The Growth of Athenian Imperialism

Abstract

By 446/5 the Delian League had become the Athenian empire. Peace had been made with Persia, but Athens had firmly retained her hold over the allies. More important, Sparta recognised the Athenian claim in the Thirty Years' Peace. ‘We will allow the cities their independence,’ Pericles could say on the eve of the Peloponnesian War, ‘if they were independent when we made peace.’ So much is clear, but the chronology and nature of the development of Athenian imperialism are both uncertain. We are coming to know or reasonably to guess considerably more of the decisive transition to empire following the Peace of Callias, but the imperial measures of those crowded years can only be appreciated in true perspective if we have a right understanding of the preceding period. The main purpose of this study is to re-examine the development of Athenian imperialism in the fifties.In his concise summary of Athens' rise to power, Thucydides emphasises the significance of the reduction of Naxos: to contemporaries Athenian action may have seemed less questionable. The Persian danger was still serious, and history had shown that the largest of the Cyclades might be a menace to the Greek cause, if it got into the wrong hands. Certainly the League was still popular after the collapse of Naxos, as Cimon's Eurymedon campaign clearly shows. From Caria to Pamphylia the Greek cities welcomed freedom from Persia and gladly entered the League: only at Phaselis was the show of pressure needed.