The conflict with Sparta that began in 461 may have encouraged the allies’ renewed resistance to Athens’ hegemony; irregular contributions recorded on the Athenian tribute lists may be evidence of unrest among Athens’ allies in the 450s (Rhodes 1992b, 56-61). If so, it was settled by 449. Discontented cities perhaps thought the Athenians were too busy dealing with other conflicts to be able to respond to rebellion. Moreover, if Athens concluded a formal peace with the Persians around 450 (see Lewis 1992b, 121-27; in 460s, Badian 1993b), the allies would have had all the more reason to break with the alliance: after all, the raison d’etre of the Delian League was to protect Greeks from the Persians. And in 446 Euboean cities and Megara (that is, cities close to home) rebelled; soon thereafter the Spartan king Plistoanax led forces of the Peloponnesian League to Attica’s doorstep, only to turn back and allow the Athenians to subdue the Euboean revolt. The Spartans soon agreed to the Peace of 446 or Thirty Years’ Peace.
According to the Peace, for the most part, each side was to keep what it had at the time of the treaty (Thucydides 1.40.2; however, 1.115.1; Ste. Croix 1972, 293-94). A defeat in Boeotia (late 447) convinced the Athenians to abandon attempts to expand their power on land. In effect, the Thirty Years’ Peace agreed to divide leadership of Greeks between Athens, at the head of a naval hegemony, and Sparta, leader of a primarily hoplite-based alliance. Not until 431 would the Spartans and their allies openly challenge the arrangement.
Within Athens democracy had, by mid-century, firmly taken root. Although democracy was not entirely dependent on income from the empire, as is clear from the flourishing democratic system of the fourth century, the evolution of Athens’ hegemony into empire helped to nourish its growth. By 454 the Athenians could use the league’s treasury to pay their crews, primarily citizens of the lowest class, as well as to finance civic festivals and building projects like the Parthenon. Administration of the empire also brought allies into Athens’ courts, stimulating the city’s economy; pay for citizen-jurors came from allied tribute as well.
A recent argument by Eder (1998) that real democracy, in the sense of political power resting primarily in the hands of regular citizens, did not emerge until after the end of the Peloponnesian War, seems to go too far. But even Rhodes, who objects to such a view, agrees that ‘‘democratic leaders of the first generation were aristocrats’’ (Rhodes 1992a, 91). Sophocles’ Ajax, traditionally dated to the period of the Peace, engages with the persistent tension in Athens between mass and elite.
World History
