Athens' Submission to Persia

In the year 506 BC, as Cleisthenes and Isagoras vied with each other for control of Athens, the Lacedaemonian king Cleomenes intervened in Isagoras’ favor. This misfired badly (see chap. 8), and Cleomenes left Athens under humiliating circumstances. Never one to stomach insults, Cleomenes sought revenge: he

A History of Greece: 1300 to 30 BC, First Edition. Victor Parker.

© 2014 Victor Parker. Published 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Summoned the Peloponnesian League and secured its approval of a military expedition (see chap. 6). Allegedly Cleomenes did so without divulging against whom he planned to lead this expedition. The League’s members, however, once they had voted to go to war, had to follow “whithersoever the Lacedaemonians might lead” - and it was to Athens that Cleomenes led them.

On no objective consideration can Cleisthenes and his political allies have had any chance of warding off this invasion. Two third parties made their own view of the probable outcome clear: The Boeotians, to the northwest of Attica, judged the time right to seize a disputed border region between Attica and Boeotia. The Chalcidians, on the island of Euboea to the north, decided to carry out raids along the Attic coast (Hdt. V 74). That is to say, both Boeotians and Chalcidians assumed that the Athenians would lose - the former could snatch some territory and the latter some plunder, both with equal impunity as the Athenians would not be able to do anything about it.

Cleisthenes was no less astute an observer, and his estimation of Athens’ chances came equally low, for ambassadors departed from Athens and traveled to Sardis to seek aid from the Persian Empire against the Lacedaemonians. The Persian satrap agreed, but only on the condition that Athens submit to Persian rule (Hdt. V 73). The ambassadors, who, given Athens’ desperate circumstances, clearly had instructions to do whatever it took to secure an alliance with the Persian Empire, acquiesced. The official ceremony required them to hand over to Persian representatives a bit of Athenian soil and a bit of water from an Athenian well. The ambassadors had these materials ready to hand, that is to say, they had brought them in the expectation that they might be needed. In other words, the possibility that the Persians might demand Athens’ submission had been considered in advance. Presumably Cleisthenes had instructed the ambassadors to avoid this step if possible, but to carry it out if necessary. Given Athens’ predicament, one can understand such instructions all too well: Cleisthenes, like everyone else, assumed that Athens would lose against the Lacedaemonians - unless, of course, it could secure an ally. So Athens, from the Persians’ perspective, officially became a part of the Persian Empire.

Meanwhile events unfolded in Attica in a way which no one could have foreseen. Cleomenes led his troops to Eleusis where the Athenians mustered what they could and prepared for the worst. As battle was about to be joined, the Corinthian contingent walked off the field. Cleomenes had not initially informed his allies of their opponent, and obviously many in his army had deep misgivings about the campaign now that they stood on Athenian soil. The Corinthians had no quarrel with the Athenians and at the crunch refused to fight against them. Seeing the Corinthians leave, Cleomenes’ colleague, the other Lacedaemonian king, Demaratus, also walked off the field. According to the rules of the League at the time, the members were obligated to follow only when both kings acted in concert (see chap. 6). More allies than just the Corinthians had misgivings, and Demaratus’ exit removed any obligation to remain on the battlefield. One by one the other allied contingents deserted until Cleomenes, bereft of troops, left also (Hdt. V 75).

This sudden deliverance gave the Athenians the opportunity to deal with the Boeotians and the Chalcidians, who clearly had not been expecting any response. The Athenian army marched northwards into Boeotia, engaged the Boeotians near the Euripus, and defeated them soundly. Elated by the victory, the Athenians now crossed over the Euripus to Euboea, engaged the Chalcidians, and, still on the same day, defeated them as well (Hdt. V 77).

Amid the general rejoicing which ensued, the embassy which had gone to Sardis returned and announced that it had secured an alliance with the Persians - at the cost of Athens’ submission to the Persian Empire. One can only imagine the insults heaped upon the hapless envoys. The Athenians never revoked their submission, as any revocation would have tacitly admitted that the submission had duly taken place; and in any case this was something which the Athenians preferred to deal with in the time-honored fashion of not talking about it. The “official” story was that the ambassadors had acted on their own initiative (Hdt. V 73) and that therefore their act was not binding upon the state as a whole. The Persian satrap in Sardis, of course, did not share that view.