The History of the Athenian Empire

After the Persian Wars, the Greek states, especially the islands and coastal cities of Asia Minor, formed the Delian League in 478 to avenge the attacks by Persia and free the Greek states under Persian rule. The Athenian general Cimon (died ca. 450), the son of Miltiades, the hero of Marathon, achieved a great victory over the Persians in 468 at the Eurymedon River in Asia Minor, freeing the Greek cities in Asia Minor from Persian threat.

With this success, the Delian League began to morph into the Athenian Empire. Cimon and Athens argued that city-states that received benefits from the league but were not members should be forced into the organization since it was unfair that they were receiving all of the benefits without paying anything.

Cimon and the Athenians forced the city Carystus into the league in 472 on those grounds. When Naxos, a member of the league, seceded, the Athenians reduced Naxos, taking away its autonomy on grounds that the city did not abide by its sacred oath. In 465, Athens under Cimon attacked the island of Thasos, a league member with a large fleet on the Thracian coast, because it desired the gold mines on the island. After a long siege, Thasos was forced to surrender in 463.

These incidents show how the league was transformed by Athens into an empire. There were now three classes of cities: those that contributed ships, which ultimately comprised only three members, Lesbos, Chios, and Samos; those who were free but paid money or tribute instead of supplying ships; and those who were tributary allies but remained subject to Athens. For Athens, the more cities that paid money instead of supplying ships the better, since this put even more control and power in the hands of Athens, which controlled the fleet. All cities were required to furnish troops to Athens (i.e., the league) in time of war.

In the end, all but Lesbos, Chios, and Samos furnished troops to the league. When new cities joined, they never maintained complete autonomy, and those that revolted lost their autonomy completely. The Athenians, moreover, made independent arrangements with these cities that were always in the best interest of Athens, and not necessarily of the league. Many of the cities had Athenian garrisons, and Athens often determined how their governments were organized. By the middle of the fifth century, the Athenian Empire included most of the islands in the Aegean except Crete, Melos, and Thera, as well as most of the coastal cities, from Chalcidice in Thrace to Phaselis on the southern coast of Asia Minor.

The league originally was centered on the sacred island of Delos. While Athens was always looked upon as the leading member, the league at least had the semblance of a confederation in which each city had an equal vote. When Athens assumed the supreme leadership, in both war and policy, the meetings at Delos became less important. Athens discontinued the regular meetings and could decide on policies without even going through the pretense of consultation.

When the Athenian fleet was finally destroyed in Egypt in 454, the Athenians moved it permanently to Athens on the pretense of safeguarding the league’s treasury. From then on, the allies paid their tribute to Athens and the goddess Athena, not to Delos and the god Apollo. The goddess received one-sixtieth of the tribute for her own treasury, meaning that Athens could do whatever it wanted with this revenue.

The Athenians divided their empire at first into five geographical zones: Thrace, Hellespont, Ionia, Caria, and the Islands, although ultimately Ionia and Caria were merged into one. Every four years during the Great Panathenaea, the tribute was reassessed, with some cities’ contributions increasing and others decreasing. As a further example of Athenian control, allies could appeal their assessment, but only in front of an Athenian court. The surviving evidence shows that the general trends of the assessments did not alter dramatically until the Peloponnesian War.

This jurisdiction of control in Athens even extended to legal issues. While the Athenians could justify disputes between Athens and an allied city-state taking place in Athenian courts, and that anyone accused of treason also be tried in Athens, the city now began to exert itself in other legal issues. After the city of Chalcis, which tried to rebel, was reduced, Athens added that for sentences of execution, exile, or loss of rights, the accused could appeal to Athenian courts. Athens was now moving beyond just the military protection of the empire to wielding intrusive political and legal control over its allies.

The political history and philosophy of Greece led to a constant conflict between the ideas of an empire, which Athens pursued, and the concepts of freedom for the city-states. Greek cities and their residents always viewed the concept of political freedom as being tied to self-governance. When a danger arose, cities could join themselves into a confederation or league, but once that danger ended, they saw it as their right to return to self-control or autonomy.

This was in opposition to the idea of the Athenian Empire. Athens, however, could not separate itself from the Greek philosophy of the polls, or city-state. So it did not take the next step needed in the evolution to bring the smaller cities and those defeated into their own political system (i.e., make the cities Athenian). By not doing this, the Athenians continually created disunity by having the residents of other cities not be Athenian (i.e., full citizens) and not independent. This in turn led to continual disaffection, and ultimately rebellion.

Athens attempted to remain on friendly terms with Sparta during the first half of the fifth century. Cimon viewed relations with Sparta to be in the best interests of both. Athens would not interfere in the Peloponnese so long as Sparta did not interfere in the Aegean. The Athenian leaders Themistocles and Aristides had watched over Athens during and immediately after the Persian Wars. With Themistocles’s ostracism, Cimon was brought in by Aristides, and the two ran the political machinery in Athens with the guiding principle of keeping Athens safe from Persia and keeping the peace with Sparta. Cimon was continually reelected as general and was able to protect Athens from Persia, while Aristides held the moral ground needed to maintain control over the Athenian Assembly and peace with Sparta.

When Aristides died, Cimon was the most important and powerful Athenian statesman. He continued his friendly relations with Sparta. Younger politicians, especially Ephialtes and Pericles, resented Cimon and his policies of peace with Sparta. When a revolt of the helots, state-owned serfs who worked the land and could not be sold, occurred in Sparta, Sparta asked Athens for help, and Cimon led an Athenian force to help Sparta in 462. The Spartans then dismissed Cimon without giving a reason, and he returned to Athens, humiliated.

Ephialtes and Pericles saw their chance to end the pro-Sparta party in Athens and Cimon. At the same time that Cimon was absent, the two were able to enact popular reforms which achieved a full democracy, giving more power to the lower classes, which Cimon had opposed. When Cimon returned, Ephialtes and Pericles were able to have him ostracized. Ephialtes was murdered soon after by unknown assassins who may have come from his own faction, and Pericles controlled the political situation in Athens.

Upon Cimon’s banishment, Athens moved away from Sparta and began to court its enemies. In 458, Athens made an alliance with Argos, Sparta’s chief enemy in the Peloponnese. This alliance, along with their receiving Megara, a member of the Peloponnesian League that had seceded, led to Athens being involved in 459 in a war with Corinth and their ally Aegina. The Athenians successfully defeated the two and built a series of defensive walls at Megara to keep Attica safe. With half the fleet in the Saronic Gulf, the other half was at the far ends of the Athenian Empire.

Athens now launched an expedition to Egypt with 200 warships to help in the Egyptian rebellion against the Persians. Unlike the previous battles and campaigns, which were fought in Greek territories, this expedition now had the Greeks as invaders in unfamiliar lands. The Athenians arrived and sailed up the Nile to Memphis, which the rebels captured. The Athenians now were fighting two wars—one at Aegina, which finally fell in 456 and was enrolled in the empire and became one of the richest tribute states; and the other in Egypt, which went on for the next two years without any details recorded about it.

During this same period, the Athenians won a victory over Spartan allies in Boeotia and, with the exception of Thebes, made the cities there allies of Athens. Although they were not enrolled in the empire, the cities would support Athens if needed. The Athenians were able to complete their long walls from the harbor to the city without fear of attack. Disaster now struck Athens, however, as the fleet in Egypt was destroyed and a relief fleet of fifty ships was defeated as well in 454.

Nevertheless, the Athenian Empire was at its height now, with both naval and land-based cities controlling most of central Greece. The major threat to Athens now lay with Corinth, and Pericles planned to make the Corinthian Gulf an Athenian lake. Athens under Pericles successfully took over Achaean cities. Cimon was recalled early, and he negotiated a five-year peace treaty with Sparta in 452, probably at the same time and in conjunction with Sparta and Argos concluding a thirty-year truce. The Athenian Empire was supreme.

Cimon and Pericles were now free to make war on Persia after the disastrous Egyptian campaign. Cimon sailed to Cyprus and besieged the city of Cition, where he was killed during the attack. The fleet abandoned the siege but then successfully defeated the enemy on both land and sea, with victory over the Phoenician and Cilician ships. With Cimon’s death, the policy of Athens against Persia now changed. Pericles successfully negotiated the Peace of Callias in 449. The Greek cities of Asia were in the hands of the Athenians while they gave up their claim to Cyprus.

Pericles was determined to hold on to the recent gains in Greece, so he was willing to abandon Cyprus so as not to face a two-front war. Shortly afterward, the Athenians lost control of Boeotia, which was probably not seen as a great loss because it had added little to their empire but took up a lot of resources. Worse, however, was the loss of Megara, with the Athenian garrison massacred. Pericles reduced Euboea, but there were rumblings of discontent in the empire. This may be reflected in a general reduction of tribute in the year 446. At this point, Athens and Sparta agreed to a thirty-year peace, in which Athens gave up its gains in the Corinthian Gulf and Aegina would still be in the league, but with its autonomy guaranteed.

With the negotiated Peace of Callias between Persia and Athens granting freedom to the Greek cities of Asia Minor, the stated purpose of the Delian League ended and the confederation should be dissolved. Pericles decided that the league, now the Athenian Empire, would continue, and Athens would ensure the protection of the Aegean and the safety of the allied cities with the fleet. At the same time, he indicated that the temples on the Acropolis, which had been destroyed by Persia during the Great War, should be rebuilt from the league’s treasury, now held at Athens. Many Athenians, who viewed that the tribute should be reserved for the protection of the allies, opposed this plan.

Pericles, however, countered that Athens should be able to use the money as it saw fit so long as the ideas of the league were upheld; in addition, the restoration of the temples allowed Athens to provide an employment program and beautify the city. In the allied states, discontent in the 440s was evident, with tribute dropping due to some paying late, others paying only the minimum, and still others not paying at all. The Athenians tightened up their collections, and payments, including back tribute, increased in the mid-440s.

At the same time, Pericles sent out more cleruchies, this time to Thrace to safeguard the important grain trade coming from what is now southern Russia. The citizens sent out were from the lowest classes, which gave them land and the prospect of more resources. This in turn allowed these new settlers to be enrolled in the hoplite class. Unlike colonists, these citizens in the Cleruchies remained Athenians, with all the rights and responsibilities that came with that status, and the lands they settled were now extensions of Athens. Pericles also introduced another act that made the Athenian Empire more prominent in all of the cities by requiring the use of Athenian coinage and weights. In addition, allied cities were forbidden to mint their own silver coins.

While the act allowed a more cohesive policy of trade in the Aegean, it also meant that Athens controlled trade. Pericles put into action his plan to rebuild the city, and the Acropolis was adorned with new temples paid for by allied tribute. By 435, Athens was in control of an empire, making it the most important city in the Greek world. Although there had been an indecisive war that brought home the realities of an empire and its problems, Athens was still ambitious and wanted to increase its power over all of Greece. This in turn led to a new conflict between Athens and Sparta, which began far from Athens on the other side of Greece with Corinth and its colonies, which in turn led to the great Peloponnesian War.