Aspects of Greek History (750–323BC)

by Terry Buckley

  (ML 52; AE78 p. 45)

  Athens was determined to exercise control over Chalcis by ensuring that the pro-Athenian ex-magistrates, carrying out pro-Athenian policies, were protected from prosecution and severe punishment on trumped-up charges by their political enemies – thus all cases involving exile, death or loss of citizen rights would be referred to Athens for trial (see Chapter 16 for fuller discussion).

  The dating of the Cleinias Decree to either this period or to the mid-420s is a matter of scholarly dispute. This decree tightened up the collection of phoros by laying down a strict procedure for the transport of phoros to Athens:

  They are to make identification tokens for the cities to prevent those who bring the tribute from committing offences: the city is to write on [15] a tablet the amount of the tribute which it is sending and then seal it with the identification token before it sends it to Athens. Those who bring the tribute are to give the tablet to the Council to read whenever they hand over the tribute.

  (ML 46; AE190 pp. 102–3)

  This system of phoros-recording tablets and identification tokens ensured there could be no claims by phoros-payers that the correct amount had been despatched but a part had been lost in transit. All prosecutions were to be conducted in Athens, initially before the Boule and then before the ‘Heliaea’ (People’s Court). There is also an expectation of Athenian officials being present in the allied states:

  the Council and the magistrates in the cities and the Inspectors (episkopoi) should look after the collection of tribute every year [10] and bring it to Athens.

  This decree also states, almost incidentally:

  If anyone commits an offence over the bringing of the cow or [the full set of armour], indictment and [punishment] are to follow the same procedure.

  The implication in this section is that the decree that authorized the compulsory sending of a cow and a full set of armour (panoply) to the Great Panathenaea, held every four years, had only been passed recently. Also, this offence was to be treated with the same degree of seriousness as the tribute offence.

  One school of thought places this decree in the early 440s as part of the Athenians’ intensification of imperial control, when the allies, angry at Athens’ re-imposition of phoros after 449, were showing their disaffection either by not paying it, part-paying it or by revolt. Their argument for this dating rests on three issues: the name of Cleinias, the tribute lists of 448/7 and 447/6, and the Greek lettering on the decree. First, Cleinias who proposed this decree is not a common name in Athens, but has associations with the family of Alcibiades, the outstanding Athenian politician in the last two decades of the fifth century. Even more to the point, Cleinias was the name of Alcibiades’ father and he died at the battle of Coroneia in c.447. If this identification is correct, then Cleinias must have proposed this decree before 447 BC. Second, Tribute List 7 (448/7) has many absentees, part-payers and late-payers, but Tribute List 8 (447/6) shows a marked improvement with former absentees making two payments for two years, previous part-payers making up their shortfall and some states paying in two instalments, presumably as a result of the Cleinias Decree. Third, the use of curved upsilons (u) on this decree are not usually found on decrees passed after 430.

  However, the other school of thought prefers a dating in the 420s. First, there is no proof that this Cleinias was the same man as Alcibiades’ father. Second, an alternative historical context can be offered for dating this decree. As early as 428, the Athenians were struggling to keep up with the cost of the Peloponnesian War and were using up their financial reserves. In this year they held an extraordinary re-assessment (due in 426) with a significant increase in the total amount of phoros. Then, in the mid-420s, two important decrees were passed concerning phoros. The Cleonymos Decree (ML 68; AE136 pp. 64–65), which can be dated to 426/5, also improved the collection of phoros by specifically appointing Collectors in all the allied cities who were personally responsible for its collection; and the Thoudippos Decree (ML 69; AE138 pp. 66–67), which can be dated to 425/4 and therefore was another extraordinary re-assessment, authorized a threefold increase in the total amount of phoros. Furthermore, this decree (assuming the Cleinias Decree was later) is the first mention in the sources of the allies’ religious obligation to supply a cow and a suit of armour at the Great Panathenaea. Therefore it is argued that the Cleinias Decree complements the Cleonymos Decree with the introduction of two new methods of tightening up the collection of phoros. Furthermore, it can be linked with the Thoudippos Decree concerning the religious obligations of the allies and should be dated soon after it. Finally, the harsh, imperialistic language with tough penalties for non-compliance is present in all these decrees and is far more in keeping with the Athens of Cleon (see Chapter 18, ‘The demagogues’).

  The final decree, yet again with scholarly opinion split about the dating, is the Coinage Decree (Standards Decree in LACTOR 1–AE198; pp. 105–6), which has been reconstructed from various fragments found in some of the allied cities. This decree closed down allied mints and imposed Athenian silver coinage, weights and measures on all of the allies; it was to be set up in stone in the agora of each city by the local magistrates (section 8). The Athenians clearly anticipated the reluctance of all of the allies to carry this out:

  [8] [The Athenians are to see to] this, if the cities themselves are not willing.

  (ML 45; AE198 pp. 105–6)

  The language in which it is couched is blatantly imperialistic, containing no mention of the ‘allies’, as in the earlier Erythrae Decree:

  [9] The herald who goes is to ask them to do all that the Athenians order.

  There are tough legal penalties against anyone who opposes these measures, and there is clear evidence of the widespread presence of Athenian officials in the allied cities:

  [4] If there are no Athenian magistrates (archontes), the magistrates [of each city are to put into effect the provisions] of the decree.

  It is not easy to establish what economic benefits this decree bestowed upon the Athenians, apart from the obvious advantages that all future phoros payments to Athens would be in Athenian silver coinage and minting fees. Certainly it would be easier for the Athenian fleet, which needed constantly to buy all kinds of supplies throughout the Aegean, if there was a uniform coinage to purchase these commodities. However, the decree did not establish a common currency, as the electrum coins (an alloy of gold and silver) of Cyzicus continued to be used in great numbers throughout the empire – also, unlike the modern euro, there were no great economic benefits arising from a common currency, since the actual (as opposed to the nominal) value of the coins was reflected in the quality and worth of their metal. This decree almost appears to be a piece of gratuitously blatant imperialism with Athens exercising control simply for the sake of it, although there would be the added political benefit of the coins serving as propaganda for the power of Athens throughout the Aegean.

  Those who favour a date for this decree in the early 440s are influenced by two issues. First, having accepted the early date for the Cleinias Decree, they can see close parallels in the tone and language of the two decrees, thus suggesting a proximity in the time of their enactment. Second, one of the fragments of this decree comes from Cos and is engraved with Attic (and not Ionian) letters, suggesting that Cos was one of those reluctant displayers of the decree in its agora, and that the Athenians therefore had to have the decree engraved in Athens and then set it up themselves in Cos. The lettering on this Attic fragment displays the three-bar sigma which, it is believed by this school of thought, was not used after c.445 – hence a date in the early 440s. However, current scholarly opinion favours a date in either the 420s or 410s. Confidence in a pre-445 date for the three-barred sigma has been undermined (see discussion above in ‘Sources’ under ‘Epigraphic’ about the Athenian alliance with Egesta/Segesta). Of greater significance is the discovery of one of the decree’s fragments at Hamaxitos in the Troad – a regi
on in north-west Asia Minor, close to the Hellespont – which seems to have been incorporated into the Athenian Empire sometime in the 420s. Therefore this school of thought believes that this decree should be assigned a later date: either in the 420s, as it is in keeping with the harsh imperial tone of the decrees mentioned above, which were passed in the time of Cleon; or in c.414, as there seems to be an obvious parody of it in Aristophanes’ Birds:

  DECREE-SELLER: I am a Decree-seller, and I have come here to you to sell you new laws.

  PEISETAIROS: Like what?

  DECREE-SELLER: [1040] The people of Cloudcuckooland are to use these measures and weights and decrees just like the Olophyxians.

  (Aristophanes, Birds AE199 pp. 106–7)

  One of the merits of effective political satire is to use topical subject-matter – hence the argument for this date, as the Birds was performed in 414.

  In 446, Athens’ attempt to complete the transformation of the Delian League into the Athenian Empire was severely threatened by the loss of the ‘Land Empire’, the revolt of Euboea and the Spartan invasion of Attica under Pleistoanax. Pleistoanax’s sudden withdrawal allowed the Athenians to crush the revolt of Euboea and thus snuffed out any chance of the allies breaking free from Athens’ imperial control. The terms of the Thirty Year Peace in 446/5 recognized the Athenian Empire – the ‘dual hegemony’ of Athens and Sparta had been placed on a legal footing. Even if the Cleinias Decree and the Coinage (or Standards) Decree were not passed in the 440s, the Athenians by 446 BC had put in place all the necessary means of control by which they could govern their empire – a fleet that was virtually Athenian, the cleruchies, the garrisons, the resident Athenian officials, the imposed constitutions, the oaths of loyalty, the judicial interference and the ending of the league meetings on Delos. The big issue for the future was: would the Athenians be content with what they now controlled or would their imperial ambitions grow still greater?

  Aftermath: Samos, Mytilene and Melos

  Although Thucydides wished to write a comprehensive account of the events of the Peloponnesian War, the length and diversity of the war made it impractical to record everything. Thus it was necessary for him to exercise selectivity; by choosing to describe at length and in full detail a particular event or person, he was able to highlight and emphasize them as typical of a general situation that he wished to record. Thus civil war (stasis) broke out in many cities as a by-product of the Peloponnesian War, but Thucydides solves this dilemma by writing a full record of the events of the civil war in Corcyra (3.70–81), and then gives a general description of what happened elsewhere (3.82–84), but writes up no other civil war (apart from the oligarchic coup in Athens in 411 – see Chapter 23). In the same way, Cleon’s tough, brutal speech against the Mytileneans and his support for the death penalty are designed to show him as the archetypal demagogue and thus typical of the politicians who dominated Athens after the death of Pericles, whereas the demagogue Hyperbolus hardly features at all. In the same way, Thucydides chose three events for full treatment: the revolt of Samos in 440/39, of Mytilene in 428/7, and the crushing of neutral Melos in 416/5. One school of thought (e.g. Finley) believes that Thucydides chose these three as examples of the progressive harshness of Athenian imperialism, coarsened by the stress of war; others believe each incident was chosen because of its specialness – Samos as the last independent ally allowed by Sparta to be crushed; Mytilene as an independent ship-supplier who chose to revolt during the war; and Melos, a neutral state, which was given the choice to determine its own fate.

  Samos

  The description of the revolt of Samos marks the literary end of Thucydides’ Pentecontaetia (but not the historical ‘Fifty Year’ period which should run from c.480–430). The other key incidents – the alliance with Corcyra in 433 and the dispute over Potidaea in 432 – are treated separately as the grounds of complaint (‘aitiai’) or immediate causes of the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides’ treatment of the Samian revolt is also the fullest and longest of all the incidents in the Pentecontaetia. There are probably three reasons for this: first, Samos was the last state that was allowed to have its independence removed by Athens without Spartan intervention; second, Samos was the most powerful of the independent ship-supplying allies and almost cost Athens its control of the sea; and third, the events were close enough to Thucydides’ maturity to gather information directly from the combatants.

  In 441/0, a war broke out between the island of Samos and Miletus, longstanding rivals, over the possession of Priene, a small city on the Ionian coast – Thucydides covers all the events in 1.115.2–117.3 (AE64 pp. 39–40). Samos was one of the three remaining independent ship-suppliers (along with Lesbos and Chios) and probably the most powerful of the three. The Milesians were defeated and turned to Athens for help. At first the Athenians adopted a softly-softly approach: they ordered the Samians to break off the war and to submit the matter to arbitration at Athens (Plutarch, Pericles 25.1). The Samians’ refusal amounted to open defiance and forced the hand of the Athenians, who responded with such alacrity that the Samians were caught totally unprepared – presumably not expecting the Athenians to interfere in a local matter. Pericles set sail with 40 ships, subdued the island, established a democracy in place of the current oligarchy, took as hostages 50 men and 50 boys and deposited them on Lemnos, and then withdrew leaving a garrison behind. That should have been an end to it. The Athenians had behaved with restraint compared to clashes with other allies – the Samians had retained their independence, their fleet, their walls and their land.

  The reaction of the Samians was one of great anger and determination to overturn the Athenian arrangements by any means. Some Samians, having fled to the mainland, made an alliance with the former oligarchic leaders and also with Pissouthnes, the Persian satrap of Sardis. They collected 700 mercenaries, rescued the hostages from Lemnos, crossed to Samos by night, seized power and revolted from Athens. To add insult to injury, the Athenian garrison and magistrates were handed over to Pissouthnes (1.115.4–5). These Samians were determined to challenge the Athenians:

  they were defiantly determined to fight the Athenians for the supremacy of the sea.

  (Plutarch, Pericles 25.3)

  Furthermore, they had the naval strength to offer a serious challenge to Athens. At the time of the oligarchic Rule of the 400 in Athens in 411 BC, the Athenian democrats, including the fleet, were based on Samos, and felt confident that their resistance from there would succeed:

  Samos was no weak city, but had indeed come extremely close to depriving the Athenians of control over the sea when it fought its war against them.

  (Thucydides 8.76.4; AE87 p. 47)

  That Samos on its own could challenge Athens for control of the sea is an obvious exaggeration, although it took a fleet of over 200 ships finally to subdue Samos. However, its revolt had also inspired Byzantium to revolt (1.115.4) – there was now a real danger that such a powerful state as Samos could become a catalyst and provide the rallying point for a general uprising against the Athenians in the eastern Aegean. Furthermore, Pissouthnes appeared willing to take advantage of the unfolding events and to break the peace (whether formal or informal) between Persia and Athens in order to re-establish Persian control in Ionia and the Aegean. Thucydides mentions on two occasions that the Athenians had to divert ships away from the campaign against Samos in order to meet a perceived threat from the Phoenician (i.e. Persian) fleet – the second time Pericles himself led 60 ships to Caria in south west Asia Minor (1.116.1–3). The Samians also made an appeal for help to the Spartans and the Peloponnesians. Everything rested on the them: there would be no general uprising by the subject-allies nor would the Persian king risk a war with the Athenians unless Sparta and the Peloponnesian League joined the war effort. It was this same combination of combatants that finally defeated the Athenians in 404. The Spartans agreed to bring assistance but were stopped by the opposition of Corinth, who persuaded a majority of the Pelopon
nesian cities to vote against helping Samos (1.40.5; AE86 p. 47). That decision sealed the fate of Samos.

  Although the Samians had some temporary success (1.117.1), their fleet was defeated by a combination of 160 Athenian ships and 55 ships from Chios and Lesbos, and, after a hugely expensive siege of nine months, the Samians finally surrendered:

  and they reached an agreement that they would pull down their walls, give hostages, hand over their fleet, and pay a full indemnity by regular instalments.

  (Thucydides 1.117.3; AE 64 p. 40)

  The collapse of the Samian revolt also led to the Byzantines returning to subject-ally status. Although the punishment was by now standard practice, the subsequent decree is very interesting in its tone, compared to that of the Chalcis Decree:

  [15] [I will do, say and advise the Athenian people as] best [I can; I will not revolt from the people of] Athens in word [or deed, nor from the] Athenian allies. [20] [I will be faithful to] the people of Athens. [The Athenians swear:] I will do, say and [advise the people of] Samos [as best I can, and I will look after the] Samians.

  (ML 56; AE91 p. 48)

  The Athenian oath is far more generous, pledging to support and look after the Samians. Furthermore, the Samians swore loyalty not solely to the Athenians (as the Chalcidians had to) but also to the allies. It seems as if the Athenians wished to acknowledge the specialness of Samos and to compensate for the removal of the Samians’ fleet, their main source of military strength, by treating them less harshly than other revolting states. This policy paid off in the long run, as the Samians stayed loyal even after the Syracusan disaster in 413 when many other subject-allies revolted from Athens.