The Establishment of an Athenian Empire
The victorious Greeks decided in 478 B.C. to continue a naval alliance in order to
attack the Persian outposts that still existed in far northern Greece and western
Anatolia, especially Ionia. The Spartans naturally assumed leadership of this alliance,
continuing the position that they had held at the had of the Greek coalition formed to
resist the invasion of Xerxes. The
conduct of the Spartan commander,
Pausanias1, soon caused disaffection among the Greek allies,
however, and Athens soon took over the position of hegemon (leader by consensus) of the
alliance. This change in leadership marked the beginning of the establishment of what
would become an Athenian Empire.
The Misconduct of Pausanias the Spartan
The Spartan Pausanias, victor of the battle of Plataea, was chosen to lead the first
expedition of the naval alliance against the remaining Persian outposts in Greek
territory.
His arrogant and violent behavior2, especially toward women, quickly led to dissatisfaction with
Spartan leadership among the Greek allies. This kind of outrageous conduct was to
prove common in the future for Spartan men in positions of power when away from home.
Their regimented training in Sparta apparently left them ill prepared to operate
humanely and effectively once they had escaped from the constraints imposed by their
austere way of life as “
Equals3”, as Spartan adult male citizens were called, always
under scrutiny by one another in their homeland. Spartan kings, too, who grew up under
a freer regimen than did ordinary Spartan men, tended to lose sight of the Spartan
tradition of austerity and just behavior when they campaigned abroad for long periods.
Not even they were immune to the corrupting influence of the desire for luxury, which
the austere life of Spartans at home in Sparta excluded as a matter of principle and
law.
Spartan Approval of Athenian Leadership
By 477 B.C., the Athenian aristocrat
Aristides4 (c. 525-465 B.C.) had successfully
persuaded the other Greeks to request
Athenian leadership5 of the continuing naval alliance against the Persians. The
leaders at
Sparta were happy to cede their position6 at the head of the alliance because, in the words of the Athenian historian
Thucydides (c. 460-400 B.C.),
“they were afraid any other commanders
they sent abroad would be corrupted, as Pausanias had been, and they were glad to be
relieved of the burden of fighting the Persians.... Besides, at the time they still
thought of the Athenians as friendly allies.”7 It could be added that Sparta's ongoing need to keep its army at home most of
the time to
guard against helot revolts8 also made prolonged overseas
operations difficult to maintain.
A Permanent Structure for the Alliance
Under Athenian direction, the
Greek alliance against Persia took on a permanent
organizational structure9. Member states
swore a solemn oath never to desert the coalition. The members were predominately
located in northern Greece, on the islands of the Aegean Sea, and along the western
coast of Anatolia—that is, in the areas most exposed to Persian attack. Most
of the independent city-states of the Peloponnese, on the other hand, remained in
their traditional alliance with the Spartans. This alliance of Sparta and its allies,
which modern historians refer to as the Peloponnesian League, had an assembly to set
policy, but no action could be taken unless the Spartan leaders agreed to it. The
alliance headed by Athens also had an assembly of representatives to make policy.
Its structure was supposed to allow participation by all its
members.10
The Finances of the Alliance (Delian League)
The Athenian representatives came to dominate this erstwhile democracy, however, as a
result of the special arrangements made to finance the alliance's naval operations.
Aristides set the different levels of payments11 the various member states were to pay each year, based on their
size and prosperity. The Greek word describing the payments was
phoros
12, literally “that which is brought.” Modern historians
refer to the payments as “tribute,” but the translation
“dues” might come closer to the official terminology of the
alliance, so long as it is remembered that these dues were compulsory and permanent.
For their tribute payments,
larger member states were assessed the
responsibility of supplying entire warships13 complete with crews and pay; smaller states could share the
cost of a ship, or simply contribute cash which would be put together with others'
payments to pay for ships and crews. Over time, more and more of the members of the
alliance chose to pay their dues in cash rather than go to the trouble of furnishing
warships. The alliance's
funds were kept on the centrally-located island of
Delos14, in the group of islands in the Aegean Sea called the
Cyclades15, where they were placed under the guardianship of the god Apollo, to whom the
whole island of Delos was sacred. Historians today refer to the alliance as the Delian
League because its treasury was originally located on Delos.
The Warships of the Delian League
The warship of the time was a narrow vessel built for speed called a
trireme16（“triple-banks-of-oars ship”), a name
derived from its having three tiers of oarsmen on each side for propulsion in
battle. One hundred and eighty rowers were needed to propel a trireme, which fought
mainly by ramming enemy ships with a metal-clad ram attached to the bow and thus
sinking them bypuncturing their hulls below the water line. Triremes also carried a
complement of about twenty officers and marines; the marines, armed as infantry,
could board enemy ships. Effective battle tactics in triremes required extensive
training and physical conditioning of the crews.
Most member states of the
Delian League preferred to pay their annual dues in cash instead of furnishing
triremes17 because
it was beyond their capacities to build ships as specialized as triremes and to
train crews in the intricate teamwork required to work triple banks of oars in
battle maneuvers. Athens was far richer and more populous than most of its allies in
the Delian League, and it not only had the shipyards and craftsmen to build triremes
in numbers but also a large pool of poorer men eager to earn pay as rowers.
Therefore, Athens built and manned most of the alliance's triremes, using the dues
of allies to supplement its own contribution.
The Rebellion of Thasos
Since Athens supplied the largest number of warships in the fleet of the Delian
League, the
balance of power in the League came firmly into the hands of the
Athenian assembly,18 whose members decided how Athenian ships were to be employed. Members of the
League had no effective recourse if they disagreed with decisions made for the League
as a whole under Athenian leadership. Athens, for instance, could compel the League to
send its ships to force reluctant allies to go on paying dues if they stopped making
their annual payments. The most egregious instance of such compulsion was the
case of the city-state of the island of Thasos19 which,
in 465 B.C, unilaterally withdrew from the Delian League after a dispute with Athens
over gold mines on the neighboring mainland. To compel the Thasians to keep their
sworn agreement to stay in the League, the Athenians led the fleet of the Delian
League, including ships from other member states, against Thasos. The attack turned
into a protracted siege, which finally ended after three years' campaigns in 463 B.C.
with the island's surrender. As punishment, the League forced Thasos to pull down its
defensive walls, give up its navy, and pay enormous dues and fines. As Thucydides
observed, rebellious allies like the Thasians “lost their
independence,” making the Athenians as the League's leaders
“no longer as popular as they used to be.”20
The Military and Financial Success of the Delian League
The Athenian-dominated Delian League enjoyed
success after success against the
Persians in the 470s and 460s.21 Within
twenty years after the rout of the Persian fleet in the battle of Salamis in 479,
almost all Persian garrisons had been expelled from the Greek world and the Persian
fleet driven from the Aegean. Although the Persian heartland was not threatened by
these setbacks, Persia ceased to be a threat to Greeks for the next fifty years.
Athens meanwhile grew stronger from its share of the spoils captured from Persian
outposts and the dues paid by its members. By the middle of the fifth century B.C.,
League members' dues alone totaled an amount equivalent to perhaps $200,000,000 in
contemporary terms (based on the assumption of $80 as the average daily pay of a
worker today). For a state the size of Athens (around 30,000 to 40,000 adult male
citizens at the time), this annual income meant prosperity.
Athenian Self-Interest in Empire
The male citizens meeting in the assembly22 decided how to spend the city-state's
income. Rich and poor alike had a self-interest in keeping the the fleet active and
the allies paying for it. Well-heeled aristocrats like
Cimon23 (c. 510-450 B.C.), the son of
Miltiades the victor of the battle of
Marathon,24 could enhance their social status by commanding successful League campaigns
and then spending their share of the spoils on benefactions to Athens. The numerous
Athenian men of lesser means
who rowed the Delian League's ships25 came to depend on the income they earned on League expeditions. The
allies were given no choice but to acquiesce to Athenian wishes on League
policy.26 The men of Athens insisted on freedom for themselves, but they failed to
preserve it for the member states in the alliance that had been born in the fight for
just this sort of freedom from domination by others. In this way, alliance was
transformed into empire, despite Athenian support of democractic governments in some
allied city-states previously ruled by oligarchies. From the Athenian point of view,
this transformation was justified because, by keeping the allies in line, the alliance
remained strong enough to do its job of protecting Greece from the Persians.
