Note 645 — Chapter XLV · PROCEEDINGS OF THE CONFEDERACY UNDER ATHENS AS HEAD. — FIRST FORMATION AND RAPID EXPANSION OF THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE.

Thucyd. viii, 5, 6, 56. As this is a point on which very erroneous representations have been made by some learned critics, especially by Dahlmann and Manso (see the treatises cited in the subsequent note 647), I transcribe the passage of Thucydidês. He is speaking of the winter of B. C. 412, immediately succeeding the ruin of the Athenian army at Syracuse, and after redoubled exertions had been making—even some months before that ruin actually took place—to excite active hostile proceedings against Athens from every quarter (Thucyd. vii, 25): it being seen that there was a promising opportunity for striking a heavy blow at the Athenian power. The satrap Tissaphernes encouraged the Chians and Erythræans to revolt, sending an envoy along with them to Sparta with persuasions and promises of aid,—ἐπήγετο καὶ ὁ Τισσαφέρνης τοὺς Πελοποννησίους καὶ ὑπισχνεῖτο τροφὴν παρέξειν. Ὑπὸ βασιλέως γὰρ νεωστὶ ἐτύγχανε πεπραγμένος τοὺς ἐκ τῆς ἑαυτοῦ ἀρχῆς φόρους, οὓς δι’ Ἀθηναίους ἀπὸ τῶν Ἑλληνίδων πόλεων οὐ δυνάμενος πράσσεσθαι ἐπωφείλησε. Τούς τε οὖν φόρους μᾶλλον ἐνόμιζε κομιεῖσθαι, κακώσας τοὺς Ἀθηναίους, καὶ ἅμα βασιλεῖ ξυμμάχους Λακεδαιμονίους ποιήσειν, etc. In the next chapter, Thucydidês tells us that the satrap Pharnabazus wanted to obtain Lacedæmonian aid in the same manner as Tissaphernes, for his satrapy also, in order that he might detach the Greek cities from Athens, and be able to levy the tribute upon them. Two Greeks go to Sparta, sent by Pharnabazus, ὅπως ναῦς κομίσειαν ἐς τὸν Ἑλλήσποντον, καὶ αὐτὸς, εἰ δύναιτο ἅπερ ὁ Τισσαφέρνης προὐθυμεῖτο, τάς τε ἐν τῇ ἑαυτοῦ ἀρχῇ πόλεις Ἀθηναίων ἀποστήσειε διὰ τοὺς φόρους, καὶ ἀφ’ ἑαυτοῦ βασιλεῖ τὴν ξυμμαχίαν τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων ποιήσειε.

These passages, strange to say, are considered by Manso and Dahlmann as showing that the Grecian cities on the Asiatic coast, though subject to the Athenian empire, continued, nevertheless, to pay their tribute regularly to Susa. To me, the passages appear to disprove this very supposition: they show that it was essential for the satrap to detach these cities from the Athenian empire, as a means of procuring tribute from them to Persia: that the Athenian empire, while it lasted, prevented him from getting any tribute from the cities subject to it. Manso and Dahlmann have overlooked the important meaning of the adverb of time νεωστὶ—“lately.” By that word, Thucydidês expressly intimates that the court of Susa had only recently demanded from Tissaphernes and Pharnabazus, tribute from the maritime Greeks within their satrapies: and he implies that until recently no such demand had been made upon them. The court of Susa, apprized, doubtless, by Grecian exiles and agents, of the embarrassments into which Athens had fallen, conceived this a suitable moment for exacting tributes; to which, doubtless, it always considered itself entitled, though the power of Athens had compelled it to forego them. Accordingly, the demand was now for the first time sent down to Tissaphernes, and he “became a debtor for them” to the court (ἐπωφείλησε), until he could collect them: which he could not at first do, even then, embarrassed as Athens was,—and which, à fortiori, he could not have done before, when Athens was in full power.

We learn from these passages two valuable facts. 1. That the maritime Asiatic cities belonging to the Athenian empire paid no tribute to Susa, from the date of the full organization of the Athenian confederacy down to a period after the Athenian defeat in Sicily. 2. That, nevertheless, these cities always continued, throughout this period, to stand rated in the Persian king’s books each for its appropriate tribute,—the court of Susa waiting for a convenient moment to occur, when it should be able to enforce its demands, from misfortune accruing to Athens.

This state of relations, between the Asiatic Greeks and the Persian court under the Athenian empire, authenticated by Thucydidês, enables us to explain a passage of Herodotus, on which also both Manso and Dahlmann have dwelt (p. 94) with rather more apparent plausibility, as proving their view of the case. Herodotus, after describing the rearrangement and remeasurement of the territories of the Ionic cities by the satrap Artaphernes (about 493 B. C., after the suppression of the Ionic revolt), proceeds to state that he assessed the tribute of each with reference to this new measurement, and that the assessment remained unchanged until his own (Herodotus’s) time,—καὶ τὰς χώρας σφέων μετρήσας κατὰ παρασάγγας ... φόρους ἔταξε ἑκάστοισι, οἳ κατὰ χώρην διατελέουσι ἔχοντες ἐκ τούτου τοῦ χρόνου αἰεὶ ἔτι καὶ ἐς ἐμὲ, ὡς ἐτάχθησαν ἐξ Ἀρταφέρνεος· ἐτάχθησαν δὲ σχεδὸν κατὰ τὰ αὐτὰ τὰ καὶ πρότερον εἶχον (vi, 42). Now Dahlmann and Manso contend that Herodotus here affirms the tribute of the Ionic cities to Persia to have been continuously and regularly paid, down to his own time. But in my judgment this is a mistake: Herodotus speaks, not about the payment, but about the assessment: and these were two very different things, as Thucydidês clearly intimates in the passage which I have cited above. The assessment of all the Ionic cities in the Persian king’s books remained unaltered all through the Athenian empire; but the payment was not enforced until immediately before 412 B. C., when the Athenians were supposed to be too weak to hinder it. It is evident by the account of the general Persian revenues, throughout all the satrapies, which we find in the third book of Herodotus, that he had access to official accounts of the Persian finances, or at least to Greek secretaries who knew those accounts. He would be told, that these assessments remained unchanged from the time of Artaphernes downward: whether they were realized or not was another question, which the “books” would probably not answer, and which he might or might not know.

The passages above cited from Thucydidês appear to me to afford positive proof that the Greek cities on the Asiatic coast—not those in the interior, as we may see by the case of Magnesia given to Themistoklês—paid no tribute to Persia during the continuance of the Athenian empire. But if there were no such positive proof, I should still maintain the same opinion. For if these Greeks went on paying tribute, what is meant by the phrases, of their having “revolted from Persia,” of their “having been liberated from the king,” (οἱ ἀποστάντες βασιλέως Ἕλληνες—οἱ ἀπὸ Ἰωνίας καὶ Ἑλλησπόντου ἤδη ἀφεστηκότες ἀπὸ βασιλέως—ὅσοι ἀπὸ βασιλέως νεωστὶ ἠλευθέρωντο, Thucyd. i, 18, 89, 95)?

So much respecting the payment of tribute. As to the other point,—that between 477 and 412 B. C., no Persian ships were tolerated along the coast of Ionia, which coast, though claimed by the Persian king, was not recognized by the Greeks as belonging to him,—proof will be found in Thucyd. viii, 56: compare Diodor. iv, 26.