[40] And the settlers to be drawn from Thetes and Zeugitai.
(ML 49; AE135 p. 120)
The original proposal had made no specific recommendations as to which Athenians should benefit, but Phantocles’ amendment made sure that the lower and the middle classes were to be the main beneficiaries. If this decree can be dated to c.445, then it may be that Phantocles was influenced by Pericles’ cleruchy policy which was initiated in 450/49:
He [Pericles] did this to relieve Athens of a mob that was idle and meddlesome because it had nothing to do, and to solve the people’s difficulties;
(Plutarch, Pericles 11; AE231 p. 119)
This was a very astute policy of Pericles, as he managed not only to export his unemployment problem and thus ease social tension, but also offered an opportunity of relative affluence. The possession of an income from such confiscated territory would usually raise the thetes to hoplite status. Even more attractive to the poor was the chance of raising their standard of living without even working for it:
Later they did not assess Lesbos for tribute, but divided up the land … into three thousand plots. They dedicated three hundred plots as sacred to the gods, and settled Athenians chosen by lot (clerouchoi) on the other plots. The Lesbians agreed to pay these settlers 200 drachmas a year for each plot and went on farming the land.
(Thucydides 3.50.2; AE133 p. 63)
At no point does Thucydides state or imply that this was a unique situation.
However, it was not only the poor who gained from possession of overseas land but also upper-class Athenians. It was axiomatic in the Greek world that ownership of land was restricted to citizens, except in exceptional circumstances. But there is evidence from the ‘Attic Stelai’ (inscribed lists of the confiscated property of those Athenians who were convicted of sacrilege in 414 after the Mutilation of the Hermae scandal – see Chapter 21) that reveals wealthy Athenians owning large tracts of territory outside Attica:
[375–78] [Property] of Oionias son of O[inochares of the deme of Atene:] at Lelanton (in Euboea) [-] and in Diros (also in Euboea) [and in – and] in Gera[istos]: 81 1/3 talents
(ML 79; AE239 p. 122)
The largest land holding in Attica, which was sold by auction, raised 20 talents. Oeonias’ land holdings must have been extensive to raise over 81 talents, but he was not the only one to benefit. The inscription lists 19 other victims, all of whom possessed substantial tracts of land in places such as Thasos, Abydus and elsewhere in Asia Minor. There may have been disputes about how the profits from the Empire should be used (see Chapter 18), but all Athenians were united in their support of the Empire, from the ‘conservative’ Cimon to the ‘demagogue’ Cleon.
Pericles also decided to use the Delian League reserve fund on a programme of public works:
which would excite every skill and involve every craft, it would provide employment for practically the whole city.
(Plutarch, Pericles 12; AE66 p. 41)
The widespread availability of employment with regular wages was the greatest boon to the Athenian poor who did not take advantage of the overseas settlements. Evidence for the commencement of the building programme comes from a papyrus that appears to be a commentary on a speech of Demosthenes, which mentions a decree of Pericles, authorizing the immediate expenditure of 5,000 talents and a further 3,000 talents over the coming years – the Parthenon, the huge statue of Athena by Pheidias and the Propylaea (not completed) were constructed in the 440s and the 430s. It was also possible to extend pay for office, financed from League funds, to a greater number of citizens:
From the tribute and the taxes and the allies, more than 20,000 men came to be supplied with maintenance payments.
(Aristotle, Ath. Pol. 24.3; AE222 p. 116)
Athens (or rather its three harbours at the Piraeus), owing to its pre-eminence as a naval power and helped by the effects of the Coinage/Standards Decree, became a great trading centre, acting as a clearing house for most of the imports and exports in the eastern Mediterranean. Pericles acknowledged this in his Funeral Speech:
On account of the size of our city all the goods from every land flow into us and we are able to enjoy foreign goods as much as our own home-produced products.
(Thucydides 2.38.2)
Apart from the commercial infra-structure that arises in all great ports, providing constant employment, there was also a harbour tax – a 1 per cent duty levied on all imports and exports (Old Oligarch 1.17), which was increased to 2 per cent at the end of the fifth century (Andocides, On the Mysteries 1.133–34). Many small states found it economically more sensible to pay the harbour tax at the Piraeus than incur the greater expense of sailing to different cities in order to buy their essential commodities. There was also a market tax on all foreigners who traded at Athens (Demosthenes 57.34), and an annual poll tax levied on all ‘metics’ (resident foreigners – Xenophon, Ways and Means 2.1). All the sums raised from these sources were added to the Athenians’ public treasury to finance the employment programme. If the money generated by tourism and the bringing of court cases to Athens is added to their total income, it can be seen that the Athenians, especially the poor, profited substantially in material terms from the Empire.
Allied benefits and the popularity of the Athenian Empire
Economic benefits
Although there is much disagreement between modern historians about the political benefits of the Empire to the allied cities, there is general agreement that the allies for the most part enjoyed economic advantages from the Empire. Most of the allies were islands or coastal towns and, because their economies were based mainly on overseas exports, their prosperity depended upon freedom of the seas. War with Persia in the first half of the fifth century meant that Phaselis in reality became the demarcation line for trading in the east Mediterranean – any ship going beyond Phaselis was liable to seizure. The peace with Persia in 449, effected and maintained by Athenian naval strength, opened up previously precluded markets, especially Egypt, which was ideally placed for taking advantage of east and west trade, bringing about a great increase in the volume of trade in the second half of the fifth century. This was also aided by the Athenians’ suppression of piracy in the 470s (Plutarch, Cimon 8), although cities still had to obey the Athenians or lose their right to trade. In addition, cities found it easier and cheaper to buy their necessary imports at Athens rather than acquire them individually from numerous other sources of supply. Isocrates, given the caution that is necessary when using him as a source, can state with some justification:
And under our leadership we shall find that private households gained most prosperity and cities became greatest.
(Isocrates, Panegyric Oration 4.103; AE245 p. 123)
The allies’ contribution to maintaining these improved economic conditions was the payment of phoros, and this was a comparatively small price to pay. Although some cities lost their fleets under compulsion, many chose to give up their navies for financial reasons, not only through dislike of overseas campaigns and tough Athenian leadership (Thuc. 1.99; AE29 p. 21). It cost about one to two talents to build and equip a trireme in the middle of the fifth century; and, if it managed to avoid destruction in storms, shipwreck or battle, its service life was effectively 20 years. The highest expenditure by far was the pay for the 200 sailors on each trireme – a half a talent per ship per month (with pay at half of a drachma per sailor in the mid-fifth century), increasing to one talent per ship per month at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, when a sailor’s pay was doubled. It is possible to compare the respective burdens on the allies. Lampsacus was paying ten talents as its phoros contribution from 431–428, and only twelve or thirteen states paid more than this; by contrast, in the suppression of the revolt of Samos in 440/39, the combined fleets of Chios and Lesbos, supplying 25 ships in 440 and 30 in 439 (Thuc. 1.116.2, 117.2; AE64 p. 40), cost them between twelve and fifteen talents per month at the lower rate of pay. The islands had always been poor in natural resource
s and the removal of the need to supply triremes would have brought substantial savings to their economies. It also seems most likely that the middle and lower classes even avoided this smaller burden, as the phoros payments would fall mainly on the rich.
Many individuals from the allied cities improved their standard of living by coming to live and work in Athens, which offered no barriers to ‘economic migrants’. One of the biggest areas of employment was service in the fleet, as Thucydides informs us on a number of occasions (e.g. 3.16.1). Many craftsmen and those involved in the retail trade also saw greater opportunities of improving their income by leaving lowly paid jobs in their own cities and making use of the increased opportunities in Athens and the Piraeus:
This is why in the matter of freedom of speech we have put slaves on equal terms with free men and metics [resident foreigners] with citizens, for the city needs metics because of all its industries and because of the fleet.
(Old Oligarch 1.12)
These resident foreigners were known as metics and paid a poll tax of one drachma per month, known as the ‘metoicion’. Although the majority would have come from the poorer classes, there was still a large number who enjoyed a middle-class income and status – 3,000 metics served as hoplites in the Athenian army in the campaign against Megara at the beginning of the war (Thuc. 2.31.2). Some of these metics became men of considerable wealth, such as the orator Lysias and his brother, who owned a shield-making factory employing nearly 120 slaves (Lysias 12.19), and whose property was sold off under the rule of the Thirty Tyrants (404–403) for 70 talents. The Athenians were very tolerant and allowed these metics to participate in Athenian festivals, go to the theatre, have access to the courts through an Athenian patron and worship their own gods in their own temples. There is a decree of 333, which gives permission to the Citians from Cyprus to purchase land in order to build a temple to ‘Aphrodite’, as the Egyptians had already done for Isis. Plato informs us that Apollodorus of Cyzicus, Phanosthenes of Andros and Heracleides of Clazomenae even became generals, and the last two served as public officials in another capacity (Ion 541 c–d). The only figure that allows for an estimate to be made of their number comes from the census of Demetrius of Phaleron (the pro-Macedonian ruler of Athens) of c.317, i.e. 10,000, but it is likely to have been higher when the Athenian Empire was at its greatest. The metics, therefore, made up a considerable section of the population, enjoying greater material advantages in Attica than in their native cities.
Political benefits and the popularity of the Athenian Empire
There is much disagreement between modern historians – e.g. de Ste. Croix and Bradeen – about the political benefits of the Empire to the allied cities, and consequently about the popularity of the Athenian Empire. The evidence from the allies themselves about their views on the so-called political benefits has not survived and thus we have to rely upon Thucydides as the main literary source. Thucydides harboured no doubts about the unpopularity of the Empire, with speakers (often oligarchic) constantly accusing Athens of ‘enslaving’ their allies. The Corinthians in 432 urged the Peloponnesian League allies to vote for war because of Athens’ tyrannical behaviour:
‘As for that tyrannical city that has been set up in Greece, realise that it has been set up to dominate all alike, so that it rules over some already, and is planning to rule over the others. … and let us set free the Greeks who are already enslaved.’
(Thucydides 1.124.3)
In 428 the Mytileneans, one of the original members of the Delian League and still an independent ship-supplier, were determined to revolt because of Athens’ treatment of other allies, as they explained to the Spartans:
‘When we saw that they were relaxing their efforts against the Persians and increasingly enslaving the allies, we began to be afraid.’
(Thucydides 3.10.4; AE126 p. 60)
Statements from Athens’ enemies and from allies planning to revolt may be considered possibly suspect, especially as the ruling regimes were oligarchic, but the Athenians themselves were blatant about the nature of their Empire. Cleon, who usually supported a tough policy in the control of the allies, said of the Empire in the Mytilenean Debate:
‘You do not realise that the empire that you have is a tyranny imposed on subjects, who plot against you and are ruled against their will.’
(Thucydides 3.37.2)
This comment, if taken on its own, might seem to be a typical example of Cleon’s harsh bluntness and tendency to exaggeration, as portrayed in the hostile sources. However, no less a ‘statesman’ than Pericles echoes the same sentiments:
‘The empire you have now is like a tyranny: in the opinion of mankind it may seem to have been acquired unjustly, but it cannot be safely surrendered.’.
(Thucydides 2.63.2; AE114 p. 56)
Thucydides (1.99; AE29 p. 21) implies numerous revolts because of Athenian behaviour, and specifically records the revolts of Naxos, Thasos, Euboea, Samos, Lesbos and Chios – important founder members of the Delian League. When the news of Athens’ disastrous defeat in Sicily in 413 became known:
The subject states of Athens were especially eager to revolt even though it was beyond their capability.
(Thucydides 8.2.2)
Thucydides clearly believed that the Athenian Empire was universally hated by both subject-allies and the rest of Greece, especially as the Athenians were prepared to use their power brutally, as in the case of Scione and Melos. Consequently, at first sight the political benefits for the allies seem to be few in number.
De Ste. Croix, however, believes that the Athenian Empire was popular with the majority of the subjects and has argued strongly, using Thucydides as his main source, that Thucydides seriously misjudged and distorted the views of the subject-allies in his portrayal of the Empire’s unpopularity. The speeches in Thucydides, where the anti-Athenian sentiments are most clearly expressed, do not reflect what was actually said but are mainly a reflection of his own personal views, e.g. the speech of the Mytileneans, a part of which is quoted above, about Athens’ imperialist behaviour does not reflect genuine Mytilenean opinion but Thucydides’ interpretation. However, there is enough detailed evidence presented in the historical narrative of Thucydides to counteract and correct his biased views. For example, Diodotus in the Mytilene Debate, although exaggerating his point to counteract the arguments of Cleon, would have failed totally to convince his audience if the Athenian Assembly had not recognized some truth in his argument:
‘At the moment in all the cities the people [i.e. the poor] are your friends; either they do not join the few in revolting, or, if they are forced to revolt, they become at once the enemy of those who have revolted.’
(Thucydides 3.47.2; AE132 p. 62)
Furthermore, after describing in full the civil war (‘stasis’) in Corcyra in 427, Thucydides continues about the state of politics generally in Greece, and about how allied democrats sought out Athenian help:
Later practically the whole of Greece was in convulsion: everywhere there was opposition between the democratic leaders who sought to bring in Athens and the oligarchs who sought to bring in the Spartans.
(Thucydides 3.82.1; AE211 pp. 111–12)
The main reason for this distortion lies in Thucydides’ oligarchic political outlook, shaped by political and social influences from his upper-class background. If Thucydides was not in sympathy with ‘radical’ democracy, as seems likely from his favourable comments about the rule of the Five Thousand in 411/0 (8.97 – see Chapter 22) and his pejorative comments on the Athenian ‘demos’, e.g. ‘mob’ (2.65.4), and if his informants within the allied cities were upper-class supporters of oligarchy, then it is possible that Thucydides mistakenly believed that the oligarchic dislike of the Athenian Empire was shared by the lower classes in the allied cities. Those with oligarchic views and states governed by oligarchies would always be fearful of Athens’ radical democracy, and, although the Athenians tried to tolerate these regimes, invariably they clashed with Athens,
as stressed by an Athenian oligarchic pamphleteer:
Whenever the Athenians have tried to support the best people [i.e. oligarchs], it has not furthered their interests. It was not long before the people were enslaved in Boeotia; and when they supported the best people in Miletus, it was not long before they revolted and massacred the common people.
(Old Oligarch 3.1)
Much of the tough imperialistic legislation, such as the denunciations and trials of allegedly subversive allies in Athens (Chalcis Decree; AE78 pp. 44– 45), was aimed primarily at the oligarchic-minded wealthy, who looked towards Sparta or Persia in their hopes of revolt from Athens:
For the Athenians everywhere destroyed oligarchies, the Spartans democracies.
(Aristotle, Politics 1307b 22; AE214 p. 112)
Although this was an exaggeration by Aristotle about the Athenians, it is still hardly surprising in these circumstances to find a strong antipathy to the Athenian Empire among the upper class in the allied cities. They would have been Thucydides’ main informants and they would have been given a sympathetic hearing by him, being himself a supporter of the Athenian ‘kaloikagathoi’ (see Chapter 18) and thus disliking the excesses of the demagogues and the radical democracy in their treatment of the subject-allies.
Aspects of Greek History (750–323BC) Page 43