Note 647 — Chapter XLV · PROCEEDINGS OF THE CONFEDERACY UNDER ATHENS AS HEAD. — FIRST FORMATION AND RAPID EXPANSION OF THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE.

I conclude, on the whole, in favor of this treaty as an historical fact,—though sensible that some of the arguments urged against it are not without force. Mr. Mitford and Dr. Thirlwall (ch. xvii, p. 474), as well as Manso and Dahlmann, not to mention others, have impugned the reality of the treaty: and the last-mentioned author, particularly, has examined the case at length and set forth all the grounds of objection; urging, among some which are really serious, others which appear to me weak and untenable (Manso, Sparta, vol. iii, Beylage x, p. 471; Dahlmann, Forschungen auf dem Gebiete der Geschichte, vol. i, Ueber den Kimonischen Frieden, pp. 1-148). Boëckh admits the treaty as an historical fact.

If we deny altogether the historical reality of the treaty, we must adopt some such hypothesis as that of Dahlmann (p. 40): “The distinct mention and averment of such a peace as having been formally concluded, appears to have first arisen among the schools of the rhetors at Athens, shortly after the peace of Antalkidas, and as an oratorical antithesis to oppose to that peace.”

To which we must add the supposition, that some persons must have taken the trouble to cause this fabricated peace to be engraved on a pillar, and placed, either in the Metrôon or somewhere else in Athens, among the records of Athenian glories. For that it was so engraved on a column is certain (Theopompus ap. Harpokration. Ἀττικοῖς γράμμασι). The suspicion started by Theopompus (and founded on the fact that the peace was engraved, not in ancient Attic, but in Ionic letters—the latter sort having been only legalized in Athens after the archonship of Eukleides), that this treaty was a subsequent invention and not an historical reality, does not weigh with me very much. Assuming the peace to be real, it would naturally be drawn up and engraved in the character habitually used among the Ionic cities of Asia Minor, since they were the parties most specially interested in it: or it might even have been reëngraved, seeing that nearly a century must have elapsed between the conclusion of the treaty and the time when Theopompus saw the pillar. I confess that the hypothesis of Dahlmann appears to me more improbable than the historical reality of the treaty. I think it more likely that there was a treaty, and that the orators talked exaggerated and false matters respecting it,—rather than that they fabricated the treaty from the beginning with a deliberate purpose, and with the false name of an envoy conjoined.

Dahlmann exposes justly and forcibly—an easy task, indeed—the loose, inconsistent, and vainglorious statements of the orators respecting this treaty. The chronological error by which it was asserted to have been made shortly after the victories of the Eurymedon—and was thus connected with the name of Kimon—is one of the circumstances which have most tended to discredit the attesting witnesses: but we must not forget that Ephorus (assuming that Diodorus in this case copies Ephorus, which is highly probable—xii, 3, 4) did not fall into this mistake, but placed the treaty in its right chronological place, after the Athenian expedition under Kimon against Cyprus and Egypt in 450-449 B. C. Kimon died before the great results of this expedition were consummated, as we know from Thucydidês: on this point Diodorus speaks equivocally, but rather giving it to be understood that Kimon lived to complete the whole, and then died of sickness.

The absurd exaggeration of Isokratês, that the treaty bound the Persian kings not to come westward of the river Halys, has also been very properly censured. He makes this statement in two different orations (Areopagatic. p. 150; Panathenaic. p. 462).

But though Dahlmann succeeds in discrediting the orators, he tries in vain to show that the treaty is in itself improbable, or inconsistent with any known historical facts. A large portion of his dissertation is employed in this part of the case, and I think quite unsuccessfully. The fact that the Persian satraps are seen at various periods after the treaty lending aid—underhand, yet without taking much pains to disguise it—to Athenian revolted subjects, does not prove that no treaty had been concluded. These satraps would, doubtless, be very glad to infringe the treaty, whenever they thought they could do so with advantage: if any misfortune had happened to Athens from the hands of the Peloponnesians,—for example, if the Athenians had been unwise enough to march their aggregate land-force out of the city to repel the invading Peloponnesians from Attica, and had been totally defeated,—the Persians would, doubtless, have tried to regain Ionia forthwith. So the Lacedæmonians, at a time when they were actually in alliance with Athens, listened to the persuasions of the revolted Thasians, and promised secretly to invade Attica, in order to aid their revolt (Thucyd. i, 103). Because a treaty is very imperfectly observed,—or rather because the parties, without coming to open war, avail themselves of opportunities to evade it and encroach upon its prescriptions,—we are not entitled to deny that it has ever been made (Dahlmann, p. 116).

It seems to me that the objections which have been taken by Dahlmann and others against the historical reality of this treaty, tell for the most part only against the exaggerated importance assigned to it by subsequent orators.