some towns in the Argolid and annexed their territory, yet such de-
viations from the pattern remained unusual and did not overcome the
general expectation that Greeks should live as free men in autonomous
poleis, not as subjects in great empires.
The Greeks shared still another belief that interfered with the com-
fortable enjoyment of great power and empire. They thought that any
good thing amassed by men to an excessive degree led, through a se-
ries of stages, to what they called hubris. Such men were thought to
have overstepped the limits established for human beings and thereby
to have incurred nemesis, divine anger and retribution. These were
the main ideas emerging from the oracle at Apollo’s shrine at Delphi,
where could be found the pair of divine warnings to man to avoid
hubris : “know thyself ” and “nothing in excess.” To the Greeks of the
fifth century, the great example of hubris and nemesis was the fate of
Xerxes, Great King of the Persian Empire. His power filled him with a
blind arrogance that led him to try to extend his rule over the Greek
mainland and so brought disaster to himself and his people.
Therefore, when the Athenians undertook the leadership of a Greek
alliance after the Persian War, and that leadership brought wealth and
Pericles and the Defense of Empire 37
power and turned into what was frankly acknowledged as an empire,
traditional ways of thinking provided no firm guidelines. The advan-
tages of empire to the Athenians, tangible and intangible, were many.
The most obvious was financial. Revenues paid directly by the allies in
the form of tribute, indemnities, and other unspecified payments came
to 600 talents annually at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War. Of
the 400 additional talents of home income that came in each year, a
large part also resulted from the empire, for import and other harbor
duties at Piraeus and court fees paid by allied citizens whose cases were
heard in Athens. Athenians also profited in the private sphere by pro-
viding services for the many visitors drawn to Piraeus and Athens by
judicial and other imperial business and by the greatness of Athens it-
self, which the empire made possible.
The imperial revenues are sometimes thought to have been neces-
sary for the maintenance of the democracy, providing the money to
pay for the performance of public duties. But the evidence argues oth-
erwise. Pay was introduced, after all, before the Athenians began to
keep a sixtieth of the tribute for themselves. Even more telling is the
fact that the Athenians continued to pay for these services even after
the empire and its revenues were gone—and even introduced compen-
sation for attendance in the Assembly in the early fourth century. On
the other hand, it cannot be irrelevant that these payments were inau-
gurated when the success of the empire had brought great wealth to
Athens in the form of booty and increased trade, and that they spread
beyond jury pay in the years surrounding the introduction of Athena’s
tithe. It seems likely, in any case, that in Pericles’ time, the people of
Athens connected the growth and flourishing of the democracy with
the benefits of empire.
Apart from direct financial gain and, as they thought, the financial
support for their democracy, the people of Athens also received ben-
efits in what it is now fashionable to call quality of life. The empire,
according to the “Old Oligarch,” allowed Athenians to mingle with
people from many places, and so they discovered
various gastronomic luxuries; the specialties of Sicily, Italy, Cy-
prus, Egypt, Lydia, Pontus, the Peloponnesus or any other area
38 Kagan
have al been brought back to Athens because of their control of
the sea. They hear al dialects, and pick one thing from one, an-
other from another; the other Greeks tend to adhere to their own
dialect and way of life and dress, but the Athenians have mingled
elements from al Greeks and foreigners.7
A contemporary comic poet provides a more detailed list of the ex-
otic delicacies and useful wares that the empire made available to the
Athenians:
From Cyrene silphium and ox hides, from the Hellespont mack-
erel and all kinds of salted fish, from Italy, salt and ribs of beef . . .
from Egypt sails and rope, from Syria frankincense, from Crete
cypress for the gods; Libya provides abundant ivory to buy,
Rhodes raisins and sweet figs, but from Euboea pears and sweet
apples. Slaves from Phrygia . . . Pagasae provides tattooed slaves,
Paphlagonia dates and oily almonds, Phoenicia dates and fine
wheat-flour, Carthage rugs and many-colored cushions.8
These, as the Old Oligarch observes, are “less important matters,”
but they helped bring home to the Athenians the advantages of empire
and the rule of the sea that it made possible.
Perhaps the greatest attraction of the empire was less tangible than
any of these things, appealing to an aspect of human nature common
to many cultures across the centuries. Most people prefer to think
of themselves as leaders rather than followers, as rulers rather than
ruled. Each Athenian took pride in the greatness of his state. The Old
Oligarch, an anonymous writer who took a caustic view of Athenian
self-aggrandizement, in explaining how the Athenians benefited from
having allied citizens come to the courts in Athens for justice shows
how the ordinary citizen enjoyed such feelings:
If the allies did not come for trials, they would only respect those
Athenians who go abroad—the generals, the trierarchs and the
ambassadors; but as it is, each individual ally is compelled to flat-
ter the common people of Athens, realizing that, having come
to Athens, the penalty or satisfaction that he receives at law de-
pends solely upon the common people; such is the law at Athens.
Pericles and the Defense of Empire 39
Therefore he is compelled to plead humbly in the courts and to
seize people’s hands as a suppliant as they enter. This situation has
increased the subjugation of the allies to the people of Athens.9
For al the benefits it brought to the Athenians, the imperial ledger
was not entirely unbalanced, for the al ies also received much value for
their participation. Foremost among these advantages was freedom
from Persian rule, the chief purpose for which the league had been
formed, and the peace that the Athenian Cal ias, son of Hipponicus, had
negotiated with the Persian Empire. Ionian cities had either been under
barbarian rule or fighting to be free of it for wel over a century, so these
achievements were not insignificant. The success of the league and em-
pire had also brought an unprecedented freedom to sail in the waters
of the Aegean. In addition, the campaigns against Persia had brought a
percentage of booty to the al ies who had taken part in them, and the
commercial boom that enriched Athens also brought wealth to many
of its al ies. In short, the Athenians had brought freedom from Persian
&nb
sp; rule, peace, and prosperity to al Greeks in and around the Aegean Sea.
To many, Athenian intervention also brought democracy, but that
was not its aim. Pericles and the Athenians, when they could, left the
existing regime in place, even when it was oligarchic or tyrannical. Only
when rebellions forced them to intervene did they impose democra-
cies, and even then not always. Pericles’ imperial policy was prudent
and pragmatic, not ideological. Nevertheless, over the years the Athe-
nians instituted and supported many democracies against oligarchic
or tyrannical opponents throughout the empire. From a twentieth-
century perspective, this might seem like an unalloyed benefit of the
empire, but it was not so viewed by everyone in the time of Pericles.
Aristocrats and members of the upper classes in general regarded de-
mocracy as a novel, unnatural, unjust, incompetent, and vulgar form
of government, and they were not alone in resenting the Athenian role
in support of it. In many cities, probably in most, even members of the
lower classes regarded Athenian intervention in their political and con-
stitutional affairs as a curtailment of their freedom and autonomy, and
would have preferred a nondemocratic constitution without Athenian
interference to a democratic government with it.
40 Kagan
Modern scholars have tried to argue that this Athenian support for
democracy made the empire popular with the masses in the allied cities,
and that the hostility with which they reportedly came to view it was
the result of distortions caused by the aristocratic bias of the ancient
writers. The consensus, however, has rightly continued to emphasize
the empire’s fundamental unpopularity with all classes except the small
groups of democratic politicians who benefited directly from Athenian
support. There is no reason to doubt the ancient opinion that Greeks
outside, and especially inside, the Athenian Empire were hostile to it.
Even some Athenians objected to what they deemed the immorality of
Athens’s behavior toward the imperial allies.
Pericles undertook to justify to each constituency Athenian rule and
Athens’s continued col ection of the tribute. For the cities in the empire
he provided justification by claiming a change in the concept behind the
league. From the beginning, some league members were colonies that
had been founded by Athens. Among the Greeks, colonial status implied
a proud familial relationship, not inferiority. Beyond that, the Athenians
had long claimed to be the founders of the Ionian cities; the Ionians not
only accepted the claim but had used it to persuade the Athenians to ac-
cept the leadership in the first place. The time of the treasury’s transfer
was the year that had been scheduled for the quadrennial celebration
of the Great Panathenaic Festival in Athens; ties between colony and
mother city were normal y warm and were celebrated by such religious
observances. It was customary for Athens’s al ies to bring a cow and a
ful suit of armor to this festival, more as a symbol of al egiance than
as a burden. It gave the colony the honor of participating in the grand
procession to the sacred shrine of Athena on the Acropolis. Henceforth,
al the al ies of Athens would share the honor.
We need not believe that all were grateful for the honor or that they
found the trappings of a colonial relationship a satisfactory reason for
continuing their contributions in circumstances so different from what
they had been. Their doubts were surely increased by the terms of the
peace treaty with the Persian Empire negotiated by Callias in 449: “All
the Greek cities of Asia are to be autonomous; no Persian satrap is to
come closer than a three days’ journey from the sea; no Persian war-
ship is to sail in the waters between Phaselis and the Cyanean rocks; if
Pericles and the Defense of Empire 41
the King and his generals respect these terms, the Athenians are not to
send any expedition against the country over which the King rules.”10
By this agreement, the Persians gave up their claim to the Greek states
on the Aegean and its coasts, as well as the Athenian lifeline through
the Dardanelles to the Black Sea. The Persian Wars were now truly
over, and the Athenians could claim to have completed the victory left
unfinished by the Spartans.
It was a great moment, but it raised serious questions. Although
Cimon, the indefatigable prosecutor of the war against Persia, was
dead, his example, his memory, and his friends remained to raise
doubts about a peace with what had become the traditional enemy. If
there was peace with Persia, moreover, would that mean the end of al-
lied contributions, of the league, of Athenian hegemony?
To the first problem, a question of Athenian politics, Pericles applied
a skil ful touch. The choice of Cal ias as the Athenian negotiator had
been significant. He was the brother-in-law of Cimon, the husband of El-
pinice. His central role was evidence that the recent friendship between
Pericles and Cimon lived on after the latter’s death, and he must have
done much to help win the Cimonian faction over to the new policy. By
various other connections Pericles had associated himself with the Ci-
monians, and he continued to do so throughout the years. As a modern
scholar has put it, “Behind the public politics of the Athenian state was
the family-politics of the great houses; here Pericles was an adept.”11
Pericles’ political operations appear to have had a public aspect as
well, if the reconstruction of events by a great modern historian is cor-
rect. After their victory at Cyprus, the Athenians made a thanksgiving
dedication of a tenth of the booty and commissioned the poet Simo-
nides to commemorate the Persian defeat. It “praised the struggles on
Cyprus as the most glorious deed that the world had ever seen. At the
same time, it was a monument to the whole Persian War, the inclina-
tion to which had been embodied in the person of Cimon.”12 We may
assume that Pericles was behind this propaganda, which implied that
the war had been won by a glorious Athenian victory instead of by a
negotiated peace, and which tied Cimon to the new Periclean policy. At
the same time, the memorial to Cimon was a gesture meant to attract
and conciliate his friends.
42 Kagan
Pericles had need of conciliation and unity in Athens. For despite the
peace, he had no thoughts of abandoning the league that had become
an empire. Nor did he wish to sacrifice the glory, the political and mili-
tary power, and the money that went with it. Athens needed the empire
to protect its own security and to support the creation and maintenance
of the great democratic society Pericles had in mind. Part of that great-
ness would involve a vastly expensive building program that would need
to draw on the imperial treasury for nonmilitary and purely Athenian
purposes. Pericles and the Athenians therefore needed to justify the con-
tinuation of al ied payments as wel as their diversion to new purposes.
&nb
sp; But already there was trouble in the empire. In 454–453, 208 cities
appear on the tribute list and are assessed more than 498 talents. Four
years later, only 163 cities are assessed at 432 talents; but some made
only partial payment, some paid late, and some surely did not pay at
all. Hesitation, uncertainty, and resistance threatened the empire’s ex-
istence. At the same time, the threat of Sparta loomed. The truce ne-
gotiated by Cimon would run out in a few years, but he was no longer
there to calm Spartan fears. Great differences remained between the
two powers, and there was no certainty that they could be overcome
without war. Yet Pericles’ plans required peace.
Not long after Callias’s peace was concluded, Pericles tried to solve
his problems with a most imaginative proposal. He introduced a bill
to invite all Greeks, wherever they lived, whether in Europe or
in Asia, whether small cities or large, to send representatives to
a congress at Athens, to deliberate about the holy places that
the barbarians had destroyed, and about the sacrifices that they
[the Greeks] owed, having promised them to the gods when they
fought against the barbarians, and about the sea, so that all might
sail it without fear and keep the peace.13
Messengers were sent to all corners of the Greek world to deliver an
invitation to “share in the plans for the peace and common interests of
Greece.” Pericles, as one scholar has put it, was “calling on the Greek
world to set up another organization to do what the Spartan-led Greek
alliance of 480 should have done but had failed to do, and to provide for
the peacetime needs which the Delian League had hitherto satisfied.”14
Pericles and the Defense of Empire 43
Beyond that, the invitation presented an Athenian claim to Greek lead-
ership on a new foundation. While war had brought the Greeks to-
gether originally, the maintenance of peace and security would cement
their union from then on. Religious piety, pan-Hellenism, and the com-
mon good were now to justify continued loyalty and sacrifice.
Was Pericles sincere? The temples burned by the Persians were al-
most all in Attica, and the fleet that would keep the peace would be
chiefly Athenian. Pericles may therefore have expected the Spartans
and their allies to reject his proposal and thus provide him with a new
Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome Page 7
