Within two years of Cimon’s exile the Athenians were allied with a state that had rebelled from the Spartan alliance and was engaged in combat with several Peloponnesian states. The First Peloponnesian War was on. After the Spartan rejection of Cimon’s troops it could scarcely have been avoided. It is interesting to apply Thucydides’ judgment of the “truest cause” of the later war to the outbreak of this one. “I think that the truest cause but the one least spoken of was that the Athenians had grown powerful, which presented an object of fear to the Spartans and forced them to go to war.” In this case it appears to be right in every particular. The power of Athens had grown enormously since 479, when Thucydides begins his analysis. Fear of Athens was manifest in the debate in the Spartan gerousia of 475, in the promise to help Thasos in 465/4, and finally in the expulsion of the Athenian hoplites in 462/1. The expression of that fear, moreover, was internal and did not need outside goading. When the Spartans made the fateful decision to expel the Athenians, they needed and received no urging from Corinthians, Aeginetans, or Megarians. Always the impetus toward hostilities came from Sparta.
The Spartan attitude reflected an important fact about the condition of the Greek world from 479 to 461: Its stability was apparent only and not real. The alliance between Sparta and Athens was not an alliance of states but of factions. The faction of Cimon and the faction that would be headed by King Archidamus were prepared to accept limits to the hegemonal claims of their states, but in each state there were significant elements of the population who were not. The political positions of Cimon and the Spartan peace party were not strong enough to resist their enemies indefinitely. The Spartans simply were not yet prepared to share hegemony with Athens, nor were the Athenians prepared to accept Spartan checks on their ambitions. It is easy to believe that if the dismissal of the Athenians troops had not occurred, another casus belli might soon have been found. Probably no complex human event can be thought of as inevitable, but the First Peloponnesian War would have been hard to avoid after the formation of the Delian League.
The ostracism of Cimon left his enemy Ephialtes in control of the field, but he was not permitted to enjoy his victory, for an oligarchic plot brought about his assassination.1 Now Pericles assumed the leadership of the democratic faction and of the state; he was to exercise a powerful influence upon both for more than thirty years. We have seen that although he and Cimon both came from the highest Athenian nobility, they could not have differed more in appearance, style, manner, habits, and prejudices. Their native differences were accentuated by the differences in their training. Cimon received the gymnastic training traditional for Athenian aristocrats. Although not without native wit, he was untrained in literature, rhetoric, and the liberal arts, disciplines that came to be thought of as characteristically Greek.2 Pericles, on the other hand, was inclined to a life of the mind and was enough younger than Cimon to take advantage of the new intellectual currents that appeared in Hellas in the middle of the fifth century. His friends and teachers were such men as Damon, Zeno, and Anaxagoras, and his conversation of music, poetry, science, and philosophy. When Cimon worked to beautify and glorify his city, he planted plane trees in the agora and built new running tracks for the noble youths who exercised at the Academy.3 Pericles built the Odeon, commissioned Mnesicles to build the Propylaea, Callicrates and Ictinus to plan the Parthenon, and Phidias to supervise its adornment and to create a statue of the goddess. To his native intelligence and excellent training he added remarkable rhetorical skill and a reputation for absolute incorruptibility.4 The democratic measures he now put into effect provided the basis for a political strength that would one day be almost unassailable.
In 461, however, his position was far from secure. He was still a very young man, not yet thirty-five, who had come to power by a freak. He had to expect the friends of Cimon to oppose him, and he needed also to win the confidence of the party he led. He may not have approved of a policy of war with Sparta, but it had been the policy of the martyred Ephialtes, and Pericles had no choice but to pursue it. Some time in 461/60 the helot rebels on Mt. Ithome could hold out no longer and surrendered to the Spartans.5 The conditions were not unduly harsh: the helots might leave freely provided that they did not return. No doubt the Spartans expected the helots and their families to scatter throughout the Hellenic world and never again to pose a threat to the security of the Peloponnese, but if so they were disappointed. Shortly before, the Athenians had taken possession of Naupactus, a town on the northern shore of the Gulf of Corinth, which had formerly belonged to the Ozolian Locrians. They offered it to the Messenian rebels, who happily accepted. The Athenians did this, says Thucydides, “because of their enmity toward the Spartans,”6 and we may well agree with his judgment. To be sure, Naupactus would later prove a useful base from which to harass Peloponnesian shipping, and some Athenians might have thought about that, but the Athenian motive could have been less rational. Stung by the insult so fresh in their memory, they may merely have taken the opportunity to strike back at Sparta in any way possible.
A splendid opportunity for further revenge soon offered itself. The Megarians, who were engaged in a boundary dispute with Corinth, found themselves getting the worst of the war. No doubt they were aware of the special position Corinth held in the Spartan alliance and despaired of any help from Sparta. Instead, they withdrew from their association with Sparta and entered into an alliance with Athens. The Athenians took advantage of the opportunity to secure Pegae, the Megarian port on the Corinthian Gulf, and to build long walls connecting Megara to Nisaea. Nisaea was Megara’s port on the Saronic Gulf, and the Athenians made it secure by garrisoning it.7 This could only be interpreted as an act of war against the Spartans. Athens’ acceptance of a rebellious ally into the Athenian alliance, her fortification of the vital route between the Peloponnese and the rest of Greece were acts that Sparta could not tolerate. The Athenians knew this quite well but did not shrink from the deeds. For them the war had already begun, and the Megarian offer of alliance was a god-sent opportunity to enter that war under favorable conditions.
Control of the Megarid was of enormous strategic value to Athens. It made the invasion of Attica from the Peloponnese almost impossible; the control of Pegae made it possible to supply Naupactus and control the Gulf of Corinth without making the long and dangerous voyage around the Peloponnese.8 However, the Athenians paid a heavy price, for it was from the Athenian intervention in this Megarian quarrel that “the bitter hatred of the Corinthians for the Athenians first came into being.”9 Gomme thinks that this Corinthian hostility was important as a cause of this war as well as of the greater one some three decades later. “It required,” he says, “the energy of Corinth, and some others, to push Sparta into the war; who, in spite of a desire to find every excuse for delay, could not afford to lose the valuable alliance of Corinth and could not fail to see that the Athenian empire really threatened the security of the Peloponnese as well as the rest of Greece.”10
It is evident that Gomme was thinking more of the war that came in 431 than of its predecessor, for his remarks apply very well to the later war but not to the earlier. As we have seen, Sparta required no push to persuade itself of the danger to the Peloponnese represented by Athens. The acceptance of the Megarian alliance was a direct blow at the Spartans, who understood it without Corinthian help. Gomme blames the Corinthians for risking the stability of the Peloponnese and the peace of Hellas in a quarrel over a strip of land, but his charge is unjust.11 Corinth had no reason to expect that Megara would turn for help to Athens, her traditional enemy. She had less reason to believe that the Athenians, who had always had good relations with the Corinthians, would help their enemies. The Corinthians could not be blamed for failing to realize that they were in the midst of a diplomatic revolution and that the Athenian action was directed against Sparta rather than Corinth. The Athenians, to be sure, sowed dragon’s teeth when they alienated Corinth over Megara, but the harvest would not come for almost thirty years.
While the Athenians were embroiled in the struggle between Megara and Corinth, their attention was drawn to events far afield. King Inaros of Lybia had led a revolt in Egypt against the Persian king Artaxerxes, who had ascended to the throne only a few years earlier. Realizing that he would need help, he called in the Athenians, who were already engaged in a campaign at Cyprus. They abandoned that undertaking, and with two hundred Athenian and allied ships they sailed up the Nile, having joined forces with Inaros.12 It is not impossible that the Athenian expedition to Cyprus, whose origin and purposes we do not know, was sent out by Cimon before the break with Sparta had taken place.13 There is no satisfactory way, however, to place the Athenian acceptance of Inaros’ invitation before 460,14 so we are forced to account for what appears a most reckless action on the part of the Athenians, who were willing to undertake a major commitment in Egypt at the same time that they faced a great conflict with the Peloponnesians.
This problem has troubled modern historians, particularly those eager to acquit Pericles of the charges of recklessness and imperialism. They suggest that he really opposed the expedition, but since he was not yet in a position of strength and was still opposed by the shattered but ever present faction of Cimon, he was compelled to go along with Cimon’s policy.15 Beloch, certainly no friend of Pericles, is nevertheless unable to believe that he was responsible for the Egyptian expedition. “For the dispatch of a great fleet right after Cyprus fully conforms with the spirit of Cimon’s policy, while it would have been obvious madness after the break with Sparta, which we may not attribute to such prudent statesmen as Pericles and Myronides.”16 Thus, he is forced to date the expedition to 462/1, which is not acceptable.17
There are many things wrong with this argument besides the date. Among the least of these is that none of our sources names Cimon in connection with either this Cyprian campaign or the Egyptian expedition, although they do name him in connection with the Cyprian campaign he led a decade later; nor is Myronides mentioned at all as an Athenian leader just at this time. Beloch, moreover, did not always consider Pericles a prudent statesman incapable of such foolishness, for he believes that he deliberately brought on the great Peloponnesian War merely to protect his political position at home.18 Much more important, as Gomme has pointed out, is that this view leads to the improbable conclusion that Pericles, “incapable of supporting the Egyptian policy for its own sake, after being quit of Kimon by ostracism, meekly carried on his policy for six long years—in Egypt, though he reversed it in Greece—out of sentimental regard, I suppose, for his rival’s name.”19
Thucydides, as usual, does not allow us to see into the internal political situation, and in this instance our other ancient authorities seem to have had no independent source. Yet, if there can be no certainty about it, the historian must try to divine Pericles’ attitude at this early date if he is to understand the later policy of Pericles when his policy was that of Athens. It is well to avoid the mistake of imagining that the policy that Pericles pursued after 450 must have been the same as that which he supported a decade earlier, that there was no development in his thinking, that like the Bourbons of the French Restoration, he learned nothing and forgot nothing. His vehement insistence that there should be no diversionary campaigns in the Peloponnesian War may well have resulted from the bitter memory of the disastrous end to the Egyptian campaign, which he had supported as a young man. Nor should we be surprised to find him supporting a policy of vigorous activity against Persia. His father had helped initiate such a policy; why should he not inherit Xanthippus’ foreign policy as well as his domestic feud with the Philaids?
It is also wrong to imagine that only the friends of Cimon were eager for the Persian war. There had never been any disagreement among the factions in Athens as to the desirability of pressing the Persians hard and winning from them whatever profit was available. Themistocles was at least as aggressive in that direction as was Cimon. Ephialtes, as the inheritor of Themistocles’ supporters, as the leader of the faction that would be the most imperialistic of all, must surely have urged the continuation of an aggressive policy against Persia. We have no reason to doubt that Pericles, his lieutenant and political heir, was at all reluctant to do the same. If we judge that this action of Pericles and the Athenian democracy was reckless and ill conceived, we should remember that both were young and sanguine, buoyed up by recent success, perhaps intoxicated with a bright new ideology whose glitter had not yet been tarnished by war and corruption. Like the young ideologues of the French and Russian revolutions, they may have felt that men who lived under a noble constitution embodying noble ideas would sweep all before them. If they were foolishly optimistic, it was not the last error they would make.20
In the spring and summer of 460 the Athenians took steps to secure their communications with their Argive allies. First they descended upon Halieis on the southern shore of the Argolic peninsula. It may be that they were able to gain control of Troezen at this time,21 for they certainly controlled it later, and we know of no better opportunity. At Halieis, however, they were beaten by a combined force of Epidaurians, whose own territory was threatened, and Corinthians, who were eager to resist Athenian encroachment. But at about the same time, the Athenians won a naval battle off the island of Cecryphaleia, which lay between the Argolic peninsula and Aegina. The first battles of the war were ominous; the Athenians lost on the land and won on the sea.22
These Athenian attempts to gain a foothold on the western shore of the Saronic Gulf alarmed and angered the Aeginetans, who now joined the war against Athens. Aegina was an old enemy of Athens, long her rival in trade and now rapidly losing ground in the competition for naval supremacy. Pericles might call Aegina the eyesore of the Piraeus,23 but the sight of Piraeus, fortified and issuing ever larger fleets of triremes, must have pained the Aeginetans even more. With the help of their allies they fought a great sea battle against the Athenians, who were also supported by their allies. The result was a great victory for the Athenians, who captured seventy enemy ships, landed on Aegina, and laid siege to the city under the command of Leocrates, son of Stroebus. The Peloponnesians withdrew three hundred hoplites who had been helping the Corinthians and Epidaurians and sent them to help Aegina. They tried to force the Athenians to break off the siege by starting diversionary campaigns, but all in vain. By the spring of 457, Aegina was forced to surrender and come into the Athenian league. The Aeginetans pulled down their walls, gave up their fleet, and were enrolled as tribute-paying members.24
Shortly after the Athenians had begun their siege of Aegina, the Corinthians invaded the territory of Megara, hoping to force the Athenians to give up the siege. It was a reasonable expectation, for not only was a sizable Athenian force engaged at Aegina, but a large contingent was still off in Egypt. The strain should have been too great, but the daring and resourcefulness of Athens was equal to the test. Myronides gathered together a motley army of men too old and boys too young for ordinary service. He marched them into the Megarid and won a smashing victory over the Corinthians.25 We may get some idea of the pride the Athenians felt in their remarkable military achievements from an inscription, probably dating from the year 460/59: “The following men of the tribe Erechtheis died in the war in the same year in Cyprus, in Egypt, in Phoenicia, in Halieis, in Aegina, and in Megara.”26
During all this time the Spartans had done very little, allowing their allies to carry the burden of the fighting. Remembering that they had declared themselves willing to invade Attica a few years earlier with infinitely less provocation, we may wonder why they waited so long to act now. For those who believe that the helot rebellion was still unsuppressed, the answer is obvious.27 But the simplicity of this explanation is marred by the fact that the Spartans did undertake a major expedition in 458,28 some three years before the surrender of Ithome by their own reckoning. It is hard to believe that by that spring the resistance of Ithome “was already breaking down,” when we know that the siege was to last more than two years longer. Still, even if the helot rebellion was already finished, as we believe, we may well imagine that traditional conservatism, intensified by the recent terror, made the Spartans reluctant to take an army of any size out of the Peloponnese. It is possible also that politics may have played a role. Perhaps the victory of the war party had been only temporary; perhaps the unhappy consequences of the insult to Athens had produced a revulsion of feeling and restored the conservatives to power. About this we can only speculate, but whatever the political situation in Sparta, by this time no faction could fail to act. The Athenians were at war with Corinth, Aegina, and Epidaurus, three of the most important allies of Sparta. If she did not act now her hegemony was gone and her security in peril.
Still the Spartans did not invade Attica, the most obvious way to stop Athenian aggression. For this there was the best of reasons: they could not. The Athenian seizure and fortification of the Megarid barred a Spartan army from marching into Attica from the direction of the Peloponnese. For the time being Sparta was frustrated, but soon an unforeseen opportunity presented itself. The Phocians launched an attack on Doris, a small state in central Greece that had a special relationship with Sparta. Legend had it that Doris was the starting point from which the descendants of Heracles launched their successful attack on the Peloponnese, which led to its control by the peoples of Dorian stock. Sparta considered Doris its mother city. When the Spartans heard of the Phocian invasion, they immediately prepared to send help. Gathering a force of fifteen hundred Spartan hoplites and ten thousand allies under the leadership of Nicomedes, who commanded in place of the young King Pleistoanax, they made their roundabout way to the north, by way of the Gulf of Corinth.29 This was obviously a far larger contingent than could possibly be needed for putting down the Phocians, a task that they accomplished quickly and easily. It is clear that the Spartan strategy was to strike at Athens from the only vulnerable direction, the Boeotian frontier.
We are given a tantalizing clue to the mystery of Sparta’s internal politics by the appointment of the commander of this expedition. Pleistoanax, to be sure, was too young for the responsibility, but why did the Spartans ignore their remaining royalty and turn to Nico-medes to lead the campaign? The answer must be that the other king was Archidamus. He had already shown and would show again that he was an able commander. We can only conclude that he was passed over because he opposed the expedition and the policy behind it. Perhaps he believed the expedition was too dangerous; perhaps he hoped that even now the Athenians might come to their senses and agree to an honorable peace. The peace party might not be able to impose its will, but it seems to have been able to disassociate itself from what it considered to be reckless policies.
Nicomedes and his supporters, however, had reason to think that their policy might be successful. Instead of returning directly to the Peleponnese by the sea route, they lingered in Boeotia. Thucydides tells us that they were encouraged to do so by “some Athenians who secretly invited them, hoping to put an end to the democracy and to the building of the long walls.”30 The Athenians, fearing an imminent attack by the Spartans, had already begun to build long walls connecting Athens to Phaleron and Piraeus. Later on a third wall, parallel to the Piraeus wall, would be built.31 The completion of this construction would in effect turn Athens into an island unassailable by land and invincible so long as it retained command of the sea. A consequence of this policy, a direct descendant of the policy of The mistocles, would inevitably be to strengthen the Athenian democracy by emphasizing the navy at the expense of the more aristocratic cavalry. In the absence of Cimon his supporters were leaderless, frightened, and, in some cases, irresponsible. The result is one of the rare cases of treasonable conspiracy in Athenian history. Had Cimon been present, his good sense would have prevented these extremists from having any influence, and he would certainly have discouraged their activities. All our evidence shows him to have been a man comfortable with the Athenian democracy, who could even live happily under the post-Areopagite constitution. He never allowed partisan considerations to interfere with patriotism; but he was in exile and could do nothing. It is possible that there had been communication between the Athenian oligarchs and the Spartan war party even before the Spartans had left the Peloponnese, but it is certain that their persuasion helped decide Nicomedes to stand and offer battle to the Athenians in Boeotia.
Nicomedes’ hopes, however, did not rest only on the weak reed of Athenian oligarchy. The true source of his confidence was Thebes. It was a general rule in the world of the Greek city-states that neighbors were at least mutually suspicious and often hostile. In land-hungry Greece the source of conflict was usually a contest for desirable territory on the borders between neighboring states. For centuries, Sparta and Argos had contended for control of Thyreatis; a border dispute between Corinth and Megara had helped bring on the present general conflict; Athens and Megara had a history of conflict over border territory and over the island of Salamis, which lay between them; and such examples could be multiplied many times.
Athens and Boeotia, of which Thebes was the greatest city, shared a long border by Greek standards, yet until the end of the sixth century they appear to have lived in peace. In part, this demonstrated the dictum that good fences make good neighbors, for the Parnes mountain range made accidental border violations highly unlikely. Boeotia and Attica, moreover, were relatively large and prosperous regions where the pressure of want was not great. When conflict arose late in the sixth century, it was for political reasons. Whereas Athens had been able to unify Attica so successfully that every resident was a citizen of Athens and not of his locality, Thebes had not been able to do the same thing in Boeotia. At its strongest moments Thebes was only the leader of a confederation of autonomous towns with strong local loyalties and varying degrees of friendship for Thebes.
In 519 the Athenians became involved in Thebes’ attempt to strengthen her control of Boeotia. They intervened on behalf of the Plataeans’ struggle to maintain their independence against a Theban attack. Their success earned the undying friendship of Plataea and the hostility of Thebes.32 The Thebans gave evidence of their feelings in 506 when Cleomenes took a Peloponnesian army into Attica to put down the Cleisthenic democracy. They joined with Cleomenes and the army of Chalcis to attack Athens from three sides, beginning the campaign by seizing the border districts of Oinoe and Hysiae. The plan failed when the Corinthians refused to cooperate and the Peloponnesian contingent retired from the field. Free now to turn against the Thebans and Chalcidians, the Athenians defeated them. Enraged by the turn of events, the Thebans turned to Aegina and helped bring on the first of a series of conflicts between Aegina and Athens, but to no avail. The Thebans suffered another defeat at Athenian hands, and their taste for vengeance was unappeased.33 Plataea remained independent and closely attached to Athens.
The Persian War further estranged the now unfriendly neighbors. Athens fought valiantly for Greek freedom while Thebes Medized. The result was a serious diminution of Theban prestige and influence corresponding with the rise of Athenian power. The Boeotian confederation was dissolved and each city given its independence.34 A moderate oligarchy seems to have replaced the “dynasty of a few men” who ruled Thebes tyrannically during the Persian War, and it managed to keep Thebes out of trouble until the outbreak of the First Peloponnesian War.35 During the years of peace Thebes was able to retain her strength and to think again of regaining her prestige. It was under these circumstances that the Thebans invited the Spartan army to come into Boeotia and “to help their city to gain the entire hegemony of Boeotia.”36
Diodorus provides us with the clue to Sparta’s strange willingness to take a large army out of the Peloponnese to re-establish Theban supremacy in Boeotia at the same time that it was unwilling or unable to invade Attica. The Thebans promised that in return for Sparta’s help, “They would themselves make war on the Athenians so that there would be no need for the Spartans to bring an army outside of the Peloponnese.” The Spartans were delighted with such a prospect and agreed to the proposal, “judging that it was advantageous to them and thinking tbat if the Thebans became more powerful they would be a sort of balanced antagonist to the Athenians.” As a result they helped fortify the city of Thebes and forced the Boeotian cities to become subject to Thebes.37
It is possible, as Thucydides implies, that the Athenians knew nothing of the Theban invitation. They did, however, know of a large Peloponnesian army in Boeotia, and they were suspicious of a plot to overthrow the democracy at Athens. As a result, they marched into Boeotia with the entire force available to them, accompanied by allied contingents including one thousand Argives. The entire force came to fourteen thousand men in addition to a detachment of Thessalian cavalry.38
The two armies met at Tanagra. The Athenian force was more numerous, but the Thessalians deserted to Sparta in the midst of the battle, and the Spartans won a victory in which both sides suffered heavy casualties. Although the Spartans controlled the field at the end of the day’s fighting, their victory was somewhat Pyrrhic, for they were unable to follow it up and could do nothing but force their way through the Megarid and return to the Peloponnese. The oligarchic conspiracy at Athens never came to anything, and within two months the Athenians were able to return and conquer a Boeotia that had been abandoned by its Peloponnesian allies.39
The Athenians had fought the Battle of Tanagra under peculiar conditions. Suspicion of treason was in the air, and it was natural to suspect that the friends of Cimon might be involved in the plot. Perhaps Cimon feared that some of his disgruntled followers might be tempted or perhaps he merely wanted to clear his friends’ reputation and his own and to demonstrate their patriotism. In any event, Cimon appeared at Tanagra in full armor, ready to join his tribal ranks in the battle to come. The Athenian boulé, behaving with the panic that men show when there is rumor of treason in wartime, accused him of coming with treasonable intentions and drove him off.40 Cimon was not embittered. Instead of sulking, he urged his friends to dispel the suspicion that surrounded them by their bravery in battle. They fought well and must have convinced their countrymen of their patriotism, for shortly after the battle Cimon was recalled from his exile, Pericles himself proposing the decree.41 He soon was able to arrange a truce of four months with the Spartans and then may have gone off again to his estates in the Thracian Chersonnese to wait until conditions made possible a lasting peace with Sparta and a policy that he could honestly support.42
Almost every element in the story of Cimon’s recall has been questioned by modern scholars. The details of his actions at Tanagra have been called “an accumulation of absurdities”;43 Plutarch’s confusion of the four-months’ truce with the Five Years’ Peace of 451/50 has been taken as a reason for rejecting his entire story; the four-months’ truce has been rejected as an invention, and, it has been pointed out, Diodorus does not even connect it with Cimon.44 None of these objections is very weighty. Plutarch is often guilty of chronological confusion and artistic invention even when he is telling a story that is basically true.45 The other objections need not detain us long; no one has yet imagined why Diodorus or his source Ephorus should invent anything like a four-months’ truce on this occasion, and the omission of Cimon’s name is hardly peculiar to this passage.46
A more serious objection to our account of events is political: “Why should the Spartans conclude a truce which left Boeotia at the mercy of Athens and secured to themselves no corresponding advantage?…Further, if Cimon was recalled in 457 B.C., why is there no trace of his presence at Athens until 451 B.C., Why, above all, was he not sent to the rescue of the Athenian force in Egypt?”47 These questions make clear the true nature of the problem. Its solution requires an analysis of the political situation, which our sources do not make explicit. Once again the historian who wishes to understand this difficult period must try to read between the lines.
It is not difficult for us to imagine the Athenian state of mind on the eve of the Battle of Tanagra. The long walls that would guarantee Athenian security were not yet completed; talk of treason was in the air. A strong Peloponnesian army was united with Athens’ rejuvenated and implacable enemy Thebes. Corinth, which had intervened to save Athens from such a danger in the past, was now ranged among its most bitter enemies. A decisive defeat now could well mean the destruction of Athens and its recently acquired power. In such circumstances it was natural to fear treachery from Cimon’s appearance. Cimon’s behavior and the outcome of the battle changed all that. He and his friends had demonstrated their loyalty and patriotism. The battle, though technically a defeat, was a strategic victory, for the danger of invasion was past, for the moment at least, and the danger of treason seemed to be gone for good. The Athenians, however, could not relax. The Spartans had fought their way back to the Peloponnese by land; they might next fight their way back into Attica. The Athenians could not yet know that the Spartans were prepared to abandon their Theban allies, if, in fact, they had already decided to do so. The situation was still critical. The danger to Athens called for a cessation of factional strife, and the events at Tanagra made it possible.
Pericles, as we have seen, was not necessarily eager to fight Sparta. With others, he had carried on the war as vigorously as was necessary, but we have no reason to think that he was determined to carry it forward. If Cimon was now prepared to accept the reforms that Ephialtes and Pericles had introduced, and it appears that he was, there was no major policy difference between them. At any rate, there was no reason why the Athenians should not use Cimon’s unique qualities to win a respite and perhaps an ultimate settlement. The time could be used to further the completion of the walls and to make Athens secure in case the war should continue. Athens had everything to gain and nothing to lose by agreeing to a truce of four months.
It is, of course, more difficult to understand why Sparta was willing to make such an agreement. The problem becomes a bit simpler if we look at the results of Tanagra from the Spartan point of view. In a battle in which they had risked a sizable army, the Spartans had won a narrow victory that had turned out to be strategically useless. They had, moreover, suffered heavy losses, and the entire course of Spartan history shows how seriously they took the loss of Spartan soldiers. They might very well have re-evaluated their agreement with Thebes, which promised them freedom from extra-Peloponnesian expeditions but which had delivered instead a costly battle in Boeotia that profited Thebes alone. In these circumstances, the idea of a negotiated peace must have seemed more attractive.
It was at this time that news of Cimon’s recall came to Sparta. If we are right in thinking that the advocates of peace were already gaining ground, the news could well have turned the tide in their favor. The return of Cimon to Athens might mean a return by Athens to a conservative policy in mainland Greece and a restoration of the friendly relations between Athens and Sparta. It must already have been very clear that the expulsion of Cimon and his troops from Sparta had been a costly mistake, expensive to both the Spartans and Cimon. What could be more fitting than to correct that error through the agency of Cimon himself?
The conclusion of a four-months’ truce, far from arousing suspicion, is a reason to have confidence in the historicity of the account. In the first place, it accords well with the necessarily cautious nature that negotiations would have after Tanagra. More telling still is the analogy to a similar truce concluded by the Spartans with the Argives in 418. On that occasion the Spartans and their allies were about to engage the Argives in a great battle on the Argive plain. Just as the armies were ready to come to grips, King Agis of Sparta concluded a truce for four months with one of the Argive generals and with an Argive who was proxenus of the Spartans. The Argives said they would be willing to submit complaints to arbitration and “for the future to make a treaty and keep the peace.”48 This was a clear attempt to win a victory by diplomacy and thus avoid a battle that it appeared the Spartans could win, although at a cost. The Spartans accepted the truce after Tanagra for the same reasons; the peace party must have urged its acceptance in the hope of restoring Spartan policy to its traditional paths.
The Athenian victory at Oenophyta shattered all such hopes. The truce was strictly between Athens and Sparta and did not include Boeotia. On the sixty-second day after Tanagra, Myronides took an Athenian army to Oenophyta in Boeotia, where he defeated the Boeotian forces. The Athenians pulled down the walls of Tanagra and became the masters of all Boeotia except for Thebes itself, newly fortified with the aid of Sparta. The Athenians quickly overran Phocis and Locris and would have done the same to Thessaly had they not been checked by the walls of Pharsalus.49 Democracies were established in the cities of Boeotia, perhaps even in Thebes itself.50 Suddenly, at one stroke, Athens had become the master of central Greece.
While all this was going on, the Athenians completed the building of their walls. From then on they were invulnerable to Spartan attack. This had all taken place in the period from the late summer of 458 down to the end of the next winter. In the spring of 457 this annus mirabilis was capped by the surrender of Aegina and its reduction to a tribute-paying member of the Delian League.51 All this success could not fail to dampen Athenian ardor for peace. Negotiation could only succeed if Athens were willing to abandon some of the fruits of her victory. Elated by their victories, the Athenians were certainly not willing to make any sacrifices and were prepared to prosecute the war until their enemies should sue for peace.
There is good reason to think that Pericles was not in favor of the second expedition to Boeotia that produced the Battle of Oenophyta. He is nowhere mentioned in connection with that campaign, and here the argument from silence is worth something, for it was common for later writers to attribute anti-Spartan actions to him. It is further true that we have very clear reports of later campaigns that he himself led against the Spartans.52 If he is not named, we have good reason to think he was not involved; if he was not involved, we may suspect that he disapproved.
It is well to keep in mind that in 458/7, Pericles was still under forty and far from the unchallenged master of Athens. For instance, Myron ides, the victor of Oenophyta, was a veteran of the Persian War and a man of immense prestige. It is clear that he favored an aggressive policy, and he was not alone. The likelihood is that the warlike faction at Athens simply outvoted Pericles without rejecting what he had done, for the four-months’ truce, as we have seen, gave Athens a free hand in Boeotia. The attack may have violated the spirit of that truce but not its letter. When the war policy proved so incredibly successful, the policy we have attributed to Pericles was finished. Pericles could do nothing but bow to circumstances and accept what he could not alter. It must have been at this time that Cimon decided that the political climate in Athens was not to his liking and withdrew until a more favorable season. His efforts to restore peace would not be welcomed by the ebullient Athenians. He would return when the fortunes of war had made them more sober.
In the following summer Athenian daring won additional victories. Tolmides took an Athenian fleet around the Peloponnese. He burned the Spartan dockyards at Gytheum, captured Chalcis, a Corinthian colony on the north shore of the Gulf of Corinth, and inflicted a defeat upon the army of Sicyon.53 The unbroken series of Athenian successes continued, and the Athenian strategy appeared to grow ever more aggressive.
By the autumn of 457 the Athenian forces were troubling the Persians in Egypt to such a degree that they were compelled to seek relief. As usual, the Great King tried to make use of Greek quarrels to further his own interests. He sent Megabazus to Sparta, supplied with money, to persuade the Spartans to invade Attica and so to draw off the Athenians from Egypt. Megabazus soon found that the money brought no results and returned to Persia with the remaining funds.54 The Spartans were clearly not ready to risk a major campaign when Athenian power was at its acme. The Persians now had no choice but to undertake a major offensive of their own in Egypt. Megabyzus was sent overland with a very large army to put an end to the uprising. The Egyptians and their allies were quickly defeated in battle. The Greeks were driven from the city of Memphis, which they had held, and shut up on the island of Prosopitis in the Nile. The siege lasted for almost eighteen months, but at its conclusion in 454 the entire Greek force was destroyed, and Egypt was restored to Persian control.55
This was a disaster of the greatest magnitude for Athens. The account of Thucydides suggests that almost all of a fleet of two hundred and fifty ships and their crews of forty to fifty thousand men were lost. Even if we reject these figures as too large, the lowest estimate is that of Ctesias, which speaks of forty ships, meaning something like eight thousand men.56 Even assuming that a good part of the force was not Athenian, such a destruction of Athenians and their allies was nevertheless a tremendous and unprecedented defeat. Its psychological impact must have been even more damaging than the loss of men and ships. It broke an uninterrupted series of Athenian victories over Persia, caused serious unrest in the Aegean, and forced a curtailment of the Athenian efforts on the mainland. A second attempt to win control of Thessaly had already failed, and Pericles’ campaigns in the Gulf of Corinth, which took place in the same summer, were Athens’ last military activities in Greece until 447. The Athenians were forced to abandon their expansion on the continent to meet the challenge of their first great imperial crisis.57
1 Plut. Per. 10. 6–7; Arist. Ath. Pol. 25. 4.
2 Plut. Cim. 4. 40.
3 Plut. Cim. 13. 8.
4 2. 65. 8;Plut. Per. 15.4–5.
5 1. 103. 1. The text says that this happened in the tenth year (δεκάτῳἔτει) of the rebellion, which had begun in 464/3. This would put the fall of Ithome in 454/3, and I agree with Gomme and the majority of scholars that such a date is impossible. An emendation of the text seems necessary, and the reading τετάρτῳ in place of δεκάτῳ seems attractive, if not certain. This would place the surrender in 461/0. For a detailed argument of this general view, see Gomme, Hist. Comm., I, 401–408 and ATL, III, 176, notes 58 and 59. For a recent presentation of a minority view, as well as a review of the scholarship on the question, which has created much interest in the last quarter-century, see D. W. Reece, JHS, LXXXII (1962), 111–120, especially note 1 on page 111.
6 1. 103. 3.
7 Thuc. 1. 103. 4; Diod. 11. 79.
8 Gomme, Hist. Comm., I, 304–305.
9 1. 103.4.
10 Hist. Comm., I, 305.
11 Hist. Comm., I, 304.
12 1. 104.
13 Beloch, GG2, II: 2, 205; Nesselhauf, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der delischattischen Symmachie, Klio, Beiheft, XXX (1933), 6, n. 1.
14 ATL, III, 177, n. 60.
15 Franz Miltner, PW, XIX (1938), s.v. “Perikles,” 754; Karl Dienelt, Die Friedenspolitik des Perikles (Vienna and Wiesbaden, 1958), 12.
16 GG2, II: 2, 205.
17 W. Scharf (Historia, III [1954–5], 308–325) takes a similar view. He believes that the campaigns in Cyprus and Egypt were both purely Cimonian. This leaves him open to the same objection that Gomme makes to Beloch’s view (see below, n. 19). That objection seems to me insuperable.
18 On Pericles as the cause of the war, see Die Attische Politik, 19–22. Beloch’s judgment on Pericles as a statesman is “Wir können selbst zweifeln ob er ein grosser Staatsmann gewesen ist…. Aber er war, wie wir heute sagen würden, ein grosser Parlamentarier.” GG2, II: 1, 155.
19 Hist. Comm., I, 307.
20 Grote (IV, 409) and Busolt (GG, III: 1, 303) do not raise the question of who was behind the Egyptian expedition. They apparently assume that was no disagreement among the Athenians on this question, in which I think they are right. Walker CAH, V, 77) says, “It may well have seemed to Pericles and the other leaders of the democratic party that here was a golden opportunity for teaching Persia the lesson that she needed. If Persia would not have peace with Athens, she should learn once more what war with Athens meant.” He is arguing on the assumption that Athens had tried to obtain a peace with Persia in 461 and had failed. I am more in accord with the view of Glotz and Cohen (HG, II, 148) that Pericles played a leading role in the decision because he and his faction appreciated “les avantages qu’il tirerait d’une intervention en Egypte, grenier inépuisable, marché à enlever a ses fournisseurs phénicians, position militaire de premier ordre accrochée au flanc de la Perse.” G. De Sanctis (Atthis [2nd ed.; Rome, 1904], 460) sees the strength of the analogy to the French Revolution and imagines that there were Athenians who were ambitious enough to hope for the unification of Hellas under Athenian leadership.
21 Such is the suggestion of Grote (IV, 410).
22 For the battles, see Thuc. 1. 105. 1–2; Diod. 11. 78. 1–2 pictures Athens as winning both battles, but there is no reason to prefer him to Thucydides here.
23 Plut. Per. 8. 5.
24 Thuc. 1. 105. 2–3; Diod. 11. 78.
25 Thuc. 1. 105. 3–106. 2; Diod. 11. 79. 1–4. See Gomme, Hist. Comm., I, 307–311 for a discussion of the very memorable nature of this victory and its treatment by later historians.
26 IG, I2, 929 = Tod, 26. The names of 177 men follow.
27 Walker, CAH, V, 79.
28 According to the ATL chronology; not later than 457 by anyone’s account.
29 Thuc. 1. 107. 1–2; Diod. 11. 79; Gomme, Hist. Comm., I, 314.
30 1. 107. 4.
31 See Gomme, Hist. Comm., I, 312.
32 For the events of 519, see Hdt. 6. 108 and Thuc. 3. 68. For a discussion of the date, which is debated by modern scholars, see Paul Cloché, Thèbes de Béotie (Namur, Louvain, and Paris, no date), 30–32. For the early history of Thebes, see Cloché, ibid., 12–29 and F. Schober, PW, V: 2 (1934), s.v. “Thebai (Boiotien),” 1452–1459.
33 Hdt. 5. 74–81.
34 Diod. 11. 8. 13.
35 The quotation is from Thuc. 3. 62. 3–4. I follow Busolt and Swoboda (GS, II, 1413, n. 1) in calling the Theban government a moderate oligarchy. Schober (1462) believes that a democratic government was installed after the war. His position is challenged by Cloché (Thèbes, 48—50), who is in essential agreement with Busolt and Swoboda, but calls the new Theban government “un régime aristocratique.”
36 Diod. 11. 81. 2. Justin (3. 6) says that the Spartans fought “ut Boeotiorum imperium his [sc, Thebanis] restituerent.”
37 Diod. 11. 81. 1–4.
38 1. 107. 5–7. Thucydides makes no mention of the Theban invitation, which affects his interpretation of the Athenian purpose in taking the field. He says that the Athenians thought that the Spartans ἀπορεῖν ὅπῃ διέλθωσιν, suggesting that the Athenians hoped to take advantage of an opportunity to fight, which the Spartans would have been glad to avoid. He also speaks of the Athenians as going out against the Lacedaemonians, making no mention of the Thebans, yet Pausanias (1. 29. 6) tells us he saw a monument to two Athenian cavalrymen who died “fighting the Lacedaemonians and Boeotians on the borders of Eleon and Tanagra.” He appears not to have known or not to have believed the story told by Diodorus, but that account appears to be more than plausible. For a discussion of the numbers of troops at the battle, see Gomme, Hist. Comm., I, 315.
39 Thuc. 1. 108. 1–2; Diod. 11. 82; Gomme, Hist. Comm., I, 315–316.
40 Plut. Cim. 17. 3–4. In his life of Pericles, Plutarch says that Cimon was driven off by “the friends of Pericles” (10. 1), but there is no real contradiction between the accounts. The same men are referred to in both passages: it was the proper duty of the councillors to send a man who had been banished away from the battle. The story that these men were the friends of Pericles is probably true; most councillors in 458/7 were likely to be friendly to Pericles, but Plutarch did not know precisely who they were, although he does have a rather precise knowledge of other things that happend at Tanagra. The tale that Cimon was driven off by “the friends of Pericles” instead of the boulé is merely a gloss by Plutarch or his source.
41 Plut. Cim. 17. 4–6; Per. 2–3; Nepos Cim. 3. 3.
42 Diodorus (11. 80. 5) tells us of the four-months’ truce. Theopompus (FGrH, frg. 88) tells us of Cimon’s recall and that he concluded a peace on his return. Busolt (GG, III: 1, 317–318) is the source of the suggestion that Cimon went off to the Chersonnese. Plutarch (Cim. 18. 1) seems to indicate that the peace Cimon made was the Five Years’ Peace, which was not in fact concluded until 451/50.
43 Beloch, GG2, II: 2, 211.
44 Walker, CAH, V, 468.
45 As Gomme (Hist. Comm., I, 326) has put it, “Beloch shows that the details of this story in Plutarch are impossible; but that is not reason enough for rejecting the whole. The details are embroidery.”
46 The story of Cimon’s return is generally accepted. Grote (IV, 416—417), Glotz and Cohen (HG, II, 151–152), Busolt (GG, III: 1, 258, n. 1 and 316, n. 3), Meyer (GdA, IV: 1, 562), and Gomme, (Hist. Comm., I, 326–327) all believe it, though each interprets the events somewhat differently. Raubitschek (Historia, III [1954–5], 379–380 and AJA, LXX [1966], 37–42) accepts the story but believes that the Five Years’ Peace was concluded in 458/7, which I do not accept. Among modern scholars, only Beloch rejects the story outright. Walker, who is inclined to deny its truth, says, “There are only two alternatives: either Cimon was recalled after Tanagra, or he was not recalled at all, but came back when the ten years of his ostracism had expired. A recall, but at some other date than after Tanagra, may be left to those to whom compromise is dear” (p. 469). The interpretation offered here accepts the first of the alternatives.
47 Walker, CAH, V, 468.
48 Thuc. 5. 58–59. For the interpretation of these events, see Kagan, CP, LVII (1962), 207–218.
49 Thuc. 1. 108. 1–3; Diod. 11. 81–83.
50 Thuc. 1. 113. 2; 3. 62. 5; Arist. Pol. 1302 b 29; Pseudo-Xenophon, Ath. Pol. 3. 10–11. See the discussions of Gomme, Hist. Comm., I, 317–318 and Cloché, Thèbes, 68–69 and 49–50.
51 Thuc. 1. 108. 3–4; Diod. 11. 78. 4. It is not clear whether Aegina was a member of the Delian League before this war. It is generally assumed that it was not, but was rather a member of the Peloponnesian League. D. M. Leahy (CP, XLIX [1954], 232–243) argues in favor of this traditional view. Douglas MacDowell (JHS, LXXX [1960], 118–121), however, presents the case for early membership in the Delian League.
52 Thuc. 111. 2–3; Diod. 11. 85. 1–2; Plut. Per. 19. 2–4.
53 Thuc. 1. 108. 5; Diod. 11. 84 gives a somewhat confused account of this expedition, including activities omitted by Thucydides and placing the settling of Naupactus, which happened earlier, in this year. See also schol. Aeschin. 2. 75.
54 Thuc. 1. 109. 2–3; Diodorus (11. 74. 2) says the Spartans refused the money.
55 Thuc. 1. 109–110; Diod. 11. 75 and 77. 1–5; Ctesias 32–34.
56 See Gomme, Hist. Comm., I, 321–322 for a discussion of the literature on the size of the Egyptian expedition.
57 Although Thucydides mentions the Egyptian disaster (1. 110. 5) immediately before he speaks of the Thessalian campaign and the Periclean expeditions (1. 11. 1–3), I believe that these activities took place before news of the Egyptian defeat reached Athens, and Thucydides tells of the defeat when he does merely to complete his narrative of the Egyptian campaign. In this I accept the chronological suggestion of Meiggs, HSCP, LXVII (1963), 3–4 and n. 12.