Martin on the Athenian Empire:

9. Athenian Empire in the Golden Age:

The struggle against the Persian invasion had occasioned a rare interval of inter-state cooperation in ancient Greek history. The two most powerful city-states, Athens and Sparta, had put aside their mutual suspicions stemming from their clash at the time of Cleisthenes' reforms in order to share the leadership of the united Greek military forces. Their attempt to continue this cooperation after the repulse of the Persians, however, ended in failure. Out of this failure arose the so-called Athenian Empire, a modern label invented to point out the political and economic dominance Athens came to exercise over other Greek states in an alliance originally set up as a voluntary association of its members against Persia.

9.1. IX. The Establishment of an Athenian Empire:

The victorious Greeks decided in 478 B.C. to continue a naval alliance in order to attack the Persian outposts that still existed in far northern Greece and western Anatolia, especially Ionia. The Spartans naturally assumed leadership of this alliance, continuing the position that they had held at the had of the Greek coalition formed to resist the invasion of Xerxes. The conduct of the Spartan commander, Pausanias, soon caused disaffection among the Greek allies, however, and Athens soon took over the position of hegemon (leader by consensus) of the alliance. This change in leadership marked the beginning of the establishment of what would become an Athenian Empire.

9.1.1. IX. The Misconduct of Pausanias the Spartan:

The Spartan Pausanias, victor of the battle of Plataea, was chosen to lead the first expedition of the naval alliance against the remaining Persian outposts in Greek territory. His arrogant and violent behavior, especially toward women, quickly led to dissatisfaction with Spartan leadership among the Greek allies. This kind of outrageous conduct was to prove common in the future for Spartan men in positions of power when away from home. Their regimented training in Sparta apparently left them ill prepared to operate humanely and effectively once they had escaped from the constraints imposed by their austere way of life as “Equals”, as Spartan adult male citizens were called, always under scrutiny by one another in their homeland. Spartan kings, too, who grew up under a freer regimen than did ordinary Spartan men, tended to lose sight of the Spartan tradition of austerity and just behavior when they campaigned abroad for long periods. Not even they were immune to the corrupting influence of the desire for luxury, which the austere life of Spartans at home in Sparta excluded as a matter of principle and law.

9.1.2. IX. Spartan Approval of Athenian Leadership:

By 477 B.C., the Athenian aristocrat Aristides (c. 525-465 B.C.) had successfully persuaded the other Greeks to request Athenian leadership of the continuing naval alliance against the Persians. The leaders at Sparta were happy to cede their position at the head of the alliance because, in the words of the Athenian historian Thucydides (c. 460-400 B.C.), “they were afraid any other commanders they sent abroad would be corrupted, as Pausanias had been, and they were glad to be relieved of the burden of fighting the Persians.... Besides, at the time they still thought of the Athenians as friendly allies.” It could be added that Sparta's ongoing need to keep its army at home most of the time to guard against helot revolts also made prolonged overseas operations difficult to maintain.

9.1.3. IX. A Permanent Structure for the Alliance:

Under Athenian direction, the Greek alliance against Persia took on a permanent organizational structure. Member states swore a solemn oath never to desert the coalition. The members were predominately located in northern Greece, on the islands of the Aegean Sea, and along the western coast of Anatolia--that is, in the areas most exposed to Persian attack. Most of the independent city-states of the Peloponnese, on the other hand, remained in their traditional alliance with the Spartans. This alliance of Sparta and its allies, which modern historians refer to as the Peloponnesian League, had an assembly to set policy, but no action could be taken unless the Spartan leaders agreed to it. The alliance headed by Athens also had an assembly of representatives to make policy. Its structure was supposed to allow participation by all its members.

9.1.4. IX. The Finances of the Alliance (Delian League):

The Athenian representatives came to dominate this erstwhile democracy, however, as a result of the special arrangements made to finance the alliance's naval operations. Aristides set the different levels of payments the various member states were to pay each year, based on their size and prosperity. The Greek word describing the payments was phoros, literally “that which is brought.” Modern historians refer to the payments as “tribute,” but the translation “dues” might come closer to the official terminology of the alliance, so long as it is remembered that these dues were compulsory and permanent. For their tribute payments, larger member states were assessed the responsibility of supplying entire warships complete with crews and pay; smaller states could share the cost of a ship, or simply contribute cash which would be put together with others' payments to pay for ships and crews. Over time, more and more of the members of the alliance chose to pay their dues in cash rather than go to the trouble of furnishing warships. The alliance's funds were kept on the centrally-located island of Delos, in the group of islands in the Aegean Sea called the Cyclades, where they were placed under the guardianship of the god Apollo, to whom the whole island of Delos was sacred. Historians today refer to the alliance as the Delian League because its treasury was originally located on Delos.

9.1.4.1. IX. The Warships of the Delian League:

The warship of the time was a narrow vessel built for speed called a trireme(“triple-banks-of-oars ship”), a name derived from its having three tiers of oarsmen on each side for propulsion in battle. One hundred and eighty rowers were needed to propel a trireme, which fought mainly by ramming enemy ships with a metal-clad ram attached to the bow and thus sinking them bypuncturing their hulls below the water line. Triremes also carried a complement of about twenty officers and marines; the marines, armed as infantry, could board enemy ships. Effective battle tactics in triremes required extensive training and physical conditioning of the crews. Most member states of the Delian League preferred to pay their annual dues in cash instead of furnishing triremes because it was beyond their capacities to build ships as specialized as triremes and to train crews in the intricate teamwork required to work triple banks of oars in battle maneuvers. Athens was far richer and more populous than most of its allies in the Delian League, and it not only had the shipyards and craftsmen to build triremes in numbers but also a large pool of poorer men eager to earn pay as rowers. Therefore, Athens built and manned most of the alliance's triremes, using the dues of allies to supplement its own contribution.

9.1.5. IX. The Rebellion of Thasos

Since Athens supplied the largest number of warships in the fleet of the Delian League, the balance of power in the League came firmly into the hands of the Athenian assembly, whose members decided how Athenian ships were to be employed. Members of the League had no effective recourse if they disagreed with decisions made for the League as a whole under Athenian leadership. Athens, for instance, could compel the League to send its ships to force reluctant allies to go on paying dues if they stopped making their annual payments. The most egregious instance of such compulsion was the case of the city-state of the island of Thasos which, in 465 B.C, unilaterally withdrew from the Delian League after a dispute with Athens over gold mines on the neighboring mainland. To compel the Thasians to keep their sworn agreement to stay in the League, the Athenians led the fleet of the Delian League, including ships from other member states, against Thasos. The attack turned into a protracted siege, which finally ended after three years' campaigns in 463 B.C. with the island's surrender. As punishment, the League forced Thasos to pull down its defensive walls, give up its navy, and pay enormous dues and fines. As Thucydides observed, rebellious allies like the Thasians “lost their independence,” making the Athenians as the League's leaders “no longer as popular as they used to be.”

9.1.6. IX. The Military and Financial Success of the Delian League

The Athenian-dominated Delian League enjoyed success after success against the Persians in the 470s and 460s. Within twenty years after the rout of the Persian fleet in the battle of Salamis in 479, almost all Persian garrisons had been expelled from the Greek world and the Persian fleet driven from the Aegean. Although the Persian heartland was not threatened by these setbacks, Persia ceased to be a threat to Greeks for the next fifty years. Athens meanwhile grew stronger from its share of the spoils captured from Persian outposts and the dues paid by its members. By the middle of the fifth century B.C., League members' dues alone totaled an amount equivalent to perhaps $200,000,000 in contemporary terms (based on the assumption of $80 as the average daily pay of a worker today). For a state the size of Athens (around 30,000 to 40,000 adult male citizens at the time), this annual income meant prosperity.

9.1.7. IX. Athenian Self-Interest in Empire

The male citizens meeting in the assembly decided how to spend the city-state's income. Rich and poor alike had a self-interest in keeping the the fleet active and the allies paying for it. Well-heeled aristocrats like Cimon (c. 510-450 B.C.), the son of Miltiades the victor of the battle of Marathon, could enhance their social status by commanding successful League campaigns and then spending their share of the spoils on benefactions to Athens. The numerous Athenian men of lesser means who rowed the Delian League's ships came to depend on the income they earned on League expeditions. The allies were given no choice but to acquiesce to Athenian wishes on League policy. The men of Athens insisted on freedom for themselves, but they failed to preserve it for the member states in the alliance that had been born in the fight for just this sort of freedom from domination by others. In this way, alliance was transformed into empire, despite Athenian support of democractic governments in some allied city-states previously ruled by oligarchies. From the Athenian point of view, this transformation was justified because, by keeping the allies in line, the alliance remained strong enough to do its job of protecting Greece from the Persians.

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