previous next


H. distinctly limits admission into the league to the islanders present with the Greek fleet. We have already heard of the Chians and Samians (viii. 132; ix. 90 f.), but the Lesbians are here first mentioned. Presumably they had previously joined but H. omitted their adhesion, just as he omits to mention the presence of allies as well as Athenians at the siege of Sestos (ch. 114. 2 n.). The other loyal islanders (enumerated in viii. 46 and n.) must have been long before formally admitted to the league (cf. vii. 145). There is a difficulty as to the position of the Greeks on the mainland. H. here appears to exclude them, and in ch. 101 ad fin. makes ‘the islands’ and the Hellespont the prize of victory, yet Ionia (in which Miletus is included) has already ‘revolted from Persia’ (ch. 104 ad fin.), and, according to Thucydides (i. 89), allies from Ionia and the Hellespont helped the Athenians to take Sestos, while Ionians and others lately freed from the king are foremost in promoting the transference of the hegemony to Athens (i. 95). Diodorus (xi. 37) cuts the knot by admitting to the league all Aeolians and Ionians without distinction, which has led Steup to insert καὶ τοὺς ἠπειρώτας here. But Diodorus in this chapter is full of errors, and it seems better to suppose that such Greeks of the mainland as revolted from Persia were at first informally under the protection of Athens, and that they were only granted a formal alliance later, probably when the hegemony was transferred to Athens (cf. Busolt, iii. 39, 40). Of course many Greek states in Asia remained subject to Persia for years after this (cf. vi. 42 n.).

τὰς γεφύρας. The bridge had perished ten months before (viii. 117), but the Greeks may well have been ignorant of the fact so long as the Hellespont was in the hands of the enemy.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: