Aspects of Greek History (750–323BC)

by Terry Buckley

  De Ste. Croix also believed that the populations of Greek states were divided strictly on class and wealth: the poor majority supporting democracy and the rich minority oligarchy. Therefore, Athens’ interventions in a state’s internal affairs in support of democracy would have been popular among the lower-class citizens and should be seen as a political benefit, as life would be far more agreeable in a democracy under the Athenian Empire rather than in an independent oligarchy. The reason for this lies in the nature of oligarchy, which both politically excluded and economically exploited the majority of the citizens, i.e. the poor. The philosopher Plato, who had little respect for democracy, is very candid about the failings of oligarchy:

  Oligarchy would then have this one very great defect … from necessity it would be not one city but two, one of the poor and one of the rich.

  (Plato, Republic 8.551D)

  The Old Oligarch, who unashamedly supports the cause of oligarchy, is honest enough to state its effect on the poor:

  But if you are looking for a law-abiding city [i.e. an oligarchy], the first thing you will see is that the able make laws in their own interest; then, the respectable will punish the mob and will make their own plans for the city; they will not allow madmen to become members of the Council, nor to speak in the Assembly, nor even to attend it. However excellent this might be, it would soon plunge the common people into slavery.

  (Old Oligarch 1.9)

  Aristotle mentions a fearsome oath taken by the oligarchs in a number of cities:

  I will be hostile to the people and will plan whatever evil I can against them.

  (Aristotle, Politics 1310a 8–12)

  These quotations suggest that the normal manner of self-government in a Greek city during the Peloponnesian War was not like modern consensus politics with different parties taking their turn to govern, but a bitter and violent class struggle. The poor in an oligarchy could experience extreme poverty, a lack of legal redress and deprivation of political rights. It is in this context that the words of Isocrates in his defence of the Athenian Empire have some worth:

  Second, they paid money not to save us but for democracy and their own freedom, and to avoid falling into the enormous troubles they had when they got oligarchy under dekarkhies and the rule of the Spartans [i.e. after Athens’ defeat in 404].

  (Isocrates 12.68; AE14 p. 16)

  Democratic constitutions in the Empire gave the poor an opportunity to participate in the internal government of their state and provided for them a better standard of living. Consequently de Ste. Croix believes that Athenian interventions would be seen and welcomed by the poor as a defence of their freedom. The payment of phoros (tribute) would be a small price to pay, especially as this burden would probably fall on the propertied classes. Bradeen, on the other hand, takes issue with the assumptions underlying de Ste. Croix’s beliefs, especially regarding his views on Thucydides. First, he does not accept that Thucydides’ speeches are mainly a vehicle for his own opinions, but argues they should be seen as being mainly the authentic words and sentiments of the speakers, otherwise Thucydides’ important claim to have stuck as closely as possible to the general sense of the words actually used would be meaningless (1.22). Thucydides probably heard the speeches of Pericles and Cleon in the Athenian Assembly about the nature of the Athenian Empire (quoted above), which leads to one of two conclusions. Either Pericles and Cleon did not realize the unpopularity of the Empire, resulting in Thucydides inserting these sentiments into their speeches and thus deliberately misrepresenting their views – the logical conclusion of de Ste. Croix’ assumption – or that the speeches are genuine and that these politicians did acknowledge in public the Empire’s unpopularity, which was reflected in the harsh imperialist tone of the decrees of the 420s.

  Second, Bradeen finds it difficult to accept that Thucydides was an oligarch, rather than an aristocrat or conservative (as many of the kaloikagathoi were – see Chapter 18), but even more difficult to accept that Thucydides was the kind of man who would allow his political views to distort seriously his historical judgement. If, as de Ste. Croix argues, there is a serious conflict between Thucydides the ‘editor’ (the political commentator) and the Thucydides ‘the reporter’ (the objective reporter of events), then Bradeen argues that one of two conclusions must be reached: either Thucydides was a fool who could not recognize ‘the truth’ from the evidence that he was reporting (and all the other evidence he would have found as a fifth-century contemporary) – but which modern scholarship, using the same evidence, could – or else Thucydides is a completely dishonest man who deliberately distorted his history. No modern historian would accept the second conclusion (even de Ste. Croix refers to Thucydides as ‘an exceptionally truthful man’), and it is difficult to accept that Thucydides, with his intelligence and experience of the range of political opinions that existed in late fifth century Athens, would have superimposed upon the citizen bodies of all the Greeks the narrow anti-Athenian views of the oligarchs.

  Third, de Ste. Croix’ depiction of a class struggle between poor, usually pro-Athenian democrats and wealthy, anti-Athenian oligarchs as the constant, defining characteristic of the Greek city-states is thought to be too schematic. Many of the subject-allies, e.g. in Chalcidice, would be agricultural towns with a rural population which, owing to their traditional conservatism, would have been content to live under an oligarchic constitution as their ancestors had. Furthermore, the poor were not always so dissatisfied that they sought the violent overthrow of the oligarchs:

  For the poor, who have no share in political office, are willing to remain quiet if no-one insults them nor takes away any of their possessions.

  (Aristotle, Politics 1297b)

  Even in commercial cities, similar to Athens but on a much smaller scale, it is doubtful that the poor could exercise genuine democratic power, as these cities lacked the financial resources to support payment for office. More revealing are the attitudes of the people on the islands, such as Chios, Lesbos (Mytilene) and Samos – large commercial centres, possessing their own fleets – where one would expect to find a lower class, equivalent to the Athenian ‘thetes’, who rowed the ships and who would presumably be pro-Athenian democrats. Chios, the largest of the ship-suppliers, was an oligarchy (as far as we know) throughout the whole of the fifth century. In 424, the Athenians, fearing that the Chians were planning revolt, ordered them to demolish their new fortifications. This would have been a perfect opportunity to impose a democracy, if they had detected among the Chian lower classes a strong desire for democracy. In fact the Chians received guarantees from the Athenians that they would not change the existing state of affairs (4.51). Mytilene in Lesbos was also an oligarchy, and again it seems apparent that the lower classes preferred independence under an oligarchy with no phoros to pay and possession of their own fleet. The alternative would have been a democracy, probably imposed by armed Athenian intervention and protected by an Athenian garrison. The inevitable removal of their fleet would have put the Mytileneans in the same position as the other democratic phoros-paying subject-allies. In the revolt of 428/7, the people, having finally been given arms, threatened to surrender the city to the Athenians only if the oligarchs refused to share out the food equally (3.27–28) – an action seemingly motivated more by hunger than by loyalty to Athens or desire for democracy. In fact, it is only after the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War that violent political clashes between democrats and oligarchs, as exemplified by the stasis (civil war) of Corcyra in 427, become more frequent and Thucydides blames the war for this new phenomenon (3.82–84).

  Fourth, Bradeen disagrees strongly with de Ste. Croix’s insistence that the specific evidence that he quotes from Thucydides about revolts corroborates his viewpoint that the Athenian Empire was popular with and inspired the loyalty of the majority of the allied citizens. Bradeen maintains that de Ste. Croix’s ‘evidence’ is in reality not legitimate evidence but simply a reinterpretation of ambiguous situations, with de Ste
. Croix believing his analysis of the political situation to be right and Thucydides wrong. The strongest piece of evidence that de Ste. Croix provides for his viewpoint is the Mytilenean revolt and the readiness of the people to surrender the city to the Athenians once they had been given weapons by the oligarchs. To Bradeen, this is a prime example of reinterpretation, not evidence – as stated in the previous paragraph, hunger rather than loyalty could equally be put forward as the main reason for the people’s willingness to surrender. In the same way, Bradeen maintains that all of de Ste. Croix’s quoted examples are open to a different interpretation, i.e. that of Thucydides whose narrative agrees in general with his conclusions about the unpopularity of the Athenian Empire.

  With such a difference of opinion, it is worth observing that, whereas rulers tend to share the same view of Empire, such a unitary view is not likely to be found amongst the ruled. In an ideal world the majority of allied citizens, being poor, would probably prefer to live in independent democracies, in the same manner as the Athenian demos; but for the many very small city-states such a situation was impossible, and domination by some super-power – be it Persia, Sparta or Athens – was inevitable. As de Romilly points out, fear and pressure were constant factors in shaping the policies of such states. It is in this real world that attitudes to the Athenian Empire will differ from state to state, from one group to another even within the same state, and from time to time. The attitude of many subject-allies would be shaped by pragmatism, especially in the Ionian War (413–404), when Sparta had gained a fleet and at long last challenged Athens militarily in the eastern Aegean. The presence of an Athenian or Spartan fleet close to one’s harbour would provide an incentive to show support to that superpower at that moment in time, although tempered by the fear of later reprisals by the other super-power. It is for this reason that there can be no definitive answer about the popularity or unpopularity of the Empire – the fact that many subject-allies never revolted from Athens is no proof of popularity.

  Some city-states, in varying degrees, would have believed that democratic constitutions, encouraged and supported by Athens, were a political benefit and would have been grateful to Athens. Obviously the proxenoi and the leaders of the democratic factions in the cities, who were generously rewarded by the Athenians, had a vested interest in their support of Athens. However, throughout most of the fifth century, many allied citizens in Ionia, accepting the likelihood of Persian conquest as the main alternative to subjugation to Athens, probably preferred Athenian control, if only as the lesser of two evils. Persia had proved to be a tough, insensitive and costly ruler of Ionia, and this, combined with their preference for tyrants as rulers in Greek cities, provoked the Ionians into two full-scale revolts. Even allowing for the glorification that is to be found in any funeral speech (which may have been written by the non-Athenian Lysias for someone else to deliver), there is a solid core of truth in the claim that:

  They [i.e. the Athenians]. … displayed so great a power themselves that the Great King ceased to desire others’ territory … [57] no Persian ships sailed from Asia at that time, no tyrant was set up in Greece, and no Greek city was enslaved to the barbarian.

  (Lysias 2.56–57; AE244 p. 123)

  In a similar way, Methone, a virtual enclave in Macedonia and constantly threatened by King Perdiccas, looked to Athens for protection and thus had a vested interest in being a loyal and willing member of the Empire. The first of the four Methone decrees authorizes the sending of three envoys to Perdiccas instructing him not to restrict Methone’s use of the sea nor to lead an army through its territory without its permission (ML 65; AE121 pp. 58–59). Furthermore, its usefulness as a base in keeping surveillance over the city-states in Chalcidice, whose loyalty to Athens was very suspect, resulted in it receiving special privileges, e.g. it only paid the ‘first fruits’ (1/60) as its phoros payment, further encouraging pro-Athenian feelings – a clear sign that Athens could rule its subject-allies with a light touch. On the other hand, Amphipolis in the Thraceward district is an excellent example of a city-state that greatly resented its subject-ally status. Although founded by Athens in 437/6, it had revolted in 424/3 through a mixture of force and diplomacy employed by the Spartan commander, Brasidas (4.102–6). The Athenians were desperate to recover Amphipolis and one of the stated terms of the Peace of Nicias in 421 was the Spartan agreement to hand it back to Athens. However, the citizens of Amphipolis resolutely refused to be re-incorporated back into the Athenian Empire, even though they no longer had the protection of a Peloponnesian garrison, and even as late as 414 were still holding out and resisting Athenian attacks (7.9).

  In all probability it is the viewpoint of Phrynichos, when reacting to the opinion of the Athenian oligarchic conspirators in 411 that Athens under an oligarchy would be far more attractive to the subject-allies, that best sums up the attitudes of the subject-allies to the Athenian Empire:

  For they [i.e. the allies] would not want to be slaves under an oligarchy or a democracy but would prefer to be free under whatever constitution they happened to have. (Thucydides 8.48.5)

  Freedom (‘eleutheria’) was an emotional, deeply-rooted, instinctive feeling among the Greeks. Any restriction on an ally’s freedom or independence would be viewed as ‘enslavement’, thus provoking opposition to Athens. For all the rational arguments of the economic and political benefits that the Athenian Empire bestowed, the subject-allies usually seized the opportunity to regain their freedom, whenever possible and whatever the economic or political cost. The subject-allies’ intense dislike and resentment of the Athenian means of control in the fifth century can be seen clearly in the terms of the charter that brought into existence the Second Athenian League in 378/7 under the hegemony of Athens:

  [l5] If any Greek … wants to be an ally of the Athenians and their allies, he may do so,

  [20] being [free] and independent and under whatever constitution he chooses.

  No [garrison] will be imposed, no magistrate, nor will the allies pay tribute:

  … neither an Athenian privately nor the Athenian state may obtain property in the lands of the allies, neither a house nor land, neither by purchase [40] nor as security, nor in any other way.

  (Tod 123; AE246 p. 124)

  The memory of the restrictions on their independence, of the interference in their internal jurisdiction, of the presence of garrisons and resident officials (archontes), of the imposition of phoros and finally of the possession of their land – whether by private ownership or cleruchies – was still deeply ingrained in the hearts of the allies of the fourth century, never to be forgotten. The specific provisions of this charter suggest that for the allies the disadvantages outweighed the advantages of membership of the Athenian Empire in the fifth century. However, when their independence came under threat from the Spartans and the Persians, the allies still recognized and willingly accepted again the advantages of membership of a league under Athenian hegemony, but with the crucial proviso that this time Athenian leadership was to be carefully controlled and that their own independence was to be legally guaranteed.

  Bibliography

  Bradeen, D. W. ‘The popularity of the Athenian Empire’, Historia 9 (1960).

  Davies, J. K. Democracy and Classical Greece, 2nd edn, ch. 5.

  Finley, M. I. Economy and Society in Ancient Greece, pt 1.3.

  McGregor, M. F. The Athenians and their Empire, ch. 16.

  Meiggs, R. The Athenian Empire, chs 11, 12 and 14.

  Powell, A. Athens and Sparta, ch. 3.

  Rhodes, P. J. The Athenian Empire, Greece and Rome New Surveys in the Classics 17, ch. 6.

  Roberts, J. W. City of Socrates. An Introduction to Classical Athens, ch. 4.

  de Ste. Croix, G. E. M. ‘The character of the Athenian Empire’, Historia 3 (1954/5),

  pp. 1–41, also in (ed.) Low, P. The Athenian Empire, ch. 11.

  ——‘Notes on “Jurisdiction in the Athenian Empire II”’, CQ 11.

  Bibliography
for 2nd edition

  de Romilly, J. ‘Thucydides and the cities of the Athenian Empire’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, 13, also in (ed.) Low, P., The Athenian Empire, ch. 12

  Low, P. (ed.) The Athenian Empire, Part IV.

  Rhodes, P. J. A History of the Classical Greek World, 478–323 BC, ch. 15.

  17

  THECAUSESOFTHE PELOPONNESIAN WAR

  I think that the truest explanation (prophasis), but the one that was least made public, was that the growth of Athens’ power and the fear that this caused among the Spartans made war inevitable. But the grounds of complaint (aitiai), which were openly stated by each side and led them to break the peace and go to war, were as follows.

  (Thucydides 1.23)

  In these words Thucydides was attempting to single out an underlying cause of the Peloponnesian War beyond the publicly expressed grounds of complaint. His use of the words ‘prophasis’ and ‘aitiai’ has led to a dispute among historians about the actual meaning of this passage, since these words can have different meanings in different contexts –‘prophasis’ can mean ‘false excuse’ and ‘aitiai’‘true explanations’. However, the use of the qualifying words ‘truest’ with ‘prophasis’ and ‘openly stated’ with ‘aitiai’ strongly suggests that Thucydides was giving his own judgement on the real reason why Sparta went to war in 431. The Spartans would never dare to make this reason public because this was not a valid ground for breaking the peace treaty, and because it would be a shameful admission from such a powerful military state. Therefore the Spartans concentrated on the grounds of complaint, which affected their allies rather than themselves, in order to press their claims that Athens had broken the Thirty Year Peace. This is further reinforced by Thucydides’ explanation of the Spartans’ motives for the despatch of three embassies in the months preceding the outbreak of the war: