Athens and Sparta
‘…an exciting introduction to Greek history for the new student… It is
thoroughly to be recommended for its intelligence and openness.’
D.R.Nightingale, Annual Bulletin of Historical Literature
‘…a major step forward in the teaching of Greek history…’
Paul Cartledge, Classical Review
‘…eminently readable…Both students with little knowledge of ancient
Greece and seasoned scholars will find much of value here…’
Mabel L.Lang, Classical World
‘…the book fulfils its aim of being accessible to beginners but also taking
them beyond the standard outline survey. Professional historians will
also find much of interest…Powell’s perceptive analysis of Spartan life is
now the best single-chapter discussion of her social institutions…’
Stephen Hodkinson, Journal of Hellenic Studies
‘What is distinctive about the book is its explicitness about the ways in
which we have to think…There are particularly interesting sections on
the Parthenon and on Spartan foreign policy…’
P.J.Rhodes, Greece and Rome
‘…consistently evidences a sophisticated subtlety of method…The
chapter on Athenian women can stand on its own as a comprehensive
introduction to the subject.’
Nicholas F.Jones, Journal of Social History
Athens and Sparta is an essential handbook to the study of fifth-century
Greek history and society. It encourages the reader to engage critically
with the evidence, presenting a wide selection of ancient source material
along with clear analysis and narrative.
This fully revised and updated second edition contains a new
appendix on the controversy over the truthfulness of Thucydides, and
fresh material on the representation of Athenian women in vase painting.
Anton Powell is Director of the University of Wales Institute of Classics.
He is the author of numerous books and articles on the history and
society of ancient Greece.
Athens and Sparta
Constructing Greek Political and
Social History from 478 BC
Second Edition
Anton Powell
London and New York
First published 1988
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London, EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Second edition first published 2001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.
Disclaimer: For copyright reasons, some images in the original version of this
book are not available for inclusion in the eBook.
© 1988, 2001 C.A.Powell
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-203-40163-8 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-70987-X (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-26280-1 (Print Edition)
Contents
Abbreviations
Introduction
vi
xii
1. The Delian League: Its Origins and Early History
1
2. From Delian League to Athenian Empire
35
3. The Athenian Empire
60
4. Sparta: Her Problems and Her Ingenuity, 478–431
97
5. The Peloponnesian War, 431–404
138
6. Life within Sparta
218
7. Athenian Demokratia
271
8. Citizen Women of Athens
348
9. Religious Prophecy at Athens
404
Appendix: Did Thucydides write “pure fiction”?
Ancient history and modern passion
436
Index
449
v
Abbreviations
AE
R.Meiggs, The Athenian empire
ATL
B.D.Meritt, H.T.Wade-Gery, M.F.McGregor,
The Athenian tribute lists
BCH
Bulletin de correspondance hellénique
CAH
The Cambridge Ancient History
CQ
Classical Quarterly
FGH
F.Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen
Historiker
HCT
A.W.Gomme, A.Andrewes and K.J.Dover, A
historical commentary on Thucydides (vols 1–3
by Gomme; vol. 4 by Gomme, Andrewes and
Dover; vol. 5 by Andrewes)
JHS
Journal of Hellenic Studies
JRS
Journal of Roman Studies
Meiggs-Lewis
R.Meiggs and D.M.Lewis, A selection of Greek
historical inscriptions to the end of the fifth
century BC
Origins
G.E.M. de Ste. Croix, The origins of the
Peloponnesian War
vi
Abbreviations
P. Oxy.
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri
RE
Pauly-Wissowa-Kroll, Real-Encyclopädie der
classischen Altertumswissenschaft
REG
Revue des études grecques
SIG
Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum
vii
These maps are adapted from maps in Talbert (ed.) Atlas of
Classical History, (Croom Helm, London, 1985). Spellings of
place names are in many cases romanised: so, for example,
Boiotia, Iasos, Kerkyra, Korinth, Sollion appear in the maps as
Boeotia, Iasus, Corcyra, Corinth and Sollium.
Introduction
This work is intended as a handbook for the bright student
beginning Greek history. It deals with method as well as with
fact. It attempts to present an unusually large selection of the
ancient evidence, and to provide clear analysis and narrative. We
seek to highlight problems and to demonstrate explicitly some of
the more important techniques of criticism and construction used
by professional historians. It is hoped to suggest something of the
contribution which Greek history can make to a liberal education,
and to communicate the enjoyment to be had from careful
exploitation of the Greek sources.
The shape of the book has been determined by the supply of
good ancient literary evidence. Political history is studied in most
detail for the period 478–411 BC, for which we have the evidence
of Thucydides; the last years of the Peloponnesian War, from 410
to 404 BC, are treated in outline. Our review of social history
covers the fourth century as well as the fifth. Important
inscriptional evidence is dealt with. But, since the book presumes
no knowledge of Greek in the reader, there is no attempt to treat
the reconstruction of epigraphic fragments.
The playwright Tom Stoppard has a character say that
journalists do not write for the public; they write for other
journalists. The warning implied in this useful overstatement is
one which historians, too, should keep in mind when we write
textbooks. In selecting and arranging material for the present
work, the author has tried to apply his own experience of the
needs of students new to the subject. For example, a teacher
should probably begin a course of Greek history by stressing that
in this subject the required (and enlightened) procedure is, not to
repeat or synthesise the arguments of modern writers, but to look
at what ancient sources say and to use independent judgement in
xii
Introduction
constructing from that base. So, when a course begins with the
Delian League, a student often turns, as instructed, to the Greek
writers and, finding that Plutarch has far more to say on the
subject than Thucydides, is tempted to draw on the former almost
to the exclusion of the latter. Accordingly our first chapter, on the
Delian League, tries to communicate the primacy of Thucydides
as a source and to make clear some of the limitations of Plutarch.
Although Thucydides is by far the most important source for the
political section of this book, discussion of his characteristics is
not confined to a single chapter. We have tried to apply the
observation that great blocks of prolegomena are offputting to
the student (and not only to the student). Discussion of
Thucydides has been distributed, for the sake of digestibility. So
has bibliography.
From the point of view of a liberal educator, one of the most
valuable elements of Greek history, as normally studied, is the
critical method applied to sources. Long after a student may have
ceased to recall much detail of Greek matters, habits survive
which were learned in the study of the Greeks: habits of
scepticism, construction and imputation of motive. And once
acquired, such habits are of course applicable far beyond Greek
history. This is partly why we have laid much stress on method.
For example, we introduce briefly but explicitly the standard
logical device known as Occam’s Razor; argument from silence
is pointedly introduced; we also show how to test the significance
of an explanation by asking whether in certain circumstances it
might have served as a prediction.
Much of the book is concerned with psychology. Aristotle
writes sensibly that the very young can excel at mathematics, as
an exercise of pure logic, whereas the mastery of political theory
requires experience. This raises the question of where the modern
student is to acquire a knowledge of political and social
psychology to apply to ancient Greece. Criticism of a Greek
source requires not merely a study of its internal coherence and
of its compatibility with other sources. In practice, successful
study is informed by a knowledge of psychology derived in part
from non-Greek cultures. The comparison of ancient and modern
is dangerous, leading when wrongly performed to anachronism
and conflation. This is precisely why the subject has to be
addressed clearly and explicitly. In particular the last chapter of
this book, on Athenian use of divination, is meant as a
contribution to this subject.
xiii
Introduction
We have tried often to make psychological principles explicit,
in the hope of making them easier to evaluate and, where
appropriate, to remember. Our emphasis on method and
psychology may also serve as a small step towards increasing the
attention paid to these matters by advanced students. In this area
historians have usually proceeded intuitively, when greater
explicitness and caution might have helped. How many scholars,
for example, could readily present evidence on the power of longterm memory (memory of the kind on which our ancient sources
often depended)? Are we always clearly aware whether the
historical explanations which we daily advance should be taken
as involving necessary cause, sufficient cause, or some other kind
of cause? Occam’s Razor dictates that entities should not be
postulated beyond what is necessary: how clearly do we identify
the differing nature of necessity in differing situations?
We have tried to inoculate our readers against a recurrent fault
in the presentation of our subject, which consists in encouraging
a patronising attitude towards the ancient Greeks. Considering
the pedestal on which the general public assumes the Greeks to
be placed by educators, it is remarkable how low an opinion of
Greek practical intelligence has been communicated by many
specialists, particularly in the twentieth century. In our view, it is
a mistake to encourage derision even of such strange practices as
the Spartan way of voting or the Athenian use of a painted rope
to corral assemblymen. The attitude of superiority is highly
contagious among beginners. It appeals not merely to normal
human vanity and to the easy presumption that modern is best,
but also to the insecurity of the student in the face of a strange
culture. An assumption that the motive for this or that Greek
action may well be silly is likely to inhibit the search for
rationality. And yet in the case of our two societies, Athens and
Sparta, so high is the level of achievement—in their own terms—
that rationality must have been the norm. This book may at times
seem to go too far in ascribing reasonable motives to the Greeks.
We have stressed the rational in the belief that the prior
assumption of reasonableness is more conducive than its opposite
to reflection and discovery in this field.
By tradition teachers of Greek history have encouraged their
students to identify political enthusiasm and bias on the part of
our ancient informants, and to make allowances accordingly. One
anonymous Greek source has even been named after his bias—
the Old Oligarch. But the constant (and desirable) attention to
xiv
Introduction
the bias of a source may in some circumstances have an
unfortunate effect. If combined with the polite convention that
we do not refer to political bias in modern scholars, it may suggest
a belief that we, unlike the Greeks, have achieved objectivity.
Such a belief would be wrong, and by degrading the Greeks it
might to some extent discourage students from seeking to discover
rationality in Greek theory and behaviour. Occasionally,
therefore, when political enthusiasm seems to have affected the
approach of a modern scholar, we have noted as much briefly but
explicitly—as scholars anyway tend to do in private. This is not
to censure. Political and moral enthusiasm has helped to produce
some of the most important studies of the Greeks. We may think
of George Grote, whose general history, still unsurpassed, was
conceived in the early nineteenth century as a massive Utilitarian
tract, hostile to traditional religion, warmly supportive of an
extended franchise. An additional benefit of openness about
modern bias might be to increase awareness in students of their
own biases—one or two of which are also addressed explicitly in
this book. Perhaps every author on a political subject should
follow the example of George Orwell by warning the reader in
advance of the writer’s bias. The present writer therefore identifies
certain personal convictions which he has tried not to indulge in
this book—his belief in almost complete freedom of political
information, in the wide and even spreading of wealth and of
access to power.
As to style: I have tried to imitate two virtues of oral
presentations at academic conferences—the short sentence and
occasional humour. In syntax and vocabulary I have usually
attempted to follow classicists’ mandarin, but have sometimes
used British demotic where that added to precision. The number
of footnotes is very large, a necessity if the reader is to be given
the fullest possible material for construction independent of the
theories of others (including my own).
Finally, my acknowledgements. To Mr R.M.Lupton, my former
teacher at Wyggeston Grammar School, Leicester, I owe my
introduction to the criticism of Greek sources at the age of sixteen.
With my early writing on Greek history I received generous
personal help from Geoffrey de Ste. Croix. I was able to watch
the inspiring effect of his great study, The origins of the
Peloponnesian War, on students at the Working Men’s College in
London. Many of those students provided me with valuable ideas
and criticism for my teaching, among them Kate Davies, Lesley
xv
Introduction
Hannigan, Colin Harris, Ian Lambert, Ling Man Cheong, Ann
Morris, Deborah Murrell, Moira Ashcroft, Gill Ray and David
Smith. Steve Hodkinson read my typescript and saved me from
many faults. Paul Cartledge has been most generous in
volunteering corrections. I am indebted to my editor, Richard
Stoneman, without whose prompt and gratifying support this
book very likely would not have been written.
The work is dedicated to my father and mother.
Note for Second Edition
I have taken the opportunity of adding references to many new
studies which have appeared in the fourteen years since the First
Edition went to press. Two new sections have also been added: in
the chapter on Athenian citizen women, there is now an
introduction to the use of vase-painting as evidence; and in an
Appendix, I deal with an influential recent challenge to the
honesty of Thucydides.
In making these changes for the Second Edition, I have received
valuable advice from colleagues in the University of Wales
Institute of Classics and Ancient History: Nick Fisher, Sian Lewis,
Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, Stephen Mitchell, Daniel Ogden. I am
most grateful to them.
xvi
1
The Delian League:
Its Origins and Early History
Introduction
In 479 BC the city of Athens was in ruins. The invading forces of
the Persian king, Xerxes, had forced it to be abandoned in 480.
The greater part of its defensive wall and most of its houses were
subsequently destroyed.1 The Athenian sailors who, with other
Greeks and under Spartan leadership, defeated Xerxes’ fleet in
480 at nearby Salamis, were men without a city.2 In 479 two
further Greek victories, at Plataia in Central Greece and at Mykale
on the western coast of Asia Minor, spelled the end of the Persian
invasion. The Athenians could reoccupy the site of their city,
rebuild its perimeter wall and fortify the city’s new port,
Peiraieus.3 Allied with eastern Greeks who now rebelled from the
king of Persia, Athenian forces went onto the offensive.
Sparta’s attempts to keep command of the naval alliance
against Persia were not wholehearted. Following up their success
at Mykale, the Greeks sailed to assault the Persian force
controlling Sestos, on the northern shore of the Dardanelles.
However, the Spartan commander, King Leotykhidas, returned
home: an Athenian, Xanthippos, led the campaign.4 Another
Spartan, the regent Pausanias, did lead the Greek fleet with some
success against Cyprus (defiantly close to the bases of Xerxes’
best non-Greek sailors, the Phoenicians) and Byzantion
(strategically placed to control the importing of corn from the
Black Sea territories to mainland Greece)—campaigns probably
of 478.5 But Sparta acquiesced when, not long afterwards, the
eastern Greeks and the Athenians rejected the leadership of
Pausanias and his Spartan successors.6 With the enthusiastic
approval of the eastern Greeks, command of the naval war against
Persia was formally given to Athens.7
1
The Delian League
The naval alliance under this changed leadership is called by
scholars “the Delian League”; its treasury and meetings
(“synods”) were located on the symbolic mid-Aegean island of
Delos.8 By stages the League was transformed into an Athenian
empire. The wealth it generated, and channelled to Athens, helped
the spectacular rebuilding of the city: the construction, for
example, of the Parthenon and of the gateway building of the
Akropolis, the Propylaia, which to contemporary Greeks was
perhaps even more remarkable.9 In its later stages the Delian
League seems to have promoted demokratia, the control of cities’
internal affairs by and for their own (male) citizen poor;10 the
subsequent Athenian Empire certainly did.11 But aristocratic and
wealthy Athenians profited especially from the League and
Empire.12 The funding by rich Athenians of artistic activities,
including the production of tragic and comic drama, was made
possible or facilitated by the proceeds of Athenian domination.
The Thracian goldmines, exploitation of which probably did
much for the education and leisure of the historian Thucydides,
may have been acquired through the activities of the Delian
League and later were protected, at least indirectly, by the power
of Athens’ imperial navy.13 Also, we may suspect that a fertile
sense of their own importance arose in Athenian thinkers (even
those opposed to demokratia and Athenian imperialism) from
contemplating the extent of Athenian power and the
understandable principles on which open demokratia proceeded.
It is well known that the influence of these thinkers on later
civilisations has been profound: in studying the origins of
Athenian rule we are examining the material base of much of
European culture.
*
Reconstructing the history of the Delian League should involve
an exercise in self-restraint. We should not claim to have a
satisfactory knowledge of the period; for one thing, it contains
several years to which we cannot confidently assign a single
recorded event. Our most important source of information,
Thucydides, set out to describe a later episode, the war which
began in 431 between the Athenians and the Peloponnesian
alliance.14 He was taking notes as an adult from that year,15 had
sufficient seniority to be a general of Athens in 42416 and survived
until at least 404.17 His account of events before 432 is, with
important exceptions, brief. At the start of his history he states
that events of the pre-war period and earlier were “impossible to
2
The Delian League
discover with certainty because of the passage of so much time”.18
He adds that certain trustworthy inferences were, on the other
hand, possible. The context of these remarks makes clear that
Thucydides’ concern here was particularly with the scale of
events. But, as it stands, his statement about the obscurity of
events embraces more than their scale. Also, it seems to apply
to—among other periods—the time of the Delian League: that is,
from 477 to c.450.
In his often-authoritative commentary on Thucydides, A.W.
Gomme states that the historian’s words on unknowable events
“must mean, both in language and logic, ‘Greek history before
the Peloponnesian War’, the whole of it”: they must, that is,
include the events of the Delian League.19 Now this is a somewhat
depressing conclusion for the professional historian, and Gomme
is unwilling to accept that Thucydides himself did mean this.
Gomme argues that the unknowable events for Thucydides
belonged to an earlier period, before c.510. He implies that if
Thucydides had meant that the period of the Delian League was
obscure, he would have indicated as much when dealing in detail
with the period between the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars.20
Gomme, with other scholars, suggests that some of Thucydides’
original words, which would have drastically changed the
meaning of the text here, have been lost in the manuscript
tradition. 21 But our manuscripts have no obvious sign of
corruption at this point. Sound method requires that we work
from the text which survives, failing strong evidence of corruption
(such as the existence of conflicting versions of a text in different
manuscripts, or of a text which yields absurdity or nonsense).
Doing so in this case, we should conclude that Thucydides placed
conspicuously at the start of his work a warning about the
obscurity of events before the Peloponnesian War.
This conclusion is strengthened by a remark of Thucydides
shortly afterwards (I 20 1): “Such I found the events of long ago
to be, though it is difficult to depend on all the inferences made
here about them.” These “events of long ago”, in the description
of which imperfect inference rather than knowledge is involved,
include some which belong to 480 and later, as the preceding
chapters (18 and 19) show.22 It seems, then, that Gomme is wrong
to exclude events after c.510 from consideration here. That
Thucydides did not repeat his caveat about the obscurity of
events, when he dealt in detail with the decades from 479, should
not trouble us. Having made the point conspicuously and
3
The Delian League
repeatedly at the start of his work, he may have expected his
readers to remember it.
Thucydides gives a detailed sketch of the precariously
describable period 479–436, which includes the entire life of the
Delian League, in Chapters 89 to 117 of Book I. What was his
purpose in doing so? At I 89 1 he indicates an intention of showing
how the Athenians “arrived at the situation in which they grew
great”.23 He then describes the fortification of Athens and
Peiraieus, the campaigns shortly preceding the founding of the
Delian League, and the setting up of the League itself. Next, he
makes it clear (I 97 1) that he is about to describe “what they [the
Athenians] undertook in war and in the management of affairs
between the Persian War and this one [the Peloponnesian], against
the Persians, against their own allies who revolted, and against
the Peloponnesians who came into contact with them on the
various occasions”. In justifying this digression from his main
theme of the Peloponnesian War, he mentions that the inter-war
period had been neglected by other writers, with the exception of
Hellanikos, who dealt with it “briefly and with inaccurate
chronology”. He also states that the digression makes it clear
how the Athenians’ domination was established.
When using the writing of Thucydides, or of anyone else, as a
historical source, it is important to investigate the author’s
purpose. For one thing, the writer’s purpose controls our ability
to make arguments from silence. Thus we could not argue, for
example, that “there were no striking developments in the
internal, constitutional, history of Athens or Sparta between 479
and 436, or Thucydides would have mentioned them”, because it
was apparently not his purpose to mention such events for their
own sake. On the other hand, Thucydides did intend to describe
Athenian undertakings against Persia. So the lack of clear
reference in his work to a formal peace treaty between Athens
and Persia in the early 440s should make us hesitate before
accepting statements from elsewhere that there was something of
the kind. (See below, Chapter 2.)
Origin and purposes of the League
Before we look at how the Delian League came to be formed, we
should ask what the participant states intended the League to do.
As often for the historian of the fifth century, a very careful look
4
The Delian League
is needed at the words of Thucydides, and in particular, in this
case, at one Greek word, proskhema. Thucydides explains very
briefly, and seemingly in passing, why the Athenians instructed
other members of the Delian League to supply funds or ships: he
writes that “a proskhema was to avenge what they (i.e. the League
members) had suffered, by ravaging the territory of the king of
Persia”.24 Until very recently even good scholars, and the authors
of standard translations of Thucydides, seem to have given a
slightly misleading translation of the word proskhema. Thus
P.A.Brunt takes it to mean “the professed purpose” of the
League;25 Gomme writes of the “announced intention”,26 while
R.Meiggs in one passage renders Thucydides’ expression simply
as “the purpose”.27 However, G.E.M. de Ste. Croix has now
pointed out that the word proskhema, as used both by Thucydides
and other Greek writers, carries an implication of unreliability or
deceit.28 It may best be translated as “pretext”. De Ste. Croix
also observes that the word here is not preceded in Greek by the
definite article: it does not even mean “the pretext”, but rather
“a pretext”. This brief remark of Thucydides’ is, then, very far
from conveying what he saw as the real reasons for the Athenians’
involvement in organising the League, but implies that some, at
least, of those reasons could not easily have been admitted. The
general and clearly stated theme of this part of Thucydides’ work
involves Athenian acquisition of power. De Ste. Croix plausibly
states,
I fancy that his choice of the word proschema would have
left them [i.e. his readers] with the feeling that the talk of
revenge through ravaging expeditions was at least partly a
cover for ambitious Athenian designs for organising a large,
active, powerful and rich alliance under their control.29
In testing this interpretation of Thucydides, we should look for
any other passage in his work which refers to the Athenians’
purpose in helping to form the Delian League. There is one such
passage, VI 76 3, where Hermokrates the Syracusan is represented
as saying that Athens became leader of willing allies in eastern
Greece “as being a state which intended to punish the Persians”.
Now, even taken in isolation this expression does not mean that
the desire to punish Persia was Athens’ real reason for assuming
the leadership.30 And an examination of the context of the remark
shows that Hermokrates is indeed alleging Athenian insincerity.
5
The Delian League
He contrasts the fair words and, in his view, unfair intentions of
the Athenians, stating that the Athenians resisted the Persians
(through the Delian League, that is) “in order to enslave [the
Greeks] to themselves”.31 Although not cited in this connection
by de Ste. Croix, the speech attributed to Hermokrates does
support his speculative reconstruction of Thucydides’ own view
of the Athenians’ motives. Hermokrates speaks of Athenian
insincerity, of the alleged desire to punish Persia and a real desire
for the “enslavement” (katadoulosis) of other Greeks to Athens.
Thucydides in his own person, having written of a pretext
concerning a desire to punish Persia, shortly afterwards uses a
cognate, and similarly pejorative, word (edoulothe) to describe
Athens’ “enslavement” of allies.32 Hermokrates is an enemy of
the Athenians, speaking to prejudice his audience against them,
as Thucydides tells us.33 His remark, then, would not be of great
value on its own as evidence of Athens’ purpose in forming the
Delian League. Its importance lies in its showing that a pattern of
thought involving an Athenian pretext of punishing Persia and a
real desire for dominance over the eastern Greeks was indeed
known to Thucydides.
We do not need to share any disapproval felt by Thucydides
for Athenian motives. However, we may accept his implication,
if such it was, that a desire for power and wealth did much to
bring about the Athenians’ vigorous participation in the Delian
League. Apart from this, did the “pretext” to which Thucydides
refers, a desire to ravage the Persian Empire to avenge sufferings
caused by the Persians, reflect a real motive of any importance?
A pretext would be chosen for its plausibility, in particular to
Athens’ eastern Greek allies. The sufferings referred to need not
have been those of Athens alone, although she had suffered
disproportionately in 480–479 with the destruction of her city.
The eastern Greeks would remember misfortunes of their own,
sustained during more than half a century of Persian rule: for
example, the savage treatment of young people after the
suppression by Persia of the Ionian Revolt of the 490s.34 Also,
though it might not often be mentioned, the eastern Greeks would
have suffered much as a result of being forced to fight for Persia
against the mainland Greeks in 480–479.
Scholars have sometimes believed that the ravaging of the
Persian Empire was projected by the Delian League for the sake
of loot.35 The use of analogy with modern history may have
misled here. Brunt comments that the members of the League
6
The Delian League
“were to seek reparation for the damage they had sustained by
ravaging the king’s territory”.36 The word “reparation“ recalls,
no doubt intentionally, the French and British policy of fining
Germany for the damage caused by the First World War.
(Demands for “reparations” produced, in the British general
election campaign of 1918, the slogans “Make Germany Pay”
and “Squeeze Germany till the Pips Squeak”.) Another scholar,
A.H.Jackson, has shown, however, that Thucydides’ words do
not imply a policy of extracting plunder from Persian territory.37
Jackson studied Thucydides’ numerous uses of the word employed
for “ravaging” in this connection, deioun, and showed that it
means destruction rather than looting. Brunt’s suggestion about
reparation may happen to reflect part of the allies’ purpose in the
early 470s; the biographer Plutarch has some interesting, though
unreliable, details of lucrative plundering by League members,38
and, much more importantly, Thucydides records the (profitable)
enslavement, in the early years of the League, of people from the
Persians’ garrison-town of Eion.39 But Thucydides’ words on a
proskhema of the alliance do not themselves provide a basis for
this view.
This last topic illustrates an important general principle about
the drawing of analogies between modern and ancient history.
Analogy of this kind can be very helpful in suggesting possible
motives and patterns of thought in antiquity. But because ancient
Greek cultures are in some ways deeply dissimilar from modern
ones, great care is needed in checking that suggested modern
analogues do indeed correspond with the evidence of our ancient
sources. At all levels of study there may be a temptation to glance
hastily at the latter, once a modern analogue is conceived of. A
result is often an error of perception of a kind which modern
psychology has carefully documented—the improper assimilation
of the unfamiliar to the familiar.40
Greeks in the later fifth century, and historians today, are in a
position to know that the great Persian invasion of 480–479 was
not repeated in the following decades. Greeks in the early 470s
were not. It is worth considering, briefly, whether their policy of
attacking Persian territory by means of the Delian League was
intended in part to prevent a recurrence of the great invasion.
Persia had, of course, been heavily defeated in 480–479 but she
retained most of her empire, including Egypt, the greater part of
Asia Minor and, indeed, most of the Middle East. A repeated
invasion might seem to outsiders, such as Athens and her naval
7