many Spartans. We may imagine the arrogance shown by at least some Athenians as they swaggered through the Peloponnese, called to aid a stricken Sparta. Even very moderate democratic ideas must have been both surprising and shocking to Spartan ears.
But if we penetrate below the general statement of Thucydides, it is possible to see the role that party politics may have played in the Spartan decision. The Spartans could not have failed to hear that the Athenian expedition had not been unanimously approved. They must have known of the opposition of Ephialtes and the hatred of Sparta it reflected. The war party, as we know, had always been suspicious and jealous of Athens, and in recent years it had regained enough power to influence Spartan policy. Perhaps, the frightening behavior and demeanor of the Athenians was enough to swing the balance in its favor. The Spartans may well have realized that to dismiss the Athenians would seriously compromise Cimon’s position, probably lead to his overthrow, and the victory of his democratic opponents who hated Sparta. Their action might well lead to war, but they did not shrink from it. We may wonder whether Cimon appreciated the irony of the situation: the expedition that he had urged to guarantee friendship between Athens and Sparta provided the weapon with which his enemies in both states could destroy that friendship.
While Cimon was gone the democrats won a great victory over the Areopagus that stripped it of the additional powers it had gained over the years and left it merely a court with very limited jurisdiction. We may well believe that only the absence of Cimon and his four thousand hoplites made that victory possible.56 On his return he made every effort to restore the political situation to what it had been before his departure. He tried to restore the lost powers to the Areopagus,57 but his efforts were doomed to failure. The Spartans had destroyed his political credit. There can be no question that the Athenians regarded the dismissal of their army as a terrible insult, and they were angry with the man whom they held responsible for it. Dislike of Sparta was so deep and general that old friends of the Spartans found it expedient to renounce their association.58 In such a climate it is hardly surprising that the Athenians withdrew from the alliance with Sparta made at the time of the Persian War. At the same time they made an alliance with Argos, Sparta’s traditional enemy, and then brought in Thessaly to form a triple alliance clearly aimed at Sparta.59 In the spring of 461 the Athenians ostracized Cimon, and the diplomatic revolution was complete.60 A party hostile to Athens was in control of Spartan policy, and the enemies of Sparta were in command at Athens.
1 Diod. 11. 43. 3.
2 Hdt. 8. 112.
3 Hdt. 8. 111; Plut. Them. 21. 1.
4 Timocreon is quoted by Plutarch (Them. 21. 1).
5 The little evidence we have is collected and probably exaggerated by Glotz and Cohen (HG, II, 55–56).
6 Plut. Them. 20. 1–2.
7 Hdt. 6. 136.
8 Plut. Cim. 4. 7; Athen. 589e; Nepos Cim. 1. 3–4.
9 Plut. Cim. 4. 9; 16. 1; Them. 23. 1. In Arist. 25, Plutarch erroneously calls Alcmaeon the accuser. See Busolt GG, III: 1, 110–111.
10 Busolt, GG, III: 1, 110–111; Glotz and Cohen, HG, II, 122.
11 Arist. Ath. Pol. 23. 3 and 24. 3; Plut. Arist. 22. 1.
12 Plut. Them. 19. 4.
13 Plut. Cim. 5. 2.
14 Plut. Cim. 16.
15 Thuc. 101. 1. Some scholars have rejected this statement by Thucydides. Glofz and Cohen (II, 135), for instance, doubt that the Spartans made such a promise, “car c’était la guerre ouverte avec la Ligue de Délos.” Walker (CAH, V, 72) doubts it also and conjectures that the story may derive from Stesimbrotus. The fullest argument for rejecting Thucydides on this point is made by Raphael Sealey (. Historia, VI [1957]). He warns that Thucydides “is not so reliable an authority on events that occurred before the Peloponnesian War,” and that “the historian should beware of statements about secret undertakings and unfulfilled intentions” (p. 369). He appears to have a higher opinion of Thucydides’ reliability for the events of the Pentacontaetia and for their interpretation in a more recent article on “The Origin of the Delian League” (ASI, 233–255). We have here a straight statement of fact offered by Thucydides on his own authority, and no one has offered a reason why he should have been either misinformed or biased on this point. Most scholars have accepted Thucydides without question. See Grote, IV, 398–400; Busolt, GG, III: 1, 203; Meyer, GdA, IV: 1, 501–502; Beloch, GG, II2: 1, 149; Bengtson, 189; Hammond History of Greece (Oxford, 1959), 290.
16 Grote, IV, 399–400.
17 On the surrender of Thasos, Thuc. 101. 3. On the attack on Cimon, Plut. Citn. 14. 2–3.
18 Plut. Cim. 14. 3.
19 Plut. Per. 3 for his lineage. Per. 10. 4–5, Cim. 14–15, and Arist. Ath. Pol. 27 on the trial of Cimon and Pericles’ debut.
20 Such is the suggestion of Sealey (Hermes, LXXXIV [1956], 239).
21 ούτος γὰρ ἦν τῶν κατηγόρων ὁ σφοδρότατος. Plut. Cim. 14. 5.
22 Pace C. Hignett, A History of the Athenian Constitution (Oxford, 1952), 253.
23 Arist. Ath. Pol. 25. 1; 24. 3; 41. 2. For arguments in favor of the Aristotelean authorship of the Athenaion Politeia, which I accept, see James Day and Mortimer Chambers, Aristotle’s History of Athenian Democracy (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1962), 1–4. Cf. Hignett, A History of the Athenian Constitution, 27–30.
24 Day and Chambers (Aristotle, 126), for instance, say, “The Areopagite constitution is palpably unhistorical: it was constructed by Aristotle to close the gap between the second democracy of Cleisthenes and the radical fourth democracy begun by Ephialtes.”
25 Arist. Ath. Pol. 23. 1.
26 Arist. Ath. Pol. 25. 2.
27 Cim. 5. 1.
28 D. M. Lewis, Historia, XII (1963), 22–40.
29 For this interpretation of ostracism, see Kagan, Hesperia, XXX (1961), 393–401.
30 Plut. Cim. 5. 3–4.
31 Plut. Cim. 10. 1–3, translated by B. Perrin in LCL.
32 Plut. Per. 3. 2–4.
33 Plut. Per. 5. 3–4.
34 Plut. Cim. 14. 4.
35 Plut. Cim. 16. 7–8.
36 Plut. Per. 9. 3–4; Cim. 15. 1–2; Arist. Ath. Pol. 27. 1. The ancient authors seem to have had conflicting versions of precisely what took place and the true relationship between Ephialtes and Pericles. Aristotle’s story that Ephialtes was helped by Themistocles must be unhistorical. The evidence seems to indicate that Ephialtes was the leader of the opposition to Cimon and the Areopagite constitution, and Pericles his lieutenant.
37 Arist. Ath. Pol. 27. 3.
38 Per. 9. 3.
39 Arist. Ath. Pol. 26. 2–3; see Busolt, GG, III: 1, 263–269.
40 Raphael Sealey, Hermes, op. cit., 234–247, has written a lively attack on the communis opinio. His warnings against unfounded assumptions are a useful tonic against attempts to read modern party politics and class struggles into the fifth century. His emphasis on “the family-politics of the great houses” is a necessary corrective, but it goes too far. The fact remains that some great houses or, at any rate, some members of the great houses favored more democratic policies, while others opposed them. The Alcmaeonids in general and Pericles in particular usually seem to have been in the first group, while the Philaids in general and Cimon in particular seem to have been in the second.
41 Plato Gorgias 515 E; Arist. Ath. Pol. 27. 1.
42 2. 65. 7.
43 Per. 9 and 15.
44 Busolt, GG, III: 1, 494–497; Hignett, op. cit., 253–257; and Beloch, Die Attische Politik seit Perikles (Leipzig, 1884), 19–21.
45 Sealey, Hermes, op. cit, 234–247.
46 Malcolm McGregor, Phoenix, X (1956), 93–102.
47 Pol. 1275a. 23–24.
48 Arist. Ath. Pol. 27. 4; Plut. Per. 9. 2; Aristophanes Wasps 684 ff.
49 See Appendix C.
50 Arist. Ath. Pol. 25. 2; Plut. Per. 9. 3–4; Cim. 15. 1–2. Aristotle has Themistocles helping Ephialtes, but that is surely impossible after 471.
51 1. 101. 1–2.
52 Plut. Cim. 16. 8.
53 Plut. Cim. 15. 2.
54 Thuc. 102. 1–3; Plut. Cim. 16. 8–17. 4; Diod. 11. 64. 2–3. For the number of troops, see Aristophanes Lysistrata 1138–1144. For the possibly derivative quality of Cimon’s remark, see Appendix B, p. 379.
55 Thuc. 1. 102. 3; Diod. 11. 63. 2 and Plut. Got. 17. 2 seem to be based only on Thucydides and add nothing to the story.
56 Hignett, 341.
57 Plut. Cim. 15. 2.
58 For the Athenian reaction, see Thuc. 1. 102. 4; Diod. 11. 63. 3. I believe that Beloch’s suggestion (GG2, II: 2, 1, 153) that Alcibiades, the grandfather of his notorious namesake, renounced his position as Spartan proxenus at this time is very plausible. See Thuc. 5. 43. 2.
59 1. 102.4.
60 Plut. Cim. 17. 2.