Fourteen years later, when Aeschylus produced his Oresteia trilogy, there could be no doubt about the nature of the Athenians’ imperialist goals. Their ambitions came at a cost. Despite the Spartans’ apparent acquiescence to the change in leadership of Greeks, they were far from content with the Athenians’ growing strength and influence. Around 465 the Spartans promised to invade Attica if Thasos rebelled from the Delian League, but were prevented from putting this plan into action by an earthquake and the subsequent threat of a revolt of their helots, state-owned slaves (Thucydides 1.101). The transfer of the treasury of the league may have taken place around this time, given the degree of control Athens was exercising over the Aegean as early as 463: by then all of the islands of the Aegean except the Dorian colonies Thera and Melos were under Athens’ control (e. g., Sealey 1976, 252-53; Robertson 1980, 112-19; contra, Rhodes 1992b, 51).
Growing tension between Athens and Sparta came to a head when the Spartans sent back Athenian forces they had requested to help with the siege of rebellious helots on Mount Ithome (around 462). Thucydides says the Spartans suspected the Athenians of meddling within the Peloponnese and mistrusted them because they were not ‘‘of the same tribe’’ - that is, the Athenians were of the Ionian rather than the Dorian Greek ethnos. According to Plutarch the Spartans thought the Athenians were ‘‘revolutionaries’’( Cimon 17). Deeply insulted, the Athenians broke off the alliance still in effect from the Persian Wars and allied themselves with Sparta’s enemy, Argos. Soon afterwards, Megara defected from the Peloponnesian League and the conflict known as the First Peloponnesian War began (around 462/61).
Plutarch’s explanation for the dismissal of Athenian forces reminds us of the close connection between Athens’ domestic and foreign policies (Rhodes 1992a, 73-75). The complaint about revolutionary tendencies most likely alludes to Ephialtes’ reform of the Areopagus in 462/61 and its consequences. About Ephialtes we know very little (see Aristotle, Constitution 25-26; Plutarch, Cimon 10, 13, 15-16). His renown rests on his having successfully deprived the aristocratic council of the Areopagus of much of its power and shifted it from the elite to the Athenian people (Rhodes 1992a, 69-72). Soon after expressing his opposition to these reforms Cimon, who had urged the Athenians to cooperate with Sparta, was ostracized (Plutarch, Cimon 17). Quarrels triggered by the reforms are believed to have been responsible for the murder of Ephialtes in the following year. Athens, it would seem, was on the brink of civil war.
Extended military campaigns abroad concurrent with the war against the Peloponnesians may have exacerbated political discontent in Athens. In 460 the Athenians tried to increase their power at Persia’s expense by sending a large fleet to help Egypt rebel from the Great King. The expedition dragged on for six years before its disastrous end: the Athenians and their allies lost 250 ships (Thucydides
I. 109-10). Thucydides says that only a few men survived (1.110.1; cf. Diodorus
II. 77). Based on epigraphic evidence (M-L 33; SEG xxxiv 45), Lewis estimates that Athenian casualties in 459 alone ‘‘ran well into four figures’’ (Lewis 1992a, 113 n. 57). In addition, in 458 the Athenians turned westward, forming an alliance with Egesta in Sicily (IG I3 11; Rhodes 1992b, 53). At around the same time the Athenians began construction of the long walls. Once complete, the walls would transform Athens into a quasi-island, allowing the city to rely on its fleet to defend its harbor and guarantee the imports necessary to survive extended attacks by land. The Spartans and their Athenian sympathizers understood the implications of the project. According to Thucydides, ‘‘Some Athenians were secretly trying to bring in [Peloponnesian troops then in Boeotia] with the hope of checking the rule of the people and the building of the long walls’’ (1.107.4).
World History
